Lodging in New Zealand
 

We are taking a 14 day driving tour in the SI in April. From reading, it seems it would be good not be be locked in to lodging reservations as one may want to stay a day longer on shorter at any particular place after seeing what is there. The question, is it difficult to find lodging without reservations at the popular areas in April or must one make reservations to be sure of decent lodging and lose flexability of how long to stay in any one destination?

April other than the Easter weekend and any school holidays associated with it will be fairly quiet and even that period will be offset by less people possibly travelling because of global economics.

There's quite a range of accommodations about with motels, hotels, caravan park cabins, B&Bs, farm stays, and even hostels have twin/double rooms so other than the more popular areas like Queenstown you should not have too great a difficulty and even Queenstown caters to a large population increase for more popular times, April a bit inbetween best tramping[hiking] and snow seasons times.

Obviously, the smaller villages will have less options, but then usually less people again stop.
If you arm yourself with a few listings of the various categories and are prepared for the making of a few phone calls if you have to I would not expect you'll have a great problem.
You'll find that there are tourist information centres about the country and they can always be a good spot to call into later afternoon for maybe a free cuppa and advice on what is available locally.

The relevant NZ school holiday runs from 9 to 27 April. Even allowing for that, if you are prepared to be flexible as to the type of accommodation, I would be very surprised if you could not pick up something at any of your areas of choice.

As mentioned above, if traveling over the long Easter weekend (including Good Friday and Easter Monday), lodging could very well be an issue, particularly in popular small towns like Franz Josef, Fox Glacier and Mt Cook.

We visisted NZ over Easter in 2007 and discovered No Vacancy signs in virtually every hotel/motel in Franz Josef and Fox Glacier as we passed through. We also experienced more traffic and people than on any prevous trip to the SI.

Things calm down considerably after Easter, and good deals on lodging can be found.

We were in NZ over the Easter weekend in 2005. We had reservations, but on checking wotif.com just before we went, there were still lodgings to be had, <i>except for the glacier places.</i>

You may not get a great room, but you will most likely get some room in other areas. If you want the flexibility, I would think it worth the try. Persistent checking of the availability on wotif or other sites would alert you to the situation. ((*))

We used a Chain Motel called Golden Chain, very cheap and self contained. They are happy to book the next place for you. NZ population is tiny, so most places are not booked out, unless it is a major public holiday.