Host Responsibility

Entry to The Albion Room is restricted to people aged 20 years or older. That is a legal minimum rather than a house preference, and no discretion attaches to it.

• Photo identification is checked at the door on every visit. Not the first visit — every visit.
• Accepted: a New Zealand driver licence, a passport, a New Zealand 18+ card, or a Kiwi Access Card.
• A person who cannot produce identification is not admitted, however obviously they are over twenty and whoever they are staying with.
• Anyone found inside the room who is under 20 is asked to leave at once and the incident goes in the venue log.
• Nobody under 20 may be issued gaming credit from a hotel package, collect a prize, or be present at a table.

This website also asks an age question on entry. It is a reminder rather than a barrier, and it is no substitute for the identification check at the door.

Part of harm minimisation is procedure. Part of it is the physical room, and the room was built with this in mind.

• There are no cash machines on the gaming floor. The nearest is at reception, thirty-five metres and one corridor away. The walk is deliberate.
• There is a clock on each of the four walls, analogue, readable from every machine and every table.
• The windows are not covered. Three of them face the terrace and the sea, so the daylight outside is always visible.
• The room closes at 2.30am, seven days a week, public holidays and New Year’s Eve included. It is emptied and locked; there is no lock-in and there never has been.
• Alcohol is not served free of charge to anyone who is playing, and service stops for any guest who appears intoxicated, in the gaming room as everywhere else in the hotel.
• No credit is extended. No cheques, no IOUs, no advance against a room account. Gaming spend cannot be charged to a room.

• Player information brochures, in English and te reo Māori, in a rack by the door, restocked daily.
• Signage on the odds of the games offered, and on the fact that gaming machines do not become “due”.
• This policy, displayed in full on the wall by the entrance.
• The helpline numbers below, on every machine and on the back of every table card.
• A written record of any harm-related interaction, kept in the venue log for the period the Act requires.

Any person may exclude themselves from The Albion Room. You do not have to give a reason and you will not be asked for one.

• It is arranged in writing and confidentially with the duty manager, in an office rather than at the door. It takes about ten minutes.
• You choose the length, from three months to two years, and it can be extended.
• A photograph is taken with your consent and held securely, seen only by staff on duty in the gaming room, and destroyed when the order ends.
• An exclusion order covers the gaming room only. The rest of the hotel — your room, the restaurant, the bar, the bathhouse — stays open to you exactly as before.
• Nobody at the front desk raises it with you again. Not at check-in, not at checkout, not on a later visit.
• If you enter in breach of an order we are required to remove you, and we do it quietly.

A multi-venue exclusion covering other venues in the city can also be arranged. Ask the duty manager and they will make the call for you.

Every member of staff who works in or near The Albion Room completes host responsibility training before their first shift and refresher training every twelve months. That covers the croupiers, the duty managers, and the reception staff who see people walk out of the room at two in the morning.

Training deals with the indicators of harm that are observable in a room this size: playing for long unbroken periods, returning repeatedly to reception for cash, visible distress, anger at a machine, asking to borrow money, or asking us to hide their presence from someone. Staff are expected to approach the person quietly and away from other guests, and to offer information and the option of exclusion.

No member of staff is paid a bonus, commission or incentive connected to gaming turnover. Nobody here gains anything from a guest staying in that room longer.

If you believe we have not met this policy, ask for the duty manager, who is on the premises at all hours. To raise it away from the venue, write to [email protected] or telephone +64 3 455 2180; that reaches the general manager rather than the gaming room.

You may also complain directly to the Department of Internal Affairs, the regulator for gambling in New Zealand, at dia.govt.nz. You do not need to tell us that you have done so.