01 Feb 2025
Words John Miller Informer

About Time

Circa Hotels gave Corowa and Albury a style infusion and helped pioneer the boutique art hotel concept in regional Australia

Take two crumbling bank buildings from yesteryear, apply vision, artistic creativity and several decades of hospitality experience, and you have the essential elements of Circa Hotels.

Kevin and Ririn Yaxley opened Circa 1936 in Corowa in 2015, followed by Circa 1928 in Albury in 2019.

“Our idea was to buy an old building of some sort, a post office, bank or whatever, and bring style to regional accommodation,” says Kevin.

The Yaxley’s search for their ideal property extended from Port Douglas to Port Adelaide. Properties in Bendigo, Ballarat, Dubbo and Goulburn piqued their interest, but it was a two-storey art deco building on the main street of Corowa on the Murray River which captured their imagination.

The former Rural Bank of New South Wales building had languished on the market for some time. It was derelict, possum infested and had structural issues, but the Yaxleys saw potential. The bold red brick facade had an elegant curved second-floor balcony sitting over the ground level entrance. Inside featured pressed-metal ceilings, timber staircases, brick fireplaces and the bank’s original vault.

The Yaxleys purchased the building in 2013. They had their work cut out for them but the combination of skills to make it happen. Kevin, a Tasmanian and then aged 57, had behind him a 40-year career in hotels, working in the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Melbourne, Darwin and Alice Springs. In 2001, he landed a job at the 3.5-star Airways Hotel Port Moresby, which later as general manager he would transform into the best hotel in the country, as acknowledged by the World Travel Awards which named it Papua New Guinea’s Leading Hotel in 2007. In 2004, while working in Port Moresby, Kevin met his Indonesian wife, Ririn, a mixed media artist who had come to consult on opening a day spa. Her artistic skills and sense of style would guide Circa Hotels’ interior design. In 2012, the couple left Moresby to live in Australia.

By 2015, the Yaxleys had transformed the ramshackle former bank into a boutique hotel with three suites, a restaurant and day spa. They faithfully restored the building’s pressed metal ceilings and timber staircase, had imaginatively repurposed the bank vault as a wine cellar and guest library, and added other touches such as leadlight windows.

They called their reimagined masterpiece Circa 1936, so named for the year the bank building had been established.

“As it turned out, we spent twice as long and twice as much on the restoration, but we were happy with the end result,” says Kevin.

Circa 1936 did not take long to take off. The small hotel quickly earned exceptional word of mouth and glowing reviews on online platforms like Booking.com (where it still garners a 9.8 “Exceptional” rating).

“Our market was guests who are looking for something more than vanilla hotels,” says Kevin.

“No disrespect, but our guests were people who were sick and tired of El Dorado-type motels being the only available accommodation in country towns. Circa 1936 attracted everyone from lawyers to property developers to actors. A lot of CEOs and other C-suites too. People who didn’t mind dropping the kind of money we were charging for a room. Perhaps 10% to 15% of our business were singles; a single man or woman who didn’t want to stay in a larger hotel by themselves. We had pretty high-profile guests at our price point, which was between $400 to $700 a night depending on when you booked.”

Circa 1936’s other successful ingredient was traditional hospitality.

“Being old school, I believe in being a proper host,” says Kevin. “Talking with your guests, building a relationship with them. Our single guests in particular liked the idea of a host who looked after them. If you read our guestbook or online reviews, our guests frequently remarked on our hospitality.”

By 2018, Circa 1936 was going gangbusters. Buoyed by its success, the Yaxley’s grand plan was to roll out the Circa brand to other regional towns.

“The idea was to renovate a building, get it up and running as a Circa, sell the business component, retain the freehold, then move on to the next one,” says Kevin. “We thought there was synergy in doing it that way.”

For their second acquisition, the Yaxleys settled on a premises in the tree-lined ‘Paris end’ of Dean Street in Albury, about 30 minutes’ drive away. The two-storey building had been constructed in 1928 to house the Commonwealth Bank but had fallen into disrepair and had most recently been used by a Bonds retailer selling T-shirts, underpants and socks. Unlike Circa 1936, the building had gone through untold renovations, so much so that little of the original interior was salvageable.

“We had almost nothing to work with other than the facade,” says Kevin. “So we had to create the interest within the rooms themselves, which gave us the idea of turning it into an art hotel.”

The Yaxleys also felt they needed to give people a reason to visit Albury.

“Albury is different from Corowa,” says Kevin. “Corowa is a destination in itself. You don’t go throughCorowa; you go to Corowa. Whereas Albury is more of a transit stop on the highway between Melbourne and Sydney or Melbourne and Canberra.”

For the building’s overhaul, the Yaxley’s main inspiration came from 21C Museum Hotels, the Kentucky-based boutique chain. Launched in 2006, 21C (which Accor acquired in 2018) turned heads with its combination of contemporary art and art-infused decor set inside heritage buildings.

Heritage protections meant the Yaxleys could not alter the former bank building’s grey and white exterior, but the interior was effectively a blank canvas.

In 2019, after a year’s work, they opened Circa 1928, again naming their creation after the original building’s foundation year.

Circa 1928 is an art hotel in two senses. Each of its four suites is named after famous creatives born in 1928: two artists, Pro Hart and Andy Warhol, rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley and ‘The Queen of Burlesque,’ Tempest Storm. Additionally, the hotel opened its walls to local artists to exhibit their work for sale. Ririn was involved in Albury’s local art community who were eager for a venue to display their work. The hotel exhibited as many as seven local artists and received a modest commission for each artwork sold.

In 2020, the Yaxleys sold Circa 1936 to a couple who were looking to relocate back to the region.

“They were previous guests who stayed with us once or twice and loved what we did,” says Kevin.

For those contemplating creating a boutique art hotel, Kevin says it’s important to know what you’re getting into.

“Before you buy a heritage property, be aware of what you can and can’t do. Things we did three, four, five years ago internally, we couldn’t now without heritage approval. Building and planning in Australia have become prohibitive. That said, a small heritage aspect to your hotel is viable. Say the front is heritage, but with a larger contemporary area out back. You could have your restaurant and reception in the heritage section and build modern at the back.”

The Yaxleys have set their sights on developing a 14-villa resort in Lombok, Indonesia, where Ririn has established an art studio. To facilitate the move, they’ve put Circa 1928 up for sale.

“We’re proud of what we did in Corowa and Albury,” he says.

“We’d like to think we were one of the pioneers for bringing style to accommodation in regional Australia. Since we opened both Circa hotels, the business model has taken off. Now, there’s Bendigo Ernest Hotel, Oxford on Otho in Inverell, The Wool Store in Bathurst, Moss Manor in Moss Vale and Flash Jacks of Gundagai.”

Travellers are now expecting a greater degree of luxury accommodation in regional Australia … and getting it.” END