Holiday park provider extends reach to five new locations

Holiday park provider extends its reach to five new locations in New Zealand

New Zealand’s largest holiday park chain has further expanded its reach, adding another five destinations to its portfolio.

TOP 10 Holiday Parks Group now has 50 parks around the country after recently acquiring locations at Paihia in the Bay of Islands, Motutere Bay near Taupo, Cambridge, Ross Beach on the West Coast and Beachaven in Waihi. Geraldine was added earlier this year.

Pahia Park

Chief executive David Ovendale says the company is still eyeing further growth, confident in its ability to add value to holiday parks looking to increase their business levels and profitability.

“Our aim is to grow strategically while maintaining our unwavering commitment to quality and to creating a great experience for our visitors in whichever of our holiday parks they stay at throughout the country. We’re not about growth for growth’s sake. Any growth cannot be to the detriment of the premium brand we’ve built over the past 35 years.”

Ovendale says the goal is to fill any strategic gaps with high quality holiday park product so that its customers have the best possible choice of holiday destinations across New Zealand.

The holiday park sector provides 36% of New Zealand’s commercial accommodation capacity and 20% of commercial guest nights. In the year ended September 2017 holiday parks provided 7,756,897 guest nights, four per cent up on the previous year.

TOP 10’s visitor numbers are more or less evenly split between Kiwis and international tourists, largely from the more traditional markets of Australia, UK, US, Germany, France, and Switzerland. There are a growing, but still small, numbers of customers from South East Asian countries and China.

Ovendale says the focus is on customers who want quality accommodation and for whom value is a key consideration; families, younger couples without children and active retirees.

Earlier this year, TOP 10 segmented their parks into three tiers - Premium, Superior and Classic - to help customers with their choice and ensure customer expectations are met on arrival in a park.

The move followed extensive research which showed that many visitors wanted to better understand what to expect before arrival at a park such as heated swimming pools, wifi and more amenities and facilities than the traditional holiday park offering.

“Segmentation allows us do a better job at ensuring customer expectations and reality will be more closely aligned where it matters, on arrival at a holiday park.”

While staying at holiday parks, guests contribute over $1 billion in direct expenditure to local
communities. Approximately $612 million (60%) of the expenditure is from domestic travelers with the balance of $405 million (40%) spent by international travelers.

“There’s really solid growth in the sector and holiday parks have recently been out-performing the growth being seen in other areas of the accommodation sector including hotels, motels and back-packers.”

Ovendale says successful camping grounds are those that have a broad range of amenities, great customer service, and clean facilities.

“A growing trend is, where possible, for parks to have zones so different interest groups can do different things without impacting others. Our ultimate goal is to deliver ‘memories for life, in amazing places, with the people who matter the most.’”

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