10 hotels that take pet-friendly to a new, luxurious level

Kassia ByrnesBy Kassia Byrnes
hero media
These luxury pet-friendly hotels​ are levelling up the game.

Pet-friendly accommodation is nothing new in 2025, but the latest offerings are going far beyond allowing your dog to stay in the room with you. Gourmet, healthy menus specifically for your pet, free toys, high-end dog beds and more await the modern pet owner and their well-travelled pooch at these luxury pet-friendly hotels.

Of course, as a cat mum, the hotel trend I’d like to see next is specially curated cat stays. But at least your dogs are covered.

woman with her pet dog on a couch at The Langham Gold Coast, luxury pet-friendly hotels
Stay in pet-friendly style around Australia.

1. W Brisbane

The hotel chain’s Sydney and Melbourne locations offer an exclusive P.A.W. (Pets Are Welcome) Package for either your dog or (hurray) cat. Besides pet beds and bowls, your furry companion is catered for with provided clean-up bags, litter or wee pads, toys and treats as well as local pet information for a furbaby-perfect stay.

Pets Are Welcome at W Brisbane hotel
Pets are welcome at W Brisbane.

2. The Langham Gold Coast

The Langham is jumping on board the pet train with its recently released Pampered Pet Package , which aims to give your pooch their own five-star experience. Think an in-room luxury bed setup, food and water bowls, a take-home gift and a premium $80 food and beverage credit that can be used on a Private Dining Dog Menu (set to launch soon).

The Langham Gold Coast, luxury pet-friendly hotels
Let your dog relax his body and treat his palate.

3. QT Melbourne

QT Hotels was one of the first chains to bring an extended offering for their furry guests. Dubbed the ‘Pup Yeah Fur-Friendly Stay’, dogs of up to 20 kilos are welcomed to enjoy pet-centric features like a mini bar packed with dog treats, as well as an in-room dining menu designed by QT Head of Treats Nic Wood (yes, really, that’s a job title).

And now, QT has hired its own dog-cierge, Russell, naturally in charge of wellness, joy and belly rubs at the hotel. Together with Guide Dogs Victoria, QT Melbourne has launched a series of dog-friendly experiences, with proceeds supporting Guide Dogs Victoria’s life-changing work in the community. Things like Pups & Poses yoga with Soflo Studios on the hotel’s rooftop and new puppuccinos at Deli QT Melbourne.

puppy yoga at QT Melbourne
QT Melbourne is taking pet-friendly further.

4. StandardX, Melbourne

Looking to Jet Set With Your Pet? Standard X, Melbourne has a package for that. Spend the night in a Balcony King so your dog can get some fresh air, plus find a pet bed, food and water bowls, treats and clean-up bags included. On top of that, for an extra charge, guests will have access to local pet services (subject to availability) like dog walking.

Standard X Melbourne Balcony King Room
Access local pet services with Standard X Melbourne.

5. Hyatt Centric Melbourne

Another hotel rolling out the red carpet for cats as well as dogs, the Hyatt Centric Melbourne hotel offers pet-friendly accommodation designed to help your pet relax, recharge and soak up the city vibes just as much as you do. Besides beds and bowls, take advantage of a souvenir (aka pet toy), access to a private balcony and provided doggy bags or litter tray.

Hyatt Centric Melbourne, luxury pet-friendly hotels
Let the pooches take home their own souvenirs.

6. Dorsett Melbourne

Dorsett Melbourne offers a Holidays for Hounds package. As well as in-room luxuries, you can order a gourmet meal from the hotel’s Pet Menu, created in collaboration with Jacinta Malone from Chadwick Nutrition (one of Melbourne’s top canine and feline nutritionists). This means pets dine on natural ingredients chosen to help increase longevity and health. Options include chicken meatballs, beef tartare and pup cakes. Not enough? Receive 10 per cent off orders from Supaw Bakery (a dog treat bakery) and 10 per cent off consultations with Chadwick Nutrition.

Get out and about after a discussion with the hotel’s ‘Paw-cierge’ team to discover dog-friendly spots and parks located nearby (also, dogs can ride the metro for free).

pet menu at Dorsett Melbourne
Order from the hotel’s Pet Menu.

7. Park Hyatt Melbourne 

Long known for its canine ambassadors, Park Hyatt Melbourne has welcomed Crescendo Charlie (or just Charlie for short), a six-and-a-half-year-old white Labrador retriever, into the role following the retirement of his predecessor, Mr. Walker. Focused on guest engagement and companionship, Charlie has brought his playful and affectionate energy to his new role. Guests can expect to find him exploring the hotel and greeting visitors.

Oh, and the hotel has also just introduced pet-friendly rooms. Complete with a soft toy and welcome treat, in-room pet dining menu and access to designated pet relief mats.

Crescendo Charlie, ambassedor of park hyatt melbourne
Meet Crescendo Charlie.

8. MGallery Manly Pacific Hotel

What dog doesn’t love a frolic on the beach? And they don’t get much nicer than Manly. Something that MGallery Manly Pacific Hotel took into consideration when creating pet-friendly rooms, complete with a private balcony, direct ocean view and outdoor furniture adapted to suit pet paws. What’s more, the hotel has a special room service menu, specifically for dogs.

Think pupaccinos, Scoop Dogg Frozen Puppy Treat (homemade ice cream with peanut butter, bacon and yoghurt) and San Chow Bow Wow (nutritionally balanced snack of ground chicken, spinach, carrots, peas and brown rice, wrapped in a lettuce leaf, braised in chicken broth).

9. Pier One Sydney Harbour, Autograph Collection

Book a Puppy Package at Pier One Sydney Harbour , in the heart of Walsh Bay, to receive a doggy welcome amenity on arrival, a doggy in-room minibar and dining menu (with treats and toys) and – the pièce de résistance – a pup snack breakfast buffet at Pier Bar.

puppy at pier one sydney hotel
Book the puppy package for views and treats.

10. Spicer’s Hidden Vale

Not only can you bring your own dog to Spicers Hidden Vale , but you (and your doggo) can be greeted by Wally, the cute caramel cavoodle and unofficial hotel ambassador. While being very willing to meet and mingle with guests, Wally also personally welcomes each guest’s pooch with a personalised card bearing his paw print.

Wally’s new dog friends can also enjoy walks with a provided lead, doggie bags, blanket and a long-lasting bone to give them something to chew on all vacay long.

Wally, the dog mascot of Spicers Hidden Vale
Meet Wally.

Prefer the open road? Check out our pet-friendly road trip tips and the best pet-friendly camping sites. Then pick your dining options from our favourite pet-friendly cafes around the country.

Kassia Byrnes
Kassia Byrnes is the Native Content Editor for Australian Traveller and International Traveller. She's come a long way since writing in her diary about family trips to Grandma's. After graduating a BA of Communication from University of Technology Sydney, she has been writing about her travels (and more) professionally for over 10 years for titles like AWOL, News.com.au, Pedestrian.TV, Body + Soul and Punkee. She's addicted to travel but has a terrible sense of direction, so you can usually find her getting lost somewhere new around the world. Luckily, she loves to explore and have new adventures – whether that’s exploring the backstreets, bungee jumping off a bridge or hiking for days. You can follow her adventures on Instagram @probably_kassia.
See all articles
interiors at liberty suite Capella Sydney
Australia

Two Aussie hotels make World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025 list

The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2025 is hot off the press – and Australia has scored big, with two local stays making the cut.

Read more
the pool at Peppers Gladstone
Australia

Central Queensland’s first five-star hotel is a coastal gateway

Peppers Gladstone proves its worth its salt, blending five-star comfort with access to the Great Barrier Reef.

Read more
The converted bakery and off-grid cabin crowned in best Airbnb stays
Australia

This off-grid Blue Mountains cabin was just crowned Airbnb’s best nature escape

Airbnb just unveiled the winners of its 2025 Australian Host Awards, and the lineup will have you booking your next getaway.

Read more
Duckboard Place street art
Australia

Once just for holiday rentals, Airbnb now plans your whole trip

From art tours in Melbourne to Bowral beehives, Airbnb has just launched its biggest evolution yet.

Read more

This scenic Victorian region is the perfect antidote to city life

    Craig TansleyBy Craig Tansley
    Continue

    Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

    The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

    There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

    Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

    ‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

    Exchanging city chaos for country calm

    kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park
    The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

    I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

    I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

    The trails and treasures of the Grampians

    sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd
    Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

    Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

    Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

    walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain
    Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

    There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

    Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

    “There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

    wildflowers in Grampians National Park
    Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

    We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

    Grampians National Park at sunset
    Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

    The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

    What else is on offer in The Grampians?

    a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola
    Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

    You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

    And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

    dining at Pomonal Estate
    Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

    Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

    The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

    Salingers of Great Western
    Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

    There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

    The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

    Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

    And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

    Kookaburras on a tree
    Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

    You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

    A traveller’s checklist

    Staying there

    Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

    Playing there

    abseiling down Hollow Mountain
    Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

    Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

    Eating there

    steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap
    Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

    Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

    Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park
    The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

    For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

    two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap
    Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.