Skip the customs queues and avoid international flights with the Kiwi holiday destination that boasts Fiji's warm waters all year round.
Stroll through Lake Taupo Holiday Resort, where you’ll find all the usual amenities. The BBQ area is a short stroll from the tennis courts that are tucked against the kids' playground.
They’re the Kiwi holiday park staples. Things we’ve come to expect. But here, they have a saying: “Go big or go home.”
“We like to have a point of difference,” said Sam Rushby, Lake Taupo Holiday Resort’s new general manager.
She’s talking about their big point of difference – the 165 square metre lagoon-style pool. A two-million-dollar slice of Pacific Island life that’s equipped with a swim-up bar.
“We wanted a little bit of Fiji. That's where the ideas come from.”
Step into the pool's geothermally-heated waters, and it’s easy to see why this place markets itself as an all-year-round holiday destination. "So winter, our two soak pools would sit at 39 to 40 degrees, and then the remainder of the pool is between 35 and 38 degrees."
And then there’s the 4m-deep cave with a faux glow worm-lit roof, a treasure chest at the bottom and a waterfall entrance.
But that’s only the pool itself. There’s the big screen TV playing family movies throughout the day. A dual hydro-slide and, of course, the ice cream parlour ready to cool the kids down when things get too hot.
It’s fair to say they went big.
“My idea is that you try and do it bigger and better than everybody else.”
That’s Lloyd Lusty, one-half of the park’s ownership duo that has taken this place from a dusty pine-dotted paddock to the resort it is today.
Although he wouldn’t call the Taupo Holiday Resort a resort just yet, he claims the name is just future-proofing.
“I have to admit, fully, that I still don't think we are worthy of it. But at the end of the day, it's slowly getting there.”
His wife, Trish, just rolls her eyes.
“He underplays it all the time," she said.
The pair have spent their life travelling with their kids, picking up ideas from the best holiday parks and resorts worldwide.
They've installed a mini-putt course, a bike-pump track, and a newly-installed interactive, electronic playground game.
“He will just start doing something. And you're like, what's happening now? And we would look at holiday parks, and they would bring those ideas home,” said Rushby.
And she would know. Rushby is the next generation of Lusty; she has been at the park since she was four.
This year, she took over the general manager title and made the resort a truly family campground.
“It's been like my own private playground," she said.
"Dad caught me one day in the games room. I was teaching kids how to lift the pool table and drop it back down to get a free game because I wanted to make friends."
She made more than friends. She even found a husband in the holiday park game. Peter Rushby’s parents once owned another Taupō holiday park.
“He eventually came to start working here, and he's never left. He's now head of our grounds and maintenance, and we now have two beautiful boys.”
While Rushby takes the management lead now, parents Lloyd and Trish are still very much a part of the planning.
Lloyd and Trish have some ideas.
“I think we will head down the line of massages and even having a gym in the end, but again, if we do it, we want to do it reasonably well.”
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