7.30.09 | Auckland, New Zealand | Accor has announced plans for an upscale Novotel hotel at Auckland International Airport in New Zealand to be finished in time for Rugby World Cup 2011. Designed by locally based Warren & Mahoney Architects, the 260-room hotel will feature a restaurant and bar, as well as conference facilities; the firm says it will infuse subtle references to New Zealand culture and heritage into the hotel's design.

Warren & Mahoney design director Andrew Barclay said the hotel would be an elegant, contemporary facility which represented the Auckland Airport brand, the cultural heritage of Tainui and the service values of Accor.

"The hotel's high degree of facade transparency, its natural materials and its dramatic/sculpted form are intended to provide a first insight into the essential qualities of New Zealand and its people."