Intimate Sophistication

Wanaka’s Whare Kea is included in a Forbes’ list of the ‘World’s Top Microboutique Hotels’. “Whare Kea means ‘house of the kea’ in Maori — the kea being the world’s only alpine parrot. This six-room lakeside lodge is itself a rare bird, a pitch-perfect combination of expansive views and small-scale intimacy, sophistication and informality. Whare Kea’s calling card, and what sets it definitively apart from the rest of New Zealand’s luxury lodges, is its Chalet. Set 57 feet high in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, the two-bedroom mountain cabin is accessible only by helicopter.” Whare Kea is owned by Australians Martyn and Louise Myer who opened the resort to paying customers in 1996.