Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort

If your last experience of a New Zealand holiday park is pre-2000, then it’s time to take another look at Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort.

Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort
Holiday Parks – time to take another look

If your last experience of a New Zealand holiday park is pre-2000, then it’s time to take another look if Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort is anything to go by. This beachside business offers a range of accommodation and facilities more akin to a Club Med than a traditional Kiwi camping ground.

Ian Smith left behind a school principal’s job in Auckland in 1995, moving to the Bay of Plenty town with partner Vicky to take over the lease of the Waihi Beach Holiday Park. Their goal was to transform what was a run-down camping ground with very few repeat customers into a great holiday park experience which would keep guests coming back year after year.
 

And they’ve succeeded. Turnover has grown strongly, averaging 17% year on year growth, and some years as high as 25%.
 

A Kiwi-style resort

Last year they rebranded the holiday park as a holiday resort, a reflection, says Ian, of the way visitors now perceive it, with its new swimming pool complex, sauna, spa, indoor family room, kids club and holiday programme.

At the same time they’ve created a resort-like operation, they have been careful to ensure the park retains its Kiwi holiday park atmosphere.
 

“That’s important, not only for our domestic market but for international guests who come here for an authentic Kiwi experience. They want to talk and interact with Kiwis and see how we do camping,” explains Ian.

That’s another thing that’s different about holiday parks. These days you are just as likely to rub shoulders with a Frenchman or Australian in the communal kitchen as a New Zealander.

In the 15 years Ian and Vicky have run Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort, they’ve grown international visitors from 3% to almost 30% of guests.
 

“First time round many overseas visitor are campervanning around New Zealand. Once they discover that holiday parks have a lot of fixed accommodation they say let’s come back with a car. New Zealand holiday parks are no longer just camping grounds. Many also have a number of good quality accommodation units which add hugely to number of guest nights. For our business, one third is campervan, one third privately owned caravans and one third fixed accommodation which ranges from standard cabins to deluxe family park motels.”
 

Telling stories

Originally a goldminers' camp, Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort is one of the oldest holiday parks in New Zealand, dating back to 1899. Years ago Ian got a note from a local whose father had been a miner and grandmother the camp cook. Over the past few years he has been searching out old stories and photos of the park and beach, transforming them into newspaper-style story boards he puts up around the grounds to give visitors a better understanding of the area, what New Zealand was like in the early days and how important camping was.
 

He’s also created storyboards featuring people who work in the park, about local Maori myths, and the area’s flora and fauna, including the eels that populate the stream that runs through the grounds and fascinate visitors.
 

“We’ve got one billboard about our gardener. It tells the story of how he moved to New Zealand from Niue when he fell in love, worked in the goldmines and then came here when he retired. People see him working around the grounds and talk to him. It just builds the whole visitor experience.”

Death, marriage and young love
 

Ian likens a holiday park is a small community. “Over the years I’ve had to deal with deaths, people who’ve proposed, got married and come back later with the kids. I’ve walked in and found young couples having a kiss in the laundry. It goes on and on. I see the generations coming and going.
 

“We had one couple who had had the same camp site for 80 years. He passed away two years ago. Before that he told me this place was as much home to their kids and grandchildren as their own home has been.”

The park is not just important for the guests who come back year after year, but also for locals.

“We are one of the beach’s biggest employers. This summer we’ll employ 17 cleaners and nine full time staff. We put through 50,000 guest nights a year, which generates about $5 million in visitor spend – 10% in accommodation costs, the rest is spread throughout the local community.”

Backbone of small communities
Late last year Ian and Vicky bought Beach Haven Holiday Park, just down the beach from Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort.
 

“Some of the locals were delighted. The park had gone downhill and they knew we would turn it around.” He says it will be more a traditional holiday park, not a resort, but still a spotless, quality operation.
 

“Holiday parks are the backbone of small communities. There are four holiday parks in Waihi beach within a 10km stretch of each other. They put through a total of about 100,000 guests nights which is about $10 million to $15 million they are pumping back into the economy.
 

“I believe if the holiday parks weren’t here, we wouldn’t have four restaurants on the beach and we wouldn’t have a shopping centre that caters to local community and visitors.”
 

Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort was a finalist in the 2010 Tourism Industry Awards.

Waihi Beach TOP 10 Holiday Resort