Beyond Milford Sound: Discover the South Island’s Best-Kept Rural Escape

The journey doesn’t have to end when your day’s sightseeing does.

For many travellers, Milford Sound is one of the great highlights of visiting New Zealand. Towering cliffs, deep fiords, cascading waterfalls and extraordinary wilderness make Piopiotahi / Milford Sound a place people travel halfway around the world to experience.

But what if the most memorable part of your South Island adventure wasn’t just the famous destination?

What if it was the place you discovered along the way?

There’s More to Southern New Zealand Than Queenstown and Milford Sound

Beyond the busy tourist centres lies a different side of New Zealand — open countryside, small rural towns, cycling adventures, welcoming communities and places where the pace of life feels wonderfully different.

One such place is Lumsden, a small Northern Southland township connecting the journeys between Queenstown, Fiordland, Invercargill and the wider South.

It’s the kind of place where you can trade the crowds for open skies, discover local history, explore beautiful countryside or simply enjoy time away from the usual rush.

Discover IN8 DESiGN HUB

In the heart of Lumsden, IN8 DESiGN HUB offers a refreshingly different approach to accommodation.

Rather than a conventional hotel, IN8 is a small, character-filled collection of individually designed buildings, with shared spaces for cooking, gathering, relaxing and exchanging ideas.

There’s room for groups of up to 15 overnight guests, with welcoming communal areas, comfortable sleeping spaces, outdoor decks and the kind of rustic personality that’s difficult to reproduce in a standard holiday apartment.

Here, the idea isn’t simply to find somewhere to sleep.

It’s to discover somewhere worth spending time.

Make Your South Island Holiday an Experience, Not a Checklist

A stay in Northern Southland can become part of a wider adventure.

Spend time exploring Queenstown, plan a memorable journey into Fiordland, take a bicycle ride through the surrounding countryside or discover the communities and landscapes that make this part of New Zealand so distinctive.

IN8 also offers bicycle hire and repair services, making it particularly appealing for active travellers and people exploring the Around the Mountains Cycle Trail.

For families and groups of friends travelling together, the shared accommodation offers something especially valuable: a chance to reconnect at the end of each day.

Cook together. Share stories. Plan tomorrow’s adventure. Enjoy having space to spread out.

A Different Kind of New Zealand Memory

It’s easy to remember the most photographed destinations.

But often the memories that stay with us are the unexpected ones: conversations around a table, an evening under a huge Southland sky, discovering somewhere we hadn’t planned to visit.

That’s the experience we’re creating at IN8 DESiGN HUB.

A place to gather, explore and recharge.

Travelling through Southern New Zealand? Discover IN8 DESiGN HUB in Lumsden and make the journey part of the destination.

Explore accommodation and group stays at www.in8.nz