Luxury Hotels Atlas / The Maison / QT Hotels & Resorts
QT Hotels & Resorts hotels
Theatrical design and Directors of Chaos turn the hotel welcome into a performance.
QT brings a playful theatricality to hotels in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, with design and staff style tailored to each address. Launched by David Seargeant in 2011 within the group now known as EVT, the brand grew from the Gold Coast to buildings such as Singapore’s former telegraph office.
7 QT Hotels & Resorts hotels in 3 countries on the Luxury Hotels Atlas, each placed on the six LHA Tiers.
- Owned by EVT
- Worldwide: 7 hotels on file, in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore
- On the atlas: 4 Core Luxury, 3 Accessible Luxury
History
David Seargeant wanted each QT to have a personality of its own. Sydney’s department store and theater, Newcastle’s retained shopfronts, and Singapore’s former telegraph headquarters gave the brand very different buildings to work with. Later hotel chapters changed those interiors and names, but the architecture remains a substantial part of the stay.
Timeline
- 1979 — David Seargeant, a science-degree dropout with a hotel cadetship at Commodore Hotels instead of the industrial-chemist career his father wanted for him, begins his career in Australian hospitality at age 20.
- 1987 — While working in Australian hospitality, Seargeant visits Ian Schrager's Morgans in New York, the hotel widely credited with inventing the modern boutique-hotel category, and, in his own words, "saw the future"; he spends years afterward convinced Australia was arriving late to a category the rest of the design world had already discovered.
- 1988 — Amalgamated Holdings Limited (AHL, now EVT) hands Seargeant the job of building a new hotel brand from scratch; he launches Rydges, initially a loose collection of individually branded hotels before airline frequent-flyer programs force AHL to unify them under one name.
- 2001–2002 — Seargeant is named Managing Director of AHL, giving him the authority to finally act on the Morgans-inspired idea he'd been carrying for over a decade.
- 2011 — QT launches with QT Gold Coast, then QT Port Douglas, where baristas dress in board shorts and waitstaff wear retro-printed miniskirts, a directive from Seargeant that no two QT hotels should ever feel clonable from city to city.
- 2016 — QT Melbourne opens in September on Russell Street, on the site of a Greater Union cinema, 188 rooms by Woods Bagot.
- 2017 — QT Queenstown opens on Lake Wakatipu, 69 rooms. Seargeant steps back from the company around this time.
- 2018 — QT Perth opens in the north of the CBD, 184 rooms.
- 2020 — QT Auckland opens on Viaduct Harbour, 150 rooms.
- 2022 — QT Newcastle opens behind the David Jones and Scotts facades on Hunter Street, 106 rooms, the first QT in a regional Australian city.
- 2024 — QT Singapore opens in September in the 1927 Eastern Extension Telegraph Company building on Robinson Road, 134 rooms.
The houses to know
- QT Sydney, Sydney, Australia — About 198 rooms in the Gowings building at 49 Market Street, a former department store and theatre.
- QT Queenstown, Queenstown, New Zealand — Sixty-nine rooms on Lake Wakatipu, opened in 2017, a small QT for a resort town.
- QT Singapore, Singapore, Singapore — One hundred thirty-four rooms in a 1927 telegraph headquarters on Robinson Road, QT's first hotel outside Australia and New Zealand.
- QT Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia — One hundred eighty-eight rooms on Russell Street, where Greater Union once ran a picture palace.
- QT Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand — One hundred fifty rooms on Viaduct Harbour, opened in 2020, with a rooftop over the masts.
- QT Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia — One hundred six rooms behind the David Jones and Scotts shopfronts on Hunter Street, opened in 2022.
- QT Perth, Perth, Australia — One hundred eighty-four rooms in the north of the CBD, opened in 2018.
Newest openings
- QT Singapore, Singapore, opened September 2024. F.G. Lundon of Swan & Maclaren finished the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company headquarters on Robinson Road in 1927. The conserved neo-classical building later held Cable & Wireless and Singapore's telecoms authority, then Accor's SO/ Singapore with Karl Lagerfeld interiors from 2014 to 2022, then Hotel Telegraph until the spring of the QT works. EVT reopened 134 rooms with Nic Graham interiors. It is the first QT outside Australia and New Zealand.
Opening next
- No further QT openings with a confirmed location and year were identified in the sources reviewed.
Every QT Hotels & Resorts hotel on the atlas
Australia
- QT Melbourne — Melbourne · Core Luxury
- QT Sydney — Sydney · Core Luxury
- QT Newcastle — Newcastle · Accessible Luxury
- QT Perth — Perth · Accessible Luxury
New Zealand
- QT Queenstown — Queenstown · Core Luxury
- QT Auckland — Auckland · Accessible Luxury
Singapore
- QT Singapore — Singapore · Core Luxury
Open The Maison in the atlas for QT Hotels & Resorts's full dossier, with prices and maps.