Reviewed by: Matt Brace
This fabulous CBD property deftly combines style, design and creative, world-leading sustainability to woo both hearts and souls. In many ways, the hotel is the destination as much as the city it inhabits. If The Hotel Britomart is the future for luxury hotels, we like it.
Overview
The hotel team set out with a clear mission: design the most sustainable luxury urban hotel using the latest techniques and innovation for every aspect… and then go the extra mile. The result is a truly marvellous property (opened in 2020) that is a very romantic and incredibly calming place to stay in buzzing downtown Auckland. It offers super-cosy rooms, harbour views and what we think is the most delicious and sustainably produced food anywhere in Australasia.
For all these reasons and more, The Hotel Britomart was awarded New Zealand’s first and only 5 Green Star hotel, based on a global accreditation system managed in New Zealand by the New Zealand Green Building Council.
Look and feel
You feel the quality and style the minute you step into the brick-walled lobby, touch the smoothness of the natural wood and stone features, slide into a cosy, cushioned booth and sip a cup of detoxifying kawakawa tea – the front-desk team keeps a pot ready for guests. There’s an immediate sense of the quiet power of nature; it gives you a welcoming hug on entry and continues to wrap around you up on the accommodation floors with their liquorice-coloured walls and in the rooms with their wood panelling, New Zealand wool carpets and super-comfy pillows made ingeniously from recycled plastic bottles.
There are lovely Kiwi design accents throughout the hotel. One evening we opened a wardrobe door and were met by a deep green forest mural, complete with tui birds flying between kowhai trees – imaginative and romantic.
Best room for two
All 99 guest rooms are the same size and have either harbour, city or laneway views. We had a king-bed Waitemata Harbour View Room which included a romantic window seat for two. Our bathroom was separated from the bedroom by a neat sliding door and had low-flow taps and porcelain-tiled shower area.
Bed linen throughout the hotel is 100% organic cotton, all mattresses are made in New Zealand and all skincare products are organic and from Auckland company Sans [ceuticals].
If you’re pushing the boat out, book one of the 10th floor Landing Suites, which have fireplaces, multiple views (harbour and city) and Māori art pieces from the owner’s private collection. The suite rates include return airport transfers, welcome gifts and a personalised, curated stay.
Food and drink
Do your tastebuds a huge favour and book for dinner at the hotel’s kingi seafood restaurant. This was our most spectacular culinary highlight since COVID struck.
Dive in with starters such as kingfish oka (a kind of ceviche) with coconut yoghurt, earthy Chatham Islands kina (sea urchin) or green-lipped mussels cooked in nduja, a complex and totally delicious southern Italian ragu.
Our main courses were yellow belly flounder topped with a citrus, caper and almond butter, and swordfish with café de Paris, white cabbage and Granny Smith apples.
Our superbly knowledgeable and personable waiter Imran paired wines perfectly, including an organic sav blanc from A Thousand Gods in Marlborough, a subtle arneis from de la terre in Hawke’s Bay and an organic cab franc from Amoise (also Hawke’s Bay).
We dined under a chandelier comprising 1,300 pieces of recycled glass and near a bartop made from one huge piece of reclaimed, 38,000-year-old swamp kauri tree dug out of the soil in the far north.
The chefs only deal directly with smaller fishing operations that line-catch or small-box catch – no nets are used at all. They also know the fisherfolk personally, their names and even the names of their boats. This is real food traceability and it somehow makes it all taste better.
Sustainability
In 20+ years of reviewing luxury hotels I have never seen such ingenuity and prowess in sustainability. It might not sound romantic or sexy but this is the future for luxury hotels and we travelling couples need to embrace it. And, once my wife and I knew the lengths to which this hotel had gone to reduce its impact, it did make us feel good and it did enhance our stay, especially dining at kingi.
During construction the hotel put everything through their sustainability filters, from building materials and design to furniture, food and fabrics. It re-used everything that could be re-used; for example, the outside shell of the building is made up of 150,000 bricks made from 80% recycled crushed concrete (using 80% roof-caught water), while the cobblestone laneway and courtyard comprise bricks re-used from old heritage buildings in the area.
All hotel lighting is low-energy LED, while hand basin taps, showers and toilets are all low-flow, and when you finish with your Antipodes glass water bottle it is sent to a glassblower who uses it to create plates for kingi restaurant.
The hotel has taken plastic reduction to a new level – not only did it ban plastic in hotel products but it also told its suppliers it didn’t want anything delivered in single-use plastic packaging. The hotel is around 95% towards that goal. But it’s the incredible food traceability covered in the Food and drink section that really blew us away.
Couples will love
Experiencing wonderful Kiwi hospitality, cosy and romantic rooms, world-class food and ingenuous, inspirational and soul-warming levels of sustainability.
Book via The Hotel Britomart website www.thehotelbritomart.com, call +64 9 300 9595 or email reservations@thehotelbritomart.com
