TFE Hotels has taken the covers off the new Vibe Hotel Hobart ahead of its scheduled opening in November for a sneak peek at the local immersion and Tasmanian flair which will form a key part of the guest experience.
Situated close to the city’s harbourfront, the 142-room Argyle Street hotel sits within a 15-storey edifice dating back to Hobart’s colonial times and features floor-to-ceiling windows peppered with random vertical panels and colourful artistic fins. In a sign of the changing times of the city’s urbanity, the hotel will form part of Hobart’s first mixed-use development, with residential and retail to feature on the lower and street levels.
Elements from Hobart’s convict history sit around the hotel, reflected not just in the age of the site itself but in its distinct period artworks. The lobby will include a period column of handmade convict bricks, still bearing their thumbprints, on one side of a log fireplace. A variety of art deco trimmings include green marble and brass trimmings leading to ‘The Belvedere’, the hotel’s fine-dining restaurant which will serve up local flavours in a ‘paddock-to-plate’ seasonal menu.
Outside the hotel in the drop-off laneway, the site’s history is further exhibited through metal panels, one of which features a sketch of Hobart circa 1800s.
Vibe Hobart marks the debut of the brand in Tasmania and follows the announcement this week of the October opening of Vibe Perth Subiaco, which will welcome guests around a month earlier than its Tasmanian counterpart.
TFE Hotels Area General Manager, Stephen Moore, said the various emotive and historical designs around the hotel will showcase everything that is great about Hobart.
“There’s a powerful sense of arrival as soon you walk in,” he said. The WOW-factor of a full-service hotel that will never leave guests questioning where they are. This is Tasmania at every touch point.”
Vibe Hobart owner and developer, Annalisa Doedens, said the second reason the hotel sets a precedent as a locally immersive destination stems from the fact it breathes new life into the city’s past, reinvigorating memories otherwise lost to history.
“An archaeological survey of the site had to be done and we soon realised it was the location of Hobart’s very earliest homesteads,” she said.
The CBD plot is located 20 metres from the banks of the now subterranean Hobart Rivulet, which, until the 1860s, provided the main source of fresh water to the original colonial settlement. Today, intrepid wanderers can venture into the city’s underbelly on a 2km Hobart Rivulet Walk.