25hours Hotel The Olympia, Sydney
- Sleepy Scoffers
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
There’s a version of Sydney that exists mostly in my memory now. Late and occasionally messy nights on Oxford Street, venues with personality, places that felt a little unpredictable and slightly out of step with the rest of the city. 25hours Hotel The Olympia doesn’t try to recreate that exactly, but it does something close enough to matter, tapping into that same looseness and giving it structure again.
Set inside the old West Olympia Theatre, the building carries its past easily. You feel it as soon as you walk in, not in a heavy handed heritage way, but in the sense the space has already lived a few lives. 25hours has made this a brand thing, building each hotel around a narrative rather than a cookie cutter template. It is here the story leans into theatre, performance and a slightly chaotic Oxford Street energy. The design follows suit, layered, referential, a little unpredictable, with books stacked into corners, objects thoughtfully chosen rather than placed and rooms shifting in tone depending on where you land.
But the rooms don’t settle on one idea. They split into different personalities, lighter or darker, softer or more theatrical and mine felt like it was still deciding which strangely felt consistent with the rest of the hotel. It’s not trying to deliver a uniform experience. It’s trying to give you a mood, and then let you sit somewhere inside it. There’s a version of this that could feel overworked, but here it mostly holds.
What becomes clear quickly is the room isn’t really the point. 25hours builds hotels where the centre of gravity sits elsewhere, in the bar, in the restaurant, in the spaces pulling both guests and locals into the same orbit. You’re not really checking in, you’re stepping into something already in motion, and the expectation is you’ll move with it.
That’s where it sharpens. Culinary director Mitch Orr sits behind the food and drink offering, which immediately lifts the floor, and The Palomar anchors the whole thing with a kind of confident, high energy cooking that moves easily between southern Europe, North Africa and the Levant. It’s less about geography and more about momentum, wood fire, spice, dishes that land and are pulled apart quickly, then replaced with something else. Around it, the rest of the hotel fills in the night almost too easily. We confess to being great fan's of Orr's work.
A cocktail at The Mulwray that turns into two, then something smaller at Jacob the Angel, then upstairs to Monica where the room opens up and the pace shifts again. I came for a look and, at some point, realised I hadn’t been back to my room in hours, which feels intentional.
That’s the thing 25hours understands better than most hotel groups. You’re not here to stay in your room. You’re here to drift between spaces, to let the night stretch out a little further than planned, to feel like the hotel is part of the city rather than separate from it. Even the details lean into that idea, minibars are more local than luxury, objects you could take home if you wanted to, staff sitting very comfortably somewhere between service and personality rather than performance.
It’s not perfect. Some of the design leans a little too hard into its own references, and if you’re expecting traditional five star polish, this isn’t it. But that also feels like a conscious trade.
Because what 25hours has done here is give Sydney something it doesn’t have enough of anymore, a place with personality, scale, and a reason to stay longer than you meant to. Not just somewhere to sleep, but somewhere to spend time, and more importantly, somewhere that understands that the night doesn’t need to end when dinner does.
Images supplied
25hours Hotel Olympia Sydney is at 1-11 Oxford Street, Paddington NSW
Rooms start from around $350 per night.
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