From lodge to hotel
A thirty-room lodge stood on this site from 1988, built for coach parties working the Milford route and, by the end, showing every year of it.
Watermark Point Hotels Ltd took the lease in 2016. The concrete frame stayed, the cladding and everything inside it did not, and a fourth floor went on the north face. Watermark Point Hotel opened in 2017 with 64 rooms.
The one thing kept from the old lodge is the schist wall behind reception, which was built by a Cromwell mason in 1988 and taken down and relaid stone by stone during the rebuild.
The peninsula itself is Kelvin Heights: a headland of about four square kilometres on the south side of Frankton Arm, with a golf course down the middle of it and a shore path around the edge.
The hotel in figures
| Rooms | 64 | Five types over four floors |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | 72 seats | The Greenstone Room, plus 24 on the terrace in season |
| Bar | 40 seats | The Von Bar, plus 30 outside |
| Casino floor | 210 m² | The Walter Peak Room: 34 machines, 6 tables |
| Hire spaces | 3 | 10 to 140 people |
| Pools | 3 | One lap pool, two hot pools, plus sauna and plunge |
| Parking | 54 bays | 48 open, 6 covered, 2 with EV chargers |
| Staff | 81 | 63 full time, 18 seasonal |
| Grading | Qualmark 4 Star Silver | Reassessed every two years |
| Opened | 2017 | 58,300 guests since |
The operator
Watermark Point Hotels Ltd is a New Zealand limited company, NZBN 9429047318265, registered and trading at 41 Peninsula Road, Kelvin Heights, Queenstown 9300, Otago, New Zealand. It holds the on-licence for the building under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 and operates The Walter Peak Room under the Gambling Act 2003.
Eighty-one people work here, sixty-three of them year round. The kitchen brigade is fourteen. Every member of gaming floor staff completes host responsibility training before a first shift, which is set out in full on the Host Responsibility page.
The general manager can be reached through the front desk on +64 3 442 6180 or at [email protected]. Complaints are answered in writing within five working days.
Power, water and waste
- Space and water heating run on two air-source heat pumps installed in the 2016 rebuild; there is no gas connection.
- Pool heating recovers waste heat from the kitchen refrigeration plant.
- Roof solar covers about eleven per cent of annual electricity use.
- Food waste is collected separately and composted in the Wakatipu basin.
- Amenities are in refillable dispensers; there are no single-use plastic bottles in the rooms.
- Linen is changed on request rather than daily on stays of two nights or more.
- Drinking water comes from the town supply and is not bottled for sale in the rooms.
None of this is certified by anyone, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
A hotel with a gaming room in it
Watermark Point Hotel is a hotel first. Roughly three quarters of what happens in the building has nothing to do with the casino floor: rooms, breakfast, dinner, conferences, weddings, pools.
The Walter Peak Room is a real part of the offer and we do not hide it. It has its own page, its own entry in the menu and its own rules. It is also one room of two hundred and ten square metres in a building of rather more than that.
Watermark Point Hotels Ltd runs no gambling over the internet, no sports betting and no remote gaming of any kind. There is no application, no account and no way to stake money through this website. Play happens on the floor, in person, during posted hours, under the Gambling Act 2003.
