Travel Blog - Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotels

It’s been, you might say, a busy week.

Last weekend, Mr & Mrs Smith cut the proverbial ribbon on their latest acquisition. Not a hotel for once, but a gleaming new office in Melbourne. From its marbled halls*, our all-singing, occasionally dancing Australian team will be hunting down the most glamorous, most homely, and most all-out amazing boutique hotels in the Asia-Pacific region, unearthing fabulous new boltholes from Bali to Bhutan and back again.

And what better way to celebrate our launch down under, than with a veritable bounty of new hotels in Australia and New Zealand? Take your pick from luxurious lakeside lodges in Queenstown, fast-paced urban glam and chilled-out boho lounging in Sydney, a 600-acre sheep farm with a difference in Hawkes Bay and a convict-built Georgian mansion house in Hobart.

And that’s only the beginning. Over the next few months, we’ll be bringing you a host of hip hotels in sun-drenched, sea-swept locations off the South Pacific. With two teams now working on finding and reviewing the most desirable haunts on the globe, it means we’ll now be launching twice as many new hotels on the Mr & Mrs Smith site every month – all over them hand-picked, anonymously reviewed, and decisively stamped with the Smith seal of style-approval.

It’s like Christmas, but in May. And without sprouts.

The Melbourne team – led by travel writer, blogger, Lonely Planet publisher and dedicated high-life liver Simon Westcott (left)– will not only be seeking out the most stylish stays south (and right a bit) of the equator, they’ll also be providing a round-the-clock reservation service (just like the expert Smith Travel Team in the UK). Also, a reliable source informs me, there may be another addition to the Smith library in the form of a Asia-Pacific boutique hotel guidebook in the offing later this year, so make space on your shelves now.

So, a new office, a fresh hotel injection, a 24-hour Travel Team exclusively for antipodean globetrotters, a new book, and a number of very late nights – we’ve had a lot to celebrate. So we decided to do so, with not one but two launch parties, in Sydney and Melbourne respectively.

Smith founders James Lohan (right) and Tamara Heber-Percy have jetted off  to join in the fun, chat to any journalists that wandered by, and crack open as many bottles of bubbly as the Hunter Valley’s vineyards can provide.

Launch Party Part The First took place in the Ivy Penthouse – one of Sydney’s hottest new venues. It’s owned by the same people as Establishment Hotel (which has just joined the Australia collection), so if you fancy your own swish soiree give the new Oz Travel team a call (1300 89 66 27) and they’ll sort it for you, (for the princely sum of AU$6,500 a night). Apparently, the last party held there was Russell Brand’s – doubtlessly celebrating the purchase of a new ruffled satin number…

As you can tell from our OK!-style photospread, it was a glam affair, buzzing with journos, hoteliers, taste-makers and Sydney high society jostling for space on the 30ft circular sofa and in the balcony hot tub. And all washed down with Chivas Regal cocktails, Plymouth gin and Wirra Wirra vineyard wines. I understand that the celebrations continued late into the night. In fact, for those of us still in the UK offices (not that I’m bitter), it made us feel a bit like being stuck in McDonalds on a wet Thursday.

However, the Smith UK team are not ones to let the knowledge that our colleagues are having an orca of a time in the Australian sun get us down for long. We’ve been hard at work on our London hotel collection, adding a stylish retreat in Marylebone with a tempting restaurant and bar, and an equally appealing Kensington pad.

If you’ve got your heart set on something more exotic, take a look at our dazzling new hotel in Beijing. We’ve also added a Brazilian beachside bolthole in Bahia that should satisfy any cravings you may be nursing for palm-fronded, sugar-sanded bliss, and two new Spanish hotels: a gorgeous golfers’ paradise just outside Marbella and an Ibizan hillside retreat with Baroque beauty and knock-out views over Ibiza Old Town.

Look out next month for some sublime stays in the UK countryside, as well as a handful of perfect Portuguese places and Mr & Mrs Smith’s first foray into Japan.

Oh, and a little bird (possibly a cassowary or a kiwi) tells me that Smith Down Under has a lot more hip hotels up its perfectly tailored sleeve too…

*Metaphorically speaking. I suspect they’re actually MDF.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Australia, Boutique hotels, Destinations, Events, Japan, London, News, Spain, Uncategorized, United Kingdom. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.