Two hundred metres of sand on one side, a tidal harbour on the other.
Tidal Veranda is a five-star casino hotel at the foot of Mauao — eighty-six rooms and suites, a kitchen that cooks what the Bay of Plenty grows and lands, a spa, three event spaces, and a gaming lounge for adult guests.
A resort built the width of a peninsula
The lobby, looking through to The Long Veranda
Mount Maunganui is narrow here. From the front doors it is sixty metres to Main Beach and the open Pacific; from the back, three hundred metres across to Pilot Bay, where the harbour empties itself twice a day and fills itself again without asking anyone.
A motor inn stood on this site from 1968 — a courtyard, a diving board, and a sign that lit up in two colours. It came down in 2011. What replaced it kept the footprint, kept the veranda that gave the hotel its name, and added five floors. Tidal Veranda opened in October 2012 with fifty-two rooms. It has eighty-six now, and ninety-six staff, sixty-one of whom live inside five kilometres.
As a casino hotel we are unusually quiet about it, and that is deliberate. The gaming lounge is one room on level two. Most guests here are walking Mauao before breakfast, putting children on the beach by nine, and eating snapper by eight. The Rangataua Room is there for the guests who want it, open to anyone aged 20 or over, and it closes at three in the morning whatever is happening inside.
Six things, done properly
Everything below is inside the building or within four hundred metres of the front door. Nothing on this page needs a car.
Rooms & Suites
From a 26 m² Harbour Classic to a 116 m² penthouse with a veranda you can walk around. Rates from NZ$276.
Rooms
Dining
A kitchen with a wood grill, a fish delivery that arrives at 6am, and a veranda that seats forty-four more when the wind allows.
Dining
The Casino
Sixty-two gaming machines and nine tables — blackjack, roulette, baccarat and poker — on level two. Photo ID at the door, every time.
Casino
Promotions
Stay-and-play, a two-night winter rate, spa and dining packages, and a long-weekend rate for guests arriving on a Thursday.
Promotions
Spa & Wellness
Five treatment rooms, two of them for couples, a salt room, a sauna and an 18-metre heated lap pool that opens at six.
Spa
Meetings & Events
The Matakana Room, the Ōmanu Room and a boardroom called The Pilot Room, which seats fourteen and has the better view.
EventsThe parts of the building you will actually use
Two rooms, one kitchen, one fish delivery
Moturiki is named for the small island off Main Beach that you can walk to at low water and regret at high. The kitchen runs a wood grill and takes a delivery from the Tauranga fish market at six most mornings — snapper, kingfish, gurnard, whatever came up. Ninety-six seats inside, forty-four on the veranda when the easterly stays away.
The Long Veranda opens at eleven and pours from a list of 214 labels, sixty-three of them from the Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay. Fifty-four seats. Bar snacks until eleven at night, midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
Menus and hours
Named after an island full of gannets
Karewa sits eight kilometres offshore and is a bird sanctuary; on a clear day you can see it from the sixth floor. The spa is on level one and has five treatment rooms — two of them doubles — a salt room, a sauna, and an 18-metre heated lap pool with a deck that catches the sun until about four in the afternoon.
Treatments run 25, 50 or 80 minutes. The spa opens at nine and takes its last booking at six. Pool and sauna are open to house guests from 6am to 9pm and cost nothing.
- Treatment rooms5 (2 for couples)
- Lap pool18 m, heated to 28 °C
- Spa hours9am – 7pm daily
Three rooms, and a lift that reaches all of them
The Matakana Room is the big one: 172 m², 180 in theatre rows or 120 seated for dinner, with a wall of glass facing the harbour and blackout blinds for the people who came to look at slides instead. The Ōmanu Room takes 60 or 40. The Pilot Room is a boardroom for fourteen on the sixth floor, and it has the best view in the building, which is wasted on most agendas.
- The Matakana Room172 m² · 180 theatre / 120 banquet
- The Ōmanu Room64 m² · 60 theatre / 40 banquet
- The Pilot Room38 m² · boardroom for 14
Six categories, eighty-six rooms
Rates below are the lowest of the year, per room per night, including GST. Check-in from 3pm, check-out by 11am, and the desk is staffed at every hour of the night.
Mauao is a four-minute walk and a forty-minute climb
The base track runs right around the maunga at sea level and takes about forty-five minutes at a conversational pace. The summit track is steeper, 232 metres up, and busy at sunrise for good reason. Both start four hundred metres from our front door.
The Mount Hot Pools are three hundred and fifty metres away — salt water, heated, open until ten. Pilot Bay on the harbour side is flat and shallow and the right place to put small children. In summer a ferry crosses to the Tauranga waterfront in twelve minutes.
Further out: Papamoa twelve minutes east, Te Puke and the kiwifruit country thirty-five minutes, Rotorua an hour south, Hobbiton an hour and twenty-five. Tauranga Airport is 4.2 kilometres away — eight minutes by car, and our van runs it on the hour between 6am and 9pm.
The concierge desk keeps a whiteboard of what the water is doing, and will tell you honestly when the swell means the harbour side is the better idea.
Looking south-east from Mauao towards Papamoa
- Main Beach60 m — cross the road
- Mauao base track400 m · 5 min walk
- Mount Hot Pools350 m
- Cruise wharf900 m
- Tauranga Airport4.2 km · 8 min
- Tauranga city centre15 min over the bridge
We would rather you left with money in your pocket
There are no ATMs on the gaming floor. The nearest one is in the lobby, past the front desk, which is a deliberate ninety seconds away. Clocks are visible from every table and the room has real windows onto Pilot Bay, so you always know what the light is doing.
The Rangataua Room closes at three in the morning, every night, whatever is happening. Our staff are trained to notice when a night has stopped being fun, and they are allowed — expected — to say something.
- 0800 654 655Gambling Helpline — free, any hour
- 1737Need to talk? Call or text, free
- 0800 664 262Problem Gambling Foundation
- Text 8006Free text support, any hour
More at choicenotchance.org.nz and safergambling.org.nz.
Ask us anything
The form goes to the front desk and someone answers it within the working day — usually a great deal sooner. If it is urgent, or it is three in the morning, the telephone is better: reception is staffed at every hour.
- Reception+64 7 575 2840
- Reservations[email protected]
- Events[email protected]
- Address112 Marine Parade,
Mount Maunganui, Tauranga 3116