Where Fortune Meets Wellington's Finest Heights

"I came to Wellington for a government advisory contract and chose Varorolodge Haven on a colleague's recommendation. What caught me completely off guard was stepping off the lift onto the casino floor and finding it genuinely quiet - not the frantic noise I associate with gaming venues in larger cities, but something closer to a members' club at midnight. No other casino I have visited in the Asia-Pacific region has managed that particular trick so convincingly. I have stayed in the hotel four times since and always request the same Thorndon Prestige Chamber, where the view of the Beehive at first light makes every early meeting feel worthwhile."

"Wellington was a stopover on a longer South Pacific itinerary and I almost booked elsewhere - I am very glad I did not. The casino at Varorolodge Haven runs baccarat tables with a pace and formality that I had only previously found in Macau, which is no small thing to say about a property in a city this size. Chef Hana's tasting menu at The Remutaka Room on my second evening was, without exaggeration, the best articulation of New Zealand produce I have encountered anywhere in twenty years of visiting this country."

"My husband and I chose Varorolodge Haven for our anniversary trip because a friend had described it as the only hotel in the Southern Hemisphere where you could watch a live rugby broadcast on a curved screen, then walk thirty seconds to a baccarat table without changing your mood or your outfit. That description turned out to be perfectly accurate. The casino itself felt more like a beautifully curated lounge than anything we had encountered before - refined in a way that made the evening feel effortless. What the friend failed to mention was the Strait-View Terrace - we sat there for two hours on our first morning watching container ships navigate the Cook Strait channel, and for those two hours Wellington felt like the most dramatically beautiful capital city on earth."