Easter Bunny escapes with the money

Name and shame

You would be better off finding a motel for the same amount and save all the unpacking!! But its not all that easy to fiddle about at the end of the day with small kids, i know, i have been there.. Michael

Hmmm

No room at the Inn

The Caravan Park is too expensive

Did you check the stable?

Thats cheap in some places - We took a powered site in a down market park at Byron Bay for the New Year Hols at $35/person/night and it was the pits.

Although a lot of people may complain about the cost of staying in a caravan park, few have a thorough understanding of the costs involved in buying and running a caravan park
Its not unusual for caravan parks to sell for $3m+, in which case the park owner could easily be paying over $5,000 a week in interest repayments just to service the debt incurred in buying the park. Thats without paying council rates, insurance, staff, electricity, land tax etc.
They are not cheap business's to run and if I was risking a few million on buying a caravan park, I'd expect to make a profit.

Dan

The reality in Australia is that the caravan parks that we all knew from our child-hood days, the ones where mum, dad, and the kids pulled up in their Viscount, stayed for weeks over Christmas are long gone and with them the rates we used to pay. Yes, there might be some out there that represent better value than others, but for the most part Caravan Parks in popular tourist spots, especially on the coast, are multi-million dollar business’s, that need to make huge investments to attract the ‘paying’ crowd.

The price of coastal properties in Australia has sky-rocketed over the past 25 years, and so have the rates the local council collects from the land holders, including caravan parks. So whilst many of us have benefited from rising house prices increasing our wealth, it comes at a cost in other ways, and this is just one of them. The value of the land that the more popular caravan parks sit on have sky-rocketed also.

Now I’m not defending Caravan Parks or what they charge that is entirely there business, and besides they have their own Association that can do that, but why single out CPs at this time of year.

How can it be that the cost of an airline seat for the guy down the front of the plane, was half the price of what you paid for yours down the back, or why are turkey’s more expensive at Christmas, how come the price of umbrella’s go up on rainy days. Well I guess the answer lies somewhere between opportunism, and the reality that business owners need to consider what they need to ‘yield’ on average over the course of a year to remain viable, whether they sell airlines seats, umbrella’s or turkeys.

Off-peak will see rates for many things tumble, and this will be subsidised by those who want to use the service at the peak time.

Consider, overtime, many Australian’s enjoy an extra payment if they work beyond a set number of hours in a week, why? Opportunism, and the fact that labour was in short supply so you have offered yours out at a higher rate because of this demand.....we all do it in some form, don’t we?

Rabbiting on now...but vote with your feet and money if you don’t want to pay the price, but equally if we all do this, caravan parks will disappear, slowly, but surely.

Cheers, The Landy

Unfortunately this is part of the problem with our economy. Business & companies are no longer satisfied with making a reasonable profit, they want to make an obscene profit. IMHO, with the rising cost of living and essential services, it will eventually cripple our economy.
Capt.

Im sorry but $100 a night for a powered tent site can not be justified in any way.
That is pure rip off in any terms.
regardless of where the caravan park is.
peak times is a load of crap.
If you want to get into a specific park BOOK EARLY.
The whole reason for powered and unpowered sites is for the basics.
To sleep in tent , swag, camper trailer or caravan.
That is why we use these sites.

I suspect that by Easter, you will think that $100.00 a night is nothing compared to what you will be paying for diesel to get there!

EVEN more reason to become independent of such places -

4x4 - and decent tent or off road camper trailer / pop top

portable toilet - Gas hot water shower - generator and solar panel and batteries


then you can camp for free away from everyone in some awsum places rather than 2 foot away from bogans and screaming kids

or for $700 a week you can come camp on our property ( kidding - its all washed away from the floods ! )

BB

wow, that's a bit rich eh.
First thing we did here was reduce the cost of camping, we're not big fans of excessive fees ourselves.