Watch this space: new hotels on the radar around Australia
The hotel scene is running hot in eastern seaboard capitals, and across the country there’s no stopping the off-grid, tiny home phenomenon as Covid propels travellers into the regions.
VICTORIA
Australia’s tallest hotel, The Ritz-Carlton Melbourne, is scheduled to open in late 2022 offering heady city views from 257 guestrooms and suites. Acrophobics take note: check-in is on level 80 and the infinity pool on 64. The Hyatt Centric Melbourne opened in January with 277 guestrooms, followed by the AC Hotel by Marriott Melbourne Southbank, the first Australian hotel for the design-driven brand, with a stylish infinity pool spanning the width of the building.
Watch for Peppers Melbourne Richmond tucked behind a heritage façade on Bridge Road, while Veriu will open “neighbourhood” hotels adjacent to Queen Victoria Market and in hot-to-trot Collingwood. In the regions, Hotel Vera brings seven one-of-a-kind luxury suites to Ballarat, and Dal Zotto Wines in King Valley will unveil new digs in upcycled shipping containers.
NEW SOUTH WALES
In Sydney, Accor debuts the Hotel Morris, following a total overhaul of the historic West End Hotel on Pitt Street as well as The Porter House Hotel Sydney MGallery. Neighbourhood-focused US brand Ace Hotels has just launched its first Australian hotel in Surry Hills, and across town Aiden Darling Harbour Hotel offers 88 very cool rooms in arestored 1930s building in Pyrmont. The opening of the world’s largest W hotel, rising between elevated roadways overlooking Darling Harbour, is scheduled for year’s end but may be pushed back further. QT Newcastle opens in June in the old David Jones building, and stand by for Capella Sydney in Bridge Street’s heritage Lands and Education Buildings next year.
QUEENSLAND
Think Queensland and island resorts and towering high-rises spring to mind, but Covid has delivered several small-scale, highly original developments. The delightfully monikered Miss Midgley’s in one of Brisbane’s oldest buildings on James Street, New Farm (once upon a time Miss Midgley’s Educational Establishment) offers five large apartments designed by mother and daughter architecture team Lisa and Isabella White. Herrmann House on the Scenic Rim is a beautifully restored Queenslander with four guestrooms in the heart of historic Kalbar, and the mid-century Tessa’s on the Beach is a 15-room beachside hotel in Bilinga on the Gold Coast, channelling that popular Palm Springs vibe. Come June the striking 169-room Langham Gold Coast brings the group’s traditional Palm Court afternoon tea to beachgoers, and watch out for the 2023 opening of the swanky Mondrian Gold Coast, overlooking the beach at Burleigh Heads. This month the Voco Brisbane City Centre debuts and next year the $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf Brisbane will add 1000 upscale hotel rooms across four leading brands including Ritz-Carlton and Rosewood.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
After a swathe of five-star openings in Adelaide over the past few years, focus has turned to the regions. In February the first sod was turned on Southern Ocean Lodge 2.0 following the destruction of Baillie Lodges’ flagship property in the January 2020 Kangaroo Island bushfires. Costing some $50 million, the lodge is due to reopen later next year. Elsewhere, development is small-scale but eminently stylish. There’s a new Yambara Tiny Abode on the Eyre Peninsula and off-grid ESCA Inman Valley (pilot property for a national collection) with two luxury suites set high in the heart of the Fleurieu Peninsula. Not too far away you’ll find the Lost Retreats at Mount Jagged (brainchild of actor Teresa Palmer and friends), with new locations at Mount Osmond and Willunga Hill. Off-grid pod pioneer CABN has teamed with Intrepid Travel to take their hugely popular concept national, with some 70 tiny homes coming online by 2023; new locations are planned for the Barossa and Clare Valleys and at The Cedars in the Adelaide Hills, former home and studio of Sir Hans Heysen.
TASMANIA
In the wake of the long-awaited reveal of Hobart’s heritage triumph The Tasman, historic buildings are being made over across the island. In Launceston there’s the Good Soul Cottage, and in the Huon Valley an old apple shed, Braeside Barn, has been zhuzhed up to pioneer “shamping” – glamping plus shed. An art deco bank in the little town of Ringarooma in the state’s north-east has become a romantic bolthole dubbed the Secret Bank Society. In the Cradle Valley, Tiny Escapes offers five off-grid houses scattered across 105ha of forest, while Sabi, a beautiful designer cottage in the Bay of Fires, is guided by the concept of wabi-sabi complete with onsen and ceremonial tea-making equipment. Later this year the $40 million Novotel Devonport is scheduled to open on the waterfront.
NORTHERN TERRITORY
Lying at the heart of a sprawling cattle property 90 minutes south-west of Darwin, the newly opened Finniss River Lodge has six luxury suites and a wet-edge pool with far-reaching views. Expect top-notch food and wildlife touring aboard airboats. Freshwater Retreat offers handsome new accommodation in Darwin, with four self-contained villas and a main house imagined along the lines of a stylish Balinese compound (book one villa or the whole property). Tiwi Retreat is adding a new luxury safari tent while in the heart of Kakadu, Cooinda Lodge will unveil five Yellow Water Dreaming villas tucked among tall trees on the edge of a billabong.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
On the remote Dampier Peninsula, Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm is adding 15 ensuite safari tents around the old homestead; further south between Coral Bay and Exmouth, Bullara Station Stay will offer the chance to experience life on a working cattle station with comfy digs in glamping tents and safari huts (the latter with kitchen, ensuite and aircon). At The Swan Valley Retreat & Spa a new architecturally designed villa, The Wine Barrel, comes complete with cedar hot tub and sauna. And in the Southern Forests Pemberton region, Ampersand Estates has added three luxury self-contained accommodation options to a cellar door and distillery line-up, including a smartly renovated 1870s settlers’ cottage and five-bedroom homestead.