Before heading to Western Australia last week, we heard that Aussies take their coffee very seriously. There’s a "cappuccino strip" (or several) of cafes in every major city, and each one of my hotel rooms would have a decent coffeemaker in it. One of them even had a deluxe espresso machine that would make a Starbucks barrista drool. Guess that's why Australians always seem so chipper.

However, the coffeemaker during a recent stay that really won out on the quality-of-coffee versus ease-of-use nexus was the one at The Richardson Hotel and Spa in Perth.
]]> EricRosen 2009-11-16T16:29:28-05:00 http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/10/26/5029/7238 <![CDATA[<img src="http://www.hotelchatter.com/files/3873/Urban_Hotel_Australia.jpg" class="top"><p> <p>While northern hemisphere hotels are busy promoting their winter sales, Down Under hotels are advertising summer specials, and there's a particularly good one on offer from the Urban group of hotels, represented in the three major east coast cities.<p>The three places - <a href="http://www.hotelchatter.com/hotel-reviews/Urban+St+Leonards+Accor+Hotel/ian/179651"><b>Urban St Leonard's</b></a> in Sydney, <a href="http://www.hotelchatter.com/hotel-reviews/Urban+St+Kilda+Accor+Hotel/ian/267230"><b>Urban St Kilda</b></a> in Melbourne and the <b>Urban Brisbane</b> - have got together to organize a half-price summer sale. The deal is that if you make your booking this week (before Saturday, October 31), you can get your room for A$99 ($91) a night instead of the usual average of A$199 ($180). The sad thing is that the Aussie dollar is pretty strong right now, so if you're amandak 2009-10-26T09:14:13-05:00 http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/9/28/5150/49969

You might remember a couple of years back when we let you know about the Australian Guests Behaving Badly database. It's a website where member hotels can report anti-social and destructive hotel guests and share their names with other hotels so they can avoid having the kind of guests that no hotel really wants.

Guests Behaving Badly has now gone one step further and has announced a partnership with the Ubid4rooms website, an Australian hotel bidding site a bit similar to Priceline. ]]> amandak 2009-09-29T14:29:38-05:00 http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/9/25/6499/24826 <![CDATA[<img src="http://www.hotelchatter.com/files/1425/viewfromshangrilabar.jpg" class="top"><p> <p>Sydney's <a href="http://www.hotelchatter.com/hotel-reviews/Shangri-La+Hotel,+Sydney/ian/131394"><b>Shangri-La Hotel</b></a> already serves up drinks in a bar we approve of - its <a href="http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2009/1/16/3205/84802/hotels/Shangri_La_s_Blu_Horizon_Bar_Rocks_The_Rocks">Blu Horizon Bar</a> which has amazing views over Sydney Harbour and the Opera House. Downstairs, the all-day dining spot <a href="http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/sydney/shangrila/dining/restaurant/cafemix"><b>Café Mix</b></a> has just had a revamp and earlier this month relaunched with a new look and a new menu.<p>The new look includes extra seating and Café Mix now seats over two hundred guests. You can get nearly anything you want here: there's Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Australian cuisine, plus (something we really like) a <b>dessert buffet</b> which includes a chocolate fountain.<p>To celebrate the new look there's a special on every Friday night until October 16. It's a seafood buffet amandak 2009-09-25T09:08:48-05:00 Search HotelChatter string http://www.hotelchatter.com/search/