Daniel Kovač
Co-owner, front desk
Handles bookings, the lease and anything involving a ladder or a toolbox. Grew up in Fremantle and spent a decade managing short-stay apartments before this.
Who we are
Cleramo: A Family-Run Boutique Hotel in Perth, Australia
Cleramo is a fourteen-room boutique hotel on St Georges Terrace in Perth, run since 2019 by two people who got tired of the way other hotels treated them as guests.
01 / The long version
We signed the lease on a Tuesday and had keys by Friday
Before Cleramo, the two of us spent eleven years running other people's properties across Perth and Fremantle. We learned every trick that makes a stay pleasant and every shortcut that makes it miserable. In 2019 the lease on this floor came up and we took it, mostly because the windows open and the light on the west side is genuinely good.
The building itself is nothing special from the street. It went up in 1987 as offices for a mining services firm, which is why the ceilings are high, the lift is slow and the fire stairs are wider than they need to be. We took out most of the interior walls, kept the terrazzo and the brass mail slots in the lobby, and put in fourteen rooms with their own shapes. Some face the river, some face the laneway. None of them are symmetrical.
The first year we had nine rooms open and a front desk that closed at six. Now it is fourteen rooms, a terrace that holds eighty guests, and somebody on the phone until eleven most nights. That is still small enough that the person who takes your booking is usually the person who meets you at the door.
02 / The people
Six of us, and one dog who thinks she works here
There is no head office and no call centre. If you ring the number on this site during the day you will get one of the four people below, all of whom have actually stayed in the rooms they rent you.
Marta Kovač
Co-owner, kitchen
Runs the kitchen for weddings and long-stay breakfasts. Trained in Ljubljana, worked eleven years in Perth restaurants, and refuses to serve dry chicken at any price.
Ravi Pillai
House manager
Runs the cleaning team and the maintenance schedule. Knows which rooms creak, which taps need watching and which guests will want extra pillows before they ask.
Elise Moreau
Events coordinator
Plans the wedding and launch nights on the terrace. Has talked more than one couple out of a marquee they did not need and saved them four figures.
Terrace, fifty guests
Studio 902
Kitchen, six in the morning
03 / What we have done
Projects that still make us nervous when we talk about them
Some jobs we took on because they were interesting, not because they were profitable. The eleven-week mining shutdown in 2021 filled the whole building with contractors and taught us more about laundry than we ever wanted to know.
The Fitzroy Crossing anniversary dinner in 2022 was four hours of cooking for ninety people in a room we had never seen, using a kitchen we borrowed from a pub. It went well. We have never agreed to do it again.
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2021
Eleven-week corporate shutdown booking, building fully let
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2022
Ninety-guest anniversary dinner off-site in the Kimberley
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2023
Terrace renovation, kept the original 1987 steelwork
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2024
Long-stay wing opened on level nine, seven rooms
04 / How we think
Four rules we actually keep
We wrote these down in the first year and have not needed to change them. They are not mission statements. They are working habits that save us arguments.
01
Answer the phone
Between six in the morning and eleven at night, a person picks up. No menu, no hold music, no "your call is important to us".
02
Charge what we said
The rate you are quoted is the rate you pay. No resort fee, no linen charge, no card surcharge that appears at the last screen.
03
Cook it properly
If the kitchen cannot do a dish well at your guest numbers, we will say so and suggest something else. Nobody remembers the bread rolls.
04
Fix it that day
Broken tap, noisy neighbour, flat pillow. If you tell us in the morning it is sorted by the time you get back, or we tell you why it cannot be.
05 / What we offer
Two things we do properly, and everything else we point you towards
We are not trying to be a resort. We rent rooms and we host small events, and we would rather be genuinely good at both than mediocre at six things.
Harbour Suite Stays
Suites and studios on the west side of the building, with river views and windows that open. Weekly and monthly rates cover laundry, parking and a desk facing the water.
See the rooms
Signature Wedding Hosting
Small weddings and launch nights on the terrace for thirty to eighty guests. One long table, a menu your family will actually eat, and no dry chicken anywhere near it.
Plan an eventRates and availability
Numbers, clearly written down, on one page.
06 / Come and see
Ring us, or send a message and we will ring you
If you want to look at a room before booking, come up between ten and four on a weekday. Somebody will show you round, and there is usually coffee going. We are on level nine. Press the button in the lift.
- 125 St Georges Terrace, Perth WA 6000, Australia
- +61 8 6412 9073
- cleramo@hotmail.com
Talk to a person
Send us your dates and what you need. Daniel or Marta will reply within one working day, usually the same morning.