A holiday to a family wedding ended in the road trip from hell for a Nelson family with three young children and that led to them developing an app for families travelling with kids.
KidsMap was inspired by Kelsey and Tom Bates’ road trip that flung an eight-hour ferry delay into their journey, followed by Cyclone Gabrielle which threw their planned trip out the window and ended in chaos.
They were heading from Nelson to the Far North where Kelsey was to be the celebrant at her mother’s wedding, but didn’t get far before the trip began to turn sour.
“We got to Pelorus and one of the kids threw up and then got to Picton and the ferry was delayed for eight hours. We ended up sitting for three to four hours in the queue waiting, then got to Wellington at 2am. Then we got caught in Cyclone Gabrielle around Auckland and had to turn around.”
It meant they spent hours on Google trying to find unplanned accommodation and child-friendly places to eat, toilet and play safely all in one, which they discovered was not that easy. Most places that were labelled child-friendly had a highchair and that was about it, Kelsey says.
“Every day I was getting more frustrated and angry.”
They eventually got to the wedding and when they returned to Nelson, decided to create an app for parents to find eating places with kids menus along with good playgrounds and toilet facilities.
Their logo says it all, with an adult on a seesaw holding a steaming cup of coffee and a child playing on the other end.
“We want to make child-friendly New Zealand accessible to families and there’s nothing better than a good cup of coffee while your kids are playing and having fun.”
They started googling potential places, but that took too long, so Kelsey joined all the mum groups and community Facebook groups around New Zealand, requesting recommendations for a family with young children.
“We wanted it all to be from the parent’s perspectives. Now we’re really excited to see some of the places that parents have recommended!”
So far, KidsMap includes more than 100 cafes and 200 playgrounds around New Zealand, and after posting the creation of the app on Facebook the recommendations from parents have been flooding in. Kelsey says, the information will continue to increase on the app and it will get better and better. It’s a free app and down the track they hope to turn it into a business through advertisements.
“It would be nice to get to the stage where it breaks even,” Tom says. “But as parents you don’t want to be paying for apps.”
The couple have created a website to access the app, which you can find here.
