Fairmont Port Douglas, Australia’s first Fairmont hotel, opens in 2023
Situated an hour from Cairns, and on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest, Port Douglas gets luxury leisure.
By Chris C., September 10 2020
Australia will land its first luxury Fairmont hotel in 2023 with the opening of the Fairmont Port Douglas resort.
An hour’s drive from Cairns, the 253-room property will adopt a nature-inspired design – such as a birds’ nest-themed lobby, a treetop walk, panoramic conference facilities, and strong use of green spaces and natural light throughout the complex.
The hotel’s location also puts it at the edge of two UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, popular tourist spots for both domestic and international visitors.
The former provides opportunities for snorkelling and diving among the reef’s colourful corals, with the latter being the oldest living tropical rainforest in the world, thought to be around 180 million years of age.
“We are excited to bring the extraordinary Fairmont brand to Australia and are confident that Fairmont Port Douglas will deliver a new level of luxury and sophistication to one of the country’s most glamourous resort towns,” said Accor's COO Pacific, Simon McGrath.
“As our first Fairmont, this is going to be a truly special resort, whose architecture mimics the rich biosphere of the Daintree Rainforest and, which is centred on well-being, nature and cultural immersion.”
The hotel’s on-site spa will offer treatments that use traditional local ingredients – a philosophy to be shared with the resort’s various restaurants and bars.
Under the umbrella of Accor and participating in the Accor Live Limitless (ALL) loyalty program, members will be able to earn and spend points at the Fairmont Port Douglas, with elite cardholders enjoying expected perks such as late check-out, complimentary room upgrades and more.
The hotel hasn’t yet shared whether Fairmont Gold facilities will be made available: this being the chain’s ‘hotel within a hotel’ concept for premium guests, as seen at other properties like the Fairmont Washington D.C. Georgetown, and the Fairmont Makati Manila.
Also read: Accor eyes IHG in mega-merger to create world's largest hotel group
Chris is a a former contributor to Executive Traveller.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
04 Mar 2014
Total posts 204
Hopefully the border will be open by then too....
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
21 Jan 2014
Total posts 319
Unfortunately 2024 is the next election, 2023 might not be a good time to open anything tourism related in Qld if the current Govt are still n power.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
06 Nov 2014
Total posts 357
If the border is not open by 2023, I think WW3 has already started.
17 Jun 2020
Total posts 235
Looks great. Will be very empty with the current Queensland approach to borders though. Unless the AFL want to base in Port Douglas.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 1010
Being a born and breed Bundabergian from QLD living in NSW with only 1 case of covid in my NSW area and not being able to cross the border is the craziest thing I have ever seen. But I have several workers living in QLD that cross the border into NSW every day and then back again that night. Go figure??
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
05 Nov 2014
Total posts 65
I’m a doctor in Queensland and must oppose the mindless and insulting anti-medical comments in this thread.
Blind Freddie can see that the cause of the massive current European spikes is people going on summer holidays and bringing back the virus.
As long as Gladys allows people from Sydney to visit the North Coast - and the insanely irresponsible Sydney-Ballina flights - keeping the border closed is what ALLOWS Cairns and Port Douglas to safely host people from SE Queensland.
Brisbane-Cairns is a busy route currently BECAUSE Coronavirus is not being seeded back into Queensland.
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
05 Nov 2014
Total posts 65
Just to build on my earlier comment.
Currently pretty much every resident of Southeast Queensland whose finances are intact is no longer able to holiday in Fiji, Phuket, Vanuatu, Bali or Hawai’i, let alone any other international holidays.
That travel is now redirected to the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and Cairns, Port Douglas and Palm Cove.
Far North Queensland seems to be doing rather well in all categories apart from the Lizard Island/Qualia $1500 per night bracket.
That would collapse immediately if a local outbreak was seeded in from Sydney. It only takes one asymptomatic carrier and that market recovery would end.
The current strong FNQ tourism recovery is basically because of closed borders. Opening them up would wreck the market.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
21 Jan 2014
Total posts 319
The numbers in Cairns are poor and don’t reflect that at all, August numbers at Cairns airport have retreated sharply once again, occupancy rates are low and the town is like a morgue. Many hotels in Cairns have actually closed until after the wet season, this is a clear indication that the industry doesn’t expect a recovery of any substance until next year at the earliest, when the impacts of the economic downturn are likely to start really biting. People need to be very careful not to believe the spin a few would like many to believe by quoting a couple of isolated good news stories, the 100,000 domestic pax in August is well down on the 350,000 last August, no industry can survive let alone thrive on 30% of its revenue, this is no different, until the borders are open the towns economy will continue to retreat.
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
05 Nov 2014
Total posts 65
There’s a pandemic going on. The closest analogy is wartime. The option of opening up the economy does not exist: this virus is too contagious to contain.
Far North Queensland tourism just needs to survive on 30% or 40% or 50% capacity for as long as it can, in the hope that a vaccine will be here around Easter 2021.
Opening up would just imitate what is happening in Europe now: a few weeks of relatively free travel followed by a much deeper Melbourne-style lockdown.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 1010
Nouflyer, What your saying is not what I’m being told by Qld business people and also Class 7 doctors, you need to start jumping on facebook doctor pages.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
07 Dec 2014
Total posts 170
I don't know if I'm expecting too much, but are the animations are somewhat lower quality than typical? It looks like a cheap computer game ... I guess they don't need fancy ones to sell the property, because by the time it opens, there will be real photos.
Also, TIL that the 'Fairmont' in the Blue Mountains, despite being an Accor hotel as the Fairmonts are, isn't an official 'Fairmont', but an M-Gallery. How confusing.
16 Dec 2016
Total posts 58
Oh Nouflyer, you may be a medico but you should stop drinking from the Coolaid. No one has ever suggested that the QLD borders are thrown wide open with no checks and balances, it is just about putting some common sense into the policy. How can you possible justify calling the ACT a hotspot for example? It is simply popular with the locals and therefore your Premier is riding this sham border closure to the election. As a Doctor you aren't qualified to speak on behalf of the Tourism and Aviation industries and Queensland tourists just don't cut it. Your state relies on Tourism to survive (along with new Coal mines and clearing more land than any other developed country but don't get me started) and this unscientific approach to movement is a joke. Queensland may think this is a smart option but it is going to take years for Tourism to recover and I am just not sure how much some of us who live in other states will feel like spending our money in your state after this.
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
05 Nov 2014
Total posts 65
The problem with Canberra is that almost everyone travelling to southeast Queensland does so by road, travelling via the same Sydney hotspots such as the Crossroads Hotel.
New Zealand used to give compassionate exemptions: until a Brisbane family went AWOL from a funeral and two UK-based women tested positive for the virus after driving from Auckland down to Wellington.
Compassionate exemptions are a terrible idea.
For us doctors, this virus is the worst case scenario. It’s a easy to handle a highly fatal virus like Ebola which is barely contagious at all. The nightmare is one like this which is highly contagious and barely affects most people - because that is a recipe for extensive transmission by asymptomatic carriers, and much higher fatality numbers.
The Victorian government has just proved that lockdowns work. The problem is the “gold standard” NSW approach is a recipe for eventual disaster. Really, Queensland could and should be open to Northern NSW - but that requires a Hard internal Border at Newcastle. As long as the NSW government lets people travel from Sydney to Byron, an open border is just reckless and stupid.
People spout a lot of nonsense about the economy that they wouldn’t dream of spouting during a war. But as we have seen in WA, QLD and VIC, with closed borders and social distancing you can keep around 90% of the economy going. But opening State borders and lifting lockdown only leads to VIC style total lockdown, and economic ruin.
Remember: the Qld government opened the border to NSW eight weeks ago, only for the NSW side to squander three strikes in a fortnight: the African girls returning from Melbourne, the Covid-infected Security Fire masquerading as a “diplomat” and the two teenage girls who travelled to Noosa. The clear lesson is that QLD cannot rely upon NSW to be good neighbours.
I just tried to upgrade some upcoming BNE-CNS flights. Fat chance. Too full.
17 Jun 2020
Total posts 235
Given the views you are advocating, it is both hypocritical and irresponsible of you to travel from Brisbane (where the virus still exists at much higher rates than most of NSW and all of the ACT) to Cairns.
Glad you are not my doctor.
Air New Zealand - Airpoints
05 Nov 2014
Total posts 65
I know one doctor whose views are significantly different to mine. There is near-unanimity on this. You basically have to lock down as hard as you can until a vaccine arrives.
Every Queensland case is clearly either in hotel quarantine or the southwest cluster brought back from Melbourne via Sydney by the African girls. EVERY case falls into those categories.
Sydney has continuing unexplained community transmission. They are playing with fire currently, trying to put out each fire as it breaks out without locking down, and their luck is going to run out. If they have an outbreak at Byron all hell will break loose, because Queensland will then have to close the border properly, and NSW will have to start to deliver the services for Tweed residents that they have never bothered to.
For now, Far North Queensland is just about surviving on a Brisbane/Gold Coast clientele. But be under no illusions: they are one outbreak away from losing even that.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 1010
Good point, when the chief Qld health offical announced that driving down the M5 in Sydney without stopping and the air was on recycle was being in a Covid hotspot gave her so much credibility.
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