– Hampshire Holiday Parks bought Hot Water Beach Top 10 Holiday Park for over $16m.
– Sheree and Grant Webster sold after 18 years, citing health issues and a desire for family time.
– The sale ensures the campground remains and staff are retained for at least 12 months.
The campground at Hot Water Beach, in the Coromandel, has been sold to an Australian-owned tourism operator for more than $16 million.
Sheree Webster and her husband Grant told OneRoof that selling Hot Water Beach Top 10 Holiday Park after 18 years of ownership had been emotional.
“It was a really huge decision,” she said. “We pretty much got to name our price, and we walked, but it was hugely emotional.”
Hampshire Holiday Parks paid over $15.8m for the land and buildings at 790 Hot Water Beach Road and shelled another significant but undisclosed sum for the campground business.
Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel is a popular stop for both locals and international visitors. Photo / Sarah Harris
The Australian chain has acquired 10 New Zealand holiday parks over the last two years as part of a multimillion-dollar expansion plan. In October, it paid $50m for Taupo Holiday Park, and last year it snapped up Ōhope Beach Top 10 Holiday Park for $27m.
Webster told OneRoof that Hampshire approached them about selling, and the “timing was right”, she said.
The couple had started thinking about exiting the business 18 months ago, but a brush with cancer accelerated their plans.
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Webster said her husband had just finished chemotherapy for blood cancer earlier this year when she discovered she had breast cancer. “It was almost the nail in the coffin,” she told OneRoof.
Both have since received promising prognoses and are now looking forward to spending their first summer in almost two decades on holiday.
“We need to look after ourselves. Our kids are all grown up now, but they’ve had 18 years of no summer holidays with their parents. We are going to give them a summer holiday this year.”
The Websters were originally dairy farmers and had been at a nursery at 790 Hot Water Beach Road buying native plants for their subdivision in the mid-2000s when the idea of setting up a campground in the area took hold.
Hampshire Holiday Parks bought Lake Taupō Holiday Resort for $50m earlier this year. Photo / Hampshire Holiday Parks NZ Facebook
On a later trip, they spotted the for-sale sign outside and decided to make a move. “It just happened so quickly,” Webster said. “We weren’t the highest bidders, but we knew the people who owned [the land], and we had a really clean offer with no conditions. Twenty-four hours later, we owned the property. But we absolutely knew nothing about running a campground. OMG we were green.”
The couple spent a gruelling 11 months turning the old nursery and farm into a campground. Webster said the global financial crisis didn’t help. “We had a consent to do the park and were donkey deep in debt when the bank pulled the funding. It was just horrendous.”
Their bank manager took their case to Auckland and managed to get them the loan, but at an eye-watering interest rate of 14%.
They managed to open the park on Christmas Day in 2008 with one toilet and bathroom block, some rented cabins and an office run from an old shed.
They stayed the course and have expanded the campground over the years to meet customer demand, with the park now boasting more than 50 cabins, three ablution blocks, two offices and a pool.
The recent additions of a pizzeria, cafe and bar in the last year were intentional moves to create a community hub that locals could use.
Webster said they had wanted to sell it to someone who would keep it a campground, and selling it to an international buyer beholden to the Overseas Investment Office rules ensured that.
“One of the things that was in the back of our minds was – well, especially Grant, because he grew up here – whoever bought the property had to keep it as a holiday park. It can never be subdivided into houses. It was like our gift to the community. This will always stay a holiday park, and there will always be good employment here,” she said.
“You always get a bit of flack when you sell to an international buyer, but a New Zealander could have come in and cut that up into 50 lots.”
The sale to Hampshire also came with a commitment that the 25 permanent staff and 20 part-time summer staff would be kept on for at least 12 months.
Hampshire’s purchase of Hot Water Beach Top 10 Holiday Park puts it on equal footing with its biggest holiday park rival, Tasman Tourism New Zealand, a joint venture between an Australian private equity firm, Tasman Capital Management Pty Ltd, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company Al Sariya Third Commercial Investments RSC Limited.
Combined, the two groups have an almost 10% share of the holiday park market in New Zealand.
– Click here to find more properties for sale in the Coromandel