Rooms & Suites
Sixty-eight rooms in five categories, from a 26 m² Belt Room to the 98 m² Gable Apartment under the roof. Rates from NZ$319.
All rooms
Royal Terrace · Dunedin · Otago
A house above the harbour, kept awake all night.
White Heath is a five-star hotel in a bluestone house of 1878, twelve minutes above the Octagon on foot. Sixty-eight rooms and suites, the Bracken Dining Room, the Aramoana Spa, and a gaming lounge for guests aged twenty and over.
45°52′S 170°30′E
Elevation 96 m
House built 1878
Hotel since 2009
68 rooms & suites
Qualmark ★★★★★
01
The house
Since 1878
Welcome
The name is older than the hotel. Before the terrace was cut, the slope was heather and tussock, and it went white in a hard frost. The family who built the house called it what the neighbours already called the hill.
A casino hotel that behaves like a country house.
White Heath was built for a wool and grain merchant in 1878, sold twice, subdivided once, and used as a nursing home for thirty-one years before anyone thought of putting beds in it for money. The refit that turned it into a hotel took nineteen months and finished in June 2009. Most of what you will notice — the kauri staircase, the four chimneys, the cast-iron lacework on the north verandah — was already here and simply had the paint taken off it.
What was added is behind the house rather than in front of it: a rear wing of forty-one rooms, the pool, the spa, and the gaming lounge on the lower ground floor. That is the arrangement we would recommend you picture. This is a hotel first. The gaming lounge is one room in a building with a great many rooms, and it happens to be the only one where you have to show identification at the door.
We are a casino hotel in the plain sense: a hotel with a licensed gaming lounge in it, run under the Gambling Act 2003 and inspected accordingly. It is open to guests and to the public aged twenty and over, from noon until late, and it closes at the hour printed on the door.
Someone is on the desk at three in the morning. That is not a slogan; it is a roster, and it has held since 2009.
The Otago Harbour is below you and the Town Belt is behind you. From the north-facing rooms you can see Port Chalmers on a clear day and, on most days, at least one container ship taking the long turn past Aramoana. In winter the southerly comes up the harbour and the house makes a noise. We think this is a feature. Guests in the front rooms occasionally disagree, and we will move you.
02
What is here
Six things
The Bracken Dining Room
Seventy-four seats in the original ballroom. Otago produce, a short menu that changes on Tuesdays, and dinner every night of the year but one.
Dining
The Signal Room
Our gaming lounge on the lower ground floor: 46 machines, nine tables, and the Sandymount Salon behind it. Adults aged 20 and over, photo identification at the door.
The casino
Stay & Play packages
Five packages that bundle nights with dinner, the spa, the harbour road, or an evening in the Signal Room. Nothing that requires you to gamble to get value from it.
Promotions
Aramoana Spa
Four treatment rooms, a 14-metre indoor pool kept at 29°C, a sauna and a cold plunge. Open 6.30am to 9pm; the pool opens an hour earlier.
What is in it
Meetings & Events
Four rooms: the Long Room at 180 seated, the Heriot Room at 60, the Glasshouse at 36 and the Bracken Library at 18 around one table.
Event rooms
03
In detail
Rooms you can walk into
The Bracken Dining Room
The old ballroom, seventy-four covers, with the original plaster ceiling and a floor that was relaid in 2008 using boards taken out of the stables. Dinner is served from 6pm to 9.30pm every night; lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon. The kitchen writes a new menu each Tuesday and prints it on Tuesday afternoon, which is why the one in your room may be out of date by a day.
Most of what arrives comes from within two hours of the front door: Merino lamb from the Maniototo, blue cod landed at Karitane, Whitestone cheeses from Oamaru, apricots from the Cromwell basin for about five weeks each summer. Bluff oysters from March to August, while the season lasts.
- Seats74 in the room, 18 in the Library
- DinnerNightly, 6.00pm – 9.30pm
- LunchFri – Sun, 12.00pm – 2.30pm
- Closed25 December
The Signal Room
Named for Signal Hill, which is directly behind the house and about forty minutes up if you walk it. The room is 610 m² on the lower ground floor, reached from the lobby by one flight of stairs or the lift. It holds 46 gaming machines and nine tables — four blackjack, two roulette, one baccarat and two poker — and behind it, through a door that is usually shut, the Sandymount Salon with three higher-limit tables.
Entry is for adults aged twenty and over. We check photo identification at the door and we check it again if you look like we might have got it wrong. The dress is smart casual; no high-visibility clothing and no work boots, which is a rule about the floor rather than about you.
- Gaming machines46
- Tables9, plus 3 in the Salon
- Sun – Thu12.00pm – 2.00am
- Fri – Sat12.00pm – 3.00am
Aramoana Spa
Aramoana means the pathway to the sea, and it is the name of the spit at the harbour mouth about forty minutes north of here. The spa is four treatment rooms, two of them doubles, around a 14-metre pool held at 29°C. There is a dry sauna, a steam room and a cold plunge at 12°C that nobody uses twice by accident.
Treatments run from a 25-minute neck and shoulder at NZ$95 to the two-hour Harbour Ritual at NZ$355. Book at least a day ahead in winter; the Saturday afternoons go first. Treatments are the only part of the wellness offer that is charged for; guests staying in the house use the pool, sauna and thermal suite at no charge.
- Treatment rooms4 (2 double)
- Pool14 m, 29°C
- Spa hours6.30am – 9.00pm
- Pool hours5.30am – 9.30pm
Meetings, weddings and the Long Room
The Long Room runs the width of the rear wing: 180 seated at rounds, 240 standing, with its own entrance off the lower drive so that a wedding party and a conference can be in the building on the same afternoon without meeting. The Heriot Room takes 60, the Glasshouse 36 under glass on the east side, and the Bracken Library seats 18 around a single kauri table.
We do about forty weddings a year and we will tell you honestly if the date you want is a poor one — the last Saturday in July is beautiful and also very cold, and the Glasshouse is not the room for it.
- The Long Room180 seated · 240 standing
- The Heriot Room60 seated
- The Glasshouse36 seated
- Bracken Library18 boardroom
04
Rooms & suites
68 keys · 5 categories
01
Belt Room
Twenty-four of them, all in the rear wing, looking into the Town Belt bush. Quiet in a way the front of the house is not. Queen bed, walk-in shower, a desk you can actually work at.
26 m²Queen bed2 guestsBush outlook
02
Harbour Room
Twenty-one rooms on the north and east faces, with the harbour below and Port Chalmers in the distance on a clear day. King bed, bath and shower, an armchair in the window that is the reason people book these.
32 m²King bed2 guestsHarbour outlook
03
Signal Suite
Fourteen suites with a separate sitting room, most of them on the second floor of the old house where the ceilings are 3.4 metres. Sofa bed for a third guest. Two of the fourteen have the original marble fireplaces, unlit since 1974.
45 m²King + sofa bed3 guestsSeparate sitting room
04
Heriot Suite
Seven corner suites named for Heriot Row, one street down. Dressing room, freestanding bath under the window, and a dining table for four if you would rather eat upstairs. Two connect to a Belt Room for families.
61 m²Super king4 guestsCorner aspect
05
The Gable Apartment
Two of them, under the roof of the original house, reached by their own stair from the second-floor landing. Two bedrooms, a kitchen that works, and the best view in the building from a window seat cut into the north gable. Minimum two nights.
98 m²2 bedrooms4 guestsMin. 2 nights
05
Where you are
Dunedin · Otago
The concierge desk
Staffed 7am to 10pm, and after that the night manager will do what he can. The house shuttle runs to the Octagon on the half hour between 7am and 11pm and is free to guests.
Nine minutes down, fifteen back up.
Royal Terrace is on the northern edge of the Town Belt, which puts the whole of central Dunedin below you and a great deal of native bush behind. The Octagon is a nine-minute walk downhill and closer to fifteen on the way back; the railway station, which is worth the trip on its own, is about sixteen minutes on foot. Otago Museum is eleven. Baldwin Street, which people come a long way to look at and then look at for four minutes, is seven minutes by car.
The peninsula is the reason most guests stay a third night. Taiaroa Head and the royal albatross colony are fifty-five minutes along the harbour road, and the road itself is the point — it runs at sea level with the water on one side the whole way. Sandfly Bay, where the sea lions haul out, is about half an hour. Tunnel Beach is eighteen minutes in the other direction and should not be attempted in the two hours either side of high tide.
For wine, the Central Otago vineyards around Bannockburn and Gibbston are two and a half hours inland — a long day, and a good one. Closer to hand, the Waitaki Valley is ninety minutes north and pours a better pinot gris than it gets credit for. The concierge desk books all of it, and will tell you plainly when the weather means you should do something else instead.
- 9 min walkThe Octagon, and the whole of central Dunedin below it
- 16 min walkDunedin Railway Station
- 11 min walkOtago Museum and the university quarter
- 7 min driveBaldwin Street
- 12 min driveSt Clair beach and the Esplanade
- 20 min drivePort Chalmers
- 30 min driveSandfly Bay — sea lions, and hoiho at dusk
- 55 min driveTaiaroa Head, the royal albatross colony
- 35 min driveDunedin Airport at Momona, 29 km
06
Host responsibility
Gambling Act 2003
In the Signal Room
There are no cash machines in the gaming lounge, or in the corridor that leads to it. The nearest is in the main lobby, about sixty metres away, and you have to walk past a person to reach it.
We would rather you had a good night than a long one.
Every table in the Signal Room is within sight of a wall clock. There are four of them, and they are correct. The room closes at two on weeknights and three on Friday and Saturday, and it closes on time — the last hand is called, not extended. A duty host walks the floor on the half hour and writes down what he saw, whether or not anything happened.
If you want to exclude yourself from the gaming lounge, you can do it in writing at reception or by post, confidentially, for a minimum of two years. We do not ask why, we do not record a reason, and nothing about it appears on your hotel account. Our staff complete host responsibility training within their first fortnight and again every March.
Read the full policy68Rooms & suites
17Years of hospitality
39,400+Guests welcomed
★★★★★Qualmark five star
4Event rooms
07
Enquiries
Reception answers, not a robot
Write to us and a person will write back.
Reception is staffed twenty-four hours. Enquiries sent overnight are answered before ten the following morning; anything sent during the day usually comes back within a couple of hours.
- Reception+64 3 477 2814
- Reservations+64 3 477 2820
- Email[email protected]
- Address41 Royal Terrace, Dunedin 9016
- Check-inFrom 2.00pm
- Check-outBy 11.00am