The luxury hotel on the site where Murdoch launched his media empire

The hotel

The Playford Adelaide, South Australia

Luma restaurant and bar at The Playford.

Check-in

Depending on your perspective, when it came to settling on a name for these desirable Adelaidean digs, the property’s original developers either made a sound decision or missed a golden opportunity. The Playford, you see, could well have been The Murdoch, since this deluxe hotel occupies the site of the building, demolished in the late 1990s, that was the home of The News. That’s the defunct Adelaide daily newspaper from which a now much-married young Rupert Murdoch effectively built a global media behemoth.

Instead, the developers settled on the more prosaic The Playford, honouring the longest-serving South Australian premier. Opened in 1998 and a member of the giant Accor group’s MGallery brand of characterful inns, the 182-room Playford Adelaide was the recipient of an extensive $25 million makeover in 2022 by Melbourne-based architectural firm Hachem.

The look

The Playford Adelaide was home to the now-defunct Murdoch newspaper, The News.

Billing its multimillion-dollar refresh as a “return to art nouveau glamour”, the most spectacular aspect of Hachem’s work is the in-house Luma restaurant and bar. It occupies a coveted position, right on Adelaide’s handsome North Terrace close to the Adelaide Festival Centre, the city’s main performing arts focus.

The restaurant is dominated by a spectacular light sculpture which, like a gargantuan glow-worm, tracks its illuminated path across the entirety of the room’s ceiling. It means The Playford’s driveway and reception is tucked away down a less auspicious laneway, denying the hotel, to a certain extent, a sense of arrival.

The room

Sophisticated comfort inside The Playford’s rooms.

Your reviewer has scored one of The Playford’s refurbished, elegantly furnished 50-square metre New York-style loft suites. Thanks to the laneway-facing room’s towering ceiling, the bedroom, with a king bed, is contained on a separate, cosy mezzanine, with the lower floor serving as a commodious living area, complete with a kitchenette for longer stayers (lucky them). The stylish bathroom is also on the lower floor, a slight inconvenience given that the bed is above.

Food + drink

The striking lighting effect at Luma.

Adelaide is arguably our third-best restaurant town after Sydney and Melbourne (praise, not criticism), with the in-house Luma competing with some heavyweight culinary counterparts in the surrounding streets, chiefly Fugazzi, a vogue, oft-packed Italian diner favoured by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas. Those same streets and laneways also host Adelaide’s nascent bar scene with the cute Clever Little Tailor a cut above.

For coffee, dash across North Terrace to the restored Adelaide Railway Station (now mainly a casino) where you’ll find Platform 10, a coffee bar set inside an imposing historic timber ticket booth. From there, admire the early 20th century architecture as well as the wonderful vintage Seppelt’s Wines neon sign that graces the station’s North Terrace exit.

Out + about

It’s difficult to surpass a sporting venue of the calibre of the Melbourne Cricket Ground for proximity to its city centre, but Adelaide Oval, spectacularly rebuilt and reimagined a decade ago, does just that. A short stroll from The Playford, the Oval features a roof-climb attraction for the adventurous or a better bet, a 90-minute guided tour of the hallowed ground that includes access inside the historic scoreboard and its quirkily improvised mechanics.

The verdict

The news on the former home of The News is that the rejuvenated Playford plays extremely well to guests desiring upscale comfort and ready access to Adelaide’s impressive culinary, cultural and sporting attractions.

The essentials

From $298 a night for a classic guest room with a king bed. The Playford Adelaide, 120 North Terrace, Adelaide. Phone [phone]; see mgallery.accor.com.

Our rating out of five

★★★★

Highlight
Pack your togs: the 12.5-metre “Tuscan-style” indoor pool — heated to 26 degrees, 12.5 metres long and open 24 hours a day — is something of a surprise bonus.

Lowlight
The stairs in the New York-style loft room between the living area and the bedroom are a wee bit steep so take care, especially after a few bevvies at the likes of Clever Little Tailor.

The writer stayed as a guest of The Playford Adelaide.