A pure delight… Eichardt’s Private Hotel, an SLH property located in what may be the single best spot in Queenstown, charges $1,500+ USD per night for a mountain view suite. That price includes outstanding service, complimentary valet parking, a fruit platter refreshed daily, all non-alcoholic mini-bar items, $100 NZD dining credit, full daily breakfast in the restaurant or as room service, and daily pre-dinner parlor hour with excellent wine choices & exquisite chef-prepared canapes. To be clear, I would never consider paying $1500+ per night for this or any other hotel. This is why I love the points & miles game: it makes it possible to do things like this which I would never otherwise consider. Instead of paying cash, we paid 40,000 Hyatt points per night. It was worth every point.
Eichardt’s Private Hotel Bottom Line Review
Eichardt’s Private Hotel is a gem which begins with the location. As you exit the front door, straight ahead is the beautiful Lake Wakatipu with dramatic mountain views beyond. To the right are Queenstown’s shops, restaurants, boat docks, and the Skyline Gondola. To the left are the Queenstown Gardens featuring a gorgeous lakefront path. Inside, the suites are large and luxurious, and the restaurant offers breathtaking lake views. The only big downside to this treasure is that finding nights bookable with points is extremely difficult.
- Price: This SLH property is listed as category 8 on Hyatt’s award chart and so it costs 40,000 Hyatt points per night standard, 35,000 points off-peak, and 45,000 points peak. Point bookings are good for mountain view suites. We paid 40,000 points per night for 4 nights. Unfortunately it is very hard to find availability for points going forward.
- Point Value: Excellent. The lowest price you’re likely to see for a Mountain view suite is around $1500 USD. If you can snag a point booking at 40,000 points per night like I did, you’ll get at least 3.75 cents per point value compared to the cash rate.
- Location: Fantastic.
- Room: Using Hyatt points, we were booked into a Mountain View suite. This is a true suite with a huge living room, large bedroom with skylight, separated dressing area with skylight, and huge bathroom, also with a skylight. The room is luxuriously appointed and offers a small balcony with mountain views straight ahead (above the nearby buildings) and a lake view to the left. Don’t expect good views from inside the room, but the views are decent from the balcony.
- Parking: Valet parking is complimentary
- Service: Awesome
- Daily housekeeping service: Everyday they cleaned, replaced towels, refreshed the snacks and drinks in the mini-bar, and resupplied our fruit plate in our living room.
- Turndown service: Every evening they closed the drapes, closed the blind on the bedroom skylight, supplied a plate with small delicious treats, refreshed the snacks and drinks in the mini-bar, and resupplied our fruit plate in living room.
- Breakfast: Free menu service breakfast was provided daily in the hotel restaurant or as room service. We didn’t try the room service option because we loved the restaurant views.
- Evening Pre-Dinner Hour: Every evening from 5:30 to 6:30 PM complimentary drinks and chef prepared canapes were available in the hotel’s second floor parlor. Each evening the hotel’s concierge greeted us, served drinks (the wine was excellent!), alerted the chef to prepare our canapes, and brought the delicious canapes to us when they were ready. This was also a great time to chat with the concierge about things to do in the area. One night we had booked dinner in the hotel’s Tapas bar (in order to use the $100 food credit, of course). The concierge knew that we had a reservation and walked us to the bar with our drinks where we found that they had reserved the best table for us. That was great service!
- In addition to the above, the following were included free:
- Fruit plate in living room
- Mini bar snacks and non alcoholic drinks
- $100 food credit per stay
- Hyatt Benefits: SLH hotels do not recognize Hyatt elite status, but they offer all guests who book through Hyatt the following perks:
- Free continental breakfast: Eichardt’s offers all guests free full breakfast, so this perk was not relevant.
- Room upgrade, if available: We were not given an upgrade, but we were thrilled with our suite as-is.
- Early check-in (noon, based upon availability at check-in): We didn’t have the chance to test this since we arrived around 8pm on our first night.
- Late check-out (2:00PM, based upon availability at check-in): We asked for 1pm late check-out and it was granted.
- Free wifi: All guests get free wifi, so this perk wasn’t relevant.
- Would I stay again? Definitely
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great location
- Base rooms are big and beautiful suites
- Great service
- Many free inclusions
Cons
- It’s almost impossible to find nights bookable with Hyatt points. We were incredibly lucky to find 4 nights in a row during peak season. I have yet to find another date with availability. Since SLH properties aren’t full fledged members of the World of Hyatt program, they are not required to make all base rooms available for point bookings.
- Eichardt’s is located in a noisy part of town. Our room was very well noise insulated, but a thumping bass sound was slightly audible at night when a nearby bar pumped up the music. This never prevented us from falling asleep, but it was a minor annoyance.
- Our room took a very long time to cool down. We were there during unusually hot weather and for some reason the housekeepers sometimes turned off the a/c. When we returned to the room and turned it back on, the room remained hot for quite a while.
- Bathroom toilet area is open to the rest of the bathroom. This is awkward for sharing the rest of the bathroom if you like to do your business privately.
- Mountain view suites don’t have much of a view unless you stand outside on the balcony.
Image Gallery
Exterior
Mountain View Suite
Pre-Dinner Drinks and Canapes in the Parlor
Breakfast
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Late to the comments here, but thought I would add my recent experience, now that SLH is part of Hilton rather than Hyatt. We booked a couple nights using Free Night Certificates obtained from holding the Aspire card. Wow, what a great use of these certs!!
It does seem like a few things have been scaled back or modified since Greg’s visit. The evening reception in the Parlor just included a few wines, no canapes. No fruit bowl in the room, and while there was turndown service, we did not receive the sweet treats he mentions (though they did replenish the Whittaker’s in the minibar). However, we did receive something that more than made up for these minor changes–an upgrade to lakeview suite with balcony. What a treat! I am not sure if that was just due to the hotel being full, or our Hilton status, but it was awesome. I think our room may have been slightly smaller than Greg’s, but the view was amazing, and no loud music across the street.
The place looks amazing! It seems you are right about availability being hard to find however, I’ll be in New Zealand for two weeks in December and there doesn’t appear to be any bookable nights at all.
Looks nice. Not sure I’d cough up 40,000 points/night for this experience though. I stayed at the nearby Crowne Plaza for a modest number of points a few years ago (probably more expensive these days). But I’d note that IHG currently has Mr. & Mrs. Smith hotels (often crazy expensive) in Queenstown for under 40,000 points (basically equivalent to a 20,000 point Hyatt redemption) that you could use a free credit card certificate at.
looks like a nice experience!
Kind of reminds me of Pismo Beach where a property decides it doesn’t like points bookings after you stay there!
I stayed there for two nights just days before you and unfortunately did not have as consistent or pleasant experience as you did. I should note that this was over New Years Eve at peak occupancy, so that could be the root of the problem, particularly with their restaurant.
You’ve pointed out the positives and I agree that the room itself was great (although I think the “Mountain View” was pretty misleading, we had a view of the club across the street with a slice of mountain above it). Perhaps if we started our stay a few days later, we would have had an experience that matched yours. In our case, we walked away disappointed given the points we paid (we paid 85k for 2 nights, one night was “peak”).
Sorry to hear that about your stay. Were you also in room 5? If so, were you the person before us that forgot to return one of the room keys? 🙂
Ha, yes that was me (and I swear it wasn’t intentional)! I still have it – they reached out to me after I was in the US and didn’t want to send me a label to get it back to them, so I need to find a convenient time to get to the post office and send an international item.
Wasn’t going to bring this up as it’s a petty grievance, but a/they should have asked at checked out (I’m used to holding on to the cards you don’t need to turn in), and b/they should be willing to send me a shipping label to make it easier to send back to them. But anyway… hope you enjoyed room 5 and you can thank us for fixing the AC so you were at least eventually able to get it cooled down!
Queenstown is the reason for New Zealand being my #2 favorite country in the world (behind Seychelles).
Queenstown is one of my favorite places in the world. Note there are cheaper, but still fantastic, alternatives via AirBnB with outstanding lake/mountain views if you don’t mind walking up the hill going home from the town center. After hiking Ben Lomond (highly recommended) we were sore but it was totally worth it.
Finally, I hate to be that guy Greg but it should be “complimentary” as in compliments of the hotel/staff.
Fixed. My complements to you for your complimentary advice
Lol. I was thinking – what IS your opinion about us grammar people? I enjoy catching mistakes as well. Do you mind?
I find it helpful!