Stonefly Lodge

About this place

Stonefly Lodge is a small owner-operated luxury lodge at 3256 Motueka Valley Highway, Stanley Brook, roughly 50 minutes' drive from Nelson Airport. It sits on the Motueka River on around 140 acres of private land, positioned between three national parks, and is built in stone and timber. The lodge is off-grid and solar-powered, with a productive garden supplying the kitchen.

The scale is deliberately intimate: four guest suites, two resident hosts and one chef. Rooms are finished in restrained natural tones with outlooks over the surrounding landscape, and the shared living and dining areas centre on a stone fireplace and a single long table where guests eat together each evening.

Dining and experiences

Dinner is a four-course menu built around garden produce and Nelson-region suppliers, served nightly, with local wines available. Fly fishing is the lodge's signature activity - it is Orvis-endorsed and sits on the Motueka, one of New Zealand's better-known wild brown trout rivers, with guided packages, gear and a private helipad for accessing back-country water. Hunting is also offered, along with vineyard visits, beaches, forest trails, swimming in the river and stargazing. The lodge lists accreditations including Orvis endorsement and Qualmark luxury lodge recognition, and its published season runs October to April.

Suitability for business events

Stonefly Lodge is not a conference venue and does not market meeting rooms. With four suites and a single shared dining table, it is best suited to small executive retreats, incentive rewards, board-level hosting and buy-out stays for a handful of senior guests or key clients. An exclusive-use booking gives a group the whole lodge, its hosts and its chef, which suits a high-value incentive trip or a small strategy gathering where the setting and the guided activity programme are the point.

Organisers should plan around the rural location - the drive from Nelson, the seasonal opening period and the very limited room count are the practical constraints. For larger delegate numbers, Stonefly works better as an add-on stay for VIPs than as the main Nelson accommodation block.