Where to stay in Christchurch: the best areas and hotels

Cathedral Square has always been the centre of Christchurch, and it is buzzing again. Around it you will find the restored tramway, the Te Pae convention centre, the Avon River and Riverside Market, where half the city seems to eat lunch. The streets are flat and compact, and almost everything a visitor wants is within ten minutes on foot.

Hotels here mix old and new. One occupies a 1913 Italian palazzo-style landmark on the square itself; others are sleek modern towers whose upper floors look clear across the plains to the Southern Alps, or overlook the lawns of Victoria Square. Stay here for a first visit and you will not need a car until the day you leave town.

West of the centre, the city opens out into Hagley Park, a huge sweep of playing fields, woodland and the Botanic Gardens, with the Avon looping lazily through. On its edge stands the Arts Centre, a cluster of Gothic Revival stone buildings that once housed the university and now holds galleries, cinemas and craft shops.

This is where Christchurch keeps its most refined places to stay: a long-established luxury boutique hotel looking over the park and river, a jewel-coloured newcomer inside the Arts Centre walls, and a cosy mock-Tudor hotel within strolling distance of the gardens. It is quiet at night, lovely in the morning and still only a short walk from the centre's restaurants.

On the other side of Hagley Park, Riccarton Road heads west through a busy suburb of shops, cafés and a big shopping mall. It is the classic place to find a good New Zealand motel: clean, roomy units with kitchenettes and free parking at the door, ideal if you have just picked up a hire car or have children to feed.

There's one grander option, a resort-style hotel set in five acres of landscaped gardens. From most places here you can walk across the park to the Botanic Gardens and the centre, and the airport is a straightforward drive in the other direction.

Flights from the northern hemisphere tend to arrive at unkind hours, and the airport, north-west of the city, is well set up for it. One hotel sits directly outside the terminals, with a restaurant that looks towards the Southern Alps. A few minutes away are full-service hotels with pools, tennis courts and round-the-clock room service, and a budget pod-style place a ten-minute walk from arrivals, next to shops and a supermarket.

It makes sense for a first or last night, especially if you are driving straight out to the mountains. For anything longer, stay in town.

About two and a half hours up the coast from Christchurch, Kaikoura sits on a peninsula with the snow-streaked Seaward Kaikoura mountains at its back. A deep ocean trench just offshore brings sperm whales, dolphins and fur seals remarkably close to land, and boat and plane trips to see them are the reason most people come. The local crayfish is the other.

The town is small and strung along the shoreline. There is a modern hotel right on the waterfront with mountain and sea views, plus seafront apartments and well-kept motor lodges a short walk from the shops and tour offices. Two nights is about right.

Hanmer Springs is where Canterbury goes to soak. The village, about an hour and a half inland from Christchurch, has grown up around its thermal reserve, a complex of steaming outdoor pools, and the surrounding forest and hills are laced with walking and mountain-bike tracks.

Almost everything is within a few minutes’ walk of the pools. Boutique motels with kitchenettes and private patios are the standard, and just outside the village there is a luxury lodge in the foothills where many suites come with their own balcony hot tub. It works as a romantic weekend and as a family stop, particularly in winter.

Lake Tekapo lies in the Mackenzie Basin, roughly three hours south-west of Christchurch on the road to Queenstown. Its water is a startling, opaque turquoise, coloured by glacial rock flour, with the Southern Alps lined up behind. After dark comes the second show: this is an international dark sky reserve, and the stars are extraordinary.

The village is tiny. Stay at the lakefront resort for architect-designed rooms looking over the water, or choose a motel or B&B with garden views of the lake and mountains, steps from the stargazing centre. Book ahead in summer; there are not many beds and a great many people who want them.

Methven is a small farming town in the foothills west of Christchurch that turns into a ski base each winter, serving the slopes of nearby Mt Hutt. Accommodation is unpretentious and sociable: two rival historic pubs with rooms, apartment-style motels with kitchenettes, and a country estate lodge out among the paddocks. In summer it is quiet, and a handy stop for walking, fishing and golf in the surrounding hills.