BEVS

That is a bit good.

I've priced up flights , car hire and accom best I can + food , petrol etc.

It seems we could fly to Raro or Oz cheaper than we can to have a week down South.

Justcol

It's no dearer than us flying North for a holiday.
I find travel and holidays in NZ to be cheap as chips.
I couldn't do a foreign holiday for the cost of a week in nz but I guess it depends on how you want to do it

BEVS

Not sure what you mean there. It isn't cheap as chips. Not for us anyway.

We can have the same nights away for the same cost in Raro- flights , accom , food- as we could for flying South with those accom , car hire costs involved.

We're not on a direct route to anywhere & we have only a week max. Even that must be unpaid leave.

BEVS

Aha!

Seats have come up on the 'orrible Grabaseat We may well grab them as it halves the cost of flights.

Gawd, I loathe the Grabaseat .

bourbon-biscuit

Bevs, is just bombing it down in one day, spending 5 days exploring then bombing back not an option? Then you would have your own car, which is a massive cost saving. My sense of distance has changed a bit: last year we went to SE Queensland twice and both times we did 14hr car journeys in one day, although we had the good sense to send the less tolerant offspring on a flight ...

Pom_Chch

What's wrong with grabaseat??

BEVS

Around 14 hours on the NZ roads + stops. It would wipe me out TBH. We did discuss that.


It is the way the monopoly AirNZ operates its internal flight costs. It's the strategy.

bourbon-biscuit

Ah, that's true. Our journey to SE Queensland is mainly straight with cruise control on so we just listen to audio books etc., but it's still a killer!

Pom_Chch

Meh, I don't think that's worthy of a complaint. That's the downside of living in a smaller town/city within NZ, there's a monopoly largely due to demand. If there was enough demand I'm sure Jetstar would operate the same flight but it's probably not worth doing....

BEVS

Not moanin' as such . It's one of my 'things' . Cannot stand the seat price rigging thing.

We do have Jetstar.

Unless it is Welly, Aucks, Xch it is always two legs to get anywhere so I would prefer some set prices to help those of us out in the sticks be able to plan and budget.

Standby and last minute deals is another matter. Thing is we usually need to plan. Work, animals and wotnot. So we pay a price for that and then next couple of days a bluddy grabaseat comes up and then goes. It's not even last minute cannot get bums on seats really. It is marketing.

Meh backatcha !

BEVS

I did. I did.

I grabbed the grabaseats that suddenly appeared a couple of evenings back. It came in at a good half the original cost. Woz Air NZ a-watching me.

We'll fly into Invercargill and will hire a car.

We aim to see Te Anau and Queenstown again after 20 odd years and in the other direction we want to visit the Lost Gypsy Gallery.

bourbon-biscuit

Marvellous! I hope you have a glorious holiday X I think it's been almost 20 years since we went to Queenstown and Wanaka too! We did a lovely walk near Wanaka with our then 4 year old and made the decision to go back to the UK with the intention of all returning to live in NZ. We buried a couple of stones up there with a promise to make it back to them. We also looked at a couple of houses for sale in Wanaka for the UK equivalent cost of a pasty at the time and decided we could always buy one of the cute little lake houses when we came back ...... doh!

BEVS

We did that too. Wanaka was so quiet back then.

bourbon-biscuit

We could have been neighbours .... or millionaires!

Jan n Neil