The 277-room hotel is located on the north bank of the Yarra River, opposite the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), and, alongside nature, focusses on art and wellbeing.
The nature ethos can be seen throughout the hotel. There are more than 2,000 living plants in guest rooms, on walls and in public spaces. Bedheads are made from old wooden railway sleepers and in the ground level bar, the floor is beautifully made with more sleepers. Some of the rooms have stunning live-edged wooden desks which don’t follow an exact set size and in the day spa, there is a partition made of tree trunks.
Throughout the hotel, 85 per cent of rooms have windows that open – unusual for a big-city, big-brand hotel.
While sustainability is a catch-cry for 1 Hotels, it does not promise to be the greenest hotel in town, says Toni Stoeckl, chief marketing officer for Starwood Hotels 2.0, of which the 1 Hotels brand is a part.
“We’re not claiming to be net zero,” he says, although the hotel does use water captured on its roof to flush toilets and also captures energy on the roof.
“Internally, our compass is do all the good you can…trying to instil better practices in the way we run our hotels,” says Stoeckl.
“What we’re trying to prove is that you can have an incredibly luxurious experience, you can have a cool experience, you can have a vibrant nightlife experience, you can have a delicious food and beverage experience. All of that that you’d like to enjoy, that doesn’t have to be in conflict to sustainability.”
The 1 Hotels brand is the creation of Barry Sternlicht, who built the original Starwood Hotels and Resorts into a portfolio of more than 1,300 hotels across 100 countries before he sold them all to Marriott International in September 2016.
The first 1 Hotel opened in 2015 and in 2025, Sternlicht put the brand, along with Baccarat Hotels and Treehouse Hotels, back under the Starwood Hotels banner, launching a second iteration of the Starwood brand.
Stoeckl recalls Sternlicht walking through a hotel, critiquing it and sharing his vision.
“He wanted to create a brand that meant something and had purpose, and he was inspired by his children growing up and being very passionate about sustainability and Mother Nature.”
1 Hotels is result of the sentiment that nature will never go out of style.
Stoeckl says 1 Hotels is not aimed at any particular demographic, “definitely more of a psychographic mindset than just an age group”.
