Great view to Opera House and Bridge from pool area and some rooms.
Walking distance to everything at Sydney.
Great value!

The Rocks area is just so much fun when visiting Sydney. But this hotel has done soo little to isolate the rooms, it's like trucks are running through your room and early morning you are woken up by the noise from outside. Changed into 3 different rooms, but hotel staff explaines "its's just an old buikding..."

Excellent hotel and I strongly recommend it. I travel extensively and I am picky about my accommodations. I had some reservations after reading couple of the disapproving trip advisor reviews, but Holiday Inn Old Sydney totally surpassed my expectations. Here’s what I liked.

1) Excellent location (Rocks) with lot of character and choice of good restaurants/bars. Right around the corner from most major attractions including Sydney Bridge, Opera house etc. Minutes from Circular Quay train station and major bus routes.

2) Nice clean rooms with all the modern amenities. I loved my room with view of the harbor.

3) Rooftop pool: Small pool, but incredible views.

4) Extraordinary service: Very helpful and friendly front office staff.

One small criticism I have was having to use the personal credit card to program (lock/unlock) the room safe. The front office assured me that they delete the guest safe data daily, but I would feel secure with a standard room safe with programmable security codes.

I tend to go for other larger hotel chains as I have preferred status there, however when in Sydney, I wouldn’t stay anywhere else but Holiday Inn Old Sydney.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Old Sydney for 3 nights in January 2012 and were very pleased with our choice. The hotel is easy to get to using public transport from the airport, being a 400m walk from Circular Quay station. It's also in the centre of The Rocks and within an easy walk of the Botanical Gardens, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge etc etc. The rooftop swimming pool is quite small but provides great views of the harbour and city. The one down side was that all the rooms on the lower floors at the front of the hotel are noisy because of the quite busy road outside the hotel. That said, the staff were very obliging when we asked to be moved. We used Priority Club reward points so our stay was effectively free.