Happy campers eager to come back for a lot more

Visited the Waihi Beach Top 10 Holiday Resort lately? This beachside business offers a range of accommodation and facilities more akin to a Club Med than a traditional Kiwi camping ground.
Ian Smith left a school principal's job in Auckland in 1995 and moved to the Bay with partner Vicky to take over the Waihi Beach Holiday Park lease. Their goal was to transform a run-down camping ground with few repeat customers into a great holiday park experience which would keep guests returning.
And they've succeeded.
Turnover has grown strongly, averaging 17 per cent year-on-year growth, and some years as high as 25 per cent. Waihi Beach was a finalist in the 2010 Tourism Industry Awards.
Last year they rebranded the holiday park as a holiday resort. It was a reflection of the way visitors now perceive it, with its new swimming-pool complex, sauna, spa, indoor family room, kids' club and holiday programme, said Mr Smith, a director of Tourism Bay of Plenty.
At the same time, they had been careful to ensure the park retained its Kiwi holiday atmosphere.
"That's important, not only for our domestic market but for international guests who come here for an authentic Kiwi experience," said Mr Smith. "They want to talk and interact with Kiwis and see how we do camping."
That's another thing that's different about holiday parks. These days you are just as likely to rub shoulders with a Frenchman or Australian in the communal kitchen as a New Zealander.
In the 15 years Ian and Vicky have run Waihi Beach holiday resort, they've grown international visitors from 3 per cent to almost 30 per cent of guests.
"First time round many overseas visitors are campervanning around New Zealand. Once they discover that holiday parks have a lot of fixed accommodation they say let's come back with a car," said Mr Smith.
"New Zealand holiday parks are no longer just camping grounds. Many also have a number of good quality accommodation units which add hugely to number of guest nights.
"For our business, one third is campervan, another third is privately owned caravans and the remaining third fixed accommodation which ranges from standard cabins to deluxe family park motels."
Originally a goldminers' camp, the Waihi Beach resort is one of the oldest holiday parks in New Zealand, dating back to 1899.
Years ago Mr Smith got a note from a local whose father had been a miner and grandmother the camp cook. Over the past few years he has been searching out old stories and photos of the park and beach, transforming them into newspaper-style storyboards he puts up around the grounds to give visitors a better understanding of the area, what New Zealand was like in the early days and how important camping was.
He's also created storyboards featuring people who work in the park, about local Maori myths, and the area's flora and fauna, including the eels that populate the stream running through the grounds.
"We've got one billboard about our gardener. It tells the story of how he moved to New Zealand from Niue when he fell in love, worked in the goldmines and then came here when he retired. People see him working around the grounds and talk to him. It just builds the whole visitor experience," said Mr Smith.
He likens a holiday park to a small community. "Over the years I've had to deal with deaths, people who've proposed, got married and come back later with the kids. I've walked in and found young couples having a kiss in the laundry. It goes on and on. I see the generations coming and going.
"We had one couple who had the same camp site for 80 years. He passed away two years ago. Before that, he told me this place was as much home to their kids and grandchildren as their own home has been," said Mr Smith.
Late last year Ian and Vicky bought Beach Haven Holiday Park, just down the beach.
"Some of the locals were delighted. The park had gone downhill and they knew we would turn it around," said Mr Smith. It will be more a traditional holiday park, not a resort, but still a quality operation.
Holiday parks are the backbone of small communities, such as Waihi Beach.
"We are one of the beach's biggest employers," he said. "This summer we'll employ 17 cleaners and nine full-time staff. We put through 50,000 guest nights a year, which generates about $5 million in visitor spend - 10 per cent in accommodation costs, and the rest is spread throughout the local community."
Four holiday parks are within a 10km stretch of each other near Waihi Beach. They put through a total of about 100,000 guest nights, which is $10-$15 million they are pumping back into the economy.
"I believe that if the holiday parks weren't here, we wouldn't have four restaurants on the beach, and we wouldn't have a shopping centre that caters to local community and visitors," said Mr Smith.