Marriott opens world’s biggest W Hotel in Sydney

“Keep in mind, this is a big hotel, and how long it took to get finished, and that we only have 200 rooms open and will be slowly ramping up,” Mr Menon told The Australian Financial Review.

Within a couple of months though, Mr Menon said the hotel would be “firing on all cylinders”.

“Booking activity is really strong and I would not be surprised if in the next few weeks it was sold out for the New Year’s period,” he said.

“It’s an iconic hotel in a triple-A location. Just the architecture is unique to the point of creating an iconic component even before it opened,” he added.

The world’s biggest W Hotel – W is one of Marriott’s flagship luxury lifestyle brands – the W Sydney opened on Thursday three years behind schedule after it was hit by the collapse of two of its builders, Grocon and Probuild as well as the pandemic.

Rising between two expressways with sweeping views of Darling Harbour and the city, the five-star hotel with 588 rooms and suites and a rooftop wet deck is set within a Hassell Architects-designed curved glass and steel structure known as The Ribbon (that includes a new IMAX Theatre).

The hotel’s launch bookends a big year of luxury and upscale hotel openings by Marriott, amid a strong bounce back in trading across all major Australian markets.

In March, Marriott opened Melbourne’s first Ritz-Carlton hotel atop an 80-storey skyscraper and brought another upscale brand, Le Meridien, back to the Victorian capital, when it opened a 295-room hotel at the top of Bourke Street on the site of the former Palace nightclub.

In August, Marriott opened the doors to Australia’s first Moxy Hotel, a 301-room offering at Sydney Airport.

Mr Menon said Marriott’s investments in these hotels reflected its long-held view that Australia is a “strategic growth market” for the company both from an inbound and outbound tourism perspective.

“These hotels help us to continue to be a luxury leader in Australia, something we have been working on for a while,” he said.

W Sydney will open with Sydney hotels averaging a 75 per cent occupancy rate so far this year – up from 59 per cent last year – and with average daily rates above $260 a night, up more than 10 per cent over the same period last year, according to STR.

Australia’s hotel sector is at the tail end of a construction and renovation boom. More than 5000 hotel rooms are expected to open this year, though that is down from about 6000 because of projects being cancelled or put on ice due to rising building costs.

Mooted more than a decade ago, The Ribbon was part of a $2.5 billion redevelopment of Darling Harbour that included the building of the new international convention centre and luxury Sofitel hotel by Lendlease.

The last piece of that redevelopment is now under way and Mirvac is building a new $2 billion Harbourside retail, office and residential precinct to replace the now-demolished Harbourside mall.

First approved in 2014 on the site of the former IMAX cinema, The Ribbon was initially a Grocon-led office development. However, after being unable to find an anchor tenant, Grocon converted the project to a hotel offering.

In 2016, Grocon sold the project to Chinese-backed developer Greaton, but remained on as the builder of the Ribbon until the Melbourne-based construction giant was forced to exit the project in 2021 after its building arm collapsed in November 2020.

Greaton then appointed tier-one builder Probuild to complete the project – already years behind schedule – but it was finally construction giant Multiplex which got the job done after Probuild ended up in administration in mid-2022.

These construction challenges combined with the onset of the pandemic meant the W Sydney opened its doors more than three years after its initial 2020 opening date.