Music lovers can soon live out any rock-and-roll accommodation fantasies they may have as the world’s first Guitar Hotel—a 450-foot-tall guitar-shaped building with luxury guest rooms—nears completion.
The massive Guitar Hotel is part of a $1.5-billion expansion plan at the 15-year-old Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida, which was previously most famous as the place where celebrity Anna Nicole Smith died in 2007. While the guitar-shaped tower is under construction for a planned Oct. 24, 2019 opening, its shell is already wowing drivers along the Florida Turnpike.
The Guitar Hotel may be colossal—among the tallest buildings in Florida—but this extreme example of mimetic architecture is also detailed down to the brightly lit "strings." Both sides were designed with guitar-front facades to attract eyeballs (and, according to the Miami Herald, which called it a "monstrosity," raise eyebrows) from every angle.
“It will be the first building in the world that’s truly to scale designed as an authentic guitar,” James Allen, Seminole gaming CEO and chairman of Hard Rock International, told the Sun-Sentinel in 2017. “So it’s not just an exterior facade, the curving of the building will be identical to an authentic guitar.”
In fairness, it's only most of a guitar: The instrument's long neck and headstock have been omitted. And the original Hard Rock Café at Universal Orlando Resort, built in the early 1990s, was also in the shape of a giant guitar, but that was demolished in 2011.
The Guitar Hotel’s 638 luxury rooms overlook the 4.5-acre lagoon-style pool through floor-to-ceiling windows. In addition to those, the Seminole Hard Rock’s new seven-story Oasis Tower has 168 more rooms and swim-up suites where guests can hop in the pool right from their patios.
The 30,000-square-foot casino floor will house nearly 200 table games and 3,000 slot machines, and true to Hard Rock fashion, a 6,500-seat Hard Rock Live theater will open on Oct. 25. The debut act: Maroon 5.
According to The Architects Newspaper, the Guitar Hotel was strategized to open ahead of Super Bowl LIV, which will take place 10 miles south at the Hard Rock Stadium on February 2, 2020.
Travelers can reserve Guitar Hotel rooms starting July 24; rates are not yet set.
