Hotels
The concept of a hotel in Australia is an interesting thing. I’m not talking about your traditional bed-and-breakfast type situation, although they do of course exist, I’m talking about pubs and clubs with some kind of restaurant function, which are known in Australia as hotels for some reason that I don’t fully understand.
The concept is reasonably basic: have a bar, offer food, satisfy the RSA regulations. Food is considered a good way to combat drunkenness, you see. Given the Aussie diet, this has led to just about every bar pasting up large signs outside offering “The $7 steak! (Conditions apply)” or “The $5 steak! (Conditions apply)” or, sometimes, even “The $9 steak! (No conditions!)”. Most bars then provide an eating area, often to do with their licence.
Somewhere along the way, these large hotels had the brainwave of putting more than one bar in, and somehow this expension just kept coming. In Australia, the bigger the nightspot, the better. Multiple bars is a big trend, with each bar themed differently and sometimes even offering different menus. The net result of this is Vegas-style superclubs of absolutely ridiculous sizes: the bar I work in has 2 bars on the ground floor, one of which is around 90 feet long. We serve food from 3 menus there. Upstairs we have two restaurants and a cocktail lounge as well as a ball room and several function spaces. Downstairs is a nightclub sporting three large bars and a bar which serves the hotel itself, which has 33 high-class hotel suites. We total 7 floors plus 2 basement floors, with 14 seperate bars.
Ivy, the latest hotel to hit Sydney, is pushing the boundary even further. 19 bars on 11 floors, with a full beauty salon, teeth whitening clinic, and tattoo parlour, and even a pool on the roof. The pool changing rooms will feature a DJ and a bar. With hotels this big, you can spend your whole afternoon and evening in one venue and never get bored. You could be out in the same venue as your friends and yet never see them. With so much variety in one place, will the pub crawl as we know it cease to be? Perhaps in the future going from venue to venue will be replaced by a quick trip upstairs in the elevator.