Wotif.com school holiday survey reveals parents prepared to pay for decent break with children.
Press Release –13th April 2006 www.wotif.com Wotif.com, New Zealand’s leading online accommodation website has surveyed
kiwi parents to get an understanding of how they like to travel and spend time on school holidays.
Wotif.com used its database of some 20,000 loyal New Zealand customers to pose 14 questions based around holidaying with
children and according to New Zealand Manager Tania Witheford, some interesting insights can be drawn from the results.
The questions provided Wotif.com with insights on; the type of accommodation people look for, what facilities are
important to their holiday, what is their favourite destination within New Zealand and offshore, how many hours they are
prepared to travel, and the all important question, how much they are prepared to spend on accommodation.
Hotel or apartment hotel living was the most popular form of accommodation followed by self-contained apartments and
motels.
On the question of what sort of facilities they looked for, a whopping 52% considered a swimming pool or spa pool as the
number one draw-card, followed by a request for separate bedrooms. Only 12% wanted cooking facilities, and surprisingly
only 5% wanted a kids club or the availability of a child minding service.
“A conclusion you could draw from that is that working parents actually want to spend quality time with their kids and
enjoy family holidays, as opposed to getting minding services in and going out alone,”said Mrs Witheford.
The ideal school holiday break showed a clear preference with most respondents wanting to spend time at a beach, second
place was a holiday in a city and third equal was shared by people wanting to travel to the country or to the snow!
“Whether people like to travel by plane or car and how many hours they are prepared to travel, was also revealing,” said
added Mrs Witheford.
The results indicated that parents are quite happy to spend four hours or more with their children travelling by car or
plane.
“This shows with the advent of hand held computer and play station games, travelling with children for four hours or
more appears relatively painless,” said Mrs Witheford.
So how much are parents prepared to pay per night for school holiday accommodation?
The majority were prepared to pay between $100 to $149 per night, while second preferred amount was between $150 to $199
per night.
There was a vast drop, however, in percentage points for those happy to pay between $200 - $249 per night.
The top five favourite North Island holiday regions ranked in order;
1. Northland
2. Bay of Plenty region
3. Hawkes Bay
4. Wellington
5. Auckland
The top five favourite South Island regions ranked;
1. Nelson/Tasman
2. Otago
3. Canterbury
4. Marlborough
5. Southland
The top five international destinations
1. Gold Coast
2. Fiji
3. Sunshine Coast
4. Melbourne
5. Cook Islands
ENDS