The Marine Room, our gaming lounge on the first floor, is restricted to adults aged 20 and over under New Zealand law. Please confirm your age before continuing.
Gambling Act 2003 · Photo identification is checked at the door of the Marine Room. Want to talk to somebody? The Gambling Helpline is free on 0800 654 655, day or night.
Access restricted
Access to this website is restricted to visitors aged 20 and over. Thank you for your understanding.
If gambling is on your mind and you would like to speak to someone, call the Gambling Helpline free on 0800 654 655, or text 8006.
Rebuilt in 1936, in the years after the earthquake took the town down. Seventy-four rooms behind a cream parapet, a dining room named for the pines outside, a tiled bathing pavilion below ground, and one floor set aside for gaming.
Two and a half minutes in 1931, and everything since
Napier is the only town in the country that can date its architecture to a single afternoon.
On 3 February 1931 the ground under Hawke's Bay moved for two and a half minutes and the centre of Napier came down. What went up in its place, quickly and cheaply and all at once, was the fashion of the moment: Art Deco, Spanish Mission, Stripped Classical. Low buildings, reinforced concrete, sunbursts and chevrons and zigzags where the money ran to ornament.
The boarding house that stood at number 63 went with everything else. Its replacement opened in the spring of 1936 with fourteen rooms, a tearoom and a stepped cream parapet that is still the first thing you see from the promenade. We took the building over in 2006, spent two years on it, and reopened with seventy-four rooms, the original stair hall and rather better plumbing.
Today the house holds the Norfolk Room, Bar Chevron, the Bathing Pavilion downstairs, three rooms for gatherings, and the Marine Room — our casino floor — on the first storey. It is a working hotel first. The gaming is one door among several, open to adults aged 20 and over, and it closes.
Our casino floor, one flight up: blackjack, roulette, baccarat, poker and sixty machines. Twenty and over, photo identification at the door, every visit.
The 1936 architects put a swimming bath in the basement because seawater bathing was the fashion and Marine Parade had the pumps for it. The seawater is long gone; the pool, the barrel ceiling and most of the original green tile are not.
There is a hot room at one end and a cold pool at the other, four treatment rooms along the corridor, and a small gym that never has a queue. House guests swim free from half past six in the morning.
Pool20 m indoor, 28 °C
HeatHot room · cold pool · showers
Treatments4 rooms, 9am – 8pm
GymOpen at all hours to guests
Bar Chevron
A short list, poured well
Off the stair hall, behind the original zigzag glasswork that gives the bar its name. Thirty-two Hawke's Bay wines by the glass, a dozen cocktails built on New Zealand spirits, and beer from Ahuriri two kilometres up the road.
Nothing needs booking before six. Most people who go up to the Marine Room start here, and a good many come back down for one more.
OpenNoon until one
By the glass32, Hawke's Bay first
KitchenSmall plates until midnight
PianoFriday and Saturday
Gatherings
Three rooms, one manager, no packages you did not ask for
The Sunburst Ballroom seats a hundred and eighty under its original plaster ceiling rose. The Pines Room takes seventy for a conference and opens onto the lawn. The Chart Room seats twenty-four around one table and has a door you can shut.
One person runs your booking from the first email to the last invoice — catering out of the Norfolk kitchen, room rates for your party, transport, and sound through our own technician.
Sunburst Ballroom180 seated · 240 standing
Pines Room70 theatre · lawn access
Chart Room24 boardroom
CateringNorfolk Room kitchen
Front desk
The people who get you out of the building
Hawke's Bay rewards a bit of planning. The desk holds standing places on the Cape Kidnappers gannet run, cellar-door tours through Gimblett Gravels and the Esk Valley, and tickets for the National Aquarium two doors down the parade.
Bicycles are free to guests — the Hawke's Bay trails run 200 kilometres from our doorstep, flat the whole way. Napier Airport is eight minutes by car and we will meet a flight if you tell us the number.
DeskAttended 24 hours
Airport8 minutes · transfer on request
BicyclesFree to house guests
ParkingOn site, no charge
Chapter four
Six grades, seventy-four rooms
Tariffs are per night for two, with breakfast in the Norfolk Room and the Bathing Pavilion included. February and March carry a festival tariff.
Deco Standard
26 m² · Queen · Garden side, second and third floors
Marine Parade runs two kilometres along the shingle, lined the whole way with Norfolk pines planted in the 1890s and still standing after everything.
The beach is grey stone rather than sand, steep and loud, and swimming happens at Westshore round the point instead. In front of the pines are the Sound Shell, the aquarium and a mini-golf course that has not changed since 1966. Behind them is the deco quarter — a dozen streets of it, best walked before nine in the morning while the light is still low on the parapets.
Six minutes north is Ahuriri, the old port, now a row of restaurants in converted wool stores. Twenty minutes inland the Heretaunga plains start: Gimblett Gravels and its syrah, the Esk Valley, chardonnay from vineyards that were orchards a generation ago. Forty minutes south-east, at the end of a beach you drive along at low tide, is Cape Kidnappers and the largest mainland gannet colony on earth.
From the front door
National Aquarium4 min walk
Deco quarter6 min walk
Bluff Hill lookout7 min drive
Ahuriri6 min drive
Napier Airport8 min drive
Gimblett Gravels20 min drive
Havelock North22 min drive
Te Mata Peak25 min drive
Cape Kidnappers40 min drive
The pines on Marine Parade, planted 1890sCape Kidnappers — gannets, November to FebruaryGimblett Gravels — syrah, twenty minutes inlandAhuriri — the old port, six minutes north
Chapter six
Looking after the people in the room
The Marine Room runs under the Gambling Act 2003 and under a host responsibility policy we file with the Department of Internal Affairs and train against every year.
Nobody under 20 gets through the door, and identification is checked every visit rather than when somebody looks young. Staff are taught to notice the evening turning, and to say something early rather than late. Exclusion can be arranged in confidence with any duty manager. There is no cash machine on the floor, the clocks are where you can see them, and we do not lend money for gaming to anybody, ever.
Gambling Helpline — 0800 654 655. Free, confidential, any hour.
The desk is attended at every hour of the day and every day of the year, including the ones nobody works.
Thank you — it has reached us
We will write back to the address you gave, usually within the day. If it is urgent, telephone +64 6 835 4720 instead.
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