The wave of hotel openings across Australia showed no signs of crashing in 2023, with a raft of new spots inspiring staycations and luring overseas visitors. These included the large-scale – big-name hotel groups opening their latest boltholes with all the top-tier amenities – along with quietly luxurious spots and colourful retro-inspired properties catering to the trend for nostalgic stays that’s blossomed over the past few years.
We’ve rounded up 10 of the best new hotels in Australia below.
Basalt, Orange, NSW
Ten kilometres from Orange is Basalt – a trio of luxe studios set on a hillside overlooking a cherry orchard. The spot is named for the volcanic rock that enriches the local soil. Each studio has polished concrete floors, rammed-earth walls and a king-size bed dressed in Carlotta & Gee French linen. Other sumptuous touches include a rainfall shower, a deep concrete bathtub with views, an internal woodfire heater and an outdoor fire pit – there’s even a telescope for stargazing. While you’re minutes away from Orange’s renowned restaurant scene, Basalt also has you covered if you want to stay put and lap up that cosy luxury: you can order ready-made meals from local favourite Racine, there’s a complimentary minibar, and the kitchenette is stocked with everything you need for a continental breakfast the next morning.
Capella, Sydney
While Sydneysiders are excited for Capella thanks to the opening of Brasserie 1930, the latest restaurant from the Bentley Group (Bentley, Monopole), this landmark hotel has plenty to offer guests from out of town. Capella has been beautifully integrated into the grand sandstone CBD building that once housed the Department of Education. The first Australian hotel from the luxury hotel brand is lush, featuring marble, dark timbers and stone, with standalone tubs and French linen in every room. A 20-metre heated indoor pool is housed in a room evoking the quiet grandeur of an art gallery, while works by local artists can be found throughout the opulent property. There’s also a cultural program to help guests get the most out of their trip to Sydney.
Hotel Indigo, Melbourne
The “king of kink” – aka German-Australian fashion photographer Helmut Newton – inspired this $20 million transformation of an old Holiday Inn on Flinders Lane into a colourful bolthole with 216 rooms and a Spanish restaurant. (Newton, who shot the likes of Grace Jones and Claudia Schiffer, opened his first studio on Flinders Lane in 1947.) Rooms channel a photo studio, with Newton-inspired works on the walls vying for attention with the views from floor-to-ceiling windows, while the lobby is more like a gallery, hung with works by local artists.
Hotel Vera, Ballarat, Victoria
A 19th-century mansion in gold-mining boom town Ballarat has been carefully remodelled into an extremely classy seven-room luxury stay. Hotel Vera’s beautiful rooms are colour-coded and decked out with Bed Threads linen, dramatic bathtubs and works by Australian female artists. The conversion is sensitive to the historic building’s bones while offering all the mod cons you’re after: rainfall showers, Dyson hairdryers and even free parking in a car stacker.
Le Meridien, Melbourne
French hotel group Le Meridien returned to Melbourne this year with a hotel on the site of the former Palace Theatre on Melbourne’s buzzy Bourke Street (the group had a hotel on nearby Collins Street in the early 2000s). The hotel retains the theatre’s grand art deco facade, behind which guests will find 235 rooms, a restaurant, a ground-floor cafe and wine bar, and a fifth-floor 18-metre pool. (Bathers can order lobster rolls and champagne directly to their sunbeds.) Rooms take their design cues from mid-century Melbourne, with dark timber furnishings and blue accents; they also have turntables and vinyls from artists who performed at the Palace over the years. Below ground is Dolly, a shimmery European restaurant with a bar pouring cocktails made in collaboration with local stalwart The Everleigh.
Motel Molly, Mollymook, NSW
The pretty beachside town of Mollymook, three hours south of Sydney, has long been a beloved destination of Sydneysiders and Canberrans. And now it has another drawcard: Motel Molly, another former motel revamped into a 21st-century hotel. Inspired by pastel-hued Mediterranean towns and the textiles and crafts of Morocco, it’s moments away from Mollymook Beach (though it does have a pool if you’re after a sand-free dip). Its one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and several king suites are all rigged out with custom-made furniture and handmade tiles – and, in a luxe touch, they’re scented with Le Labo Santal 26.
Sunnymead Hotel, Aireys Inlet Victoria
The nostalgia of childhood beach holidays is woven into every aspect of this hotel on the Great Ocean Road – and to amp this up further, the lighthouse from zany ’90s show Round the Twist is just a few streets away. Rooms are decked out in vintage-inspired furnishings and have minibars stocked with local gin and whisky. The old-school hotels of your childhood probably didn’t have Indian restaurants (their loss) – but the Sunnymead does, in the form of Santara, which pairs Indian flavours with local ingredients. Other facilities those old motels didn’t have? Sunnymead’s on-site spa and communal bathhouse, mineral pool and firepit.
The Motley Hotel, Melbourne
Hidden behind heritage shopfronts on Bridge Road in Melbourne’s Richmond is The Motley Hotel, an 80-room boutique property with a rooftop bar and a restaurant, Ms Parker – named for Mary Parker, a seamstress who used to work in the space. Fabric, texture and patterns are abundant in the deluxe guest rooms, which have complimentary minibars and views of either the CBD skyline, Bridge Road or the leafy surrounds from Abbotsford through to the Dandenong Ranges.
The Swell, Byron Bay, NSW
Byron Bay is an epicentre for chic stays. The latest? The Swell, inspired by the global travels of its California-native owners. The 16 custom-designed suites ooze textural, laid-back luxury: velvet bedheads arch across walls, large accordion windows let the light in and cosy reading nooks encourage lazing in the room. You shouldn’t, though – other highlights of this adults-only stay include a fairy-light-lit garden, a bamboo-umbrella-lined pool area (with an adjacent pink marble-tiled bar) and an infrared sauna and ice bath. Plus, upon exiting the property, you’ll find yourself in the thick of Byron Bay’s best bars and restaurants, and moments from Main Beach.
W Sydney, Sydney
For the past several years, a monumental undulating glass building has been rising from the place formerly occupied by Sydney’s IMAX theatre. The W Sydney hotel – the brand's biggest property in the world – finally opened in October after lengthy delays. It features a whopping 588 luxury rooms and suites dotted with artworks commissioned from local artists. W’s crown jewel is its mosaic-tiled rooftop infinity pool on level 29, complemented by a rooftop bar spliced between the 29th and 30th floors. While the hotel is on the edge of the city’s brilliant Chinatown and close to a slew of bars, it also has an in-house restaurant, Btwn, and in-room cocktail kits.
Additional reporting by Alice Jeffery, Angela Saurine, Elizabeth Macdonald, Grace Mackenzie, Hollie Wornes, James Williams, Quincy Malesovas.