What's Happening

Blanket Bay and Huka Lodge have been named among the best luxury hotels in the world, sharing the annual Forbes 400 list with prestigious properties such as the Paris Ritz, New York Four Seasons and Hawaii's Halekulani.

Forbes said outstanding service, facilities, food and beverage, rooms and views were features which elevated them to the top.

They were the only New Zealand properties to make the list and are examples of the emergence of a new level in luxury accommodation, the super-lodges.

Blanket Bay, on 26,000ha high country Wyuna Station, overlooks Lake Wakatipu at Glenorchy and offers 13 rooms including suites and 110sq m chalets.

The property has previously been listed among 20 top international properties in Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report and won gold in Conde Naste's best cuisine awards.

It is owned by the former world president and chief executive of US leisure clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss, Tom Tusher, who bought the lake frontage land on his first New Zealand visit in 1974.

Blanket Bay opened in 1999 and Mr Tusher and his wife Pauline spend four months each year at the lodge, away from their San Francisco home.

Manager Philip Jenkins said, however, that the current tourist season had been one of the most disappointing he had seen with reservations down 10-15%, mainly from the longhaul US and UK markets.

The Forbes placing adds to Huka Lodge's long list of awards which include the Australian Luxury Travel Magazine's best overseas boutique hotel in December.

The Taupo property can accommodate 50 guests in 18 rooms built on almost seven hectares along the Waikato River, a suite and two cottages - the second of which opened last month and is named for Huka's Irish founder Alan Pye.

A keen dry-fly trout fisherman, Mr Pye set up a humble fishing lodge on the site in 1924 and watched it grow into a world-class luxury destination - daily four-guest rates for the cottage which now bears his name range to $8075 plus GST.

Sales and marketing director Liz Rodgers said Huka, owned by Dutch businessman Alex van Heeren since 1984, had the highest occupancy rate among New Zealand's luxury lodges and although business had not matched the "exceptional" 2007, it was still doing very well.

Ms Rodgers said the property was part of The Huka Retreats which included South African wine estate Grande Provence which Mr van Heeren bought five years ago and Fiji's Dolphin Island, part of the group since the 1980s.

Blanket Bay's Mr Jenkins said growth in New Zealand luxury lodges in the past five years had added another tier to accommodation options, particularly for inbound visitors.

"A number of investors - all American except Alex van Heeren - have come along and built these resorts," he said.

"There's Blanket Bay, The Lodge at Paratiho Farms, Wharekauhau and Kauri Cliffs - almost entirely owned by American investors and setting themselves apart from the others by the size of the investments.

"Because of the amount of money injected into them, you have a series of sheer physical assets that are far more valuable than other very successful and very good lodges.

"They have now fallen into a tier of their own and have risen above other luxury lodges simply because of investment - they are the super-lodges."