A five-star hotel above Napier Port
Rooms, dining, a bathhouse
and a gaming lounge for guests aged 20 and over
39°29′S 176°55′E Elevation 87 m Est. 2009 64 rooms
Headlands Club, Napier
A five-star hotel on the seaward side of Bluff Hill, eighty-seven metres above Napier Port, with sixty-four refined rooms and suites, the Perfume Point dining room, The Gravels wine room, The Ahuriri Bathhouse, three event rooms — and The Breakwater Room, a private gaming lounge for adult guests aged 20 and over.
A casino hotel that is, first, a hotel
The building went up in 1937 as a shipping company's offices, three years after the earthquake flattened most of what stood here, which is why it has the flat parapets and the horizontal banding you see all over central Napier. It was converted in 2009. We kept the terrazzo in the stair hall and the original lift doors on floors two through five, and replaced almost everything else. 17 years and 38,400+ guests later, it is a sixty-four-room hotel that happens to sit on the best-placed acre in the city.
Most of what we do here is ordinary hotel work. Breakfast at Perfume Point from half past six. Somebody at the desk at three in the morning. Two hundred and eleven flights of stairs to the roof if you would rather not take the lift. A wine room downstairs with a hundred and eighteen labels on the list, sixty-one of them from within forty minutes of the front door. Guests come for the Art Deco Festival in February, for weddings in the The Marine Room, for a night before an early flight out of Hawke's Bay Airport, and for no particular reason at all.
The Breakwater Room is part of that offering, not a separate business hiding behind it. It is one room on the second floor — three hundred and forty square metres, thirty-eight gaming machines, nine tables — open from midday until two in the morning, to anyone aged 20 or over with photo identification, guest or not. It is a casino resort in the plain sense: a hotel with a gaming lounge in it. If gaming is not why you came, you will not walk past its door on the way to anything else.
Six things you can do without leaving the building
Rooms & Suites
Six categories across five floors, 26 m² to 88 m², from NZ$239 a night. Twenty-eight of the sixty-four face north over the port; nineteen east to the bay.
Perfume Point
The dining room: seventy-four seats and twelve at the counter. Hawke’s Bay lamb, gurnard landed at Ahuriri that morning, Te Mata figs in February. Closed Mondays.
The Breakwater Room
The gaming lounge: thirty-eight machines and nine tables of blackjack, roulette, baccarat and poker. Midday to two in the morning, strictly 20 and over, photo ID on the door.
Promotions & Offers
Six standing packages, including two nights with a tasting flight of six Hawke’s Bay reds at The Gravels, from NZ$612. Direct booking only — they are not on the booking sites.
The Ahuriri Bathhouse
Two treatment rooms, a twelve-metre lap pool and a hot pool held at 38°C, on the lower ground floor. Free to guests, 7am to 8pm. Treatments from NZ$120.
Meetings & Events
Three rooms: the Marine Room (180 seated), the Deco Room (60) and the Chart Room, a boardroom for eighteen. All three have their own entrance off the first-floor lobby.
The parts of the hotel, measured
Perfume Point — the dining room
Named for the spit at Ahuriri, twelve minutes downhill, where the whaling station once rendered oil and the smell gave the place its name. Seventy-four seats, plus twelve at the counter facing the pass, which is where solo travellers usually end up and seem to prefer. Breakfast 6.30–10.30 every day; dinner 5.30–9.30 Tuesday to Sunday. We close Mondays because the kitchen brigade also cooks Saturday weddings and something has to give.
The menu changes four times a year and about a third of it moves week to week depending on what comes off the boats at Ahuriri and out of the Heretaunga plains. Bookings are taken for parties up to eight; above that, talk to us.
The Gravels — the wine room
Named after the Gimblett Gravels, twenty-two minutes inland, where the shingle riverbed the Ngaruroro abandoned in 1867 now grows the best syrah in the country. One hundred and eighteen labels; sixty-one of them from Hawke's Bay, and fourteen open at any time on Coravin so you can drink a glass of something you would never buy a bottle of.
Open from noon until late, every day. No table minimum, no bookings before six. There is a cheese board and a plate of Te Mata olives and that is the whole food menu — if you want dinner, it is two floors up.
The Ahuriri Bathhouse — spa & wellness
A twelve-metre lap pool, a hot pool held at 38°C, a steam room and two treatment rooms. Open 7am to 8pm; free to anyone staying. Treatments run from NZ$120 for a half-hour to NZ$295 for the ninety-minute one, and need booking a day ahead in February because of the festival.
The pool is on the lower ground floor because that is where the building's old strongroom was, and the walls are eight hundred millimetres of 1937 concrete. It is the quietest room in the hotel by a distance.
Three rooms for events
The Marine Room — first floor, 214 m², 180 seated at rounds or 240 standing, with the original steel windows down the eastern wall. Most Saturdays between October and April are weddings.
The Deco Room — 78 m², 60 seated, 40 for a long table. The Chart Room — a boardroom for eighteen with a door onto the terrace, which is why it gets booked for two-day workshops. All three have their own entrance off the first-floor lobby, so an event never runs through reception.
Sixty-four rooms, six categories
Rates below are the lowest we charge, which in practice means a Tuesday in June. Art Deco Festival week in February and the weekend of the Mission Estate concert are the two times of year we are genuinely full.
Coote Classic
From NZ$239 per night, room only
The smallest rooms we have, and the ones we send most people to first. Second and third floor, courtyard or road side, blackout blinds because the harbour lights up at night. Filter coffee, not capsules.
- Size26 m²
- Sleeps2
- BedOne queen bed
- AspectCourtyard or Coote Road side
- How many we have22
Marine Parade King
From NZ$289 per night, room only
North-facing, floor-to-ceiling glass, and a view down onto the container cranes at Napier Port. People either love the cranes or ask to move; we tell them before they book.
- Size31 m²
- Sleeps2
- BedOne king bed
- AspectNorth, over the port
- How many we have16
Bluff Hill Superior
From NZ$335 per night, room only
Corner rooms on the fourth and fifth floors with two armchairs by the window, which is where most guests end up sitting. Sunrise over the bay arrives at about half past six in January.
- Size34 m²
- Sleeps3
- BedOne king bed, one single on request
- AspectEast, to the bay
- How many we have12
Ahuriri Suite
From NZ$449 per night, room only
A separate sitting room with a door that closes, which matters if one of you is up early. Bath and shower both. Six of the eight have a small balcony deep enough for two chairs.
- Size48 m²
- Sleeps3
- BedOne king bed, sofa bed in the lounge
- AspectNorth-west, towards Ahuriri
- How many we have8
Cape View Suite
From NZ$585 per night, room only
Fifth floor, timber-lined, with a balcony facing the long line of the bay towards Cape Kidnappers. On a clear morning you can pick out the white of the gannet colony from the chair.
- Size62 m²
- Sleeps4
- BedOne king bed, one sofa bed
- AspectSouth-east, towards Cape Kidnappers
- How many we have5
The Lighthouse Apartment
From NZ$795 per night, room only
The top floor, all of it. Two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a laundry, and the only room in the building with its own front door off the lift lobby. Minimum two nights. It books out over Art Deco Festival a year ahead.
- Size88 m²
- Sleeps4
- BedTwo bedrooms, one king and two singles
- AspectTwo aspects, north and east
- How many we have1
What is within reach, and how long it actually takes
Bluff Hill is the headland that separates the port from Marine Parade, and the hotel sits near the top of it. Everything below is downhill, which is pleasant on the way out and less so coming back — the desk will call you a taxi and nobody thinks less of you for it.
Napier is a small city of about 67,000 people that was rebuilt almost entirely between 1931 and 1935, which is why the centre is one of the densest concentrations of Art Deco architecture anywhere. The Art Deco Festival falls in the third week of February and the whole city dresses for it.
- Art Deco quarter, Emerson Street — a nine-minute walk down; fifteen back up.
- Marine Parade and the Sound Shell — eleven minutes on foot.
- Ahuriri and the West Quay restaurants — twelve minutes downhill, eighteen returning.
- Hawke's Bay Airport — 6.4 km, seven minutes by car. We run a shuttle on the hour between 7am and 9pm.
- National Aquarium of New Zealand — fourteen minutes' walk along the Parade.
- Te Mata Peak — twenty-five minutes by car; the last four are on a single lane.
- Gimblett Gravels wineries — twenty-two minutes inland. Most cellar doors close at 4.30pm.
- Cape Kidnappers gannet colony — forty minutes south to Clifton, then a tractor along the beach. Tide-dependent; the concierge checks it the night before.
- Hastings — twenty minutes; Havelock North — twenty-three.
The concierge desk is staffed 7am to 10pm and will tell you honestly when the wind is up and you should do something indoors instead. Bikes are free to borrow; there are six of them and they go quickly in January.
We would rather you left in the same mood you arrived in
The Breakwater Room operates under the Gambling Act 2003 and a written Host Responsibility Programme that our staff refresh every six months. There is no cash machine in the gaming lounge or in the corridor outside it. There are two clocks, one on each end wall, and neither is hidden. The room closes at two in the morning, seven nights a week, and does not open early for anyone.
If you would like to be excluded from the room, ask the duty manager. It is done in writing, confidentially, and can run from twenty-four hours to two years.
NZ Gambling Helpline — 0800 654 655, free, any hour. Read our full host responsibility commitment →
Ask us about a room, a table, an event or the gaming lounge
This form reaches the front desk, not a call centre. We answer inside one working day, and inside two hours between 8am and 8pm. If it is urgent, phone +64 6 835 2471.