I’m sipping on a welcome cocktail, wandering through a warehouse room filled with colourful couches, pops of greenery and quirky homewares like ceramic kangaroo bookends and a Connect Four set. An old-school photo booth sits in one corner, a skeeball game in another. A flat-screen TV is playing the news.
I’m in the lobby of Moxy Sydney Airport, which opened on August 22 and is the first Australian property of the Moxy brand. And by “lobby”, I mean the open-plan ground floor that also serves as the hotel’s restaurant, bar, café and lounge. On weekends, a DJ sets the mood with tunes. And a live feed of Instagram photos tagged at other Moxy hotels around the world is projected onto a wall.
“These details are some of my favourite things about the hotel,” says Michelle Scott, General Manager of Moxy Sydney Airport. “Our pink Moxy airport shuttle bus, the vintage phones in the rooms where guests can press a button for a bedtime story and the Moxy pink boxing bag in the gym are personal fave details of mine.”
For the hotel’s design, Canadian interior designers MAED. COLLECTIVE tapped into the industrial feel of the hotel’s suburb of Mascot. A restored Wynyard Station platform sign has been transformed into a neon art piece, while on level four, a sculpture by local artist Elliott Routledge is designed to catch the eyes of passing locals. Routledge also created a mural on the hotel’s façade.
“I adore the initial arrival experience,” says Scott. “The lobby’s double-height exposed ceilings really capture the open, airy feel of one of Mascot’s converted warehouses. The space is drenched in natural light, and the four-metre-high fig tree — inside the hotel! — gives a beautiful sense of calm.”
Scott says in the evening, she loves settling in by the fireplace on the ground floor with a glass of red. The fireplace is in a nook on the ground floor surrounded by comfy vintage furniture, stacks of books and games. To make the most out of a stay at Moxy Sydney Airport, Scott suggests you venture out of your room and take advantage of the social spaces like it.
“Pull up a stool at our beautiful red travertine stone bar — picture hues of Uluru — and sample our ‘Lager Than Life’ Young Henrys beer collab or a G&T with local Archie Rose gin,” she says. “Or challenge a friend — or stranger — to a board game or giant Jenga by the fire.”
If you’re in Sydney for business, you can work or book a meeting in one of the hotel’s five meeting rooms, including The Record Room with a desk that doubles as a ping pong table, bar inside a cupboard and working record player and records, and another called ArtHouse, with a collection of Australian and international art from Paddington gallery Saint Cloche.
After checking in and freshening up in my room, I headed downstairs to work in the communal space. The hotel’s streetside café, Little Baxter, which serves coffee from Marrickville’s Double Roasters and bread and pastries from Sonoma wasn’t still open, but I made use of its sparkling water tap, perching myself at a window seat with my laptop, sun shining in.
Little Baxter is open to locals, too, with a ‘parking bay’ where they can park their pooches while ordering a coffee. If you’re keen to explore the hotel’s surrounding area, you can do so by renting a bike at the front desk.
Later that day, I came back downstairs, nabbing a seat on a couch. Guests were playing skeeball, using the photo booth and, like me, lounging. In the morning, I checked the hotel’s 24-hour, grab-and-go, Moxy Pick-Ups, for a snack or drink before catching a $10 pre-booked shuttle to take me the five-minute drive to Sydney Domestic Airport (it’s 10 minutes to international).
Moxy Sydney Airport rates start at $209 AUD per night.
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