We stayed at a funky new airport hotel in Sydney. Here's what we found

Hotel Review: Moxy Sydney Airport

Where: Moxy Sydney Airport, 56 Baxter Road, Mascot, Sydney

How much: From $199 per night

This hotel with attitude, open since August 2023, is Moxy's Australian debut and the playful brand's first airport property. With the motto "play on", Moxy's 15-plus worldwide hotels, part of the Marriott Bonvoy group, upend tradition with witty signatures, keen prices and cool design.

The 301-room, 12-floor hotel is beside Sydney Airport's domestic terminal and 10 minutes from the international terminal via Moxy's pink minibus, which shuttles half-hourly between both ($12 each way). Higher floors offer city panoramas. A stroll from Mascot's houses and shops, Moxy feels embedded in the neighbourhood, too.

Moxy's big personality waves hello with a pink, neon-lit entrance and wall mural by Sydney abstract artist Elliott Routledge. The interior's design duet of Mascot-inspired warehouse-chic scored the hotel top gong and Best New-Build Hotel at the 2024 Australasia-Pacific Hotel Design Awards. Bar and check-in desk are one and the same, and step you straight into Moxy's centrepiece Living Room, a sprawling communal hangout with exposed ceilings and wrought iron beams, cosied up with slouchy lounges and retro armchairs, and scattered with rugs, cushions and vintage objects - cassette players, projectors, a 1970s photo booth.

My Moxy Queen Sleeper room compensates for compactness with charisma and space-saving style. The mirror, mirror on the wall says I'm the fairest of them all with pink handwriting on the glass: "Amy, looking fabulous!" Equally endearing: the funky foldaway Stellar Works tables and chairs that stow neatly on wall pegs and a retro telephone you can dial for a bedtime story. Fun family options among the line-up of nine room types include quad bunks and a queen with overhead bunk.

The hotel's tasty menus suit this food-savvy neighbourhood and attract locals, too. Meals are ordered at Moxy Bar and you can stack up sleepover-style treats like burgers and loaded fries, go healthy with salad bowls, or offset the impending airline food with a last supper of substantial comforters like slow-roasted Aussie beef brisket. The bar's strong cocktail game features local heroes like Archie Rose, whose Moxy gin stars in a Cockatoo Fizz served in a tiki mug version of Frank, the hotel's rockstar cockatoo emblem. At breakfast you can party on with a DIY Bloody Mary and after-hours pangs are sorted by Moxy Pick-Up, a 24/7 store of essentials from tinned olives to toothpaste.

After overnighting pre-flight, I hop aboard Moxy's pink bus, energised and ready for whatever long-haul throws at me. The pops of pink, cheeky graffiti slogans, the laundry room's life-size poster of a shirtless hot guy ironing - every playful detail builds a feelgood vibe. While comfort, service and value are all on point, this hotel's superpower is something air travellers so desperately crave these days: fun.

Explore more: moxysydneyairport.com

The writer was a guest of Moxy.