New Label for Old Hotel :: Grand Hotel Melbourne Becomes an MGallery Hotel

October 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM | by amandak | Comments (0)

We got curious when fashionable Aussie blogger Karen Cheng said that the Accor Hotels people were sending her to stay at the "brand new" Grand Hotel by Sofitel on Spencer Street in Melbourne--we didn't think it was new. But a quick investigation soon found that in some ways, it is a bit new: it's just joined the exclusive MGallery hotel collection.

As far as we can figure out, the whole MGallery thing is meant to be a fancy version of the Mercure brand, hence the "M". To kick off the collection Accor have chosen eight hotels from their Sofitel and Grand Hotel Mercure chains to become MGallery hotels, and the Grand in Melbourne is one of them. Get it? So it's new, but not new.

The neat part about the MGallery idea (and it's not the name that's neat) is that each hotel is somehow a bit special--for example, it's a historical building or has particularly sophisticated design. The Grand Hotel in Melbourne definitely fits under the historical category, sitting in a heritage-listed building that's been at the center of Melbourne's development over the past 120 years.

As for the hotel itself: well, it comes in at number 9 on the TripAdvisor popularity index, and many people have nice things to say. But there are regularly a few complaints about the décor, probably because the kind of interior that fits into a historical building like this just won't suit everyone. But we'll wait to see if the MGallery labeling gets any significant changes happening.

[Photo of the wide corridors: CarolynHa]

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