Could hotel imaginaries transform high-rise living in Melbourne?

Well-appointed lobbies, ‘five-star’ hotel amenities, and on-site concierge services. This is how a growing segment of Melbourne’s new high-rise apartment real-estate is increasingly being marketed to higher-end consumers, especially to older homeowners seeking to downsize.

Since the 2000s, Melbourne has seen the emergence of a thriving economy of high-rise apartments. In 2021, 57.3% of people in Inner Melbourne were living in a flat or apartment [1]. A new typology of hotel-like high-rise buildings is challenging established housing aspirations and reshaping norms and visions of ‘home’ in apartments [2].

It is important to understand how the design of apartments influenced by 'hotel imaginaries' impacts the everyday experiences of residents, and the broader communities in which they are located. This knowledge can be used to ensure that these apartments and building spaces are designed in a way that enables residents to experience a sense of 'home' while also enjoying the 'hotel' features that support their desired way of living.

What are hotel imaginaries?

Hotel imaginaries can be defined as a particular set of design, spatial and management features and/or discourses that provide specific affordances to apartment dwellers from the removal of maintenance duties to greater access to urban amenities. Yet hotel imaginaries also present important challenges, not only because the lifestyle aspirations marketed for such developments do not necessarily reflect residents’ lived experiences of these spaces [3] but also because the blurring of home and hotels destabilise tenure categories and residents’ sense of belonging [4].

Our recently published research article sets out to understand what hotel imaginaries mean for high-rise urbanism in terms of social relationships, belonging and everyday practices [5]. The paper builds on existing research on homes, hotels and vertical urbanism to investigate how hotel imaginaries are perceived and experienced in two apartment buildings in Melbourne.

Impact on home, belonging and social connection

We found that the design and management of hotel-inspired apartments impact the sense of home, belonging and social connection for residents in three main ways.

1. Hotel features and conviviality

Hotel features such as the exterior façade, lobby and corridors elicited a sense of pride for some residents, notably because residents were depicted as hotel guests. The upmarket aesthetics and design also worked to help maintain the capital value of properties and establish a point of difference from other large-scale developments. Yet hotel features also caused frustrations, disorientation, and detachment. The configuration of the buildings felt like a maze for some residents and resulted in a sense of dizziness and placelessness. The absence of daylight in corridors and their similarity was described by residents as ‘confusing’. Navigating the different levels therefore required a particular spatial familiarity that only comes from experience.

Hotel-like features often include a bar or restaurant. In the two case-study buildings, there was a tension between the desire to control who walks through the building lobby (as an interface between public space and private residential space) and the intention to spark a vibrant social life. In efforts to address this tension, the presence and authority of the concierge was used as a barrier against unwanted and uninvited visitors.

Original aspirations to create convivial high-rise courtyards while preserving private ownership and upmarket aesthetics was also challenged by residents’ everyday practice and experience. Courtyards were central to this promise, intended to be used as important socialising spaces within the developments. In practice, most participants underlined their lack of atmosphere and conviviality, stating they were ‘not designed for a community’. However, other hotel features (such as warm hues and snug furniture) were more successful in maintaining a distinctive character and sense of homeliness.

2. Residents’ social status in hotel discourses

Residents' experiences of these hotel-like apartment buildings were shaped by tenure (private renters versus home owners). In our study, hotels and high-rise buildings were perceived differently, insofar as owner-occupiers and longer-term renters were seen as driven by a desire to ‘look after the place’, whereas hotel corporations were seen as driven by financial motivations. Similarly, a contrast was established between hotel guests who ‘just stay the night and clear off’ and long-term residents who ‘want to look after the building’.

Developers and architects seemed to adopt hotel references with the aim of reinforcing a positive, upmarket imaginary of high-rise living, but residents’ discourses highlighted the ambiguities of hotel-homes’ lived experiences and practices that stray from those intended in the design of the buildings. In small apartments, 'making do' with the layout was often mentioned as many participants considered their units to be 'quirky' rather than conventional. For some, this meant a lack of functionality while others valued the uniqueness of shapes and fixtures, which helped compensate the limited space available.

For other participants, what mattered most was their relative seclusion and privacy to allow for ‘decent’ living. One participant carefully chose their unit by conducting sound tests and making comparative measurements to select a location and layout that was as far away as possible from their idea of hotel living.

Common spaces helped elevate residents’ status by providing additional flexibility and amenities. Many residents’ routine of leisure and business trips permeated their everyday practices in high-rise living, blurring professional and personal practices in these buildings. For example, the common spaces of the building such as the rooftop were also used for informal, after-hours corporate meetings in an atmosphere enlivened by the passing by of people attending to the gardens.

Similarly, most ‘downsizer’ participants expressed a strong connection with their previous suburbs that materialised in regular visits, allowing them to juggle their hotel-like lifestyle aspirations and the perpetuation of previously established social networks and place attachments. In these discourses, suburban homes were associated with maintenance and high-rise hotel-inspired living with mobility, revealing a desire to delegate responsibility for maintenance to a governing body.

3. Tensions emerging from hotel tenures and transience

Conflicts existed between long-term and short-term (Airbnb) residents – the same as they do in ‘everyday’ apartments, if not more so. The emerging housing tenure category formed by short-stay rentals raised the questions of whether and how the hotel imaginary is shaped by, and in turn shapes, relations between long-term and short-stay residents.

Although the adoption of hotel imaginaries implies openness to more transient forms of belonging and residency, almost all residents in our study expressed anxious concerns about short-term rental practices. These were associated with anti-social behaviours, unaccountable visitors, and material damage to the building. Owners and renters shared the disapproval of short-stay rental in both case-studies. In fact, participants who were renting expressed concerns around inadequate care and responsibility by short-stay renters which echoed owners’ discourses on both long-term and short-stay renters.

The rejection of short-stay residents was primarily founded on the view that they benefited from the hotel-style facilities (especially pools, gyms, and rooftop areas) without contributing to their care and maintenance. Owner’s corporations and building management saw short-term rental as an ‘out of control’ phenomenon, which contrasted with the promise of order that comes with a hotel-like management. From the perspective of enforcing rules and using common spaces, these high-rise developments were expected to operate according to ‘conventional’ residential living rather than functioning on 24/7 hotel temporalities.

Transient atmospheres, identified through people passing by and unknown faces, created distress and a sense of unease among residents. This reveals visions of who belonged (or not) to hotel-like developments and mirrors recent research exploring parents’ strategies in high-density settings where children are seemingly absent from perceptions of apartments as ‘adult spaces’ [6].

Implications on housing and planning

Notions of home and hotels are increasingly bound together in Melbourne's high-end, high-rise living. The elevation of the home-hotel to the status of desirable housing product casts a shadow on the traditional ‘great Australian dream’—as provincial, unsociable, high maintenance, and restricting mobility.

Further, this ‘hotelification’ of high-rise buildings represents a shift in housing supply, one that will be important to understand for implications for housing planning policy, and broader urban management issues [7]. It underscores concerns about conflicts between owners-occupiers and investors; and between long-term owner-occupiers, long-term tenants and short-stay renters. It also raises questions about a potential exacerbation of socio-spatial divisions. Even though many of the hotel features that are now emerging in Melbourne high-rise apartments are long-standing features of high-rise homes in other global cities, these hotel-style and highly privatised apartment buildings have an exclusionary potential.

The way we design and think of common spaces and amenities in multi-residential buildings should also be thought about carefully in light of our findings. How we choose to think of housing (as customers/consumers rather than residents, as services rather than places and homes) has consequences on everyday practices and belonging and has the potential to shape the desirability and liveability of our future cities.