Dialogue: Happy at home for the holidays

"I'm trapped in New Zealand," complained my upwardly mobile friend as she flicked through the Jasons Motor Lodge Guide to our country. "And even worse, everything is booked out!"

Although last Christmas she was swanning around New York, a mere one year later she refuses to set foot outside the country because of our dwindling dollar.

She is even considering camping, should she be lucky enough to secure a site somewhere since New Zealand seems destined to be booked out for summer.

It looks like many of us will be getting used to being home for the holidays, trapped by our dollar. Will this nation of great international travellers adopt cabin fever? Well, let's.

Remember the days when the only people who seemed to go overseas were devil-may-care nannas and poppas unconcerned with superannuation issues, jetting off to places as exotic as, say, Norfolk Island. Even Fiji was a big deal. And we cooed over the loot they bought back - transistor radios and T-shirts bearing slogans like "My nanna went on holiday to Fiji and all she brought me back was this lousy T-shirt."

The rest of us were content with day trips to the beach or endless summers in caravans, tents or baches. Overseas holidays were not yearned for as they were simply considered outside the realm of possibility. We were isolated and happy with our lot.

Then came the Big OE phenomenon, which gave ordinary folk a taste of life more exotic than Surfers Paradise. With the internet not yet fully established, travel became critical to New Zealanders, enabling us to feel plugged into the outside world.

Of course, the affordability and accessibility of air travel meant that globetrotting became a bit of a habit. Everyone had a shot of a casual jet-setting lifestyle, to the point where long weekends seemed to lead more to shopping in Melbourne than caravanning in Orewa.

In the past 10 years we have been thrashing the term "across the ditch," referring to the regularity and informality of our frequent last-minute trips to Australia. Moreover an increasing number of New Zealanders boomerang back and forth to Aussie as a professional necessity.

Itchy feet have thus become an in-bred characteristic for about three generations of Kiwis. And with holidaying overseas becoming our right, we've been notorious for leaving home before seeing the country.

But things may be coming full circle. Figures released last week show that domestic tourism is booming. This reflects a few things.

First, holidays for more than one week seem impossible to commit to and are often ruled out in favour of a more convenient series of short breaks which lend themselves to local travel. And thus our realisation that the foreign tourists were right all along - there is a lot to do in this country.

We love to holiday and despite feigning windowless schedules, Aucklanders like treating themselves so much they even have a peculiar habit of trying out new hotels in the city, for a bit of a break.

And finally it seems that we are growing out of our insecurities linked with being an insignificant, isolated nation. The world has suddenly got a whole lot smaller - thanks to the explosion of global media and, particularly, the internet. As a result, the time lag between what happens overseas and what happens in New Zealand has shrunk. In fact, we often lead the world in embracing new ideas.

Thanks to changes in tariff structures we have successfully "closed the gaps" in a shopping sense.

We may be trapped by a weak currency but at least we are now in the comfort zone of having been overseas experienced.

The internet means that not only can we let our fingers do the walking but also that we can get all the material benefits of going overseas via our laptops.

So although some Kiwi travellers may still be despairing of our country as a geographically isolated, cultural desert with unpredictable weather and a currency with as much pulling power as the Thai baht, others are turning on and tuning in to living in a tourism mecca.

It's time to take stock of why we live here. It will never be the comparative job prospects that will have brain drainers flocking back home but simply the realisation that we are really good at one thing. The leisure lifestyle.

So if your campsite gets rained out at least you can easily just drive home.

Summer in New Zealand. I can think of worse places to be trapped. Book now, don't be disappointed.