About us

Hot Tubs Omarama is owned and managed by Lance and Jan Thomas. Lance and Jan have a passion for the High Country; Lance was born and grew up in Cattle Creek in the Waitaki Valley.

Now that their own family have grown up, they are ready for the next exciting adventure. Lance and Jan have enjoyed their own European style Hot Tub for some years and during a trip to Japan experienced Japanese Onsen. They are now keen to introduce others to the luxurious pleasure of soaking in a beautifully constructed wooden hot tub.

Establishing Hot Tubs Omarama brought together Jan and Lance’s love of the High Country and their full bodied enthusiasm for the hot tub experience! + read more »

“Kiwis have to learn to relax. They've got to learn to stop and take time out and this is just ideal. This is just perfect,” says Jan Thomas above.

Acknowledgements.

Lance and Jan would like to acknowledge the following people and businesses which worked with them and offered huge amounts of support in setting up Hot Tubs Omarama, this is by no means a complete list and if you are not mentioned and would like to be please let us know. info@hottubsomarama.co.nz

Firstly Berend Folkerts of Lignum Hot Tubs is the craftsman who makes the Hot Tubs, Wellness Pods and Saunas and designed the submersible fireboxes, Berend was also a major influence in the initial concept and design of the whole layout and without his knowledge, expertise and belief that it would work the whole idea would have remained just that, an idea! See their website here

Bob Hall helped out with consultancy between Ecan and us, say no more about that lengthy process.

Kerry Turner of Arkwrights Irrigation & Engineering planned the water systems including irrigation, sewerage, pumps, water storage and return. See their website here

Phil Gilchrist of Southern Automation provided all the innovative electrical work and brought Phillips on board for the lighting which was specially designed to minimize light pollution.

Thanks to Kev Tonner of Hi Flo Plumbing for the extensive plumbing networks of taps and pipes and fittings and things to do with water of which there are plenty, & for “geeing” us along on the darker days when we really doubted we would make it.

Roselyn and Geoff Cloake of Cloake Creative are responsible for the Website, photography and brand development. See their portfolio here

Doug and Cheryl Leamann contract diggers for digging innumerable trenches and moving lots of gravel and rocks from here to there.

Gutsy and the Aitken family of Temuka Transport moved things as needed.

Thank You to South Canterbury Finance who backed us financially in particular Gordon Leslie who believed in us and encouraged us. See their website here

Omarama businesses have also supported us two in particular Trish and James and the staff at The Wrinkly Ram Café kept us fueled up with good food and coffee and Barry at BG Autos kept the vehicles in working order.

All of these businesses and their staff have helped to make Hot Tubs Omarama what it is and have offered us support encouragement and friendship over and above what their jobs required of them and we are very grateful.

Every project requires someone to pull it all together and keep things ticking along as they should and this job certainly needed someone like that, he came in the form of Greenie who was taking a year off to play golf but thought he felt like a little project (I'm not sure he felt like that by the end of it all). May your drives be ever straight and your putting parr excellence Greenie, thank you for putting up with us.

We are also very blessed to have an awesome family and a bunch of very special friends who laboured and toiled and laughed and cried and sung with us as we spent weekends and holidays and eventually all the time up here planting and digging and weeding and lugging rocks and buckets of sand and gravel and that is all before we really got started. So to Salim, Bree, Perry, Marchell and Yukari, Frank (No 2), Les, Kris, Jan, Leila and Belinda thanks for making us put our “Big girl knickers on and helping us to deal with it”.

Campbell Live reports:

Hot Tub paradise in the Mackenzie Basin - Filmed by Campbell Live

As winter settles in on the edge of the Mackenzie Basin a new venture is steaming up the landscape. It took nine years to get resource consent but red tape and a recession was not going to stop one determined South Island couple from launching their dream tourist business. Lance and Jan Thomas have started a hot tubs business designed to soak away travelers care...

View video on Campbell Live!

NZ Herald writes:

There can be few simpler or more pleasurable experiences than observing this shining winter landscape while immersed in soothing hot water. The crackle of the log burner, the scent of wood smoke - basic sensory rewards that somehow feel so luxurious. Hot Tubs Omarama is the newest and most surprising attraction in north Otago's Waitaki Valley, an area fast becoming less of a crossroads than a tourist destination in its own right.
Read article on the Hot Tubs