This weekend the four North Island-based teams – the Blues, Chiefs, Hurricanes and new entrants Moana Pasifika – will travel by charter plane to Queenstown. The Crusaders and Highlanders will, meanwhile, travel via bus.
The Blues' preseason match on Saturday – scheduled for Takapuna's Onewa Domain – will now be played in Wellington en route south.
The six teams will be based in separate hotels. Day games will be played in Queenstown while teams will endure a four-hour round trip to Invercargill for night matches.
"There will be other members of the public in those hotels but our players will be completely isolated and have no interaction with those other guests," Lendrum said. "They'll have their own entry and exit. They'll be required to stay in their team bubble the whole time."
Players will be permitted some freedoms such as rounds of golf or swimming in the lake while adhering to wearing masks and distancing.
"We are going to give them the opportunity to have some personal freedoms to exercise and get outside the hotel so they won't be confined to barracks but they'll have to follow all the other protocols."
Lendrum acknowledged the unforeseen sacrifice players were making, and that some may choose to opt out.
"It's really tough in terms of having to be away on an unplanned basis from family but I hope it's also exciting. Our players want to play; to do what they love. This gives them the best opportunity to do that without disruption. It's not foolproof, and there's no guarantees, but this gives us the best chance of getting these games away.
"Most players have come to the conclusion that it's a necessary step and are really supportive. I'm sure not everyone is 100 per cent thrilled because it's not the plan you want but people get it.
"I expect the start of this competition will see most, if not all, of the stars we're used to seeing in Super Rugby."
Teams will have the ability to replace injured players but the number of new entrants to the bubbles will be limited for risk of compromising the entire scheme.
The Queenstown bubble base will be used for a maximum of four weeks. At this point, there are no contingency plans for when teams return to their home bases.
"The incredible nature of the spike that's been modelled at the moment is hard for everyone to get their heads around I suspect," Lendrum said. "Quite what we'll have to do to respond to that at the time I don't know.
"We're committed to getting these players home on a definite timeline and we'll make further plans in that time. We've stood this bubble up in seven days so it shows what's possible in a short timeframe. A month from today is a lot of time in the Covid world."
Despite speculation from Australia Lendrum indicated there had been no discussions of the New Zealand teams relocating across the ditch to complete the transtasman matches scheduled to begin with the super round in Melbourne on April 22.
"It's a theoretical option but we've done no planning based around that at the moment," Lendrum said. "Our desire is always to play the tournament as close to the current schedule as possible. It won't be an ideal situation if that has to come onto the table as an option.
"Having had our players in Queenstown for three or four weeks and further down the track asking them to relocate to Australia for a period of time doesn't really feel palatable."
Contingency plans are yet to be formulated but NZ Rugby remains committed to staging Super Rugby Aupiki, the maiden season of the women's competition due to run from March 5 to 27. At this point, the most likely scenario is a later start date.
"Super Rugby Aupiki is a priority for ust," Lendrum said. "It's a slightly different type of competition to Super Rugby; we've got mostly part-time employees playing in that tournament and it's far more condensed so we have to sit back now and assess when the best time to play that is – whether it's in the existing window or we move that back slightly. Options like a hub are available as well."
