Michael For about a decade, if you wanted to stay in Perth, you basically had to choose between a dusty 1980s carpet-trap or a mining-boom-priced shoebox that cost $400 a night for the privilege of hearing your neighbor brush their teeth. It was grim. I remember checking into a place on Hay Street in 2014—I won’t name it, but it rhymes with ‘Schmeraton’—and the ‘city view’ was literally a dumpster fire in the alleyway. I’m not joking. Actual flames.
But things shifted. We finally stopped pretending that being a ‘resource hub’ was an excuse for terrible hospitality. Now we actually have some of the best hotels in the country, though most travel bloggers will just list the ones that give them free stays. I’m paying my own way, so I have no reason to lie to you.
The Treasury is the only real five-star experience
I know people will disagree because of the price tag, but COMO The Treasury is the only hotel in Perth that actually justifies its existence. It’s located in the old State Buildings, which sat empty for twenty years because nobody knew what to do with them. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. It doesn’t feel like a hotel. It feels like you’ve been invited to stay at the house of a very wealthy, very quiet architect who has excellent taste in towels.
The rooms are massive. I actually brought a tape measure once because I’m a nerd like that, and the bathroom in the Treasury Room I stayed in was 22 square meters. That is literally larger than the studio apartment I rented in Subiaco when I was twenty-two. The floors are heated. The mini-bar is included (except the booze, obviously). It’s expensive—usually $700 to $900 a night—but if you’re celebrating something and you go anywhere else, you’re making a mistake. Total waste of money to go elsewhere for luxury.
If you stay here, eat at Post. Don’t bother with the fancy rooftop spot unless you want to spend three hours eating foam. The schnitzel at Post is the real winner.
My disastrous night at the Great Southern
I’m going to tell you about the time I failed at being a local. It was February 2021. A massive heatwave hit Perth, 44 degrees for three days straight, and my home air conditioning exploded at 2:00 PM on a Saturday. I panicked. Every decent hotel was booked out because of a weekend footy match, so I booked a room at the Great Southern in Northbridge. I thought, “How bad can it be for one night?”
The answer is: very bad. The room felt like a concrete hug from a sweaty stranger. The AC unit sounded like a jet engine but only produced a lukewarm breeze that smelled faintly of old deep-fryer oil. I spent $180 to sit on a bed that had the structural integrity of a biscuit and watch a TV that only had three working channels. I ended up driving back to my hot house at 3:00 AM just so I could be miserable in my own bed. Never again.
Anyway, the point of that story is that “cheap” in Perth usually just means “sad.” If you can’t afford the Treasury or the QT, you’re almost better off just staying in a decent Airbnb in Mount Lawley. But I digress.
Don’t stay at Crown Towers. Just don’t.
This is my risky take. Everyone in Perth treats Crown Towers like it’s the Taj Mahal. It’s not. It’s a gold-plated airport terminal attached to a casino. If you like walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke and past people losing their rent money just to get a coffee in the morning, then sure, you’ll love it. The pool is great, I’ll give them that. It’s like a tropical lagoon if lagoons were surrounded by people wearing Gucci slides and drinking $24 mojitos.
I refuse to recommend Crown because it’s soul-sucking. It’s the same experience you get in Macau or Vegas or Manila. It has zero “Perth” soul. I tested the walk time from the lobby to the actual ‘resort’ elevators—it’s nearly four minutes if you get stuck behind a group of tourists. Life is too short for that. It’s a mall for people who hate character.
The Alex Hotel is where I used to be wrong
I used to think boutique hotels were a scam designed to sell you $9 artisanal water. I was completely wrong. The Alex Hotel in Northbridge changed my mind because they actually understand how humans live. The rooms are tiny—like, actually small—but the communal spaces are better than my own living room. They have a rooftop terrace where you can grab a beer from the honesty fridge and just look at the city skyline without some DJ blasting house music at you.
- The beds: Actually firm. None of that marshmallow nonsense.
- The location: You are 30 seconds away from the best wine bars in the city.
- The vibe: You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to.
It’s the only place in Northbridge that doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard. I’ve stayed there three times now when I just needed to escape my house for a night. It’s consistent. That’s the highest compliment I can give a hotel in this city. Worth every penny.
The QT is loud, but I kind of like it?
The QT Perth is the opposite of the Treasury. It’s dark, it’s moody, and there’s a lot of velvet. Sometimes I think the designers were on something when they picked the wallpaper. But the rooms are comfortable in a way that feels intentional. I stayed there last November and tracked the noise levels because I’m sensitive to city sounds. Despite being right on Murray Street, the soundproofing is incredible. 34 decibels at midnight. That’s quieter than a library.
The breakfast at Santini is also the only hotel breakfast in Perth that doesn’t taste like it came out of a bulk-buy catering bag. They do this crushed pea and avocado thing that I’ve tried to recreate at home four times and failed every single time. It’s frustrating.
Look, Perth isn’t the hospitality wasteland it used to be. You have options now. Just stay away from the casino and anything that looks like it hasn’t been painted since the America’s Cup in ’87.
Is it weird that I still think about that crushed pea toast once a week? Maybe.
Go stay at the Alex.
