RV FEATURE
Unless you are staying in a hotel, it’s a fair bet
that you’ve booked into a holiday park. Again,
as with the fuel, there are plenty of variables
when it comes to the difference in price
between a powered site and a cabin. The
seasons, the region, the type of cabin and the
park’s facilities are all cases in point.
But this doesn’t mean we can’t draw some
meaningful conclusions on the question of the
price difference between driving to a
destination and staying in a cabin, or towing a
van and using a powered site.
According to figures from the Caravan
Industry Association of Australia, holiday
parks around the country charged an average
daily rate of $180.93 for a cabin in the peak
December 2019 period, while in October the
average daily rate was $158.24.
Meanwhile, the average daily rate for powered
sites around Australia was $47.46 in October
2019 and $60.22 during December 2019 – see
the ‘State by State Breakdown’ table.
What do these figures tell us? Clearly, staying
on a powered site is always going to be
cheaper than staying in a cabin.
Let’s return to our Melbourne-to-Forster
example. We know already that it is $141.76
more expensive to tow 2225kg worth of
caravan behind an MU-X there and back.
Average daily rate: October 2019
CABIN POWERED
SITE
NSW $168.28 $49.34
NT $108.21 $37.18
QLD $149.92 $45.34
SA $126.10 $36.14
TAS $124.88 $38.66
VIC $134.90 $38.97
WA $143.86 $39.96
STATE
Average daily rate: December 2019
CABIN POWERED
SITE
$204.13 $65.44
$106.7 $36.67
QLD $182.65 $55.41
SA $138.61 $43.65
TAS $141.49 $43.83
VIC $156.77 $53.47
WA $165.81 $48.66
STATE
NSW
NT
Staying there for 10 days, however, would be
considerably more expensive without your
own towable accommodation.
In NSW during October 2019, you could have
expected to pay about $1682.80 for the use of
a cabin for 10 days. Using a powered site,
however, would have set you back about
$493.40 – a difference of almost $1200.
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