Hilton picks Taupo for its second NZ hotel

The Terraces Hotel, soon to be re-named the Hilton Lake Taupo. Photo / Supplied

The upmarket Hilton hotel chain has delivered some welcome news to New Zealand's slumping tourism industry, announcing this morning it has chosen Taupo as the site for its second hotel in this country.

Hilton Hotels Corporation says it will now manage the 113 room hotel currently known as the Terraces Hotel in Taupo.

The Hilton opened its first on Auckland's Princes Wharf in 2001. At the time it said it was planning to open hotels in in Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch. A planned Hilton in Dunedin never happened after the property developer went under late last year.

The original Terraces hotel opened in 1889 and is now a heritage building. The Hilton says it was last renovated in 2003 and will undergo another refit to add another 36 rooms and bring it up to Hilton standards.

This year has been tough for the tourism and accommodation sector, with guest nights down 11 per cent in March from a year earlier.

The 3.2 million guest nights in March was also down 5 per cent compared to two years earlier.

International visitors made up 1.6m of the guest nights in March, a fall of 197,000 or 11 per cent from March 2008, with domestic guest nights down 190,000 or 10 per cent.

Martin Rinck, president of Hilton Hotels Asia Pacific said he was pleased the company would be managing a Hilton "in one of New Zealand's most significant leisure and meetings destinations - Lake Taupo."

Taupo nayor Rick Cooper said he was delighted the Hilton had chosen Taupo for its second hotel.

"To have a truly global brand like Hilton in our destination will help to introduce Taupo to a wider audience," he said.

Funding for the project has been arranged by Triumph Capital, a privately owned advisory company. Director Brian Fitzgerald, said Taupo was an excellent location for a hotel investment like this, since it was close to many parts of New Zealand and there was a strong demand for the convention market "combined with world class leisure activities."

- NZ HERALD STAFF