voco South Melbourne

IHG's voco brand and Melbourne developer BEKL announced a 171-room new-build hotel for South Melbourne's St Kilda Road corridor back in 2020, targeting an early-2023 opening. That date passed without construction starting, and as of 2026 the project is still working through Melbourne's planning process with no confirmed opening date.

The place

The site sits at 10-16 Dorcas Street, at the northern end of St Kilda Road, about 3km south of the Melbourne CBD. The location places the hotel near the Shrine of Remembrance, the Royal Botanic Gardens, South Melbourne's sporting venues, and the city's hospital and business precinct — upper floors were designed to look across the Shrine and the Gardens rather than into the denser CBD skyline. It is a mixed commercial-residential pocket rather than a tourist strip, positioning the hotel toward business travel and events as much as leisure.

The concept

voco South Melbourne is planned as a new-build hotel occupying part of a mixed-use tower that also includes 36 apartments and roughly 2,293 sq m of office/co-working space, replacing a seven-storey office building on the site. Plus Architecture designed the scheme around IHG's 'Me Time' room concept — premium beds, adjustable lighting and straightforward in-room technology — paired with the wider 'voco Life' brand promise of relaxed, unpretentious public spaces rather than formal hotel service. It would be voco's third Victorian property after voco Melbourne Central and voco Yarra Valley, and one of several voco properties in IHG's Australasia pipeline at the time of announcement.

Dining & wellness

The 2020 announcement described a signature restaurant and bar in keeping with the voco Life concept, a gym, and four meeting spaces, but no operators, chefs or a spa have been named — standard for a project still without a construction start.