The price of summer
Roll out those, hazy, crazy, lazy, costly days of summer. New data shows it’s not so cheap, write Tom Kitchin and Laine Moger.
Ten bucks for a towel with seashell design you’ll lose before summer is over. $2 for a scoop of ice cream in a cone. $15 for a family feast of fish’n’chips wrapped in paper . . . summer used to be inexpensive.
New Figure.NZ data shows the cost of some staples have decreased (mayonnaise and pineapple both dropping 12 cents and 25c respectively over the past decade) but the vast majority of items in your picnic hamper have soared in price, from sirloin steak, camembert cheese and tomatoes, to the petrol that gets you to the beach.
The price of fish and chips and sirloin steak both increased 44 per cent over the past 10 years, nearly double the rate of inflation. Ice cream increased 34 per cent.
The Sunday Star-Times also found a lucrative market for premium products that seems foreign to the Godzone of yesteryear. The trusty jandal, a whopping $600. Pitching the tent for one night at a camping
ground, a hefty $125. A beach towel for an eyewatering $100, and even a $15 ice cream cone.
At New Plymouth’s Fitzroy
Beach, glamping will set a family back $140 a night (for two adults and two children in a three-room tent), while Hahei Holiday Resort
charges $125 a night for two adults and two children on a powered site, with a minimum of a seven-night stay.