Hotel in Cairns Pre/Post Liveaboard

We will be doing a liveaboard prior to going to Sydney in March.

We will be needing a hotel one night prior to liveaboard and one night after liveaboard.

First trip to Australia, I know nothing about the area. We are going through Reef Encounter.

Can someone recommend a nice hotel. Looking for a reasonable price (around $150 USD/night) and something that is not too far from the airport or the departure site.

I've looked at the threads, but not sure exactly what I am looking for.

Any help is much appreciated!

Hi,

when we stayed in Cairns we stayed at Reef Palms. It was close to the airport and we had free pick up for our reef trip. We used Reef Experience for our one day reef trip, they are the ones that do Reef Encounter. In fact we took a group out to the overnight boat and brought a few people back with us.

I recommend staying in Cairns. There are plenty of shuttles buses that will take you to your hotel.

I'm not sure if this will be in your budget but the Cairns Hilton is really nice and is right on the waterfront. According to Google Maps it's only about 500m to where Reef Encounter departs from.