This was published 3 years ago
W Hotel Melbourne opens inside $1.25 billion Collins Arch complex
By Anthony Dennis
The hotel's cocktail bar, Curious.
It may be the first major international five star hotel to open in the Victorian capital since the protracted COVID-19 lockdown but, for a city without foreign tourists, save for tennis players, the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that the "W" in the W Melbourne's name might stand for "Why?".
It could, after all, be viewed as one of the worst times, perhaps since the rise of mass tourism, to open such a hotel anywhere, not least Australia, with its closed international border.
Nevertheless, the 294-room W Melbourne is receiving its first guests this week. And, of course, the answer to the "why" question is that many hotels were already under construction prior to the pandemic and were optimistically commissioned to exploit the boom in international tourism, particularly the Chinese inbound market.
The hotel is built inside the East Tower of the arresting, tripodic, $1.25 billion Collins Arch development.
Australia welcomed 1.5 million tourists from China in 2019, making it, according to Tourism Australia, the most lucrative market for total expenditure and visitor nights. A total of 9.4 million overseas visitors came to Australia that year.
Now they are gone, and judging by the frigid relations between Australia and China, the Chinese may never return in such numbers, if at all, leaving a massive gap in the inbound tourism market for the hotels, built and being built, to welcome them.
The tourism industry will be hoping that domestic borders stabilise so city-based hotels can benefit from the pent-up demand for interstate tourism as well as staycations by Victorians themselves.
A 'Fabulous Room' in the hotel.
"There's more incentive to stay local than ever before," says Brenden McClements, chief executive of Visit Victoria. "With luxurious accommodation options at the new W Hotel Melbourne, Lancemore Crossley St now open and the Hilton Melbourne Little Queen St not far away."
The opening of W Melbourne, a younger, colourful and funky spinoff of the more conservative and earnest Westin brand (hence the lone letter) and part of the giant Marriott conglomerate, coincides with the city's first positive COVID-19 case in weeks.
It is built inside the East Tower of the arresting, tripodic, $1.25 billion Collins Arch development and surely ranks as one of the most dramatic homes for a hotel that Australia has ever witnessed.
The hotel pool area.
W Melbourne features five restaurants and bars celebrating "innovative, original takes on the city's multicultural cuisines" as well as a gold-roofed indoor pool with poolside bar and DJ booth.
Elsewhere, the hotel's 29 most indulgent suites, dubbed "WOW" and "Extreme Wow" and reflecting W's youthful outlook, include bold and offbeat design and luxury furnishings.
The Extreme WOW Suite on the 15th floor features a 40sqm balcony - much bigger than the average city hotel room - with expansive views of the Yarra River. All guest rooms feature a private "W MixBar" so guests can stir up their own cocktail alongside high quality sound systems and technology.
"Staycation business is driving occupancy, particularly in the Gold Coast, Perth, Port Douglas and Sydney and we are seeing very strong pre-opening bookings for W Melbourne," says Sean Hunt, area vice president for Marriott.
"The Melbourne market is in need of a truly luxury hotel experience and we have seen strong interest from the local staycation market with particular interest in the 29 luxury suites. We are confident the interstate market will follow as borders continue to reopen across Australia." However, like the recently unveiled Crown Towers Sydney, the W Melbourne has opened with less than half of its full complement of rooms.
Another major five-star hotel, the Ritz-Carlton Melbourne, also part of the Marriott group, is under construction at the west end of the city and a W Sydney is being built as part of the delayed Ribbon building, wedged in air space between freeway flyovers, at Darling Harbour. W Brisbane, the city's first five star hotel, opened five years ago.
While the luxury hotels are performing well on weekends, weekday occupancies are poor. In normal times, they'd rely on high-spending international tourists as well as week-day overseas and domestic corporate travellers, many of them visiting cities like Melbourne to attend conventions and conferences.
One accommodation industry insider estimates that many major city hotels have lost around 60 per cent of their business from the collapse of the corporate and conference sectors.
Until international inbound tourism resumes, five-star city hoteliers will have to rely on the border-closure-battered domestic market.
Mr Hunt says that W Melbourne serves up a "double shot of design, music, fashion and fuel that speaks to all that is Melbourne" and says such hotels will undoubtedly position Australia well when overseas tourists do begin to return.
However, with no clear date for when Australia can again receive overseas tourists, let alone travel abroad themselves, Mr Hunt says the key for the recovery and growth of the industry is having borders opening and having planes fly again with higher frequency.
"Australia now has the world's leading luxury hotel brands offering unparalleled opportunities for guests in every state," he says. "Travellers are looking for those luxury experiences they wouldn't normally splurge on and are exploring destinations and cities they wouldn't normally prioritise."
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