The Sebel Sydney Martin Place — Hotel in Sydney

TL;DR - a great choice for comfort and all the basics while being close to everything Sydney has to offer.

The hotel is quite lovely, the foyer and common areas are modern and fresh and the staff helpful, professional and friendly. The location is great and is walking distance from just about everything, plus super close to multiple train, metro, and bus stations/stops - making it really easy to take the train from the airport and arrive almost at hotel door - as well as getting public transport to get out to all the sights.

We had the deluxe queen room and I was really surprised at how fresh, modern and nicely decorated it was - it actually looked like the online photos! It was small, but in a good, cosy way, perfectly suitable for a couple and had everything we needed. The room was also really well cleaned on arrival. The first thing I do when I get to a hotel room is hit all of the countertops and high touch areas (light switches, remote controls, phone, taps, door handles etc.) with disinfectant wipes (I get sick easily) and I can happily say that no dirt was found on any of those wipes so they were doing their sole job of sanitising. The TV is also up to date with Chrome Cast available so we could watch our own movies easily, and I found the bed comfy.

The bathroom was a bit meh, and you can tell that in the renovations the original bathrooms have just been given a lick of paint and updated hardware, but they are perfectly serviceable.

My only complaint would be the housekeeping during our stay. When we left each day, we'd put out the "please make up room" sign; but all they seemed to do was a haphazard job at making the bed, emptying bins, and folding our used towels and putting them back. For reference, if you want fresh towels, you're asked to leave them on the floor, so we did this, but instead of fresh ones, we just got the same ones hung back up. Nothing in the bathroom was cleaned each day which would have been nice (not the worst thing in the world, it was just us using it so it's no different to home), the floor wasn't vacuumed, and the hotel plates in the room didn't get cleaned and put away (which yes, I'm sure you're screaming "wash your own damn dishes" - I would have, but there was no dishsoap). But, housekeeping staff could potentially be under unrealistic time crunches so those corners are being cut, in which case that's not the staff's fault.

I've seen some mention in other reviews that the hotel isn't accessible due to the stairs to the entrance at Phillip St. If you do have mobility issues and need assistance or are a wheelchair user (they have accessible rooms available!) I'd recommend contacting them ahead of time and requesting to enter by the Elizabeth St entrance on the Lower Ground floor. You need a hotel access key to open it, but calling reception when you arrive will likely get them to open it for you. There are double wide automated doors and a wide, tiled hallway to the lifts to take you to the lobby on the Ground Floor. This would also be easier if you have a lot of luggage that you don't think you can pull up the stairs at the...

I stayed at the Sebel Martin Place recently as I was in Sydney for work and training. The staff on the front desk were friendly and helpful, albeit I only interacted with them on check-in and check-out, so my experience is mostly related to the room and location.

From a location perspective, it's pretty good. It's very central and in a quieter part of the CBD tucked away near the law courts and Parliament. It's right near Town Hall station and metro, so it's easy to get around. I was within a 20-minute walk of where I was going each day, so that was good. It's easy to get to and from the airport. All around, it's pretty solid, albeit you're not getting much of a view from there.

The rooms look pretty nice initially. Clearly, they've been updated and modernised recently, with lots of nice amenities. In particular, I liked having a sink that's separate from the bathroom to fill up the kettle, water bottles, etc. There's also plenty of space, and the styling feels pretty modern. Again, there is no view from the room except onto the internal atrium, which is pretty bland, but there's at least some natural light.

There are, however, some pretty big problems:

1. As you have an internal atrium, there are a lot of windows facing each other, which means you don't have tonnes of privacy and you need the sheers closed to keep your privacy.
2. The walls seem to be very thin. Someone was in the room next door to me, and they were speaking on the phone for a large proportion of one night. They weren't that loud, but I could hear everything they were saying quite clearly. Furthermore, they had a coughing fit one night, and I could hear all of that, too. It really needs more soundproofing.
3. The bed wasn't particularly comfortable, although this was a minor inconvenience.
4. The other big one is that the bathrooms don't feel very modern. I'm not sure about this hotel's history, but I suspect it was previously an old hotel that then got modernised, as the bathrooms feel noticeably older than the rooms. It seems a bit weird to have modern-feeling bedrooms but old bathrooms.
5. If you are in the city for work, there is no obvious space to do so. There is a table in the room, but it feels more like a table for meals than for work.

Overall, this somewhat lets down the experience. I still had a comfortable stay, but I think some improvements could make this place...

If you are expecting 4 stars as they are rated and advertised as please lower your expectations. We stayed 2 nights at The Mercure, and both my mum and I struggled to stay asleep both nights. The first night we were placed in a room on the 6th floor and it was boiling, we ended up sleeping with only a sheet on and kept waking up due to the temperature in the room (it was cooler in the corridor). In the morning, we did let the staff know how warm it was, and they moved us into another room by that afternoon and gave us a bottle of wine as compensation for the poor nights sleep. We were moved to the 7th floor, into a slightly smaller room. The air-conditioning was blowing air, but it was still the same temperature as our previous room, and the air- conditioner made such a loud rattling sound that we ended up turning it off and sleeping without it. (We happened to run into our across the hall neighbours. They said it was also warm in their rooms) Not to mention, the rooms and corridors smell quite odd smell. Cross between airport food, mold, and musk. The cutlery and dishes that are provided in the room were dirty (like they had been wiped down with a dirty rag). We weren't asked how our night was in the morning of check-out (I ran down to the convenience store and overheard another family grilling the staff about the air-conditioning at 8:30am) and honestly we didn't even care about compensation we just wanted to get the hell out of there we checked out by 10:00am. For the money, it's not worth it, and when you have the expectation of a 4-star hotel and the reality is maybe a 2.5- 3, trust me, you will be disappointed. If you are thinking of staying at this hotel, do yourself a...