- Soho House is firmly back in Australia, with a Sydney opening imminent and renewed plans to establish a long-anticipated Melbourne location.
- Australia now sits within Soho House’s next global growth phase, following its $3.9 billion sale to Ron Burkle’s consortium, alongside expansions in cities like Tokyo, Milan and New York.
- The expansion reflects a broader shift in luxury hospitality, as private members’ clubs increasingly compete for Australia’s globally mobile creative class in Sydney and Melbourne.
We don’t have to cast our minds back too far to remember the abandoned plans for Soho House’s Melbourne expansion.
It raised a few eyebrows at the time, yet earned another feather in Sydney’s cap amid the enduring culture wars that persist between its friendly rival, as Soho House announced plans to replace its Melbourne brick-and-mortar ambitions with a Sydney location in 2023.
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Darlinghurst was the desired target for Australia’s first Soho House; the perfect location to develop London’s premier members club, synonymous with 90s Britannia and a sense of forgotten hedonism that can only be associated with the English capital.
The multi-million dollar investment would certainly introduce a completely unique experience on this side of the world, but Soho House’s arrival isn’t happening within a gilded vacuum. The Australian expansion lands at a moment when private members’ clubs are quietly reshaping the country’s luxury and hospitality landscape, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, to make a play for Australia’s globally mobile creative class.
After all, that’s what has always been synonymous for the Soho House, a place to call home, wherever you are in the world; a counter-culture hangout for the city’s creative types to unwind within some of the most recognisable postcodes.
While Sydney is firmly underway with an imminent opening this year, the company has also confirmed it is actively scouting a Melbourne site, reviving long-held ambitions for a second Australian location.
It’s further proof that Soho House’s once-abandoned Victoria footprint is far from an afterthought. Instead, Australia now sits alongside a new wave of global expansion with Tokyo, New York, Los Cabos, Palm Springs, Milan and Madrid all slated to join the 40 Houses already established worldwide.
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The move forms part of a renewed growth phase for the brand following the $2.7 billion USD (~AU$3.9 billion) public market delisting and sale of of Soho House to billionaire Ron Burkle. He leads a consortium that includes Hollywood A-lister Ashton Kutcher, alongside Goldman Sachs and Apollo Global Management.
Freed from the constraints of public markets, the sale could be seen as a return to the brand’s long-term thinking, for a global community of exclusive locations.
It certainly gives fresh context to why multiple sites Down Under are, at last, firmly back on the map. After all, for a luxury brand built on ambition, location and exclusivity, the question is no longer why Australia, but why it took so long.
