About Blissaro
A family-run boutique hotel with a licensed casino floor in Ascot Park — nine years of late checkouts, straight dealing, and breakfasts worth waking for.
From a garage full of furniture to a full house
Blissaro started in 2016 when the Callaghan family sold most of a garage’s worth of antiques to put a deposit on a tired motel on Daws Road. The plan was modest: fix the rooms, pour honest coffee, see what happens.
What happened was a waiting list. Then a gaming licence, a brasserie, a private salon, and — eventually — the top-floor penthouse. Every stage was funded by the one before it. No investors, no franchises, just a house that kept earning its extensions.
Today it’s the same deal, scaled up: rooms, tables and spaces run by people who actually own the place.
The motel years
18 rooms, a borrowed espresso machine, and a very loyal dog at reception.
First renovation
Rooms rebuilt around blackout sleep — our obsession started here.
The licence
Gaming licence granted. Four roulette tables, sixty machines, strict door policy.
Private salon
A closed-door room with its own dealers for birthdays and board nights.
Full house
Penthouse floor + 140-guest event hall. The garage is officially out of furniture.
Hospitality is a contact sport
You can’t automate a welcome. You can’t stream a poker face. Everything we do is built around being physically, undeniably there.
Names over numbers
Regulars get greeted by name. New guests get greeted like regulars. That’s the whole trick.
Straight tables
Licensed, audited, and boring in the best way — the odds are printed, the deck is honest.
Sleep is sacred
The floor stays up late so you don’t have to. Rooms are sealed, dark, and church-quiet.
The crew that runs the house
Fourteen full-time staff, two residents of the building, zero outsourced smiles.
Dana Callaghan
Owner & licensee
Ray Okafor
Casino floor manager
Elena Voss
Head of hospitality
Sam Nguyen
Brasserie chefSpaces we built, nights we hosted
A few things we’re quietly proud of — renovations, recurring events, and the occasional legend.
The Emerald Floor
Our main gaming hall — felt, brass and a ceiling that took three painters to get right.
The Private Salon
Closed-door gaming room with dedicated dealers — 200+ private parties hosted so far.
The Event Hall
140 seats, full AV, and a load-in ramp the bands always thank us for.
Quietly decorated
A small house with a long memory
We’ll never be the biggest venue in Adelaide — which is exactly why we can afford to run it properly. Here’s what that looks like on paper.
Lighter footprint
Solar on the flat roof, kitchen waste to a local farm, and rooms cleaned with refillable everything.
Play it safe
Self-exclusion support, spending-limit tools and trained staff — the floor is fun because it’s fair.
Neighbours first
We host the Ascot Park community night every quarter — free hall, cheap parmas, loud trivia.
Open books
Our licensing, audits and house rules are published at reception. Ask to see them anytime.
The house tours itself — walk in any day
Or skip the tour and go straight to a room key. Either way, someone at the desk already expects you.