Host Responsibility

What we are actually promising

Most people who come into The Breakwater Room spend an hour there, lose or win a modest amount, and go downstairs to dinner. A small number do not, and the whole point of a host responsibility programme is that the venue notices before the guest does. That is the promise: we watch, we say something, and we would rather lose the revenue than keep it under those circumstances.

Concretely, we commit to the following, and our staff are held to it:

• There is no cash machine in The Breakwater Room, in The Coote Room, or in the corridor outside either. The nearest one is in the ground-floor lobby, two floors down and past the front desk. That walk is deliberate.
• There are two clocks, one on each end wall of the gaming floor, and neither is obscured by a machine, a plant or a sign.
• The blinds go up at eight in the morning on all three windows and stay up. You can always see the harbour, the weather and what time of day it is.
• The room closes at 2.00am, seven nights a week, and does not open early or stay open late for anybody, at any stake, ever.
• We do not extend credit, cash cheques, hold personal property against a debt, or lend money to a guest for gaming. Not as a favour, not for a regular, not for a VIP.
• Water, tea and coffee are free and on the floor at all times. Alcohol is not served on the gaming floor after 1.00am.
• We do not run loyalty points, cashback, matched play, bonuses, prize draws or competitions attached to gaming.
• Nothing on this website can be played. We do not operate or advertise online gambling in any form.

Twenty and over, every time

Gambling in a casino venue in New Zealand is restricted to people aged 20 and over. This is the Gambling Act 2003; it is not a house policy and we cannot waive it.

We check photo identification at the door of The Breakwater Room. We accept a New Zealand driver licence, a Kiwi Access Card or a passport. We do not accept photographs of documents, expired documents, or the word of somebody who has been coming here for years. Staff are instructed to ask anyone who could plausibly be under 25, and to keep asking on subsequent visits.

A person under 20 found on the gaming floor is asked to leave immediately and the incident is logged. Nobody under 20 may play, watch play, or stand at a table, including in the company of a parent.

Every other part of this hotel — the rooms, Perfume Point, The Gravels, The Ahuriri Bathhouse and all three event rooms — is open to all ages, subject only to the ordinary licensing rules on alcohol.

Asking us to keep you out

Anyone may ask to be excluded from The Breakwater Room. You do not need to explain why, you do not need to be a guest of the hotel, and you will not be asked to justify the decision or to reconsider it.

• How — in writing, at the duty manager's desk. We will sit down with you somewhere private and fill the form in together if that is easier. It takes about ten minutes.
• How long — from twenty-four hours to two years, your choice. Two years is the statutory maximum for a venue-issued exclusion.
• What we keep — your name and one photograph, held securely and seen only by staff who work the door. We destroy both when the exclusion ends.
• What happens if you come back — we ask you to leave, and we do it quietly and without an audience. We are required to, and we will.
• Ending it early — you cannot. That is the point of it. A self-exclusion runs its full term.
• Third-party concerns — if you are worried about a family member, talk to the duty manager. We cannot exclude someone on your say-so, but we can listen, and we can tell you what options exist.

An exclusion also removes you from every mailing list we hold and voids any gaming credit attached to a package. Ask at the desk, phone +64 6 835 2471, or email [email protected].

Who is trained, and in what

Every person rostered into The Breakwater Room — dealers, floor staff, the duty manager, and the bartender who works the service hatch — completes our written Host Responsibility Programme before their first shift and refreshes it every six months. Training is recorded and the records are available to the Department of Internal Affairs on request.

They are trained to notice, and to act on:

• Sessions that run unusually long, especially without a break for food.
• A guest returning repeatedly to the lobby cash machine.
• Distress, anger, or a marked change in mood at a table or machine.
• Anyone asking to borrow money, from staff or from other guests.
• Someone claiming they need to win an amount back.
• A person who has been drinking beyond the point where they should be making decisions about money.

The response is usually a quiet conversation and an offer of a coffee. Occasionally it is a request to leave for the night. Staff have explicit authority to make that call and are never questioned for making it, whatever the guest was spending.

New Zealand helplines

All of these are free, confidential, and independent of this hotel. You do not have to have a serious problem to use them.

• NZ Gambling Helpline — 0800 654 655. Free, 24 hours a day, every day.
• Need to Talk? — call or text 1737. Free, 24 hours, for anything at all.
• Problem Gambling Foundation — 0800 664 262. Free counselling, including for family members.
• Text support — text 8006.
• Choice Not Chance — choicenotchance.org.nz
• Safer Gambling Aotearoa — safergambling.org.nz
• Department of Internal Affairs — the regulator for gambling in New Zealand: dia.govt.nz

Complaints and questions

If you think we have failed to meet any of the above, tell us. Ask for the duty manager on the night, or write to the general manager at [email protected] or 27 Coote Road, Bluff Hill, Napier 4110, Hawke's Bay. We acknowledge written complaints within two working days and answer them within ten.

If our answer does not satisfy you, you can take the matter to the Department of Internal Affairs, which regulates gambling in New Zealand, and you can do that without going through us first.