What it’s like to stay at the new W Sydney between two expressways
After construction dramas then the pandemic, the $1 billion Ribbon built for the glamorous hotel has opened. Life & Leisure stayed on opening night. The new W Sydney hotel, located between two expressways on the southern end of Darling Harbour, has become the world's biggest hotel. Life & Leisure had the first media stay at the long-awaited W on its opening night on October 12. The Living Room is where you check in, but it also has an Asian-oriented bar with a small-bites menu, and casual seating areas. The vibe is youthful and friendly rather than uber cool, and the flyover road is at eye level, like silent performance art on a loop.
प्रकाशित : 2 साल पहले द्वारा Philippa Coates में Travel
This might be the biggest W hotel in the world, but from the inside at least, it doesn’t feel that way. Life & Leisure had the first media stay at the long-awaited W, on its opening night on October 12. Like most of Sydney, since 2016 we’ve been watching and waiting as The Ribbon, wedged between two expressways on the southern end of Darling Harbour, has taken shape.
“Any new hotel generates a certain amount of public anticipation,” general manager Craig Seaward tells us, “but I feel like this has been a vertical takeoff. Every year, 5.5 million people walk past this site, let alone those who drive past it, so in a way, they’ve lived the story of the hotel. I shouldn’t be surprised, but we’ve been overwhelmed by the interest.”
Certainly after the official opening ceremony, the place was buzzing. Guests enter at ground level and head straight up to the Living Room via a wide, sweeping staircase or a glittering copper-lined escalator.
The Living Room is where you check in, but it also has an Asian-oriented bar with a small-bites menu, and casual seating areas. Cheery staff are everywhere; the vibe is youthful and friendly rather than uber cool.
From the Living Room you ride an escalator “through” the level-two Away Spa (which is behind an opaque domed roof) to level three, where you arrive at Bean to Bar, and some brilliantly vibrant structural columns that artist Sophi Odling spray-painted by hand.
Outside, beyond the floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows, the flyover road is at eye level, like silent performance art on a loop, which explains the graffiti-style spray paint and the red-strip ceiling lighting referencing nighttime traffic whizzing by.
Bean to Bar it just that – coffee to cocktails – and is one of several spaces cleverly separated and integrated through design tricks on level three that combine to make BTWN the main dining floor.
विषय: Australia