The hottest Australian hotels opening in 2024
Pack your bags as we have the details on all the new luxury hotels you need to know about, from Hobart to Cape York.
Pack your bags as we have the details on all the new hotels you need to know about from Hobart to Cape York.
New hotels in Melbourne and Victoria
A byword for cool in the hotel world, The Standard has found its natural milieu in Melbourne’s Fitzroy. The new hotel designed by Woods Bagot, likely to open by mid-year, will house 125 guestrooms over seven levels, with categories ranging from Cosy King to Suite Spot. The local art will be cool. The Thai restaurant, headed by chef Justin Dingle Garciyya, will be cool. And the guests-only rooftop “hotspot” offering Mexican food and cocktails will most definitely be cool.
Also debuting in Melbourne this year is another design-savvy US brand, 1 Hotels & Homes, with a focus on sustainability, located riverfront as part of the striking Fender Katsalidis-designed Seafarer development. South Yarra’s boutique Lyall Hotel is set to reopen in autumn following a two-year renovation. Also watch for Lanson Place Parliament Gardens with 137 guestrooms and apartments, and Melbourne Place on Russell Street styling itself as a fashion-forward outpost with rooftop dining.
Steps from Melbourne Airport’s Terminal 4, the dual branded Novotel & Ibis Styles Melbourne Airport is expected to open in July with 464 three and four-star guestrooms.
New hotels in Sydney and New South Wales
Sydney-headquartered TFE Hotels is set to launch The Eve Hotel in a new precinct being developed in the laneways linking Surry Hills with Redfern on the site of the old Wunderlich factory. The 102-room hotel is expected to open in September, topped with a rooftop pool, garden and bar with “a fully operable glass roof and walls”. Perfect for those Sydney thunderstorms.
Meantime the German-founded 25hours Hotels lands in Sydney’s Paddington before year’s end. This group is known for its playful interiors and lively locations (in Berlin, guestrooms offer views into the city zoo’s ape house and elephant enclosure). In Sydney the hotel will take over former ’90s Oxford Street “hotspot” the Grand Pacific Blue Room. Long before it was nightclub it was a cinema, the West’s Olympia Theatre.
Acclaimed Byron Bay beachside hotel Raes on Wategos will this year unveil a downtown apartment hotel complex on the high street with 41 two, three and four very chic self-contained apartments and a rooftop pool. The pared back California vibe of The Bonobo by Raes is courtesy Richards & Spence, the architectural outfit behind the widely admired Calile in Brisbane.
Drifter, a new hotel brand offering private suites and shared bunk rooms, debuts in Australia in June on Byron Bay’s Lanteen Lane with 52 guestrooms. And for those who’d rather get away from the madding Byron crowd, this autumn Sea Sea opens in Crescent Head. From the too-cool-for-school hoteliers behind Bali’s The Slow comes a dedicated “surf-club hotel” with 24 ’70s-inspired guestrooms plus pool, bar and restaurant. Surfboard hire a given.
Newcastle’s hotel scene continues to blossom with the April opening of The Little National Hotel, with 181 compact but cleverly designed guestrooms.
New hotels in Brisbane and Queensland
Scheduled to open in August with a goodly dose of Vegas-meets-Miami glamour, The Star Grand presages further hotel introductions as part of the $3.6bn Queen’s Wharf development, touted to include Australia’s first Rosewood. The 340-room Star Grand occupies two crescent shaped towers providing access to a leisure deck with three pools and a high-rise dining destination.
Meantime, Central Queensland’s accommodation scene is due for a boost when Gladstone welcomes its first five-star hotel. Due to open mid-year, Peppers Gladstone will have 32 apartments. Further north on the remote Cape York Peninsula, Rossville Retreat will unveil a collection of safari-style glamping tents in June.
New hotels in Adelaide and South Australia
Adelaide’s historic GPO will reopen as the five-star hotel mid-year when Marriott comes to town. The $200m development includes a 15-storey tower housing 285 guestrooms and suites. There will also be an 18m indoor pool.
Pod pioneer CABN will open a new off-grid site in August in the Adelaide Hills at The Cedars, the charming arts and crafts home of artist Hans Heysen. The little art colony will include eight pods and one upscale CABN X with private sauna. This represents a rapid growth trajectory for the nature tourism operator that began with one pod pre Covid and will soon operate almost 40 across SA.
The first stage of a planned $50m off-grid, private island luxury ecolodge just off Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula was unveiled in January. Passion project for tech entrepreneur Che Metcalfe, Stage One of Rumi on Louth features just five luxury suites; the remainder of the resort is slated to open next year.
New hotels in Perth and Western Australia
Born as game-changing lounge and nightclub on LA’s Sunset Strip two decades ago Hyde Hotels is set to open its first Australian property, in downtown Perth. Joining outposts in Miami and Ibiza, the new hotel will have 120 guestrooms and a lively music scene revolving around the beach club-style pool.
The $40m redevelopment of the former Rottnest Island Lodge is due for completion this year. The Lodge Wadjemup offers accommodation from compact and affordable to premium rooms with lake and island views. There will be two pools, a new restaurant and gelato bar. Motel chic hits WA with the makeover of the old Comfort Inn Busselton River Resort on the banks of the Vasse River. Even the name is bang on trend. The Timothee Resort offers 34 stylish rooms and all the trimmings including gratis drip coffee from the Margaret River Roasting Co.
New hotels in Hobart and Tasmania
Opening later this year on the site of the old Silver Sands Resort, The Rookery may be planning a new name, but the fundamentals remain the same. An eco-resort comprising 12 two-storey “nests” linked by boardwalks, all offering sweeping views of the ocean and dramatic granite boulders of Peggys Point at Bicheno on the island state’s east coast. Construction is taking place with care not to disturb the nesting sites of the resident Little Penguins.
A Novotel is planned for Hobart but otherwise development in Tasmania this year is small scale and includes Leighton House, 20 minutes from Launceston overlooking the Western Tiers. The 1840 Georgian homestead has been handsomely restored to sleep up to 12 with three ensuite guestrooms in the old house.
