Family travel: Five top tips for booking a Kiwi bach

The Kiwi bach is ideal for a low-key summer family holiday. Photo / Getty Images

There are so many different types of accommodation from which to enjoy your great Kiwi summer with the family. Road tripping in a campervan; tenting it at a full-service campground or DOC site; staying at a holiday park in cabins or self-contained units; motel or hotel stays — the list goes on. But perhaps one of the most quintessentially Kiwi places to stay is a rented bach. It's so Kiwi that no one else in the world even calls it that. In fact even our country is divided — South Islanders call it a crib.

The word "bach" now has slightly different connotations from when I was growing up, when it tended to refer to a very basic style of accommodation, usually on tank water and often by the beach. We would pile in with sandy feet and eat barbecued dinners off mismatched crockery, sitting on slightly battered chairs and sleeping on mattresses that had seen better days. Those places still exist, for sure, but now there are so many modern — almost palatial — holiday homes on offer; every taste is catered for.

If you haven't booked a holiday home for your family before, here's a quick guide with some tips for getting a good match for your needs — it's a bit different to booking a hotel. Popular sites are Bookabach, AirBnb, Bachcare and Holiday Houses. They work much like most accommodation booking sites where you can define parameters and start searching.

Things to think about when booking a bach:

1. Most families advise against picking anything too pretty. There's nothing worse than spending a week worrying the kids will break that gorgeous vase or spill juice on the pristine white carpet or furniture. Save those places for a romantic no-kids holiday.

2. Decide whether you want to cart linen around. Some baches provide linen, others require you to bring everything yourself. It's good to understand what you're in for if space is at a premium in the car.

3. If you're going for a low-budget family holiday, look for a place set up for kids — maybe a big garden to play in, lots of board games or — even better — right on the beach. This will mean there's less need to spend money on extra activities.

4. Look at the cleaning situation. It can be quite stressful trying to get a bach back to the way it was when you arrived, so sometimes it's worth going for a place where you pay a cleaning fee. That way you can just do a quick tidy up and leave someone else to clean the toilets, vacuum, and mop the floors after you've gone.

5. Go right through the booking process until just before payment to see what the actual cost will be. It might be advertised at $275 a night but once you go further you may find there are fees for more than two adults, plus cleaning, plus a service fee which could bring it closer to $400 a night. This is not always the case, and varies from site to site, but just be aware there may be additional costs.