<p class="title">Apartment owners on the premises of a luxury Melbourne hotel are seeking to quash plans by Australian Open organisers to use the hotel to quarantine players ahead of the Grand Slam.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The apartment owners at the Westin Melbourne are concerned for their health and never agreed to international players quarantining at the hotel, their lawyer Graeme Efron told Reuters on Monday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"My instructions are to get an injunction. So at this stage, that's where we’re going," Efron said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Hundreds of players are expected to arrive in Melbourne in mid-January and undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine as part of Covid-19 protocols before the Feb. 8-21 Australian Open.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Efron said the Westin had informed the owners on Christmas Eve about the quarantine plans and presented it as a "done deal."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"No-one has told us that this has been mandated by a government authority to turn a partly residential city hotel into a quarantine hotel," he said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Owners, who include some of the country's top business people, said they felt "ambushed" by the quarantine plan.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"At 84, I'm in the vulnerable group and it's shocking the way they tried to ram this through without any attempt to consult with us," owner Digby Lewis told Fairfax media.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Westin management said their "Covid safe" plan had been shared with the owners corporation, adding that residents would use a separate entrance and lifts and have no contact with players and quarantine staff.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Their floor will remain exclusive while there will be no reticulation of ventilation between the floors," the Westin said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Tennis Australia did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Melbourne, capital of Victoria state, was the epicentre of Australia's largest second-wave outbreak of Covid-19, which started at two quarantine hotels for international arrivals.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Victoria recorded three new cases on Monday, as authorities scrambled to trace close contacts from an outbreak that began in mid-December in Sydney's Northern Beaches area.</p>
<p class="title">Apartment owners on the premises of a luxury Melbourne hotel are seeking to quash plans by Australian Open organisers to use the hotel to quarantine players ahead of the Grand Slam.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The apartment owners at the Westin Melbourne are concerned for their health and never agreed to international players quarantining at the hotel, their lawyer Graeme Efron told Reuters on Monday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"My instructions are to get an injunction. So at this stage, that's where we’re going," Efron said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Hundreds of players are expected to arrive in Melbourne in mid-January and undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine as part of Covid-19 protocols before the Feb. 8-21 Australian Open.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Efron said the Westin had informed the owners on Christmas Eve about the quarantine plans and presented it as a "done deal."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"No-one has told us that this has been mandated by a government authority to turn a partly residential city hotel into a quarantine hotel," he said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Owners, who include some of the country's top business people, said they felt "ambushed" by the quarantine plan.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"At 84, I'm in the vulnerable group and it's shocking the way they tried to ram this through without any attempt to consult with us," owner Digby Lewis told Fairfax media.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Westin management said their "Covid safe" plan had been shared with the owners corporation, adding that residents would use a separate entrance and lifts and have no contact with players and quarantine staff.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Their floor will remain exclusive while there will be no reticulation of ventilation between the floors," the Westin said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Tennis Australia did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Melbourne, capital of Victoria state, was the epicentre of Australia's largest second-wave outbreak of Covid-19, which started at two quarantine hotels for international arrivals.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Victoria recorded three new cases on Monday, as authorities scrambled to trace close contacts from an outbreak that began in mid-December in Sydney's Northern Beaches area.</p>