The luxury of leisure and pleasure at the New Zealand second home

Abstract

Second homes in New Zealand have a long history and are an important part of the New Zealand culture. Increasingly over the last few decades, the popular media has constructed ownership of the traditional second home, or ‘bach’, and the associated lifestyle, as democratic and as such, the antithesis of luxury. This paper provides a new perspective through an examination of media representations of leisure and pleasure at the second home in New Zealand through a thematic discourse analysis of Home New Zealand magazine. A critical examination of the representations of luxury through leisure and pleasure at the second home shows consistent and recurrent tropes over the years of publication. These include the luxury of eating, playing and relaxing. The paper argues that leisure and pleasure at the New Zealand second home, as represented in Home New Zealand, has always carried connotations of luxury. This provides a significant point of departure not only from the popular mass media constructions but also from much of the academic literature.

Keywords:

• second homes
• New Zealand
• leisure
• media
• luxury
• thematic analysis

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who identified parts of the article that needed clarification and expansion to improve the strength of the argument.

Notes on contributor

Trudie Walters is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. She had her first experiences of second homes as a child, when her grandparents built a second home in a beachside location and her family spent some time there each summer. Her academic interest in second homes was precipitated by her time selling real estate in a popular holiday destination, where she observed first-hand the more recent changing nature of second homes in New Zealand.