8 October 2012
Renowned Queenstown Holiday Park receives platinum recognition
The team at Queenstown’s most environmentally conscious holiday park is celebrating news of a world-beating Platinum
EarthCheck award.
Queenstown’s Top 10 Holiday Park Creeksyde is the first holiday park in the world to be awarded Platinum status, putting
it in a category that only a handful of businesses from around the world have managed to achieve.
EarthCheck is an internationally-recognised environmental management and certification programme designed for the travel
and tourism industry. Members are able to competitively benchmark the efficiency of their operations against
internationally-compliant standards of best practice.
EarthCheck businesses are benchmarked against ever-evolving criteria, with stringent annual audits including a full
on-site audit of the complete operation every second year. Creeksyde has just achieved its tenth EarthCheck
certification.
Creeksyde owner Erna Spijkerbosch said she was “absolutely thrilled” with the acknowledgement and recognition of the
business’s efforts towards sustainable practice.
“Working with EarthCheck keeps the business on its toes in every aspect of our operation,” she said.
“Benchmarking tests our operations and we’re graded as either ‘benchmark’, ‘best practice’, or ‘better than best
practice’.
“In most cases we’re consistently achieving ‘better than best practice’ and are proud of this.”
In keeping with its environmentally conscious stance and its standing as an EarthCheck certified destination, Mrs
Spijkerbosch said Creeksyde’s latest project had been to re-work the recycling sorting area at the holiday park to help
improve aesthetics and divert even more waste from landfill.
“It’s modelled a little bit on a ‘Steptoe and Son’ yard, similar to the one made famous by the BBC series in the UK many
years ago,” said Mrs Spijkerbosch.
“Eighteen months ago we launched our fabulous Oast House which as anyone who’s visited our park will know, is our very
‘unique’ ablutions block featuring artwork by our nephew Marc.
“When it came to remodelling our recycling area, we wanted to make it just as fabulous, so we’ve had our talented nephew
do another amazing paint job for us.”
Marc Spijkerbosch is a world-renowned ‘trompe l’oeil’* artist. His latest piece for Creeksyde acts as a ‘curtain’ to the
recycling area, screening the back-of-house area from guests while also drawing attention to and promoting recycling
efforts.
“We’ve managed to make a recycling area look interesting, using reusable materials and creating an interesting and
functional area for staff to work,” said Mrs Spijkerbosch.
“The new screen is decorative and educational, adding to the ‘self-marketing’ concepts in the park, by which I mean that
guests take lots of photos, spread the message by word-of-mouth and through social media, and often come back to the
park, even when they’re not staying with us, to show their friends.
“It’s rather entertaining as we see more and more guests reaching for their cameras when going to the toilets and
depositing their rubbish.”
Creeksyde is a full holiday accommodation park with a wide range of sites and cross section of accommodation. For
reservations go to www.camp.co.nz
* Trompe l’oeil is a technique used in realistic paintings to trick the eye, especially through the use of perspective
to create an illusion of three-dimensionality
ENDS