September 7, 2021 | By Graeme Kemlo
In a city that has added hundreds of modern millennial-flavoured hotel rooms since COVID hit, another new hotel is rising: Vibe Hotel Adelaide, in a precinct known as the Paris-end of the eastern CBD.
Originally announced in 2018 for a 2020 opening, the 19-storey $45 million Vibe will now open by November 2022. It will have 123 rooms with floor to ceiling windows, open plan bathrooms, meeting spaces and a ground level plaza, restaurants and bars. But probably its most-commented-on feature is a spectacular suspended swimming pool bridging the two ultra-modern towers.
TFE Group Chief Operating Officer, Chris Sedgwick, said TFE Hotels’ first Vibe brand in South Australia with its design-focused style “will offer a vibrant, inner-city community vibe at ground level with lively restaurants and bars”.
“On the higher hotel floors, the open plan bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows will frame city views that extend all the way to the beautiful Adelaide Hills.”
Vibe Adelaide was designed by the award-winning Loucas Zahos Architects. Director Con Zahos said the hotel “will set the standard in the worldwide movement to modern and relevant millennial stays”.
There is already a modernist feeling in this city. Adelaide has a walking tour to discover iconic buildings erected in the 50s, 60s and 70s that are well preserved. With the recent erection of the new millennial-style modern architecture of Vibe and other new Adelaide hotels, such as Eos by Skycity, Oval Hotel, the new Sofitel and Hotel Indigo, architectural tourism could potentially be expanded.
Just six minutes from the Adelaide Convention Centre, Vibe is among the new accommodation that the meetings and events industry has been expecting, despite the pandemic slowdown of some local developments. In 2020 and 2021, the city gained a number of global brands and 800 hotel rooms, but another 2,000 rooms are expected to come online by the end of 2022. The Australian Hotels Association has forecast an extra 4,000 hotel rooms will be built in Adelaide by 2024.
Vibe is a lifestyle brand of Australia’s TFE group which has 80 hotels with 11,826 keys in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. It already has an Adina property in Adelaide in the old Treasury building, offering 79 apartment style rooms and eight meeting spaces for up to 100 theatre style.