Booked out: The death of the cheap, easy camping holiday

Camping was meant to be the classic New Zealand summer holiday. Then it got competitive.

Like Frujus and overcooked barbecued sausages, camping is a pillar of our national summer identity. And like many New Zealanders, I grew up on it, both as a kid and as a young adult – not the fancy kind, where you take two cars, one for the people and one for the gear, and set up as if to live in a makeshift community until the apocalypse comes. Ours was the more common kind: you throw everything in the boot at the last minute, discover you’ve brought the tent with the broken zip, and spend the first night getting bitten so badly it looks like you have chicken pox. (Ask me how I know.)

Still, once you’ve made the initial investment in gear, camping is fun (to some), relaxing (to some), and easy on the bank account. Or at least it used to be.

The Airbnb-ification of everything has pushed up prices across every kind of accommodation, and inflation has crept into every corner of consumer life (except drugs). For families without a bach bought by their grandparents off a farmer for threepence a hundred years ago, camping was the fallback. And having not hammered in a tent peg for the duration of their lives, I wanted my two kids to experience nights in tents too hot to sleep in, 30 metres away from teenagers with Bluetooth speakers blasting into the night. So, at the admittedly late hour of late October, I went looking for somewhere north of Auckland for two adults and two children to camp.

I thought this was reasonable. Not early, exactly. I’m not the sort of organised, functional adult who books in August, and I’m certainly not the devoted camper who finishes one summer holiday by booking the next. Reader, I was wrong.

I opened the DOC website, typed in approximate dates in office-closure January and hit search. The Department of Conservation laughed at me. Not literally, but the effect was the same. Every popular coastal spot north of Auckland was either full or didn’t take bookings. Convincing a non-camping family to go camping is hard enough. Convincing them to go without a booking is another matter.

So I widened the search. We could go private. Matauri Bay Holiday Park, right beside the bay, with the Cavalli Islands offshore and the Rainbow Warrior resting beneath the waves: $140 a night, no availability. Mangawhai Heads Holiday Park was $94 a night, which sounded fine until I saw it was (again) full. Pakari Beach Holiday Park wanted $460 for four nights, about $115 a night for an unpowered site. Top 10 in Russell – $120 a night, also unpowered. Elliot Bay Campground looked charmingly lo-fi, with an equally lo-fi booking system: no website, an amateur Instagram, no rates in sight.

For comparison, I tried motels. Acacia Lodge Motel in Mangonui wanted $350 a night, One Tree Point Motel $1,220 for four. An Airbnb in Pukenui was $1,519 for four nights but slept seven. Kotare Cottage on Ninety Mile Beach came in at $1,006, which sounds fine until you learn it sits behind the main house and you’d be sharing the barbecue.

Against all that, DOC’s standard unpowered site remains the benchmark: $25 a night per adult, $12.50 per child, infants free. For a family of four, that’s about $75 a night, or $300 for four nights. Lovely. The inflation-free summer holiday dream. The problem is getting one.

In desperation, I emailed DOC to find out when it got so hard to book a camping site. Visitor services manager Cameron Hyland declined an interview but replied with answers to my assumed questions. “DOC campsites are a popular option for people wanting to enjoy some of our most beautiful places, particularly over the summer holidays,” he wrote, adding that some of the more popular sites book out quickly over Christmas and New Year. Was affordability driving demand? “While affordability may be one factor in their popularity, we wouldn’t want to speculate on what’s driving demand without looking at the booking data.”

His advice: try lesser-known sites, travel outside peak periods, consider midweek stays, stay flexible on location, and plan ahead. “Sometimes the lesser-known places offer the best experiences,” he said.

So, as you may have guessed, we’re not going camping this summer. Camping is still worth it (once you have all the gear). It’s just harder to book than a music festival ticket, can cost almost as much as a motel, and is significantly more likely to involve arguments and itchy bites. So: book early. Book very early. Or embrace the chaos, turn up early to campsites that don’t take bookings and hope for the best. It may not be relaxing, but, at the very least, you’ll have an adventure.