Mawhera buys hotel

Tu Tangata, Issue 15, 1 December 1983, Page 33

Mawhera buys hotel

A South Island Maori group, the Mawhera Incorporation has purchased an historic Greymouth business, Revingtons Hotel.

The Incorporation already owns two other Greymouth properties, Poutini House occupied by Roys Furnishing Ltd and the MacDonnells Building next to Revingtons Hotel.

Mawhera Incorporation bought the Revingtons Hotel with an eye to tourism and has installed an experienced hotelier, Mr Russell King of Kings Hotel to rim the hotel as a co-operative venture.

It’s an historic investment because it gives the Poutini Ngaitahu people a strong foothold in its ancestral area. It’s been a policy of the incorporation to reinvest rentals received from land on which the town of Greymouth is built. With the recent lifting of legislative restrictions, the incorporation has been free to develop the land.

A familiar landmark in Greymouth for many years, Revingtons Hotel was established about 100 years ago by the Revington family of Greymouth. It quickly established a high reputation throughout the country for hospitality.

A name change to the Post Office Hotel earlier this century caused so much confusion that the owners changed the name back to Revingtons.

The hotel boasts amongst its guestlist, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second who stayed there during her first N.Z. tour in 1953.

Chairman of the Mawhera Incorporation, Stephen O’Regan said the purchase of the hotel brought traditional elements together.

The Barrow family owned and held the licence for Revingtons for some years and were an established Greymouth family. The King family had roots in West Coast heritage through an All Black rugby captain and through run-

ning hotels. The incorporation was an even older element in the West Coast landscape, he said.