Wellington, New Zealand

QT Wellington

Price per night from$152.89

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (NZD251.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

QT Wellington Photos

Style

Night at the museum

Setting

Hip harbour-view hotspot

Explore

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You’ll find QT Wellington across the street from Wellington Harbour in the city’s on-trend Te Aro district. Like its sister QT hotels in Australia, this quirky and creative hotel is tastefully over-the-top, with a 200-piece-strong rotating art collection, and a staff outfitted by an acclaimed Broadway costumier. The hotel’s mod-French fine-dining restaurant, which hosts lunches, high teas and elegant dinners, is equally creative. There’s also an art-filled and moody lobby cocktail-lounge and coffee bar and a glittering indoor swimming pool.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

Welcome drinks for two at the Lobby Lounge, plus free late check-out until noon

Facilities

Photos QT Wellington facilities

Need to know

Rooms

163, including 23 suites.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability and an extra charge (starting from NZ$20). Earliest check-in, 3pm.

More details

Rates generally exclude breakfast; full buffet (NZ$32 a person) and à la carte options(from NZ$25) are served.

Also

Your fully-stocked minibar comes with everything from cheesy bites to chocolate blocks, emergency bottle openers to bow ties, and a deck of cards to an ‘intimacy kit’. You'll also find all manner of local drinks, including coconut water and juices, local craft beers and regional wines.

At the hotel

Art collection, lobby lounge, gym with a sauna, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: flatscreen TV, Bose sound system, Nespresso coffee machine and minibar.

Our favourite rooms

We like the QT Deluxe King rooms for their extra wiggle room, and the QT Junior Suite has sweeping views of the harbour. All rooms have original modern artwork and furnishings from collaborations with local artists.

Poolside

The heated indoor spa pool is lined in iridescent blue tiles; a glass ceiling over the 17-metre-long pool lets in natural light. Lounge around or swim leisurely laps anytime from 6am to 11pm.

Packing tips

Pack your most avant garde night-on-the-town looks for dinner and modern-art inspired accessories to fit in amid the hotel’s well-dressed walls.

Also

All rooms are accessible by lifts, and the hotel has a number of dedicated accessible rooms with specially-adapted bathrooms.

Children

Young Smiths are welcome, but not catered to; this art-filled stay is best for a grown-up getaway.

Food and Drink

Photos QT Wellington food and drink

Top Table

Snag a table by the window for views of the Te Papa Museum and the harbour.

Dress Code

Dress like you’ve just been featured in Wallpaper* or recently wrapped up a gallery show; it’s hard to best the hotel’s flamboyance.

Hotel restaurant

Helmed by executive chef Laurent Loudeac, Hippopotamus Restaurant and Cocktail Bar is all about over-the-top glamour: ornate seating and a stuffed peacock stage whisper to its Gallic-inspired grandeur. On the mod-French menu you’ll find Akaroa salmon with scallops, wild venison with cherries, and a dessert selection sure to satisfy your sweet tooth; special occasions call for the extravagant Discovery Dining menu with a fleet of paired wines. At breakfast, browse the buffet, or order French toast with candied bacon and banana, acai muesli with berries and Greek yoghurt, and citrus-poached salmon with turmeric rice.

 

Hotel bar

Follow the sounds of Kiwi reggae, hip-hop and soul to the Lobby Lounge, which shares a space with the check-in area and also hosts live music events on Friday nights. Decorations range from original paintings to a colourful bull’s head wall-hanging and a parked motorcycle. This stylish bar specialises in crafted cocktails; try the sweet-and-sour Clover Club or a mint-muddled Whisky Smash. A menu of nibbles ranging from a Parisian-style croque-monsieur to  a sharing portion of beef fillet with potato gratin,  is also available from noon to 10pm. A second bar is attached to Hippopotamus Restaurant; order a figgy Aftershow Manhattan or a peppery, rum-based Filthy Diplomat. Oenophiles can work their way through the list of largely regional wines, and whisky, gin and vodka drinkers will find an impressively international range of spirits.

Last orders

Hippopotamus is open for breakfast from 6.30am to 10.30am during the week, 7am to 11am on weekends and holidays; lunch is served from noon to 2pm Monday to Friday, dinner from 6pm to 10pm every day. The cocktail bar is open daily from 2pm until late.

Room service

Order drinks, nibbles and full meals to your door at any time of the day or night. Your minibar is loaded with sweet and savoury snacks, all manner of drinks, and games both fun and flirty.

Location

Photos QT Wellington location
Address
QT Wellington
90 Cable St, Te Aro
Wellington
6011
New Zealand

Ocean-view hotel QT Wellington is on Cable Street, the city’s main strip, and has direct access to Wellington Waterfront Walk and Waitangi Park.

Planes

Wellington Airport is a 20-minute drive from the hotel; flights from Europe require a couple stop overs in the UAE and Auckland, and flights from the US arrive via Australia. Call our Smith24 team to arrange flights and hotel transfers.

Trains

Wellington Central Station is two kilometres from the hotel (around a 20-minute walk); it’s a stop on the North Island Main Trunk line, which connects Wellington and Auckland.

Automobiles

If you’re planning to explore beyond the city, a hire car will be your best bet. Parking in Wellington can be a bit tricky, but there’s valet parking on site for NZ$30 a day.

Worth getting out of bed for

Download the hotel’s concierge app and take a guided tour of the museum’s art collection, then pick up a mid-morning coffee from the lobby bar. For more art and culture, the gleaming building that houses the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is just across the street; collections focus on Mātauranga Māori history and traditions, and art and design. The hotel is a three-minute walk from Courtenay Place and adjacent to Cuba Street, on which you’ll find vintage stores, record shops, second-hand bookshops, quirky cafés and buzzy bars. Scope out the city's finger-on-pulse scene at City Gallery Wellington or go alfresco art-spotting, keeping your eyes peeled for the pakiTara-toi murals. Leafy Waitangi Park and Oriental Bay Beach, Wellington’s most popular stretch of sand, are both within three minutes’ walk too. Further afield, a two-hour drive from the hotel are Martinborough’s eateries, pubs and pinot noir-producing estates.

Local restaurants

Egmont Street Eatery’s menu changes weekly, and includes both sharing plates and heartier mains, with a carefully-curated selection of coffees, wines, craft beers and cocktails. It’s open daily for breakfast and lunch, and for dinner Tuesdays through Saturdays. For brunch expect delights such as smoked potato hash with ham hock and harissa and a burger with Russian dressing and beef-fat onions; for dinner, taleggio-cream-filled profiteroles or Wairarapa lamb rump with yoghurt, mint and radicchio. The hotel’s by the bay, so you’re set for seafood-laden dinners; we like Ortega Fish Shack on Majoribanks Street. Start with the smoked-eel risotto, then move on to the blue wharehou in sherry and mustard; order a bottle of crisp regional wine to sip with your meal. Ingredient provenance takes pride of place at Logan Brown, whose menu poses difficult choices: oysters with gooseberry or served tempura style? Dry-aged steak or coastal-aged lamb? Persimmon-jelly doughnuts or rum crème caramel? Decisions, decisions…

Local cafés

Coffee culture in New Zealand is as hyper as the caffeine hit cafés offer, and there’s no dearth of spots at which to pick up a strong brew in the city. Caffe L’affare has been pouring out coffees on College Street for more than 25 years; try their signature Primo blend on its own, or with a hearty helping of ricotta pancakes with blueberry compote. We also like Coffee Supreme on Hopper Street for a quick pick-me-up.

Local bars

Nearby cocktail bar and lounge The Library has a menu of specialty and classic cocktails, a regional list of wines, and a smattering of single-malt scotches. The cinnamon- and amaretto-laced Whisky Business will make you want to slide sock-footed across the hardwood floor, in the best way possible. Speakeasy-style Hawthorn Lounge is just around the corner on Tory Street and has an blink-and-you’ll-miss-it entrance; once inside, tell the expert bartenders what you like, then scout out a cosy table for two.

Reviews

Photos QT Wellington reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this boutique hotel in Wellington and unpacked their bottle of local pinot noir and bag of single-origin coffee beans, a full account of their city break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside QT Wellington in New Zealand…
 
The street-art style, pop-art colourful mural painted on one outside wall and a life-sized golden hippo on the roof are just the first two pieces of art in this museum-quality stay. A sign that this cool city-break hotel will follow its notably quirky sister QT properties down a design rabbit-hole. After check-in, make a beeline for the lobby lounge bar and a cup of New Zealand’s famously flavourful coffee, or take a refreshing splash about in the hotel’s iridescent blue indoor pool.
 
Corridor walls are lined with surrealist paintings and nooks and crannies filled with unexpected installations, including a full-size motorbike and a papier-mache cow’s head; a handy concierge app allows guests to take a self-guided tour, and impress their fellow Smiths with their insider art knowledge. Wrap up your gallery tour by settling in for dinner at the hotel’s decadent French restaurant Hippopotamus, where the dishes may be elegant and delicately assembled, but you'll feast on them like the eponymous beast.

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Price per night from $152.89