Demand for Totaranui Beach in Tasman briefly broke the DoC Booking Website this morning. Photo /David Tip, Unsplash
Demand for Totaranui Beach in Tasman briefly broke the DoC Booking Website this morning. Photo /David Tip, Unsplash
Demand for the Tōtaranui campsite, one of the most popular summer holiday sites in Nelson Tasman, took down the Department of Conservation website when it opened for bookings this morning.
Hordes of holiday planners rushed online for 9.30am, as they tried to nab pitches for Christmas and New Year.
High demand was anticipated by the DoC bookings team. Tōtaranui was given its own booking window to cope with the expected rush.
DoC staff for Whakatū / Nelson said they were aware of the issues caused by summer demand, but were back online and taking bookings again with half an hour.
Despite the brief hiccup, by 10:30am all 269 tent sites were reportedly completely sold out for peak season.
Families who have spent the past summers in the north of the Abel Tasman National Park are familiar with the rush to book.
At this stage, most dates through the summer holiday period have sold out, though there’s still plenty of room outside the peak season.aranui beach at the campground was named one of the “world’s best hidden beaches”, despite hosting thousands of campers every summer and even receiving a royal visit by Prince Harry and Meghan in 2018. Something one would expect would put it firmly on the map.
DoC’s booking services manager Cameron Hyland said that “capacity had been scaled up in anticipation” for this morning’s bookings release but they expected this morning’s outage was demand related and their IT vendor was investigating the issue.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex battled rain in the normally sunny Abel Tasman National Park when they visited in 2018. Photo / Robert Kitchin
The only other campground to get its own booking slot is Momorangi campground outside of Picton on April 23, which is expected to be equally busy next summer.
This is despite 21 high-demand sites having price increases to offset what DoC says are rising operating costs.
“More people using DOC’s most popular huts means higher upkeep and maintenance costs,” said Cat Wilson, director of heritage and visitors for DoC.
The popular Great Walks network is expected to open for bookings from May, to great anticipation.
Last April the Milford Track - the most sought-after multi-day walk on the network - crashed the DoC website on opening day. The bookings team told the Herald its site was able to handle 6000-7000 simultaneous bookings, not the tens of thousands that turned up early to book bunks.
The booking window was delayed by four months to July to address its IT issues.
DoC said it would be staying with its IT supplier US eDirect, which has run facility bookings since 2018.
