Papamoa Top 10
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Situated on 16 acres of coastal land on a long term lease from the Tauranga City Council, it offers a wide range of accommodation, from modern basic cabins to luxury beach-front spa and garden villas.
There are also more than 250 grassed camp and caravan sites. Adjoining a wonderful white-sand ocean beach and just a short drive from the shops and restaurants of Mt Maunganui, the park has offered superb holidays to its guests ever since Thelma and Gordon Crosby purchased it in 1966.
The efforts of three generations of Crosbys and their staff have paid off. The resort won the AA Spirit of Hospitality Award in 2008 and in previous years, has received various tourism and business awards.
Everything seemed set for another golden summer in 2011/12, but the grounding of the Greek container ship Rena on Astrolabe Reef in early October gave owners and staff plenty of cause for concern. If a significant amount of the more than 1900 tonnes of oil and diesel on board had leaked and washed ashore, the resort's summer business could have been ruined.
"We did take a hit around October and November," says general manager Rebecca Crosby, granddaughter of the founders, "but since then, the majority of our guests haven't been fazed by it at all."
Ms Crosby and her team have other reasons to be optimistic. As well as the traditional summer business from sun and sea seeking holidaymakers, new revenue streams are steadily opening up. So what has been happening at Papamoa Top 10?
"We'd spent about eight years investing a lot of money into building up the resort, concentrating on our two main markets of young families and older couples," Rebecca said. "But we were getting a lot of requests for weddings, family reunions and similar occasions, so in the past 12 months we've put more emphasis on attracting that sort of business. We have three lovely locations where we can hold wedding ceremonies. We provide the accommodation and we work in conjunction with a restaurant right next door – the BlueBiyou – which is a lovely beach-front location for receptions.
"An advantage we have is that an entire family and their friends can come and stay here together. They can have the wedding and reception, and the next day have a family get-together, with a BBQ or something similar, and it's all in the one area of a stunning location.
" Guests don't have to go anywhere until they're ready. We only started this off in the middle of 2011 and it's going really well. We've had fantastic feedback from our guests," she said.
Those guests so far have come mainly from the wider Auckland and Waikato areas. It is all proving to be a valuable addition to the resort's previous business. In conjunction with the BlueBiyou, the marital opportunity is mainly being promoted on two professional wedding organisers' websites. The resort does not charge for venue hire, but clients are required to book a certain amount of accommodation, and the rights of other customers have to be considered. "We've put a number of packages together that work for both the wedding guests and the other customers staying here."
Rebecca is also driving growth into other revenue streams. "We've tested the market in three different segments in the past 12 months. Another is hosting small meetings and conferences which is something we only kicked off late last year. We'd noticed there was a trend towards companies wanting to hold their meetings or events in a slightly unique setting. We can offer that. We have the accommodation by the sea and the big open spaces – we've got the area where they can hold their meeting and yet still have afternoon and evening functions. This is also proving to be quite successful for us, so we're hoping to ramp that up in 2012.
"A third stream of revenue is catering for school and other groups, which is a market we had already to a certain extent but which we see good potential to increase substantially. We'd hoped to build an area especially for groups this year, but we've suffered a bit financially with the Rena disaster so we might have to put that off for a year," she said.
"We're looking at building a conference and meetings venue which would hold a maximum of 40 people. At present, we're using one of our beach-front units which has been converted into a small board meeting room, and it's worked well so far. We're using that to test the waters and so far the feedback is great."
The wreck of the Rena was certainly a blow to the resort and the early summer weather was far from ideal, but better days are surely coming. And those three new revenue streams mean Papamoa Top 10 is now well placed to weather any new storms.
