Sofitel adds some festive romance to your hotel stay

Soiftel hotels want to add a little fragrance and romance to your stay.

This festive season, Sofitel is offering special packages that combine sound, light, and scent "to create a moment of true connection".

The Candle Experience is described as an immersive in-room ritual "that transforms guest rooms and suites into a shimmering sanctuary of candlelight, scent and sound".

Designed for those seeking calm during the holiday rush, the experience aims to blend "Parisian romance with modern luxury, inviting guests to pause, reconnect and savour an intimate escape".

The Candle Experience begins flickering light as hundreds of LED candles bathe your hotel room in a soft glow.

The air is perfumed with the Signature Sofitel fragrance, a blend of bergamot, white rose and sandalwood, while a curated Devialet soundscape envelops guests in high-fidelity calm.

With a bottle of Pommery Champagne chilled and waiting, and specially crafted festive treats, your suite "becomes a private stage for an unforgettable shared moment".

“The Candle Experience is Sofitel's invitation to experience luxury as a sanctuary - a moment of peace and presence,” says Nicolas Gronier, a global brand experience leader.

Every Candle Experience includes a room filled with candles, the signature Sofitel Scent and a bottle of Pommery Champagne, with a high-tech Devialat speaker in-room offering a soundscape. 

Each participating Sofitel then adds its own touch. The experience is ultra-exclusive, with only one Candle Experience Suite available per hotel per night, so guests are encouraged to book early.

Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour offers the Candle Experience, along with chocolate-coated strawberries for $250 on top of your room rate.

At Sofitel Sydney Wentworth the experience is $199 and includes the Candle Experience, a box of Christmas-themed chocolates and a Sofitel Candle to take home.

Sofitel Queenstown also offers the Candle Experience for $250 NZD on top of the room rate.

Food, drinks, and now Tasmania has its own fragrance

Tasmania has built a formidable reputation for its food and wine, and now the island state has its own fragrance. 

Wild fragrance GONDWANA by Undersong has just launched in one of Tasmania's most picturesque locations. 

The perfumery is located overlooking the water at Bicheno’s The Gulch, a noted east coast beauty spot, and is open by appointment. 

Undersong founder Hilary Burden, a former ABC journalist and author (right), says GONDWANA Eau de Parfum "evokes a love of land from old time, an era when flowering plants first arrived in the southern hemisphere 100 million years ago".

Tasmania has some of the rarest temperate rainforests in the world with links to the former great southern landmass of Gondwana. 

The limited-release wild fragrance aims to distil the essence of Earth’s temperate rainforests and evoke a love of plants older than human life.

GONDWANA was chosen from six Undersong aromatic mists (all steam-distilled hydrosol blends created by Burden) by Grasse-based master perfumer Marianne Nawrocki, who specialises in natural fragrances. 

Burden worked alongside Nawrocki at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France during the summer of 2023. Together they lifted the fragrance’s intensity and longevity.

Returning to Australia, Burden continued to fine-tune her scent with Sydney-based independent perfumer Jocelyn Fullerton. 

GONDWANA Eau de Parfum is described as "a woody-aromatic scent that opens with piquant Tasmanian pepper leaf and Sassafras. 

These native ingredients lend their vibrant energies to White cypress leaf, Cabreuva wood and Tasmanian Celery Top pine, creating a primordial harmony of nature in balance, an odour of temperate rainforests, of leaves, flowers, and heartwood, from sun-drenched forest canopies down to the petrichor-rich earth". 

GONDWANA travel sizes are now available from Undersong Perfumery, Bicheno, and online at www.undersong.com.au.