If you’re familiar with luxe Bali hotel The Slow, you’ll have an idea of what to expect from George Gorrow and Cisco Tschurtschenthaler’s latest.
Opening in time for summer 2024, Sea Sea is a ’70s-inspired 25-room boutique hotel in the New South Wales coastal town of Crescent Head. And like the Canggu hotel, the new hotel will be equally focused on food, music, entertainment, art, stylish design and surfing.
“I love surfing, so does my wife [Cisco Tschurtschenthaler], and the wave [at Crescent Head] is to us one of the best waves in Australia. It’s for everyone; super fun,” Gorrow says in a statement.
Gorrow co-founded Aussie fashion label Ksubi (originally called Tsubi) in Sydney’s northern beaches in 2000 before moving into the accommodation game with his wife Tschurtschenthaler. Gorrow left the label in 2012, a couple years after it went into administration. Gorrow and the other co-founders then sold it to the Bleach Group (which also went into administration). It’s now independently owned.
Unlike The Slow, which was a new build and had a “tropical brutalist” aesthetic, Sea Sea is a reimagining of pre-exciting structure. For Sea Sea he and Tschurtschenthaler worked closely with Claus Sendlinger, the founder of Design Hotels, a curated hub of design-driven boutique hotels.
“The buildings are very Australian and very ’70s brick, with high-pitched roofs, longe rafters, skylights,” Gorrow tells Broadsheet. “This is being paired with a humble fit-out that is inspired by time spent travelling the coast of Australia surfing and staying in beach-side stays, and surf cabins.”
Gorrow wants Sea Sea to be a destination hotel offering what he calls a “360-degree experience”. He’ll tap into his world of fashion and hospitality by incorporating musical performances and exhibitions, including a photo exhibition held every six weeks in the hotel’s Room 13.
There will also be a souvenir shop selling the Sea Sea homewares collection. It’ll be home to Non-Type, the new label by Gorrow and another Ksubi co-founder, Gareth Moody. Sea Sea will exclusively sell the brand’s apparel and lifestyle products, from tailored trousers, shorts and leather blazers to wetsuits.
The hotel will have lots of texture, with bespoke furniture, bold art, an in-house radio curated by Reverberation, and minibars stocked with lots of fun things. There’ll be food and drink curated by Sydney’s respected P&V Wine & Liquor Merchants; Antonello Arzedi (who has worked with Sydney’s Icebergs Dining Room and Bar); and Daniel Medcalf of Cabarita’s No. 35 Kitchen and Bar and, previously, The Slow Kitchen and Bar Bali.
“There will be an abundance of natural textures, creating a homely warm feeling allowing the guests to feel immersed in their surroundings. There’s the bare foot luxury element, simplicity, which is also contrasted with an underlying progressive thinking,” he says.
The hotel is going to be like nothing the sleepy coastal town of Crescent Head has seen. It’s just north of Port Macquarie, about a 4.5-hour drive from Sydney.
“It is invigorating to see such an intimate and modernist concept coming to life in a [hotel] market where just size seems to matter,” Sendlinger says in a statement. “I believe the Sea Sea Hotel concept has the potential to grow internationally and attract influential, well-travelled clients around the globe.”
Sea Sea is slated to open in for Summer 2024. Bookings are open now.
This article was originally published on November 14, 2022 but was updated on September 28, 2023 to reflect changes to the opening timeline.
