12 hotels
The great hotels of Australia
12 luxury hotels in Australia are documented in this guide, ordered by international renown. The oldest, InterContinental Hayman Island Resort, opened in 1950; the most recent, Capella Sydney, in 2023. Each page gives the history, the key figures and a direct line to the events team.
Capella Sydney
Sydney's former Department of Education building, a sandstone pile finished in 1930, reopened in March 2023 as a 192-room Capella.
192 rooms
Park Hyatt Sydney
Park Hyatt Sydney sits at the water's edge of Campbell's Cove with the Opera House straight across the harbour from its rooftop pool.
155 rooms
qualia
qualia's 60 pavilions occupy the quiet northern tip of Hamilton Island, built by the Oatley family and closed to guests under 16.
60 rooms
InterContinental Hayman Island Resort
Reginald Ansett opened a hotel on this Whitsunday island in 1950; after a cyclone and a rebuild it reopened as an InterContinental in 2019.
Southern Ocean Lodge
Burnt out in the bushfires of January 2020, Southern Ocean Lodge was rebuilt on its Kangaroo Island cliff and reopened in December 2023 with 25 suites.
25 rooms
Lizard Island
The northernmost resort on the Great Barrier Reef, with 24 beaches and the hill Captain Cook climbed in 1770 to find a way through the reef.
40 rooms
Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley
Forty villas, each with its own indoor-outdoor pool, on a conservation reserve between the sandstone escarpments of the Wolgan Valley.
Longitude 131°
Sixteen tented pavilions on a red dune at Yulara each face Uluru, so the rock is the first thing seen from the bed at sunrise.
16 rooms
Saffire Freycinet
Twenty suites under a roof shaped like a stingray face the pink granite Hazards across Great Oyster Bay on Tasmania's east coast.
20 rooms
COMO The Treasury
Forty-eight rooms inside Perth's colonial Treasury and post office, with a rooftop restaurant cooking to the six Noongar seasons.
48 rooms
Jackalope Hotel
A black-walled vineyard hotel on the Mornington Peninsula, with a 30-metre infinity pool running out towards the rows of vines.
46 rooms
Lake House
A chef and a painter opened a lakeside restaurant in a faded spa town in 1984 and built it, room by room, into a country hotel.