In recent years, Canberra has seen the opening of a number of boutique and design-focused hotels that afford leisure and business travellers a more personalised and art-driven hotel stay experience.
East Hotel, in the fashionable suburb of Kingston, was opened in 2012 by siblings, Dan and Dion Bisa. Familiar with the hospitality industry, the pair had grown up watching their parents open and operate the first serviced apartments in Canberra.
Just shy of its 10th year in operation, the Bisas are continuing to evolve their 140-room apartment-hotel, unveiling the latest adaptation last September, with a newly-refurbished lobby space.
Todd Handy, the hotel’s general manager since opening, tells me that the goal of the lobby renovation was for guests and locals to utilise the space in more ways.
Designer Kelly Ross, who was also responsible for the hotel’s interior designs and its in-house restaurant Agostinis, and Joe’s Bar, had the plans finalised pre-COVID – however disruptions to overseas shipments saw a delay of nine months to the completion of the lobby.
“We wanted something quite different to what we previously had,” explains Handy.
“Dion has travelled extensively and has seen different hotels and how they use space, and what works and what doesn’t. We thought the lobby that we had really worked. What we’ve done hasn’t been a wholesale change but the colours and materials are warmer and, as a result, people use this space so much more.
“They use it to have a pop-up coffee meeting or a casual conversation in the daytime; and once Joe’s Bar opens, this space is so much more activated. It actually fulfils the original vision of Dan Bisa when he created this space for the lobby to be the hub, and pulling everything together through all the different zones. It’s just amazing how much that has happened now.”
I first visited East Hotel in 2018 for Travel Monitor (you can read the earlier review here) and while the same welcoming atmosphere rooted in Italian hospitality and buzz for travellers of all ages remains, I can’t help but notice that the new lobby definitely oozes a more sophisticated and adult vibe.
For starters, designer Kelly Ross has shortened the legs of a long counter-bench height table, made from repurposed French oak wine barrels. It previously held Mac computers and jars of lollies, with stools where guests could sit perched against its smooth surface.
“We got rid of the Mac computers because we found that guests didn’t use them, only children playing Minecraft, so we thought ‘we don’t really need those anymore’,” says Handy.
Now, at dining-table height, patrons of adjoining Italian restaurant, Agositinis, can also sit here when the restaurant books out and is at full capacity.
“It’s amazing how simply changing the table and chairs has encouraged people to use this area,” says Handy.
A central atrium rises to the ceiling, while carefully positioned mood lighting creates ambience. By chance, Kelly and Dion found the impressive tasselled central chandelier, made in Africa, at MCM House on Oxford Street in Sydney. In cooler months, guests can gather around the lobby’s open fire, drinking cocktails from Joe’s Bar just steps away.
Then there is the sleek, textured outer shell of the reception desk, that was inspired by an Yves Saint Laurent handbag, and pink tasselled pendant lights that hover above the counter.
“Two of the most powerful tools to bring a design to life are texture and colour as we connect with both in such an emotive way,” says Kelly Ross. “The new leather texture of the front desk, installed by Inset Group, is based on an YSL handbag – but the joke is on the handbag because it’s about inclusivity rather than exclusivity.”
Like so many operators in the hotel industry, East Hotel was not immune to a downturn during the height of the pandemic in 2020.
“Our occupancy, thankfully, started going back up in December 2020,” says Handy.
The January Sydney COVID outbreaks did have an effect. “It’s funny though, with the hotel industry – I think the nation sneezes and we get the cold in the industry. But business in Canberra always starts again in February, when schools go back and people start to travel again for work so, since February, it’s just been awesome. People are so keen to travel and to connect. We saw that the whole time during last year with Agostinis and Joe’s Bar – as soon as people were able to get out and meet with people face to face, the venues were really busy. Joe’s has actually done better post-COVID than it did pre-COVID.”
It’s quite a feat when an Australian hotel restaurant can proudly claim that 95 per cent of its patrons are locals, but that’s exactly the case for much-loved Italian restaurant, Agostinis. On the night we dine, a family enters, with a lavish tiered birthday cake, here to celebrate a milestone birthday with multi generations of the family in attendance. On my Facebook page, when I share photos from my time at Agostinis, one of my Canberra-based friends writes of the restaurant, “one of our favourites”; and my brother-in-law, also a Canberra local, tells me his new employer took him and his colleagues to dinner here to celebrate his new appointment.
It’s reflective of the Bisa family Italian heritage in creating such a family-friendly dining option where locals truly love to come and dine, and hotel guests are also keen to try. The food quality is as outstanding as I remember from my first dining experience here ¬– do not miss the calamari! The experience is made all the more fun by the colourful and vibrant interiors that include leopard print circular dining booths, an oversized black and white photo of an Italian village from the family’s archives on the wall ; and a vintage Vespa parked proudly near the restaurant counter where staff are hand-making pasta and kneading pizza dough.
Location
East is tucked in between the fashionable shopping and dining precincts of Kingston and Manuka. We wander for breakfast to Manuka’s nearby eateries ¬– try Typica café; or Pattisez for their insane thick shakes (the kids will love you for it). In the other direction, stroll to Kingston Wharf to enjoy any number of bars and restaurants overlooking the water.
In Kingston, we visit the newly-opened Queenies Bar whose eclectic interiors, paying homage to strong and powerful women of the past, have also been designed by Kelly Ross.
Guests are also just minutes away from the Parliamentary triangle and some of the main attractions of the capital, including the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and the National Portrait Gallery.
East Hotel offers NGA packages for its guests, a convenient short drive away of no more than five minutes, ensuring a fairly seamless process when arriving at the gallery.
We take the opportunity to visit the current touring exhibition, ‘Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London’, running until 14 June.
The exhibition represents the first time in its near 200-year history that the National Gallery, London has toured an exhibition of its works internationally.
With COVID-safe and social distancing measures in place, there’s no dampening the experience of wandering the exhibition rooms and viewing up close 61 paintings that span 450 years of Western European history by master artists including Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Turner, Constable, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
Of course, with such priceless artworks, there are reasonable security measures in place but, even so, visiting during school holidays, I could stand close enough to view the thick brushstrokes on Van Gogh’s 1888 masterpiece, ‘Sunflowers’. As I approach the painting, a mother and her teenage son are standing in awe staring at the painting. The mother places her arm around her son’s shoulder and he returns the gesture as they linger a few moments longer. I couldn’t help but wonder how few places there are on the planet right now where people can so freely experience the joy of viewing art. I’m not sure if even visionary Van Gogh could have possibly predicted the little ray of sunshine that his ‘Sunflowers’ is still bringing to art lovers some 133 years after he finished it.
TOP IMAGE: East Hotel
