Aro Hā is a residential wellness retreat on a sub-alpine terrace near Glenorchy, at the head of Lake Wakatipu and around 45 minutes' drive from Queenstown. It runs structured multi-day programmes combining guided hiking, movement and yoga, plant-based nutrition, bodywork and mindfulness practice, rather than operating as a conventional hotel or spa.
### Background and ownership
The retreat was founded by Damian Chaparro with business partners Chris and Beth Madison, and opened in 2014. Chaparro's background is in yoga teaching and retreat operations across the United States and Europe, alongside study in movement, insight traditions and permaculture. His stated rationale for building Aro Hā was that existing retreat facilities often did not reflect the ethos of their own programming, particularly on sustainability - so the physical building was designed to align with the guest experience.
The property sits on roughly 8.5 hectares of pasture overlooking Lake Wakatipu. It was built using Passivhaus principles for thermal efficiency and permaculture design, and is powered by local renewable sources including a micro-hydro scheme, photovoltaic solar and a boiler fuelled by sustainably sourced local wood. The retreat is frequently cited in New Zealand tourism coverage as an early adopter of regenerative tourism practice.
### Programmes
Aro Hā's core offering is its Revive & Thrive programme, run in a seven-day Signature format and a five-day Essential format. It also hosts specialty retreats with visiting educators across themes including breathwork, nutrition, leadership and resilience, in five- or seven-day durations. Group sizes are deliberately small, which the operator links to the ability to tailor the programme and manage safety on the hiking components.
### Group and corporate capability
Aro Hā markets a dedicated corporate wellbeing offering. This includes exclusive retreat packages aimed at executive teams or selected groups of high-value clients, with private booking available so the property is not shared with other guests. Preferential corporate pricing is offered depending on group size and the degree of exclusivity required.
For MICE purposes, Aro Hā is not a conference venue in the usual sense - it has no advertised plenary or exhibition space and the programme structure is fixed around wellness activity. Its relevance is to a narrower set of applications: senior leadership offsites, board-level retreats, high-end client incentive rewards, and executive resilience or burnout-prevention programmes. Buyers should treat it as a whole-of-property, whole-of-programme booking rather than a venue hire, and should confirm maximum group capacity and exact exclusivity terms directly, as these are not consistently published. For Queenstown-based conferences it is more likely to function as a pre- or post-event extension for a small VIP cohort than as a mainstream delegate activity.
See more Queenstown incentive activities.
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