These include, amongst other things, such matters as room sizes, suites, dining options, conference and banqueting facilities, gym / spa / pool facilities.

A team of consultants was brought together with international and local experience. The international team included Singapore based AR+D architects who had worked with Hyatt on other projects and were in the pool of architects that was approved by Waterfront Auckland in the Development Agreement. AR+D linked up with local architect Pete Bossley Architects who did most of the heavy lifting during the design and project monitoring phase.

Challenges

As may be expected, a project of this size and complexity is not without its challenges, all of which have been overcome with the hotel “Soft Opening” on 15 September 2020 and full opening in early 2021 well in advance of the Americas Cup Finals in Auckland. 

Park Hyatt Auckland was Fu Wah’s first investment outside of China and therefore it was inevitable that there would need to be learnings from dealing with a different culture, not just in terms of local customs but also business practice. The first step was to hire a local General Manager who was able to manage the cultural differences and secondly a Project Director who was multilingual and in partnership with the local GM able to act as a bridge between the two cultures.

The construction of a true international standard five-star hotel had not been tackled in the New Zealand construction industry prior to Park Hyatt Auckland. These challenges presented themselves in the following ways:

A lack of local workers with the experience and qualifications to undertake the necessary finishing work for the fitout of the hotel requiring consistency of outcome over multiple levels over multiple surfaces. This was mitigated through the introduction of China based fitout companies and Chinese trade specialised workers. However, this was not without its own challenges and required considerable investment in internal resources to manage this process and to ensure that at all times Fu Wah worked with Immigration New Zealand to make sure all protocols were followed.

In late March 2020, the New Zealand Government announced that the Country would be going into a four-week lockdown with the immediate effect for Fu Wah (as well as many other projects) being that the work on the project would need to stop. This was very bad timing for us as just a few days after we had agreed an opening date with Hyatt for 31 May 2020. For a project of this scale with over 300 workers on site at any one time it was akin to having to stop an Oil tanker at sea.

Working with the contractors and consultants, plans were immediately being put in place for how this would work with what was essentially a partially functioning building that would need to be kept running during the lockdown period. Security of the site and the safety of all concerned were also key factors that needed to be addressed and overcome.

Summary

Park Hyatt Auckland is the first international Five Star hotel to be constructed in New Zealand. By way of example, the base room product starting at 47 square metres, it offers 16 different room categories with 23 suites ranging in sizes up to the Putanga Mai (presidential suite) which is 235 square metres with a 120 square metre deck and its own private garden. Rather than list or describe the various hotel attributes, the link below is a video prepared by Hyatt and demonstrates the finished “product” showing the variety of Guest Rooms, Food and Beverage offerings, event spaces and public areas. 

As well as providing a much needed contribution to tourism infrastructure for Auckland and New Zealand, Fu Wah (as part of its Development Agreement) contributed $2.5 million to the design and creation of the public space surrounding the hotel known now as Urunga Plaza. This space was the final piece of public area that now links the whole of the Auckland Viaduct and allows everyone to be able to walk around the waters edge. This is the first time that this area has been available for public access since the land was reclaimed in the 1990s for Americas Cup bases. Urunga Plaza was opened in early September 2020 in partnership with Eke Panuku and Ngati Whatua Orakei.

Over 3,000,000 man (and woman) hours have gone onto the project with several hundred people involved along the way with the total investment greater than the $300 million reported. Chinese and New Zealand companies have benefited from this investment financially and to gather learnings and relationships that will give them the benefit of being able to grow their businesses in New Zealand.

The building of Park Hyatt Auckland has been a long journey that started for Fu Wah eight years ago but with the vision and commitment of its Chairman and the Fu Wah team in China and New Zealand has seen the job through to completion and now stands as a testimony to the hard work of many hundreds of people from both countries.

Learn more about Fu Wah International here.