Visiting friends

We are travelling to Australia to visit friends that live a couple hours from Melbourne. We want to fly into Melbourne and stay there a few days to see the sights before we drive out to visit our friends. Can anyone recommend any good Melbourne hotels? We have never been there before. We will have a car, but we won’t want to drive any more than necessary, so a centrally located hotel would be best. We also won’t want to spend a great deal on the hotel since the trip is already so expensive, but we just can’t miss out on seeing Melbourne after travelling so far.