“Best Boutique Retirement Village”
This category celebrates smaller, premium retirement villages in New Zealand, typically comprising 10 to 50 dwellings and offering an intimate, community-focused living experience. Voters should consider villages that provide high-quality, personalized services, strong resident-staff relationships, exclusive amenities like wellness centers and on-site dining, and a warm, tailored atmosphere overseen by a dedicated village manager.
How Facilities Qualify
To qualify for an award, facilities must receive a minimum of three reviews within the previous 12-month period and have five or more reviews within the last three years to qualify. AgedAdvisor does not charge for entry into the awards, and provides freepost forms for residents to post in, ensuring no facility is disadvantaged. “These winners not only demonstrate a commitment to providing the best care possible, they’ve set the bar high for others to follow.”
Award Categories
The awards include finalists and winners in North and South island locations, plus a nationwide award. The size categories are:
Aged Care:
- Small (less than 40 beds)
- Medium – Large (41 – 101+ beds)
Independent Living Retirement / Lifestyle Villages:
- Small (up to 80 ORA/LTO Units/Homes)
- Medium – Large (81 – 251+ ORA/LTO Units/Homes)
How We Calculate the Winners
So, with all these positive reviews rolling in, how do we accurately calculate the winners when the larger facilities receive more reviews and votes due to the number of residents? When developing these awards, we decided a method was needed to smooth results so that a 20-bed facility had the same chances as a 120-bed facility. The answer lay in consultation with the University of Canterbury, where working together with AgedAdvisor they developed a series of algorithms to calculate the ratio and mean score of reviews over a 12-month period. Facilities with more residents were aggregated by the number of ‘reviews to residents ratio’ to reflect a true score across all villages.
2022/23 Stats
For those of us who enjoy a few stats, the 2022/23 year included some interesting results with 85% ticking ‘would recommend their village or care facility to a friend’, and another 85% rating their village 4 & 5 stars: great to excellent. For popular describing words, we couldn’t beat ‘Friendly (14.41%)’ and ‘Staff’ (24.28%) – perhaps these two descriptors could give villages a hint as to where to spend their budget in recruiting the right people who will be popular with residents!