74 Oriental Parade · Wellington · Aotearoa New Zealand
A five-star harbour hotel where the city stops and the water starts — 143 rooms and suites, two dining rooms, a bar that faces the weather, a spa cut into the old sea wall, and a private gaming lounge for adult guests. This is a casino hotel, and the gaming lounge is one room in it.
The building went up in 1968 as offices for a coastal shipping line, which is why the windows are as large as they are and why the floors are level with nothing else on the parade. It became a hotel in 2005.
Wellington records gusts above sixty kilometres an hour on roughly a hundred and seventy days a year. A hotel here either pretends that isn't happening or builds around it. We built around it.
The north-east face carries the guest rooms, because that is where the harbour is: Matiu / Somes Island, the Hutt hills behind it, the Eastbourne lights at night, and the ferries crossing to Picton twice a day. The south-west face carries the corridors, the lifts and the plant, and takes the southerly on our behalf. Every window is double-glazed and every one of them opens, which in this city is a decision, not an oversight.
Inside, most of what the shipping company left is still here — the terrazzo in the lobby, the brass lift surrounds, the concrete coffers in the ceiling of what is now the Carter bar. The 2019 refurbishment replaced the rooms entirely and left the bones alone. We are a casino resort in the sense that the Windward Room, our gaming lounge on level two, is part of what the hotel offers its adult guests; we are a hotel in every other sense, and the proportions of the place reflect that.
Everything below is inside the building or across the road from it. Nothing on this list requires a car.
143 of them in six categories, from a 24 m² city room to the 88 m² Southerly Suite under the roof. From NZ$249 a night.
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Seventy-four seats and an eighteen-seat terrace on the top floor. Fish landed at the Wellington fish market, lamb from the Wairarapa, 240 wine labels of which 96 are from over the hill.
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Our gaming lounge: 96 machines, twelve tables, and the Beacon Room beyond it for high-limit play. Open eleven in the morning until three. Photo identification at the door, every time.
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Four at a time, no more. Two nights with dinner, the winter spa package, the Wairarapa wine weekend, and Stay & Play for guests who want the gaming lounge included.
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Five treatment rooms, an 18-metre lap pool, sauna and steam, built into the old sea wall. Guests swim free; treatments are booked at reception or by telephone.
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Four rooms, the largest seating 180 in theatre style and 120 at round tables. Weddings on the level nine terrace, weather permitting, and a wet-weather plan that has been needed.
See the spacesThree parts of the hotel that guests ask about most often, with the numbers rather than the adjectives.
Named for the bay two headlands east, where the whalers used to work. The spa sits on the lower ground floor, against the 1904 sea wall — the stone is exposed along one side of the pool hall and is cold to the touch in July, which people either love or ask us about.
The ground-floor bar, named after the fountain that has been throwing water twelve metres into the air out in the bay since 1973. Forty-six seats, a concrete ceiling nobody has painted, and a window that runs the whole harbour side. On a good southerly the spray reaches the glass and the bar fills up, which tells you something about this city.
Four rooms on level one, all with daylight, which is rarer in Wellington conference space than it should be. A dedicated events manager runs them; there is one contact and one number, not a department.
| Room | Theatre | Banquet | Boardroom | Floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Herd Street Room | 180 | 120 | — | 214 m² |
| Clyde Quay Room | 90 | 60 | 34 | 108 m² |
| Point Jerningham Studio | 40 | 30 | 18 | 61 m² |
| Freyberg Boardroom | — | — | 14 | 38 m² |
Rates are the lowest we publish, per room per night, and include breakfast at Chaffers, the pool, and the wireless. GST included.
Facing Mount Victoria and the bush of the town belt. Quieter than the harbour side and, in a southerly, noticeably steadier. Queen bed, walk-in shower, a desk that is a real desk.
The same room turned around. You get Matiu / Somes Island, the Eastbourne lights and, if you are up early enough, the Picton ferry coming in past Point Halswell.
An armchair by the window that people actually sit in, a proper bath as well as the shower, and enough floor to unpack a suitcase without moving furniture.
The top of the building, next door to Roseneath, with 180 degrees of glass and a terrace that is unusable about forty days a year. On the other three hundred and twenty-five it is the best room in Wellington.
The concierge desk keeps a walking map with times on it. These are those times, taken at an ordinary pace on an ordinary day.
Sand barged in from Golden Bay in 2003 and still there. Freyberg Pool is directly opposite our door.
40 metres · across the road
Flat the whole way, past the boat sheds and Waitangi Park. Free entry to the museum; the paid exhibitions are worth it.
900 m · nine minutes on foot
From Lambton Quay up to Kelburn and the botanic garden. Walk down through the roses instead of riding back.
1.6 km · twenty minutes on foot
196 metres up, straight out the back of the hotel. Steep for the first ten minutes, then not. Take a jacket; take it even in February.
25 minutes · uphill
A predator-free reserve in the middle of the harbour. East by West ferries run from Queens Wharf; take lunch, there is nothing there.
Ferry from Queens Wharf · 20 minutes
Three and a half hours to Picton, the last hour of it through the Marlborough Sounds, which is the part people remember.
Aotea Quay · 3.4 km, eight minutes by car
Roughly a hundred and seventy days a year gust above sixty kilometres an hour. It comes up the harbour from the strait and you can watch it arrive from the level nine windows.
Free · from the bar
Pinot noir and twenty-odd cellar doors within a bicycle ride of the village square. The concierge arranges a driver.
72 km · 75 minutes over the Remutaka HillThe concierge will tell you honestly when the ferry is going to be rough, and when the walk you had planned is not the walk to do today.
The Windward Room is a room in a hotel, not the reason the hotel exists, and we run it that way. There are no cash machines on the gaming floor — the nearest is in the lobby, two floors down and past the front desk, which is deliberate. There are clocks on every wall and they are lit. The windows are not covered, so you can always see what the weather and the hour are doing.
Anyone on duty can arrange a break, a taxi, a glass of water, or a self-exclusion order — that last one confidentially and in writing, and it takes about ten minutes. Nobody will ask you why.
Counted at the end of the last financial year, and rounded only where rounding is honest.
A room, a table, an event, the spa, the gaming lounge — one form, and it goes to the right person.
This goes to reservations, and on to whoever it concerns — the kitchen, the spa, the Windward Room. Somebody reads it within the working day, and inside two hours between eight and eight.
The Windward Room, the gaming lounge at Windshore Place, is reserved for adults aged 20 and over, in line with New Zealand law. The rest of the hotel — rooms, restaurants, the spa — welcomes guests of every age.
Access to this website is restricted to visitors aged 20 and over. Please close this window. If you would like to talk to someone about gambling, ring 0800 654 655, free, at any hour.