If you think Raglan’s been looking fuller than ever this Christmas-New Year, you’d be right.
Accommodation providers says it’s been a boomer summer so far as people turn back to the traditional Kiwi holiday, and there’s little sign of a letup despite the sometimes windy weather.
Rob Clark – now into his eighth year as boss of Kopua Holiday Park – says it’s definitely the busiest summer ever for the bulging council-owned campground, which caters for everything from tent and van sites to de luxe tourist flats.
People are coming earlier and staying longer, he says, with both December and January bookings up on last summer’s. The trend is to more and more families – and fewer of the younger party set.
“Everything’s ticking over rather nicely,” he says. And early this week, even though many holidaymakers headed off over the weekend, the campground was still “comfortably full”.
It’ll be that way all this month, he reckons, with weekends “chokka”. Even then, he adds, none of the 17 units will be free until February, having been booked solidly since mid-December.
Rob, whose work day typically ends about 10pm after he’s struggled to find a few spaces for transients, has often had to turn campers away. He estimates that up to 1500 people are packed into the campground which has 300 sites but insufficient facilities to expand further.
A new toilet block was added to the grounds just before Christmas 2008, he says, but while camping can spill onto the soccer fields if need be it still becomes a strain on the facilities.
Solscape Eco Retreat overlooking Manu Bay has also been super-busy, reports owner Phil McCabe who took on what was then Raglan Wagon Cabins in 1992. As with the town’s holiday park the rush “started a bit earlier” this summer, he says, with people booking into cabooses, cabins, tipi, tent and van sites before Christmas rather than after as usual.
And that “busy-ness is continuing at the moment … people are happy with Raglan”.
The weather, he reckons, is “not epic but good enough”.
Back downtown, Raglan Information Centre manager Noleen McCathie agrees that visitor numbers are holding up well. All overseas people coming through the doors are wanting to stay on, she says, and not go back to the northern hemisphere.
The centre has been “busy, busy, busy”, she reports, but staff have coped and managed to put everyone in accommodation, with no double bookings. “That’s a first,” she says.
Meanwhile, Raglan’s emergency services have been quiet despite the crowds, which peaked downtown with the annual New Year’s street parade. Police say only two arrests were made on the night of New Year’s Eve while St John Ambulance team manager Bush Barton says also it was a “fairly quiet” time. Seven callouts last weekend however – four accident-related and three medical – made up for the lull, he says.
Out at Ngarunui Beach, daily onshore winds seem to have kept huge crowds away so far, says Raglan Surf Life Saving Club captain Debbie Phillips-Morgan. A few rescues this season have been made, she adds, and at least five known rips have kept swimmers and lifeguards on their toes. “Flash-rips” which come and go at any time are also proving a hazard.
However out-of-towners have been flocking to the shops, with Raglan Four Square supermarket’s customer numbers, for example, up four percent this holiday season compared to last and the dollar count double that of last time around.
“That’s more people spending more,” says supermarket owner Richard Jacobsen.
Just last week, he says, they had almost 13,000 customers, 576 more than in the same week last year. Yet checkout queues are not as long as in Whangamata for instance, he adds, where customers have apparently had to wait up to 45 minutes.
Meantime queues of holidaymakers at the local BP service station have been “normal” for this time of year, reports owner Graham Garrett, and business has run “like clockwork”.
Edith Symes
