News & Insights

Dominique Crenn, the first female chef in the United States to hold three Michelin stars, is opening her first Australian restaurant in Melbourne this October. Petit Crenn will take over the ground floor of the InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto, on Collins Street,...

Australia has had a strong week in hospitality. The 2026 Michelin Key selection added 22 new Australian hotels, including one debuting directly at Two Keys, and promoted three existing properties, taking the country's total to 54. That's a substantial jump from the 35...

Jet Zero Australia has hit three major milestones for Project Ulysses, its proposed sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel refinery in Townsville, in a single announcement. The company secured a $30 million funding round backed by Qantas and Airbus, welcomed...

A new Flight Test Range Command Centre has officially opened at Latrobe Regional Airport, giving developers a dedicated home for testing, manufacturing and integrating drones and other emerging aviation technology in the Latrobe Valley. The opening was held the week...

The former Mercure Clear Mountain has reopened as Peppers Clear Mountain following a multi-million-dollar renovation, becoming the only five-star hotel in the City of Moreton Bay. Owned by Mandala Hotels and Resorts and operated under Accor's Peppers brand, the...

The Tasman, a Luxury Collection hotel in Hobart, has opened LUMINA, a striking new event space aimed squarely at Tasmania's growing business events, incentive travel and celebration market. Announced on 14 September, the space is open now and already taking enquiries,...

New Zealand now holds 28 Michelin Key hotels, nine of them newly awarded in 2026, in only the second year the country has featured in the selection at all. Ten properties now sit at Two Keys, with the remaining 18 at One Key, and the newcomers have pushed the map into...

If you've been waiting for Australia to produce a five-star river cruise to rival the Rhine or the Danube, the wait is over. PS Australian Star, the newest vessel from Murray River Paddlesteamers, has begun sailing the Murray between Echuca and the region's historic...

Yiaga has been named Best New Restaurant at Gourmet Traveller's 2026 Restaurant Awards, the 46th running of the awards and part of the magazine's 60th anniversary year. Chef and co-owner Hugh Allen, also known for his work at Vue de Monde, has turned a former...

Rosewood's first Saudi Arabian resort opened for paid stays on 18 August, and on paper it's an impressive debut. Rosewood AMAALA sits at Triple Bay, on the Red Sea coast between the Tabuk mountains and the world's fourth-largest barrier reef, with 110 pool villas...

Virtuoso, the global luxury travel network, has just released its findings from Virtuoso Travel Week 2026, and the standout trend has nothing to do with where wealthy travellers are going. It's about when. Autumn bookings through the network are up 59% this year, with...

Capella Sydney was the only Australian hotel to make the 2026 World's 50 Best Hotels list, landing at No.16 globally and taking the title of Best Hotel in Oceania. A well deserved win in so many ways bolstered by Capella Sydney’s amazing concierge team lead by...

Embraer has delivered the first Praetor 600E to Flexjet, and it's arrived ahead of schedule. The handover, announced from Melbourne, Florida on 18 September, marks the start of deliveries under what was the largest firm order in Embraer Executive Jets' history: 182...

Picture a board director, a technical adviser, an investor-relations lead and an investor’s representative who need to inspect three assets inside two days: an operating mine, a development project a long way from it and a processing facility where a community meeting...

In summer, New Zealand's South Island feels improbably generous. You can take breakfast beside Lake Wakatipu, stand in the silence of Fiordland before lunch and finish the day with a glass of Central Otago Pinot Noir in your hand. Finding extraordinary places was...

CASA is continuing work with industry on safety initiatives in the Pilbara following recent airspace reviews, and the detail is worth reading if you plan movements into the region. It isn't a story about an incident. It's a story about the operational maturity that...

Aircraft flying low-visibility instrument approaches in Australia now need upgraded radio altimeters, and the requirement bites at each major airport once a 5G base station is switched on nearby. It's a technical change with almost no visibility from the cabin, but...

IHG has relaunched the former Hotel X in Fortitude Valley as The Alva Hotel Brisbane, Vignette Collection, giving anyone arranging private jet Brisbane itineraries a genuinely different option from the CBD business hotels. This is a repositioning rather than a new...

Australian air transport and aerial work operators have until 1 September 2026 to submit documentation for the flight operations regulatory transition, and by 1 December they need those systems accepted and in place. It's an operator-facing process rather than...

Hilton has signed the Gold Coast hotel currently trading as The Imperial, and formerly known as Palazzo Versace, to become the first Australian property in its LXR Hotels & Resorts collection. The 200-room hotel on the Gold Coast Broadwater will undergo a...

For luxury travellers, “close to home” no longer means compromising on the experience. It increasingly means choosing a journey that delivers more time in the destination and less time managing connections. According to recent travel-trade commentary from Plateau...

New Zealand has no shortage of headline destinations, but some of its most rewarding luxury stays sit well beyond the familiar Queenstown-and-Milford circuit. One of the newest names to watch is Holme Station Homestead in South Canterbury: a restored 1912...

True North Adventure Cruises has announced a reported $4 million refit across its fleet ahead of the 2026 season, underscoring the growing sophistication of Australia’s expedition-cruise offering. The update was highlighted in a recent Luxury Lodges of Australia...

Australian luxury lodges are increasingly appearing on the global radar, with several members of Luxury Lodges of Australia now featured on World’s 50 Best Discovery. It is a meaningful signal for international advisors and well-travelled guests: Australia’s most...

Tourism Australia has released its new Tourism 2035 strategy, a 10-year plan designed to build international demand and lift high-yield overnight visitor expenditure. For luxury travel, the most interesting part is not a new hotel or a new route. It is the strategy’s...

Every major new resources project comes with a logistics problem that rarely makes the headlines: how do you get hundreds of workers in and out of a remote site, reliably, week after week? A new iron ore development near Port Hedland is set to create more than 800...

Western Australia is having a moment most states would envy. In the 12 months to October 2025, WA welcomed a record 1.024 million overseas visitors, beating its pre-COVID benchmark of 996,000 arrivals and marking a full tourism recovery, the strongest of any...

Luxury travellers are chasing something different lately. The fastest-growing slice of the market isn't about ticking off five-star hotels; it's "transformational travel," trips built around personal growth, wellness and genuine cultural depth. The shift shows up...

Palm Cove has long been the quietly sophisticated alternative to Port Douglas, and now it's getting a serious luxury anchor. Hilton's debut in the beachside village opens in August 2026, and its position between Cairns and Port Douglas makes a planned charter flight...

The headline question everyone's asking about Qantas Project Sunrise is "would you really sit on a plane for 22 hours?" It's the wrong question for most Australians. The hard part of these ultra-long-haul flights usually isn't the marathon middle leg, it's the first...

Southern Ocean Lodge was already Australia's most celebrated luxury lodge, and it just added a new layer of global credibility. The Kangaroo Island clifftop icon has earned Two Michelin Keys, and since the only way to reach it is by charter flight into Kingscote, the...

The team behind Raes on Wategos spent three decades making it Byron Bay's most celebrated address, so a second property was always going to draw attention. The Bonobo has now opened in the heart of town, and for anyone planning a luxury charter escape to the northern...

Some hotels are built for the dramatic entrance, and the new Ritz-Carlton Gold Coast is one of them. Sitting at a brand-new superyacht marina on Main Beach, it's the kind of address where arriving by private jet hire and stepping straight into the precinct feels less...

Picture a single winter week that opens on a misty morning in the Adelaide Hills, runs through red-dirt outback under clear desert skies, and closes beside a vineyard fireplace with a glass of cool-climate shiraz. The catch is that you cannot string those places...

It's 05:30, a storm front has just closed your destination airport, and your chief executive is due to chair a board meeting on site at 11:00. On a scheduled airline, this is the moment you join a queue of thousands and take whatever rebooking you're handed. On a...

There's a version of the South Pacific most people never reach. Not the single-island resort week, lovely as that is, but the one where a week carries you across three countries: snorkelling a Fijian reef one morning, swimming a Vanuatu blue hole a few days later, and...

When fuel prices spike, the first thing airlines do is sharpen the pencil on their network, and the routes that lose out are rarely the busy ones between capital cities. They're the thin regional and long domestic services that keep remote communities and resources...

Australia's best new city hotels are no longer competing on thread counts and concierge ratios. The standout openings of 2025-26 are competing on architecture, art and cultural identity - and the results are reshaping how design-conscious travellers experience Sydney,...

Australia is having a luxury hotel moment. Not the slow-burn kind - the kind where global brands are opening flagship properties, regional operators are dramatically raising their product, and luxury travel lists now feature Australian addresses alongside established...

While a generation of Australian luxury travellers is spending 2026 working out how to detour around a conflict zone, a quieter group has already bought tickets south. A charter flight to Santiago routes through none of it - no Middle Eastern airspace, no Gulf hubs,...

The desire to travel hasn't faded. If anything, the events of 2026 have made people want it more - that sense of arrival at somewhere extraordinary, the resort, the private island, the remote lodge that took months to plan. Australians are still travelling. Japan,...

There are two types of business travellers in 2026. One is perpetually frustrated - rerouted through alternate hubs, refreshing booking apps at midnight, arriving a day late to meetings that couldn't move. The other always seems to land on time, get the deal done, and...

Australia's most well-travelled people made a quiet decision early in 2026: stop fighting the chaos of routes through a conflict zone and start designing around it. Not a retreat from travel - a reorientation. Some travellers gave up on Middle East-transiting flights...

Electric air taxis have been "five years away" for most of the past decade. In Australia, that gap is closing - not through hype, but through the slow, unglamorous work of regulatory preparation. CASA's RPAS and AAM Strategic Regulatory Roadmap sets a formal 10-15...

Picture the scenario: a client, a $40,000 itinerary, a charter flight booked for the critical leg - and the commercial connection feeding into it has just changed. They're calling you. What happens in the next ten minutes either cements the relationship or quietly...

Luxury travel advisors who want to win business in 2027 are making decisions right now - choosing which rooms to be in, which relationships to invest in and which trends to get ahead of before they hit the mainstream client conversation. The second half of 2026 is...

Wolgan Valley is set for a high-profile return in mid-2026, reopening under a landmark partnership between Emirates and Marriott International as the world’s first Ritz-Carlton Lodge. The 40-suite, all-inclusive retreat in the Greater Blue Mountains has been closed...

Marriott International has unveiled an ambitious expansion drive across Asia-Pacific (excluding China), accelerating growth in its premium and luxury hotel portfolio throughout 2025. The hospitality giant signed 187 new property agreements during the year,...

A London-based luxury travel membership service targeting independent female travellers has commenced Australian operations, four months after its UK establishment.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Club Avandra (@clubavandra) Club Avandra...

Historic Southern Highlands estate Milton Park has reopened as Ardour Milton Park Bowral, marking the flagship launch of Ardour Hotels & Estates - a new luxury brand from Salter Brothers Hospitality.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by...

Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer has reported record-breaking results for its executive aviation division, delivering 155 business jets in 2025 - the highest figure in the company's history. The milestone represents a 19% increase year-on-year and meets the top...

The Asia-Pacific region is emerging as a critical growth market for private jet manufacturers, with industry leaders reporting significant expansion across Southeast Asia and beyond. At the recent Singapore Airshow, Gulfstream's head of worldwide sales Scott Neal...

Australia’s luxury travel landscape is entering a new era in early 2026, defined by reimagined icons, ultra-luxurious small ships, and a powerful shift towards slower, deeper, and more experiential journeys. Affluent travellers are prioritising privacy, wellness,...

Twenty Australian luxury hotels have secured prestigious positions in the Forbes Travel Guide 2026 Star Awards. Seven first-time entrants join established favourites across Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and spectacular island destinations. Australia's luxury accommodation...

Australia's dining scene has never been more exciting. From intimate Turkish supper clubs to sprawling heritage conversions, the past year delivered a wave of openings that redefined what it means to eat out in this country. Whether you're chasing theatrical fine...

The 2026 Virtuoso Luxe Report has arrived, giving eager jet-setters a peek at where the world’s savviest travellers are dreaming of next. Drawing on insights from over 2,400 travel advisors across 50 countries, it shows luxury travel is still on the up — with nearly...

The 2026 Virtuoso Luxe Report has revealed the top 10 cities capturing the attention of luxury travellers worldwide, with European destinations claiming eight of the coveted spots. Paris takes the crown as the most popular city for 2026, followed by Tokyo in second...

Northrop Grumman has reached a major production milestone, delivering its 1,500th centre fuselage for the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter. The fuselages are assembled at the company's Integrated Assembly Line (IAL) in California, which has been operational since...

Australian travellers are embracing a new approach to walking holidays, swapping basic lodges for boutique accommodation without sacrificing the adventure. The trend, dubbed 'bootiquing', pairs scenic hikes with luxury stays, fine dining and premium service....

InterContinental has unveiled its first beachfront property in Sydney, with the opening of InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach bringing 198 rooms and suites to one of the city's most beloved coastal suburbs.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by...

A shiny new luxury hotel has just landed in Melbourne’s Southbank, right in the middle of the city’s arts-and-culture action. Think local design, great art, and seriously good dining, all wrapped up in one very stylish stay.   View this post on Instagram   A...

Global private jet flying is on a serious run right now. In 2025, private aviation clocked almost 3.9 million flights worldwide — up 4.6% on the year before — and it’s officially the biggest year on record. And here’s the thing: it’s not really about the...

Gulfstream’s newest flagship, the G800, continues to underscore its long-range capability with a growing list of speed achievements. Most recently, the aircraft completed a Phuket–Dubai sector in 5 hours and 38 minutes, marking its eighth city-pair record since...

Otto Aerospace is developing the Phantom 3500, a business jet that could reshape expectations around fuel efficiency and aerodynamic performance. Expected to enter service in 2030, this aircraft represents a bold departure from conventional business jet design. The...

Cirrus Aircraft has made aviation history by introducing the SR Series G7+, the first piston-powered aircraft to feature Garmin’s Safe Return™ Emergency Autoland as standard equipment. This groundbreaking technology, previously seen on higher-performance aircraft such...

Since October 2025, the European Union has begun rolling out its long-planned Entry/Exit System (EES) - a major update to border processing across the Schengen area. The system replaces manual passport stamping with a fully digital model designed to improve security,...

Flying by private aircraft opens your world far beyond the limits of commercial travel. Suddenly, you're touching down on remote runways that put you right at the heart of the action, gliding into discreet terminals shielded from the crowds, or stepping into luxurious...

Adelaide's The Playford has claimed national glory at the 2025 HM Awards, taking out the title of Australia's Best Boutique Hotel. For those familiar with this Art Nouveau masterpiece on North Terrace, the recognition feels both fitting and long overdue. Art Nouveau...

Vietnam's UNESCO World Heritage-listed Hạ Long Bay has welcomed a game-changing addition to its luxury hospitality scene. The InterContinental Halong Bay Resort opened in summer 2025, reimagining what five-star accommodation can be in one of Southeast Asia's most...

New Zealand is set to become Oceania's first destination to receive the coveted Michelin Guide, whilst Australia has politely declined the opportunity, at least for now.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by New Zealand (@purenewzealand) Tourism...