Levels 3–11 · 96 rooms
Arc Room
The standard casino hotel room: one curved window, a window seat built into it, and roughly forty degrees of view.
- Sleeps
- 2
- Size
- 28 m²
- Arc
- 40°
From $310 AUD a night
360° Vernay Point · Tasmania
A round casino hotelfrom 1974.
The Orbit Casino Hotel is a fictional Australian casino hotel built as a single concrete cylinder on the water: 172 casino hotel rooms stacked around a core, a restaurant on level sixteen that turns once every eighty-eight minutes, and a nine-table casino on level two. Every room in this casino hotel faces out, because there is no other direction to face.
- 172 rooms
- All of them curved
- 9 tables
- The casino, level 2
- 88 min
- One full turn
- 18+
- Casino only
000° The tower
One cylinder,
seventeen levels,
one casino.
The Orbit is imagined as a casino hotel from the exact moment Australia decided it was allowed to have casinos at all.
It was finished in 1974 and it has been round ever since: a poured-concrete drum with the lifts and services in the core and every casino hotel room wrapped around the outside. The casino sits on level two, one floor up from the lobby, in a room with no windows and no clocks — which was considered good practice at the time and is now simply the way the building is. Level sixteen turns. Everything else stays still.
- 14:00
- Check in, lobby level
- Level 1
- 17:30
- A drink while the room comes round
- Level 16
- 19:30
- Dinner, facing whatever it faces
- Level 16
- 21:00
- The casino opens its tables
- Level 2 · 18+
- 06:30
- Breakfast, the mountain still there
- Level 16
A casino hotel with no corners, no clocks and one very slow room.
172Casino hotel rooms
09Tables in the casino
1974The tower, as opened
88Minutes per revolution
Levels 3–15 Casino hotel rooms
Every room is
a slice of a circle.
Curved outer wall, curved window, and a floor plan that is a wedge. Nothing in a casino hotel room here is rectangular except the bed, and the original 1974 joinery has been kept wherever it survived.
Levels 12–15 · 72 rooms
Long View Room
Two wedges knocked together on the upper levels, so you get twice the window and a corner that isn't one.
- Sleeps
- 2
- Size
- 46 m²
- Arc
- 80°
From $480 AUD a night
Level 17 · 4 suites
The Turret
Four suites above the revolving level, each taking a full quarter of the drum, with a bath set against the glass.
- Sleeps
- 3
- Size
- 94 m²
- Arc
- 90°
From $920 AUD a night
Rates in Australian dollars, GST included, breakfast on level sixteen. Casino entry is never bundled into a room rate.
Level 2 The casino · adults 18+
Nine tables,
one floor up.
The casino is a single round room directly above the lobby: nine casino tables arranged around the core, a bar on the inside wall, and the original 1974 terrazzo underfoot. It is the one part of the casino hotel that does not turn and does not look out, and it closes at two whether anyone is winning or not.
BlackjackFour casino tables, hand-dealt
RouletteTwo wheels, single zero
BaccaratOne table, hosted
PokerTwo tables, cash game
21:00 Casino opens 01:30 Last hand 02:00 Casino closes
How casino play works here →18+ Photo ID is checked at the casino door every night — 18 is the minimum gambling age everywhere in Australia. There are clocks at the bar and by the door, which the 1974 designers left out on purpose and we have put back.
The only square room in a round building.
No windows · No music · Casino entry 18+
Level 16 Casino hotel dining
The room that
goes round.
Eighty-eight minutes a turn, which is about the length of dinner. Tasmanian produce, cooked without ceremony, on a floor that has been rotating since 1974 and has never once been ahead of schedule.
Daily · 06:30–22:30
The turning room
Breakfast, lunch and dinner all happen up here. Ask for a window table — every table is a window table, but people like being told.
Plan a stay →Nightly · 17:00–02:00
The core bar
The bar inside the casino, built against the lift core. Tasmanian whisky, cold-climate wine, and a long list of drinks with nothing in them.
See the casino →090° Off the point
The estuary,
and what's on it.
The tower stands on a point with deep water on three sides. Three things worth leaving the casino hotel for, all of them within an hour of the door.
Departs 07:00 · 4 hrs
Down the channel
Out past the point on the early boat, through the sea cliffs and back with oysters eaten off the deck of the farm that grew them.
Departs 09:30 · half day
Up the mountain
A road to the summit that was cut in the 1930s, and weather at the top that will be doing something different from the weather at the bottom.
Saturdays · from 08:30
The Saturday market
Two hundred stalls in a square of Georgian sandstone. Go early, go hungry, and take the ferry rather than the car.
18 minAirport to the door
2 h 15Melbourne, by air
9 h 30Spirit of Tasmania, overnight
340 mTo the ferry pontoon
2 nights Casino hotel package
One Full Turn.
The stay most people take at this casino hotel: a long view room, dinner on the revolving level, the early boat down the channel, and an introduction to the casino if you want one.
Check dates →- Long View Room2 nights
- Breakfast on level 16Both mornings
- Dinner, revolving levelThree courses
- The channel boatOnce
- Casino introductionOptional · 18+
- From$1,180 AUD
? Casino FAQ
Casino
questions.
What this casino hotel page is, who may enter the casino, and how casino gambling came to Australia in the first place.
No. The Orbit Casino Hotel is an invented Australian casino hotel, built to demonstrate casino hotel content and responsive web design. It takes no bookings, holds no casino licence and processes no payments. The tower, the rates and the casino are all fictional, although the kind of building it describes is not.
Tasmania. Australia's first legal casino opened in Hobart in 1973, after Tasmanians voted on the question in a state referendum — the only time an Australian casino has been put to a public vote like that. Every other casino in the country came afterwards, which is why this fictional casino hotel is set where it is.
The state does. Casino licensing in Australia is handled state by state — in Tasmania that means the state's liquor and gaming regulator, with licences granted under state legislation. Each state and territory has issued only a small number of casino licences, so a new one could not simply be applied for.
Adults aged 18 and over, with valid photo identification. Eighteen is the minimum gambling age in every Australian state and territory. In this concept the casino is open to hotel guests and to verified adult visitors, subject to capacity.
No, and most guests do not. The casino is one floor out of seventeen, open five hours a night, and the lift only stops there if you press the button. Casino entry is never bundled into a room rate and nothing about the stay assumes you will play.
Decide a limit in money and in time before you go down to the casino, and only play with money you can afford to lose. Never borrow to gamble and never chase a loss. If it stops being fun, stop. In Australia the National Gambling Helpline is free and open around the clock, and every state and territory runs a venue self-exclusion scheme you can register for.