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Hotel Openings / Sydney Hotels / Park Hyatt Hotels / Australia Hotels / Hotel Design / → All Tags

What's It Like Inside The Newly Re-Opened Park Hyatt Sydney?

Where: 7 Hickson Road, The Rocks, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

Sven Blogt's City Harbour King room

Apart from a sprinkling of tweets from a fab Aussies lucky enough to go to an opening party for the Park Hyatt Sydney last week, there has been very little fanfare about the return of the iconic hotel.

This is a surprise, but as blogger Sven Hennig points out in his review of the hotel, it is still in the soft opening phase, so perhaps they are waiting just a teensy bit longer before waving the big old Australian flag around--not to mention showing us photos of the new-look rooms on their website.

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Hotel Opening Rates / Hotel Renovations / Sydney Hotels / Park Hyatt Hotels / Australia Hotels / → All Tags

Park Hyatt Sydney Will Reopen March 1 at $855 a Night

Where: 7 Hickson Road, The Rocks, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

We knew the big, big revamp of the Park Hyatt Sydney was going to be a big deal. But deal is not a word you're going to hear in any other capacity when it comes to this harbour-front icon.

Apparently the hotel is on track to re-open in mid-February but is taking reservations from March 1 onwards. And the starting rate for a night on March 1st? $AUD 855 a night.

Before you think, but hey, that's Aussie dollars. It's got to be cheaper when you convert it, right? --check out how strong that Aussie dollar is. The rate converts to $893 US dollars. Ouch.

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Hotel Openings / Sydney Hotels / Australia Hotels / Casino Hotels / → All Tags

Sydney Finally Gets a New 5-Star Hotel, and She's a Darling

Where: 80 Pyrmont Street [map], Pyrmont, NSW, United States, 2009

At last, there's some fancypants hotel action in Sydney! The city's most iconic hotel, The Park Hyatt Sydney, will soon emerge from an extensive makeover--and a brand new five-star hotel will open just around the corner. She's called The Darling, and she is part of the new-look Darling Harbour casino The Star (formerly known as Star City).

Apparently Sydney was feeling a little left out in the cold, with Melbourne's Crown stealing all the country's posh casino-hotel thunder. But the new Star will be home to a new spa and pool, new stores including Gucci and Bottega Veneta, and a bunch of new restaurants including one from David Chang—Momofuku Seiōbo, one that will be part of The Darling— Sokyo, and an outpost of one of our favorite restaurants in all of Sydney, Golden Century.

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Hotel Club Lounges / Intercontinental Hotels / Sydney Hotels / → All Tags

Inside the Club Intercontinental Sydney

Where: 117 Macquarie St., Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

Over on Jaunted, you can get our inside looks at some of the world’s best airline lounges, so we thought we’d do something similar here and start talking about some of the hotel lounges we’ve frequented lately for our new series on Hotel Club Lounges. Today, HotelChatter contributor Eric Rosen takes us along with him to the Sydney Club InterContinental.

During our last stay Down Under, we spent a few days at the Intercontinental Sydney, and spent a fair amount of our time hanging around the hotel’s Club Intercontinental lounge, which has to be one of our favorites in Australia.

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Cool Hotel Jobs / Green Hotels / Australia Hotels / Eco Resorts / Wildlife Hotels / → All Tags

Green Hotel Jobs: What It's Like Overseeing A 4,000-Acre Reserve In Australia

Where: 2600 Wolgan Road, Wolgan Valley, NSW, Australia

All this week, HotelChatter contributor Eric Rosen will be talking with the people who perform some of the coolest Green Hotel Jobs out there. He reached out across the globe to talk to the dynamic folks who do everything from breeding fish to teaching indigenous survival courses, and everything in between.

Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa in Australia’s picturesque Blue Mountains is the world’s first certified carbon neutral luxury resort, so naturally when we were thinking of the coolest Green Hotel Jobs out there, we thought we’d say g’day to the resort’s Senior Field Guide, Ben Boothby, whose job it is to basically oversee every living thing on the 4,000-acre reserve.

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Hotel Openings / Hotel News / Sydney Hotels / Hotel Opening Rates / → All Tags

Sydney Gets a New Hotel with Park8

Where: 185 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

The folks behind Australia’s privately owned mini-chain, 8Hotels (the Diamant, the Kirketon), recently opened up a new boutique hotel called Park8 in the center of Sydney a block from Sydney’s sprawling Hyde Park, in what used to be the Central Park Hotel.

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Eco-Hotels / Australia Hotels / Blue Mountains / Green Hotels / → All Tags

Australia's Wolgan Valley Resort May Be The Greenest Hotel On The Planet

Where: 2600 Wolgan Road, Wolgan Valley, NSW, Australia

Leave it to the Aussies to out-eco everybody. We've been following Emirates Hotels and Resorts' Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa for some time now but it was the property's official designation as the world’s first carbon-neutral luxury resort that really got our attention.

Not only is the resort in the gorgeous Blue Mountains outside of Sydney super-duper green, it's been topping 'Best Of' lists all over the world, including Condé Nast Traveler’s Hot List, Travel + Leisure’s 'It List 2010,' and Luxury Travel Magazine’s 'Gold List Awards.'

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Hotel Bars / Sydney Hotels / Hilton Hotels / → All Tags

Hilton Sydney Transforms Into Covent Garden on Fridays

Where: 488 George Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

We might be in for record-breaking temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, but if your travels are taking you to Australia in the next few months, there’s already a brisk chill in the air foretelling of crisp winter days and nights to come. To mark the changing of seasons the Hilton Sydney is throwing a Winter Party that will transform the outdoor terrace at Zeta Bar into Covent Garden starting at 6:00pm every Friday evening.

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Hotel Construction / Hotel News / Sydney Hotels / Australia Hotels / → All Tags

Sydneysiders Afraid New Harbour Hotel Will Turn City Into a Mini-Dubai

Where: Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

The best hotels in Sydney are undoubtedly the ones with harbour views—the Shangri-La, the Park Hyatt, the InterContinental, the Observatory. It's been years since a new hotel had the chance to muscle in on this priceless real estate but now there's one in development, it's causing a ruckus. The biggest complaint? That the proposed 698-foot-high hotel perched on a pier jutting into the water will turn Sydney's skyline into a mini Dubai.

The yet-to-be-named hotel is part of the larger Barangaroo project at Darling Harbour—a mixed-use retail, public domain and housing plan for the last remaining piece of harbour foreshore available for development. Many of the project's plans are still under public review, and unfortunately the Aussie public is giving a big thumbs down to the plans for the hotel.

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Room Service / Australia Hotels / Hotel Restaurants / Shangri-La Hotels / → All Tags

Room Service Breakfast at the Shangri-La Sydney is Pricey In Any Language

Where: 176 Cumberland St [map], Sydney, NSW, United States, 2000

While shacked up at the Shangri-La Sydney recently, we could barely tear ourselves away from the gorgeous views. But then we decided to flick through the room service menu and off came our rose-colored glasses... We all know that hotel food is expensive, and room service items even more so. But seriously who pays $44—plus delivery charges—for bacon and eggs?

Now, we love love love an Aussie breakfast—the bacon there is out of this world and we may have eaten a whole pig's worth of the stuff in two weeks. But we could most definitely not drop a bright yellow Aussie fifty dollar note on a few strips, even if it did come with fruit, toast, hash browns, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, juice and Darjeeling.

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Sydney Hotels / Killer View / Hotel Service / Australia Hotels / Shangri-La Hotels / → All Tags

It's Hard To Beat The Views At Shangri-La Sydney

Where: 176 Cumberland St, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000

Yeah, mate, yesterday's Guess The Hotel shot was taken from level 14 of the Shangri-La Sydney, where we can barely tear ourselves away from the window.

Back when this was the ANA Hotel, the bar on level 36, now known as Blu Bar was the place to wow tourists. The newly renovated bar still provides knockout views, but there's nothing quite like knocking the socks off longtime Sydneysiders by inviting them into your hotel room to see this more personal view of their city.

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Guess The Hotel / → All Tags

Guess The Hotel With The Double-Banger View Of Sydney Harbour Icons

Welcome to a special Down Under edition of Guess the Hotel!

This is one of those instances where we're going to have to give you the location of the hotel because, frankly, if you can't guess that from the photo, you really should head back to your third-grade geography class.

Yes, we're here on a whirlwind visit to our one-time hometown of Sydney, and will bring you some more observations from this spot on the harbour tomorrow. (Notice we're even using the Aussie spelling of 'harbour'? When in Sydney, and all that ...)

But in the meantime, here's how our little game works: we give you some hints, you put your guesses in the comments below, and we'll reveal the name of the hotel tomorrow.

Got it? Good. Here we go...

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