New luxury hotel brand snaps up central Christchurch hotel

Friday, 15 October 2021

Inside the Fable Dunedin. The new Fable Christchurch will undergo a major refurbishment.

The Rendezvous Hotel in central Christchurch has been sold and will be turned into a five-star hotel.

The Gloucester St hotel has been sold to CPG Group, which already owns two Canterbury hotels, Terrace Downs and Hanmer Springs Hotel, and previously owned the now-demolished All Seasons in Papanui Rd.

The company is owned by New Zealand’s Pandey family.

The Rendezvous will be rebranded as the Fable Christchurch from mid-November. It will undergo a major refurbishment due to be finished in May.

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The hotel was previously owned by TFE Hotels, an Australian chain which owns 80 hotels under seven brands.

The Rendezvous has 171 rooms plus conference rooms and a restaurant and bar.

Fable Dunedin is one of the several Fable hotels CPG Group is planning to have in the South Island.

It takes up most of the Pacific Tower – Christchurch’s tallest building – which has 23 storeys and was built in 2010. The Cathedral Junction building also has several levels of privately owned apartments on the upper floors.

CPG Group has purchased both the hotel business and the 14 floors of the Pacific Tower occupied by the hotel.

Fable is a new luxury brand, with one in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby and one in Dunedin, as well as two others due to open in central Auckland and Queenstown.

The Hanmer Springs and Terrace Downs hotels will also be rebranded as Fable hotels.

CPG Group’s operations manager, Ronnie Ronalde, said the Rendezvous purchase was “an exciting step” for the expansion of the Fable brand in the South Island.

Ronalde said the Fable Christchurch would have a restaurant specialising in seafood, and a gin bar specialising in cocktails.

CPG Group is headed by Prakash Pandey, whose father Charles Pandey founded its parent company, the Pandey Corporation.

As well as their 15 New Zealand hotels, the wealthy family has more hotels in New Zealand and three in Fiji, managed by Accor brands, and owns 10 in the United States, managed by international brands.

A year ago they announced they would spend $100 million on major makeovers and upgrades of the New Zealand hotels.

This included rebuilding the All Seasons in Christchurch, but that plan was dropped and the land sold.

The company bought both Terrace Downs and Hanmer Springs Hotel in 2020.