5 kitchen appliances Kiwi travellers look for when booking accomodation

Eating out may be a holiday highlight but when it comes to cooking at home while on vacation, Kiwis love a good old-fashioned barbecue.

In an effort to understand traveller preferences and forecast trends for 2023, travel platform Expedia asked 24,000 people from 17 countries about trips they had planned within the next 36 months, as well as pulling data from Expedia and Bookabach.

This included asking Kiwi travellers about what kitchen appliances they looked for when booking accommodation.

At the top of the list was an outdoor kitchen or barbecue / grill. The majority of travellers (66 per cent) said they prioritised places that had these features.

In second place was an air fryer or deep fryer, with almost half (41 per cent) claiming they wanted accommodation options with this appliance. Air fryers may not be as quintessentially Kiwi as a BBQ but experienced a pandemic boom in popularity as people started cooking from home more. Affordable and small, air fryers require less oil than typical fryers and can cook food evenly and quickly, making it a kitchen essential for many.

Unsurprisingly, the third most popular appliance holiday-makers want is a professional coffee machine. Proud coffee snobs, Kiwis love great coffee and don’t want to settle for bad cups of instant or need to walk to a cafe every morning for a caffeine fix. More than a third (39 per cent) of travellers said, while on holiday, they wanted to stay somewhere with a professional coffee machine.

Other important kitchen appliances were a pizza oven (28 per cent), sandwich maker (18 per cent) and wine fridge (9 per cent). Fresh produce was also a nice-to-have and 24 per cent said they liked places with a fruit and vegetable garden, while 12 per cent wanted places with access to a herb garden.

Kiwis will cook to cut costs

The quality of a kitchen and its appliances is especially important for Kiwi travellers, as most will trade eating out for making meals at home to cut down on holiday costs. According to the Expedia study, 56 per cent of travellers said they would cook at their bach or accommodation if they needed to keep costs down while away.