Tag: melbourne

Travel Review – Crown Metropole Melbourne

Crown Metropole Melbourne is a convenient and comfortable business hotel, particularly if you’re attending conferences at the Exhibition and Conference Centre across the road.

Sitting on Melbourne’s Southbank and tucked in behind the Casino, Crown Metropole is a convenient and comfortable business hotel, particularly if you’re attending conferences at the city’s Exhibition and Conference Centre.

In Sydney, the city’s casino is tucked on an old power station site in an inconvenient location so the locals can – and mainly do – ignore it. Melbourne’s Crown Casino on the other hand, has one of the best locations in the city.

While I’m personally uneasy about the role Crown seems to play in Melbourne’s social and political circles, that location makes the casino’s hotels a very convenient place to stay.

Networking vendor Cisco kindly flew me to Melbourne and put me up in the Crown Metropole hotel, part of the casino complex, for three nights to attend their Cisco Live! conference at the convention centre.

Attending a conference

While Crown Metropole isn’t attached to the conference centre like the Hilton South Wharf, in many ways it’s more convenient being just over the road from the other end of the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre. If your exhibition is in the Eastern end of the building it’s a far shorter walk between the room and the event.

That convenience also translates to seeing the rest of Melbourne with major tram routes nearby and a short walk to Southern Cross Station. For Cheap Charlies, there’s a supermarket and liquor store across the road if you don’t want to partake of the expensive mini bar.

In room facilities

the tea making facilities in melbourne's crown towers
Nice choice of teas in the room

Along with the usual expensive mini-bar, there’s a good range of in room facilities including a nice range of Madame Flavour teas.

In the bathroom there’s also a pleasant range of amenities and very comfortable bathrobes. The bathroom itself has a full size bath to use some of the lotions in.

Work desk in Crown Towers hotel room
crown towers hotel room work desk

For the connected traveller though the most important thing are power points and there were plenty available including two easily accessible on the room’s desk. If you need more they are scattered around the room including under the bedside tables.

There’s also HDMI and component video connections to the TV if you want to stream feeds or practice presentations from your laptop. The TV has the standard hotel range of Australian Foxtel channels but lacks some of the international stations.

Wi-Fi is available at an extra charge but I didn’t use it and instead relied on a Telstra 4G hotspot. Some guests did report that they found the hotel’s network could get congested.

Hotel facilities

Outside the room, the hotel has the standard facilities of a five star hotel. The rooftop fitness centre is very nice though while it’s possible to do 25m laps in the pool, it will get crowded during the day. It also appears the gym is open to the public so there will be busy times there as well.

For eating, the first floor has the Mr Hive Restaurant which Cisco were kind enough to host dinner one night. It’s a nice place with good food at standard restaurant prices. Crown has dozens of eating establishments in the complex along with a somewhat expensive food court .

There’s no reason to eat in the Crown complex when its an easy walk into the city for cheaper dining options or down Clarendon Street to South Melbourne. The 96 and 112 trams which stop nearby will take you to St Kilda where there’s no shortage of pubs, cafes and restaurants.

Getting in and out

When it comes time to leave, checkout is easy and the service at all times was professional and courteous. Rooms were made up and cleaned properly. The beds were comfortable and the rooms quiet with very good block out curtains.

Overall, Crown Metropole is a good choice for business travellers attending the Melbourne Conference and Exhbition Centre, it’s also conveniently located for tourists. In all, it’s a good mid-priced hotel.

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Flight review – Qantas QF427 Sydney to Melbourne

A comfortable flight on Qantas’ gracefully aging 767s

The milk run between Sydney and Melbourne is a pretty routine affair and increasingly the service is like catching a fast bus.

Normally I fly Virgin Australia but as Xero were paying for my flight to attend their Australian convention I was happy to fly Qantas, it’s enough out of my usual routine to warrant a review.

Check in

Only having a day bag is an advantage with short hops along Australia’s East Coast and Qantas’ on-line check in is reasonably efficient.

An irritation with Qantas is the opaque way seats are made available. Depending upon your fare and frequent flier status you may not see all the available seats when checking in online so if grabbing a specific seat is important then it is worthwhile manually checking in at the airport to see what has become available.

Boarding

For all of Sydney airport’s sins, getting to the airport and boarding is fairly straightforward and for an 11am flight the security queues are short and efficient.

Another advantage with flying Qantas out of Sydney is their Heritage Centre in the T3 terminal where you can kill time waiting for a flight while looking at everything from the evolution of cabin crew uniforms to 1920s outback flight schedules. Just watch you don’t get too engrossed.

Boarding a Qantas flight is fairly clunky compared to Virgin Australia. This is partly due to their 767 craft only boarding from the front and not from both the forward and rear doors on the Virgin 737 aircraft. This also means queues down the aisles.

Onboard

The 767 aircraft are homely and showing their age. It’s surprising Qantas have kept flying them for as long as they have and the operating costs of these planes must be costing the airline a fortune compared to newer craft.

A positive with the older aircraft is the 2-4-2 seating is quite wide and comfortable compared to the equivalent JetStar and Virgin craft. Inflight entertainment is lacking although this hardly matters on a 95 minute flight.

Service

Qantas has a patchy reputation for cabin service, but the crew on this flight were delightfully friendly and helpful.

The inflight snack was a raspberry and white chocolate cookie or an apple (I had both) along with tea, coffee and softdrinks. The super-sweet cookie went well with a cup of tea.

On time performance

Sydney airport can create hell for passengers if the weather or various traffic restrictions conspire against them. This was not one of those days and the flight was away a few minutes late but arrived on time in Melbourne.

Arrival

With an on time arrival and only carrying hand luggage, there was no need to worry about baggage claim.

An advantage with Melbourne Airport is that cab ranks and bus stops are right outside the terminal although passengers using the Skybus service should note that the city bound buses usually stop at the Virgin terminal first so you may fight to get a seat unless you’re prepared to walk the 200m to earlier bus stop.

Overall QF427 was a comfortable trip and a good re-acquaintance with the flying kangaroo. The 767 aircraft though are desperately showing their age and while for passengers this doesn’t really matter on a short trips, it can’t be good for the airline’s image or operating costs.

QF427 – 20 Jul 12. Dep Sydney 11:00am, Arrived Melbourne 12.35. Economy class ticket $120.

Paul travelled to Melbourne courtesy of Xero for their Australian developer’s conference.

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Travel review: Hilton South Wharf Melbourne

Melbourne’s Southbank Hilton is a nice choice if you’re attending a conference. Don’t go for the views though.

The Melbourn Hilton South Wharf is a good location for conference attendees, but for others it might be a little out of the way.

Melbourne boasts two Hilton hotels – the Park Hilton in Jolimont just to the East of the city and near the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground and the newer South Wharf Hilton on the Yarra River across from the refurbished Docklands precinct.

For those attending events at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, the South Wharf Hilton is an unbeatable location as you’re right next door to the venue. For most of the rest of Melbourne, the South Wharf Hilton’s a little bit out of the way.

If you’re using public transport, the closest services are Southern Cross Railway station and the tram stops on Flinders Street, both are a reasonable walk and getting to the train station takes you through some depressing and pedestrian unfriendly architecture.

On foot, it can be a slog from the city centre or Crown Casino through the convention centre, ladies with high heels should consider packing a pair of flats or be prepared to hail a cab.

By car and cab, it’s a circuitous route from the city centre, although if you’re coming in from the airport or the highway from the North or West of Melbourne, the hotel’s easy to get to off the freeway.

One of the interesting cultural aspects to Melbourne are the locals’ obsession with views – this probably comes from an inferiority complex over not having a nice harbour like Sydney’s. This means tourist and accommodation marketing often gushes about the views from the windows.

For all of Melbourne’s attractions, views are not the city’s greatest asset and most of Melbourne looks like Minneapolis or any other Twentieth Century high rise city from anything above the third floor.

In the case of my room, the view was of a freeway approach and a massive discount retail outlet complex, in the distance lay the docks and the West Gate Bridge – another manifestation of Melbourne’s civic desire to outdo Sydney in areas the city can’t compete.

Drawing the curtains on this less than inspiring vista was harder than expected and it took a bit of hunting to find the controls for the electronically operated blinds.

The hotel itself is a nice property and the rooms are lovely with comfortable beds. Unfortunately I was too busy with the conference to check out other facilities like the gym.

At both check in and departure the staff were extremely efficient, pleasant and polite.

If you’re attending a conference at the MCEC this is a good hotel to stay at and I’d recommend it, the main drawback is it’s a little out of the way if you’re wanting to explore Melbourne.

Paul travelled to Melbourne courtesy of Xero.

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