How We Keep Caravan Park Costs to About $180 a Week
Whenever we put our weekly numbers up, the accommodation line gets the most pushback of the lot. Why would you stay in a caravan park at all? Free camps are where we stayed. First year out we were in a park for two weeks of the fifty two.
Fair enough, and we’re not arguing with it. We budgeted about $180 a week for accommodation, and most nights we’re not in a caravan park either. Here’s what that $180 is actually buying and how the weeks average out to get there.
– For all your caravan and camping gear: CaravanRVCamping.com.au
Two to Three Nights a Week, Not Seven
We like doing around two to three nights in a caravan park. That’s the pattern the $180 is built on. The rest of the week we’re somewhere else, and plenty of weeks we don’t go into a park at all.
Then there are the weeks that go the other way. Sometimes we just need a break, we need a stop, and we’ll be in the one caravan park for two weeks. Those weeks look terrible against a weekly figure and they’re worth every cent.
It all averages out. That’s the bit that gets lost when people look at a single week. If you do it over many, many months it really does average out, and $180 is where ours landed.
Book Midweek
When you do need a caravan park, book it midweek if you possibly can. Midweek is a really, really good way to save a little bit of money, and it’s the single easiest change to make because it costs you nothing except moving your stop by a day or two.
It has a second benefit that doesn’t show up in the budget. Midweek parks are quieter, which is a nicer stay for the same money, or less.
Shop the Sales, They’re Sitting Right There
Jump onto some of the caravan parks’ websites and their social media before you book. They’ll put up when they’ve got the really good deals going on. It takes a few minutes and most people never do it.
This works best when you’re a week or two ahead of yourself rather than booking the morning you arrive, which is another quiet argument for planning your stops a little in advance.
👉Making the non-park nights comfortable is what keeps the park nights optional. Shop Snowys for the camping gear that does it!
Pick the Smaller, Out of the Way Parks
If you don’t need the bouncy castles and all that sort of stuff, go for the smaller little out of the way caravan parks. Normally they’re really, really quiet, so that’s always a bonus. They save a heap of money. And it feels nice going to the local caravan parks, the locally run ones.
The big resort-style parks aren’t off the table. If you want the bouncy castles, treat yourself, do it mindfully. Ours tend to be the reward stop rather than the default one.
Why We Pay for Any of Them
Those two to three nights buy us a break. Travelling with a five and a seven year old, there’s a point where everybody needs a stop, and a caravan park is where that happens for us.
If your family doesn’t need that, your accommodation line will be a fraction of ours and your weekly total drops accordingly. That’s a completely valid way to do it. Budget the trip you’re going to take.
And as with every weekly figure we put up, this one is travel only. It doesn’t include what keeps running at home while you’re away, which we’ve gone through in The Bills That Follow You on Your Big Lap.
Our Thoughts
$180 a week for caravan parks is what two or three nights costs when you book them midweek, at the smaller parks, after checking for a deal. Take any of those three away and the number goes up. Take the park nights away entirely and it goes to nothing.
The point of putting a figure on it at all is so you can see which lever you’re pulling, rather than finding out at the end of the month.
What’s your split, free camps to parks? We’d really like to know where other families have landed on this one.
- We Budgeted $700 a Week for Our Big Lap. Here’s Where It Actually Went
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👉If you’d like to pop your own park-to-free-camp split in and see what it does to the week, have a look at our paid Big Lap budget calculator and planner here.
