United States-born couple James Glucksman and James Boussy took over the luxury accommodation lodge in 2010, after moving to Oamaru from China, where Mr Glucksman was working as a health economist.
"We were looking for something new to do and someone new to do it and we wanted to go into hospitality, thought it couldn’t be that typical and New Zealand sounded like a nice place, and we found the lodge and leapt into it head first," he told the Oamaru Mail.
Admittedly, neither James knew anything about the industry, he said.
Over the years the couple have developed a hands-on approach to hospitality, including preparing tailored breakfasts and dinners cooked by Mr Glucksman for guests, but are now looking to sell the lodge as they have built a new house in Kakanui and are ready to transition, though they continue to enjoy running the business, into which they have poured a lot of hard work.
"We’ve completely renovated it," Mr Glucksman said.
"We replaced the roof, we expanded the annex building to make the rooms there larger. We refinished and refurnished and renovated every room. We installed insulation. We built the wall on the streets. We re-plumbed it, rewired it, built the patio between the two buildings — we’ve done a lot."
Both the initial renovations and the couple’s hands-on approach have paid off.
"We get almost universal positive feedback both for the lodge and for the experience of staying in Oamaru," Mr Glucksman said.
"And, the thing that more guests say than anything else is they wish they could have stayed longer."
Mr Glucksman said the accommodation was expensive and aimed at a "well heeled" international clientele.
Those guest have included, among other notable names, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, celebrity chef Jax Hamilton, British actors Miriam Margolyes, Sam Heghan and Graham McTavish, as well as an unnamed actor from Downton Abbey and his wife, who is also an actress.
"They’re generally just like everybody else. I mean, I don’t treat them differently," Mr Glucksman said.
" That’s something that I find a lot of travel agents will say, ‘oh, this is a VVIP, Make sure you treat them well’. That always rubs me the wrong way because we treat everybody same way — everybody’s a VIP as far as we’re concerned. We treat everybody well."
Dame Kiri, often labelled a "diva" by the tabloid press, was a case in point.
"Knowing her only through her music and knowing musicians in New Zealand who knew of her and who warned us that she could be prickly, I was extremely nervous because that was also early on in our tenancy here but she was one of the loveliest guests we’ve ever had. I mean, she was absolutely stupendous.
"She was here for three nights. We learned that she does not like being treated like she’s made out of alabaster. She was showing us pictures of her dogs and playing with our dogs and hanging out in the garden and she was a lovely, lovely guest."
The pair and the venue are now well established internationally, particularly with travel agents and clients in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and the US but Mr Glucksman credits Oamaruvians for continued support, right from the beginning of the venture.
"It’s all exceeded our expectations. Neither of us had done anything like this, you know, for a job.
"We had done no research into what was involved, so we started with a completely blank slate. I mean, the amount that we did not know could fill a book but what really, really helped me a lot was making friends with local people."
Mr Glucksman credits Toni McLennan in particular for introducing him to prominent Waitaki Valley philanthropists Doug and Gloria Hurst, just three weeks before their first guest was due in 2010.
"Toni introduced us to all sorts of people, including Gloria Hurst. Gloria Hurst said her husband was having a birthday, they’d like to come stay at the lodge, have dinner and do all that on, if I remember right, the 19th of August. So this is like maybe the 5th of August when this was happening.
"My stuff wasn’t due to arrive for another couple of days and then we were going to have a little bit over a week to put everything away in time for this new guests to come. But we thought this is a great opportunity because they know we’re new. I chatted with Gloria that we have no idea what we’re doing and it’ll allow me to sort of break the ice and have my first experience as a host without quite all the pressure of having somebody who’s come from halfway around the world booked by a travel agent who might have expectations that I can’t live up to.
"And so, I made a Moroccan dinner for Gloria and her husband, chatted with them throughout their stay, and they seemed to enjoy it and, you know, they booked again.
"That helped in such a tremendous way And that’s just the kind of overwhelming support that we got from all Oamaruvians as newcomers. We were foreigners coming in, completely cold, and people really, really, really treated us well."
The people of Oamaru came through again later, when the pair were having immigration difficulties.
"People leapt to our aid to do what they could to support us and I could never have expected that. It was really touching and that’s probably the highlight of our experience."
The pair are very happy to be remaining in Waitaki.
"The new house will have guest space, so we’ll continue to have like a bed-breakfast sort of setup there, but on a much more casual scale."
The five-bedroom lodge is for sale through Bayleys and has already attracted some interest.
"There’s been consistent expressions of interest, not yet reaching fruition, but we’re not at the stage where we’re worried about it. It’ll come when it comes and I think we were smart to list it when we did.
"We don’t feel like there’s a definite sell-by date and we’re still enjoying it. We enjoy the guests and we’re still busy."
