Built by hand, run by heart

Since 2013

Our story

Entrychoicegate began as a family project: a sheep-station homestead on Fernhill Road, rebuilt stone by stone into a lodge for travellers who wanted Queenstown's drama without its noise.

Local masons laid the schist walls; rimu rescued from a decommissioned woolshed became the salon's card tables and the library shelves. We opened with nine rooms in 2013 and grew slowly — a wing here, the spa there — never faster than the hospitality could keep up with.

The salon came from a family habit. Generations of us ended evenings around a card table, and guests kept asking to join. So we built a room for it: the warmth and ceremony of a casino evening, translated into something entirely ours — social games, no stakes, no screens.

Philosophy

Quiet luxury, the Kiwi way

• Materials with a memory. Schist from the Shotover, rimu with a past life, wool from the station down the road. The lodge feels like Queenstown because it is Queenstown.
• Hospitality in person. A reception desk staffed by people, a concierge who knows the heli-pilot by name, a dealer-host who teaches you the game before you play it.
• Unhurried by design. Twenty-four rooms, never more. Restaurant tables are spaced for conversation; the salon caps its evenings so the room never loses its hush.
• Honest pleasures. Central Otago wine, South Island produce, a real fire. No apps, no gimmicks, no upsell.