The Arista Story…… SO FAR.

Mike and Annemarie Gallagher purchased what was the Cedar Lodge Motel on the day that Wills and Kate tied the knot (31 April 2011). The motel was extremely run down to say the least, but we knew it had a few things going for it:

• It had a lovely road presence. Even now people can often think it’s a new property.
• The Rooms were Huge! Being a family of five, we could really appreciate the room size! It had ‘good’ bones, as they say. And we could see massive potential for maximising guest experiences.

So, we started the refurbishing process and got the business up and going properly by rebranding it to Arista of Rotorua www.aristaofrotrua.co.nz and implemented some key marketing strategies. But the underline success of the business has always been about people and outstanding customer service.

Unfortunately, our son Joshua had a brain tumour at the age of 4 yrs old and this took us away from the business for about a year of which we spent most our time in Starship hospital in Auckland.

We arrived back at the motel and once we were on our feet again we had the opportunity to purchase the motel next door called Capri Court Motor Inn, we quickly rebranded it to Capri on Fenton www.caprionfenton.co.nz and we put our secret weapon over there to manage this. Morgen Waghorne aka "The Guest Whisperer". 

We are project people and love a challenge and over the years we had discovered a problem which leads us to our next project.

The problem: Guests have been leaving the Rotorua Accommodation establishments feeling like they are not done with Rotorua. Many guests arrive to Rotorua and simply don’t realise how much there is to do here in our beautiful district, so our challenge is- "How can we get that message out there before arrive in Rotorua"?

One or two days is simply not enough time for Rotorua. So, the team here put their thinking caps on and came up a website solution which lists some of the main tourist attractions while offering "Discounts" and "Value added" Entry Tickets for Attractions, Accommodation and Eateries.

The website is called Rotorua Tourist Attractions www.rotoruatouristattractions.nz

The site is also a great way to help plan your itinerary while you are here in our beautiful district and gives some great local tips!

Where ever you stay in Rotorua have a great time and thank you for coming to our city.

And our motto is “Its Rotorua – Go hard!!”