New Zealand Campervan Holiday Why

New Zealand Campervan holiday as opposed to an organised group coach tour. In this post, I’ll discuss the pros and cons.

 The changing face of modern holidays

In New Zealand, the general trend today is a New Zealand campervan holiday. Moving away from the traditional organised group tours that are usually accompanied by a tour escort or tour guide. However, the advantage of this is that you usually get a running commentary from the tour guide who are generally very knowledgeable, always available to sort out problems and able to give you the best advice on shopping, places to go and things to do.

However, these types of tours tend to be a lot more expensive and extremely limiting as to the time you are able to spend at various attractions, places to take photographs and time to just catch your breath and relax.

Today the trend is to go on self-drive New Zealand Campervan holidays, which allows you to have so much more freedom. Whilst you can visit all of the regular attractions, enjoy the same scenery, it also gives you the opportunity to spend more time at certain locations that are of interest to you and enables you to go to other places that are not on the standard itinerary of the organised tours.

New Zealand Campervan Holiday touring advantages

There can also be some significant savings by driving yourself, especially in a campervan. When on tour you normally stay at relatively high-class hotels. Eat in hotels or nearby restaurants and don’t have the same ability to be able to pick and choose where what and when to eat, like you do with a New Zealand campervan holiday. You save money as your daily fee covers both vehicle and accommodation.

Freedom of choice

You have the freedom to choose which attractions you want to see or activities you want to do.

Holidaying in a campervan allows you to:-

Have a sleep in, in the morning then decide what you are going to do for the day.

• Will you go mountain biking?
• Swimming?
• Visit that special attraction?
• Have a day shopping?
• Travel on to your next destination?
• Just stay here and try your hand at catching something for dinner?

Campervans today and facilities that are available

The modern campervan today is fully equipped with stoves, ovens, all the utensils you need, bedding and yes even toilets and showers. We call these units “self-contained” and give you the ability, in many areas of New Zealand, to freedom camp. Most of the campsites around New Zealand welcome campervans and whilst many of them do not have cooking and showering facilities they usually do have a toilet of some sort or the other.

Travelling distances on your New Zealand Campervan holiday don’t tend to be that far and availability of supermarkets, fuel stations and dump stations (to get rid of your waste) are never far away.

There is a wide range of campsites to choose from. Privately owned campgrounds that specialise in accommodating campervans, public or council owned campsites that tend to be very clean, tidy and have very good facilities.

Then we have the DOC (Department of Conservation) camping grounds, which generally are very inexpensive but have absolute minimum facilities. E.g. a long drop toilet and if you are very lucky, a cold shower. These DOC campsites are usually in prime locations, on beaches, in beautiful forested areas, by lakes or alongside clean running streams. DOC campsites are strictly “Pack In Pack Out”, meaning whatever you take in you must take out. Rubbish or waste human, organic and inorganic. This is to preserve our natural surroundings and help with New Zealand’s conservation. There is also a number of “Freedom camping sites“, but caution is needed here to make sure you are allowed to stop overnight.

Don’t miss out on anything the organised tours do or see

With the help and experience of sites like this one and many others, we are able to provide you with all the information, tips and hints that you would ever want for your campervan holiday in New Zealand

In this post, I have covered a lot of the questions and answers you may have had. However please do not hesitate to email me, via the Contact page, with anything that I can help you with further.

So now it is up to you to go book that holiday, gleam this and other sites for information and have an Awesome Time.

Have you been on a New Zealand campervan holiday?

Want to go on a New Zealand campervan holiday?

Then tell us all about it in the comments sections below.