If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (NZD273.13), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
An office-block exterior, sleek neutral-hued rooms and uniformed staff may lead you to think the Mayfair in Christchurch is all business… In fact, this one-of-a-kind boutique stay is fine-tuned for pleasure. Partnering with neighbourhood restaurants, a gym and spa, the hotel offers bells-and-whistles luxury to guests while supporting the businesses that keep its locale lively. Its own café is a buzzing, art-nouveau-inspired lounge open for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, ahead of cocktail o’clock, tipples and tapas. Nowhere is far away in Christchurch, but at the Mayfair, the city centre is in walking distance and Hagley Park even closer.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
A cocktail voucher each and late check-out at 12 noon.
11am. Earliest check-in, 2pm, but flexible, subject to availability. Late check-out available on request (charges apply).
Prices
Double rooms from £149.38 (NZ$314), including tax at 15 per cent.
More details
Rates are room only but an à la carte breakfast is available (from NZ$30).
Also
The Mayfair’s owner has spent time in eastern Asia and subscribes to the traditional Asian notion that four’s an unlucky number – so much so that there are no rooms on the hotel’s fourth floor.
At the hotel
E-bikes to borrow. In rooms: free WiFi, smart TV, Chromecast, minibar, free tea and coffee, free filtered water, Byredo bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Comfortable and modern, all rooms are spacious (at least 32 square metres) and light-filled with either windows that open or a Juliet balcony. Top of House Kings have double-height ceilings and balconies. Mayfair Suites are positioned on corners with dual-aspect windows and nothing is bigger (or loftier) than the Top of House Suite.
Spa
There’s no spa at the Mayfair, but the hotel partners with a nearby gym and spa. Gym equipment can be ordered to your room at extra cost.
Packing tips
Vintage glamour will fit right in at the art nouveau-style café – your comfiest trainers for exploring this walkably compact city.
Also
Wheelchair accessible rooms are available and the lobby, café and bathrooms are wheelchair friendly.
Welcome. Under-18s can stay for free in their parents’ room; any additional beds are NZD 75 per night. The hotel can help arrange babysitting and there’s a kids menu at the café. The vibe, however, is more grown-ups only.
Sustainability efforts
Rooms have been designed with maximum natural light and windows that open – although there’s still AC, which along with the lighting, plumbing and heating, all of which have been installed with energy-saving measures. Your ensuite, too, is no slouch: Byredo bath products are full size and refillable, and toilet roll suitably eco. Cleaners do their bit with environmentally friendly products, but if you opt out of daily housekeeping, the hotel will make a donation to a tree-planting scheme. Partnership schemes with restaurants, a gym and nearby spa, are the hotel’s way of supporting local businesses, plus the Mayfair donates to a local native planting charity, Trees For Change.
Tables at the edge of the room set against navy velvet banquettes combine cosiness and the best views of the café’s comings and goings – although a high stool beside the bar may be more convivial if you’re there for cocktails only.
Dress Code
Anything that channels Twenties glamour – although the relaxed vibe means smart attire is entirely optional.
Hotel restaurant
Majestic at Mayfair is an all-day café, open for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Its navy-velvet and eau de nil interior channels Twenties glamour. An à la carte breakfast menu includes eggs benny and signature French toast. High tea is a high point with miniature charcuterie toasts, canapé burgers, finessed financiers and cremeux-filled choux swans courtesy of the resident French pastry chef. From mid-afternoon, service turns to small plates and mains such as slow-cooked smoked lamb on puy lentils, rare beef chimichurri or feta and lemon stuffed chicken breast.
Hotel bar
As popular as Majestic at Mayfair is for its high tea, it’s also a magnet for those in search of mixology: tea-laced tipples provide signature cocktails, but whatever you’re in the mood for, staff are happy to improvise. Pre-dinner is when the café is at its most lively – the 9pm closing time means it’s not a place for a nightcap.
Last orders
The café is open from 6.30am until 9pm daily, with afternoon tea served from 3pm.
Room service
You can order from the café menu via the guest services tablet in your room: when the café is closed, limited snacks are available to order.
The Mayfair is on Victoria Street, an area of shops and restaurants not far from the casino and only a short walk from the centre of Christchurch.
Planes
Christchurch airport is a 20-minute drive away; the hotel can arrange private transfers at extra cost.
Automobiles
The hotel offers valet parking in a covered car park from NZ$39 a night; there’s self-parking nearby for NZ$25 and free parking if you can find a spot near Hagley Park, a short walk away.
Worth getting out of bed for
A tram tour of Christchurch is an excellent starting point for a potted history of the city and its sites of interest commentated by your driver. Head to Christchurch Museum exhibit Quake City for a heart-rending insight into the city’s story of survival and the science behind earthquakes. We wouldn’t usually recommend the local library, but Christchurch’s is an architectural wonder. Explore the shops and cafés around the Riverside Market and ‘the terraces’ (Oxford and Cambridge). There’s so much more to Christchurch Art Gallery than its curvaceous, mirror-tiled exterior. Or you could start the day in style with a sunrise soak at New Brighton hot pools, where thermal dips come with sea views.
Local restaurants
Mayfair partner the Goldfinch is a Victoria Street restaurant of warmly lit suede benches and wooden tables where the Asian-fusion menu features wild boar skewers, cauliflower pakora, dumplings, seared tuna and more. After negotiating its slightly less than welcoming name, grab a table at You Hanoi Me, which serves modern Vietnamese plates with a side of irreverence: highlights include monkfish green curry, slow cooked beef cheek and clay pot sticky pork. Giovanni’sis the Mayfair’s third partner restaurant, serving Italian classics at chequer-clothed tables just across the street. Greek food done well and a shipshape dining room are the hallmarks of starred restaurant Athens Yacht Club, which brings Aegean flavours to Victoria Street in dishes such as halloumi filled courgettes, calamari with dill mayo and kleftiko lamb.
What I appreciate about Christchurch is that it’s gone from New Zealand’s most traditional city to perhaps its most transitional. After being decimated by the 2011 earthquake, it has determinedly rebuilt – its historic English Cathedral is still in ruins, but an abstract, triangular ‘cardboard cathedral’ has taken up the baton of worship. Rather than replicate exactly what was, Christchurch turned the rubble of tragedy into an opportunity for something fresh.
A notably new addition is the Mayfair hotel, in the Victoria Street precinct, though its black, blocky exterior doesn’t give much away. When I visit it’s mid-winter and a bitterly cold wind cuts through the streets, but as soon as I enter the lobby, the reception is warm, an effusive welcome from smartly dressed staff followed up with free drink vouchers for the hotel’s café and bar.
At first glance The Mayfair seems a run-of-the-mill business hotel – a stylish suit, but one bought off the rack. My King room on the third floor is as expected: minimalist shades of grey and cream, a beige cubic sofa; a typical minibar selection. But slowly I discover subtle, considered details, which are simple but effective: alongside the tea and coffee is a sink, which means I am not filling up the kettle or water glasses in the bathroom. Ah, I realise. Someone’s really thought about this.
I kick back on the pillow-stacked bed and browse the in-room tablet – it’s a digital concierge, offering to do all but mix me up a martini. A swipe of the screen and I can read a guide to the local area, find out what’s on, or order from a long list of free amenities. If only I needed a toothbrush. Perhaps I need to borrow an Apple Watch charger or a Dyson hair straightener? I don’t, but with a push of a button they’d quickly appear. Should I stop being so lazy, and have a spin bike delivered to my room for a small fee? But no, it’s dinner time. For a moment I peruse the tablet’s room service menu but instead I use it to book a local restaurant from a curated list. (We opt for ‘You Hanoi Me’, a two-minute walk away, which has very excellent Vietnamese.)
If the room has delivered surprises, I expect little from the bathroom, often the most uninspired element of a hotel room – a perfunctory afterthought. And once again, the Mayfair’s doesn’t look much different from other standard business hotels. Until I shower and realise that mirror is, cleverly, a no-steam one, and the magnifying make-up mirror comes with its own ring light. (Oh, the Mayfair, you do flatter.) This is all unassuming glamour I didn’t know I needed, and on top of that I appreciate being able to blast volume into my locks with the most powerful hairdryer I’ve ever used in a hotel. Frankly I am left flummoxed, in a hotel that doesn’t appear particularly plush, yet somehow feels like it is.
The next morning we take breakfast in the Majestic café adjoining the lobby, a pretty space resplendent (and I rarely use that word) in a beautiful pairing of eggshell walls and dark-blue booths that I mentally file away as a colour scheme in my future dream home. Speaking of eggs, all the dishes are artistic presentations of the brunch classics: my companion’s french toast is a deconstruction of sourdough with quenelles of brown-butter mascarpone, and my granola is a textural palate of grains and colourful fruit. All of this is such a contrast to the sparse monotones of the room, but a part of me wonders if that might be the point.
The hotel is within easy walking distance to a lot of shops, galleries and museums, so we head out, wandering through the green surrounds of the iconic Hagley Park just a stone’s throw away. A mere 20-minute meander takes us to the Riverside Market, a buzzy hub of shops and food stands, and another gem born out of the city’s renaissance.
Eventually the temperature drops to a lofty two degrees, and a light drizzle almost threatens snow. It’s too cold to keep walking around so I’m grateful for my central haven and its unassuming little touches. It’s an afternoon for fuzzy robes, slippers, and movies Chromecast on the TV. Best of all, we order Belgian hot chocolates (via the tablet, of course) – the kind made with real chocolate that leaves thick dregs at the bottom of the cup. I opt for one with a dash of hot chilli, because this seems to be the Christchurch way, transforming the traditional into something pleasantly surprising.
