Award-winning South Island eco lodge with underwater observatory for sale

January 29, 2020

An award-winning waterfront eco’ lodge and hospitality venue which operates one of only two underwater aquatic observatories in New Zealand has been placed on the market for sale.

Lochmara Lodge on the shores of the Queen Charlotte Sound at the top of the South Island is a 14-room licensed accommodation and food and beverage business sitting on some 4.392 hectares of freehold land.

One of the lodge’s biggest attractions is its recently opened underwater observatory - a purpose-built permanently moored semi-submerged submarine-like structure with expansive viewing windows looking out to an artificial reef teeming with carpet sharks, stingrays, crayfish, blue cod, terakihi and conga eels.

The observatory is one of only two such tourism attractions in New Zealand - the other located in Milford Sound. Lochmara’s underwater observatory business runs four 40-minute trips daily from the lodge to the anchored sunken viewing facility. The underwater centre is located on a separate wharf on Lochmara’s waterfront just a few minutes from the venue’s central operations hub.

Lochmara’s new aquatic attraction builds on its already well-established eco tourism activities - working in conjunction with the Department of Conservation to run wildlife rehabilitation and breeding programmes and supporting the activities of the Marlborough Sounds Wildlife Recovery Centre which was founded in 2007.

The Centre works under the guidance of the Department of Conservation in partnership with local schools, iwi and Marlborough District Council, to provide habitat and facilities for the rehabilitation of injured animals until they can be release back into the wild.

The Centre also sustains an endangered species breeding programme to help grow species such as gecko and kakariki parakeets. Self-guided nature walks are interspersed throughout the hills and bush surrounding Lochmara Lodge for guests and members of the public to enjoy.

In 2010, Lochmara Lodge was awarded the Department of Conservation in Action award recognising the venue’s on-going contribution to conservation and the environment. In 2012, Lochmara Lodge won three accolades in the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce - taking out the medium-sized business category, the environment section, and selected as the overall supreme winner.

At the start of the current summer season, Lochmara also opened a booking and reservations office on the Picton waterfront - leasing a brand new purpose-built prime waterfront premises from Port Marlborough. The highly-visible booking office drives customer traffic to not only the underwater viewing amenity and the lodge’s waterfront café but other Picton attractions and ice-creams are sold from here as well.

Day visitors and those staying a night or more are comfortably transferred on Lochmara Lodge’s own twin-engine 15-metre alloy passenger catamaran surveyed to carry up to 50 people.

Now the freehold lodge, land, building and multiple going concerns of Lochmara Lodge business activities are being marketed for sale by tender through Bayleys Marlborough, with tenders closing on 12th February 2020.

Click here for more information on the Australasian Leisure Management Tenders page.

Images courtesy of Lochmara Lodge/Bayleys.

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