For such a historic hotel, it's surprising just how many modern day firsts it adopts. It's amongst the first luxury hotels to adopt an iPad, currently in the hands of the concierge to help you make your holiday plans. It is also one of the first hotels in the world to employ Ceres Sustainability Principles with the Saunders hotel group beginning an environmental program in 1989. No small feat for a hotel that was built in 1900 by the then owner of New York's Waldorf-Astoria for a grand price of $1,100,000. It is not short on historic glamour either. It's been the choice stay of many celebrated guests throughout the century. Jimmy the Bellman, here for 60 years, remembers many of 'his guests' well, including Judy Garland who stayed here for more than three months in 1965. Today you can stay in a suite named after her with its gilt-edged furnishings, teal velvet lounges and powder blue curtains.