While higher fuel prices have hit grey nomads hard, most would point to the rising cost of caravan park stays as the biggest blow to their budgets.
Sadly, it seems the days of seriously cheap family stays at stunning coastal van parks are now pretty much a distant memory. And, while there is no doubt that the cost of things like energy and insurance made significant site fee increases inevitable, the prices being charged are, in some cases, genuinely eye-watering.
And it is not just privately-owned parks. Quite a few council-owned van parks can also ‘surprise’ guests with the fees being asked.
It all raises the question of whether the real value of a van park should be measured by the pleasure it brings, not simply the money it earns.
Do lower van park fees have you heading in a different direction? PIC: Ezza
At its meeting on June 18, Sunshine Coast Council voted to adopt a Full Cost Pricing approach for its six holiday parks, and to introduce dynamic pricing whereby higher fees can be charged during periods of heavy demand.
Full Cost Pricing means the parks recover the full cost of providing the service, including capital and overhead costs, and do not receive a competitive advantage over private operators.
Sunshine Coast Mayor, Rosanna Natoli, said dynamic pricing was used by a lot of different accommodation providers.
“We are absolutely going to get our costs back,” she told the media. “And make sure we make money on our holiday parks to benefit our ratepayers.”
But not all local authorities adopt the same approach.
In NSW, Kyogle Council has just voted to to put forward to public consultation a plan that would ensure fees at its Kyogle Gardens Caravan Park are lower than other parks in the area.
The park, which re-opened last year following a $1.8 million upgrade, has 27 powered sites and 10 unpowered sites, although it doesn’t have facilities like camp kitchens, barbecues, and playgrounds. If the proposal goes forward, a powered site for two adults will cost $29 a night, and an unpowered site $15 a night.
The council decided a simple year-round price would achieve its key aim … attract visitors to Kyogle.
Cr Brett McNamara said being the cheapest place around would give the town a point of difference.
And councillor Janet Wilson agreed, while mourning the fact that over the past 10 or 20 years it had become increasingly unaffordable for families to have a holiday. She said having a straight, simple, cheap fee to make the park accessible for allcomers was the way to go.
“It’s just our land anyway, we don’t have a huge amount of money to pay out,” she said. “We are not in it to make a profit, we are in it to provide a good facility that allows families to have a little holiday.”
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It’s not the cost of the council providing the facilities that need to be measures, but the bennifit to the overall community it would bring. Such as shopping and keeping the town alive.
Yes Rob you are so right.Having travelled for the last 1 around Vic/SA/NSW I have noticed a lot of small towns struggling and shops closed.Having cheap Caravan Parks not only attracts travellers also provides much needed
spending in these towns
Caravan park owners should realise that the more they charge the less customers they get, particularly us grey haired nomads, any one doing the lap can’t afford to pay higher camp fees. High camp fees means those towns miss out on customers too.
Us older folks are not cash cows!!
You are so right, we cannot afford the price of caravan parks especially where we are , port Stephens, we live in cessnock.so a holiday up there not far from home is out of our price range Is too expensive and the price of diesel to what it is, towing our austrack it will cost us too much money, l said to my husband we have got to try and sell our dream van …
Exactly, we stayed at Fisherman’s Park in Surat Qld, its FREE! (Coin donations accepted) free toilets and free showers in town, hot showers too, cheap laundry and so we stayed a week and spent quite a bit of money at the local cafes, pub, general store,..we would’ve stopped had a look and kept going if it hadn’t had a free/donation place to camp.
The town has done a fabulous job providing for tourists & pet friendly too! Lovely little town, should be proud of themselves
Yes we have been there along time ago and it was the same beautiful people in town.. and we spent money as well .. would love to go back some day..
Cots to do anything are and always have been a consideration when travelling. Having been involved from both sides and based on lived experiences have witnessed first hand many situations. First it should be noted you can’t travel our country, or any other country, and think you are going to get it free. Councils, like any other entity are and should recover costs to keep parks and camps open as the local ratepayers are just the same as travellers and are not going to subsidise our holidays and rightly so. In my experience most do not over charge. As for spending money supporting local businesses most people,e don’t and only want a cheap stopover while they top at at markets and the large super markets. Just checkout free stops or low cost ones for dumped rubbish as is case in roadside stopover all over Australia. I have been involved in studies on the matter and these matters vary greatly. Tread carefully
Agreed. Most caravan parks are becomming just rip-off the tourist. Why have a peak periods pricing? They will fill up any way. It is just greed. The other cost issue is charging an extra $5 to $10 per night per child. How can a child cost that much extra?Another rip-off??
My husband and I are pensioners, so we must watch our money, caravan parks are well out of our range especially along the coast. So we must go inland to have a holiday. Country towns are most welcome by us. Coastal caravan parks need to lower their prices. We are not rolling in money. But they think we are…
On a recent stopover in a council free site in Cunnamulla a questionnaire was handed out asking how much did we contribute to the local economy and for our two nights we spent over $400 so there’s a plus for cheap sites as retailers benefit, if not for the cheap sites many would not stop there.
Hi.an community guest bus to shops from van Park. To save unhooking the 4×4 will be usefully to help cost on pk fees
By the same token, we stayed in a private caravan park in Cunnamulla (in 2019-20) – the Riverside CP. The stand in proprietor knew I had caught COVID & then both of us got it. These people really looked after us – we phoned our orders in to the supermarkets, chemist shop. When the proprietor went into town to pick up their mail, they also collected our goods & delivered them to our door. For us being bird watchers, this park was excellent with high hedges separating the sites – our neighbours remained COVID free, we got the rest we needed, saw lots of good birds & received a discount on our stay.
We like showgrounds as they normally have good cheap facilities with some degree of security. While as in the initial report, there are a number of greedy councils who discourage travellers with their fees but there are others that do the reverse – Aramac in Central Qld is a good example.
Exactly..
I don’t think facilities should be free but I also don’t think there should be peak loading either. For council parks it should be cost recovery and based on the services provided within the facility.
The value that a caravan park brings is not the immediate profit to the council operator but the attraction of visitors to the relative town and therefore the use of various establishments,benefiting the entire community not just the park operator.
Most are just Profiteering, still providing good clean user friendly parks. The costs are over the top and make it very difficult to stay in, and that’s fine we will find Alternatives but the towns miss out as well,If you don’t want tourists then shut down the parks don’t blatantly rip people off because you can…
Sounds good to me. We have set a limit as to how much we pay a week. If above that move on somewbere else
Surely it’s better to have a consistently full park at a lower price than to have a partly full park at a higher price. After all more people equate to more spending.
Hi we have travelled to many states and enjoyed many caravan pks, community overnight -72hr stays with donations and free parks.
We have noticed the increasing rates and the addition of cabins and lovely amenities,pools,playgrounds and camp kitchens. Perhaps working familys can afford the prices which i am sure they will get great value with a family. We are grey nomads and look for simple quiet location and happily will pay for this in farm stays and national parks
I just want a safe spot, level and quiet for the night. No need for amenities if just overnighting in a populated area.
Right on. It’s expensive coming in to caravan park at 4- pm And been charged the full price.and you leave at 7 am in the morning… Rip off
We have just stayed 1nt in the free RV camp in Kimba SA , it’s large , level blue metal sites, a dump pt, potable water, and has clean showers and toilets. A small donation is all that is required. We ended up spending in the small town, if the RV Centre wasn’t there we could of kept going to another down the road.