Claire and Nigel Shatford have four children, and have both worked busy professional careers. We would look forward to one or two weekends in each year in which we could escape to a place of peace and quiet and just take a couple of days to recharge. Occasionally we would not get it quite right and ended up in family-style accommodation, leaving us feeling as though we should have brought the kids and feeling guilty, or occasionally wishing that we weren't having to suffer other people's kids being kids!. Love Hanmer Retreat became available for us to purchase and develop as a retreat for adults in 2016. Our guests love it and so we decided to create another retreat to give them an alternative destination in the South Island. In 2017 we turned the Punakaiki Treehouse into the Love Punakaiki Retreat. At Punakaiki, the guests enjoy staying in the midst of the New Zealand native wilderness, in a treehouse! Our final ideal, was to be able to offer a seaside retreat and the village of Akaroa was the obvious choice of destination. Love Akaroa has been born through the feedback of our guests at Love Hanmer and Love Punakaiki. We have learnt what you love and we have done our very best to roll that all into one in the Love Akaroa Retreat. We hope you love it as much as we do.
