The Royce

The Royce Hotel is a world class boutique hotel on the stunning St KILDA Road, from the moment you walk in until you leave it’s exceptional, it’s all class situated within a former Rolls Royce showroom, it’s like a luxury home with wonderful service and exceptional service and stunning food, Pawan Dutta the hotels Executive Chef is a man with such finesse in the kitchen and he must have an equally incredible team, the food is like you are dining in either a hatted restaurant in Australia or Michelin star restaurant in London, so polished and using local ingredients and service with a smile, it’s pure luxury from the rooms to that old world charm, simple spectacle, we will be back.

The Royce is truly magnificent with the renovations 5stars. The Royce has a convenient tram stop out the front so you don’t really need a car. Beds were as soft as I imagine a cloud could be. Listening to the boys at Melbourne Grammar practising their sport brought back memories as we sat on the balcony with wine and cheese. Breakfast was great and staff were friendly and helpful. Dinner was lovely but arrived cold (I don’t know why as there were only 3 couples in the restuarant).

Royce hotel was excellent last year during F1 period. This year was let down by their Room service team and TV!! We had usual 4 nights stay as it is closest to F1 event. It was not a large room, had quite a good size terrace. It also faces the Tram and a large condo staring straight at you. Pls don’t bother to book Terrace room unless you smoke. We all know F1 is a great time for F&B and hotels to jack up their prices ridiculously but service cannot be a letdown when they’ve ample time to hire more staff and train staff to be capable of their job. 4 nights in this small room no breakfast included cost us AU 6,220++ is not cheap as this is more like a 4 star hotel with minimal gym equipments and no swimming pool. No room slippers and when I asked for it, the reception asked me the next day “how was the slipper?” Is your room all good now? I was lost for words. Our room cups can either not be cleaned or missing one cup and teaspoon, coffee capsules not top up, towels on the floor after room was service? Room was also not vacuumed daily. They also can’t afford to purchase any movie/news channels and expect guest to hook up their own laptop to pair on their screen. I know is a trend that watching TV is demonishing, so is reading newspaper hardcopy. But I’m sure most of their target audience age above 45 whose eyesight are failing and neither are they very quick at technology. I tried to connect to my ipad for 1 movie and TV started restoring itself 3/4 into the movie. I reboot ipad and TV and wouldn’t connect. Gave up. Can hotels who positioned themselves high-end please subscribe to basic tier CNN, BBC, HBO, Movie channels? This is the funny part. Many hotels try to be so forward thinking (touch screen buttons through the entire room that when you wake up frantically trying so hard to switch on the lights but end up flashing yourself with all the curtains drawn open, QR code everywhere, swanky shower handle but confusing when you’re tired after a long flight etc) yet when you switch on the MAKE UP ROOM button, it will not connect straight to the housekeeping. Still is using traditional phone calls to reception to get housekeeping to please come up now. Bright spot is James the front desk manager. He’s very kind, helpful and cheerful. Unfortunately, he couldn’t save Royce. If we come for F1 Melbourne again, I’ll make an effort to find a quality hotel with a swimming pool and a well-equipped gym.