Overview
The Westin Melbourne has its own private driveway and porte-cochère — talk about door-to-door service. The hotel sits at 205 Collins Street, on what its own marketing calls the city's "Paris End" — the block that's held onto its theatre awnings and old-world formality while the rest of the CBD built up around it.
Location-wise, you'll find yoursel perched next to the Regent Theatre, a short walk from Flinders Street Station and Federation Square, and close enough to the NGV, ACMI and the Arts Centre that a gallery afternoon and a theatre night can both happen without getting on a tram.
Inside, all 262 rooms and suites carry the brand's signature Heavenly Bed and a deep soaking bathtub, non-negotiables for Westin loyalists. The entry-level Westin Standard rooms look inward over the Regent Place courtyard; step up to a City View or Deluxe room and the floor-to-ceiling windows turn outward, some opening onto a Juliet balcony over the CBD. At the top, the 91-square-metre Regent Suite gets its own separate living and dining room on a high floor — closer to an apartment than a hotel room.
Executive chef Apoorva Kunte, who spent 16 years cooking across hotels in India and the Middle East before Sydney and then Melbourne, runs the kitchen at Allegro, the hotel's treetop-level restaurant on Collins Street. The everyday menu is modern Australian with a global accent, but the calendar is where Kunte's personality shows: Tuesday is steak night with bottomless fries, the Sunset Menu is built for anyone due at the Regent Theatre by 7pm, and from June to October the kitchen runs High Cheese, a three-tiered high tea that swaps the usual scones and finger sandwiches for cheese course by cheese course.
Downstairs, the Lobby Lounge — dim light, purple velvet armchairs, an actual fireplace — runs its own more traditional high tea daily from 9am, one reason it keeps turning up on lists of Melbourne's best.
Guests who'd rather work off the excess have a 24-hour WestinWORKOUT studio and a heated 20-metre lap pool with sauna and steam room largely to themselves, and the hotel's meeting and event spaces — flexible, naturally lit, with menus also built by Kunte's kitchen — mean a conference can end and a long lunch can start without anyone leaving the building.
Images: Supplied.