Tough economic times had hit bookings at the Queenstown Lakes District Council's two Wakatipu holiday parks, its holiday parks manager Greg Hartshorne said yesterday.
While the Queenstown Lakeview Holiday Park was likely to be full again this New Year, bookings for the Arrowtown Camping Ground were "very slow".
Mr Hartshorne said bookings for the 2008-09 summer had been "very late coming" this year, and bookings were still being made now.
"It is very, very slow this year. For the young ones, we wouldn't take bookings until November . . . This year, we opened up the bookings in November as normal, and we had 10% of the bookings that we'd normally have by the end of November.
"But there has been a late rush."
He said a reason people had delayed booking their holidays might be that "a lot of people are really aware of things like job security".
Mr Hartshorne said at the Queenstown Lakeview Holiday Park the "old" camping ground had been set aside for the young campers who would be in Queenstown to bring in the New Year, while the new area had been set aside for families and couples who were looking for a relaxing holiday.
"The old end is just about full and will be full [by New Year's Eve]."
However, the Arrowtown Camping Ground, traditionally popular with domestic holidaymakers, was looking likely to have similar numbers to last year, the first summer it was properly open after a major upgrade of its facilities.
"Quite a few people have been coming to us for a long time but they've cancelled because they've been made redundant."
One family, who always saved their money through the year and made payments every three months so by the time they arrived at the camping ground their holiday was paid for, had cancelled their booking this year because of a redundancy.
"They now need the money. It's terrible. Unfortunately, it's just a fact of life and it's going to affect a hell of a lot of people before it's over."
However, people did need to be aware it was "business as usual" at both camping grounds, and the message Queenstown was "affordable" needed to be circulated, he said.
"[Queenstown] is not what people say it is, and hopefully, we can get people coming into town and not just for New Year. It wouldn't matter how bad things are out there; we would always be full at New Year . . . [What] we need to be well aware of now is that we're promoting Queenstown beyond January 5."
