About Touring Brain

Touring Brain is a free, ad-free trip planning and safety toolkit for New Zealand caravan, campervan, motorhome and tent camping travellers — both Kiwis touring at home and visitors planning a NZ road trip from overseas. It was built by a small group of experienced Kiwi campers, caravan and motorhome owners who got tired of juggling five different apps and websites every time they planned a trip — weather in one place, road routing in another, campgrounds in a third, towing rules in a fourth — and decided to put the lot in one tool.

Why we built it

New Zealand is one of the great touring countries in the world. State Highway 6 down the West Coast, the loop through Arthur's Pass and Lewis Pass, the run from Tongariro to East Cape, the long winding southern routes through the Catlins — every leg is worth the effort. But the planning has always been frustrating: the right campsite is often hidden three layers deep on a council website, the wind forecast you really need (gusts at cab height, not 10-metre wind speed) isn't on the front page of any forecast service, and a generic mapping app doesn't know that you're towing a caravan and care which roads are sealed.

Touring Brain bundles route planning, three-day weather, camp search and the safety basics that get owners into trouble (towing weights, ball loads, GVM, tyre age) into one place. We keep it focused on touring — no booking aggregator, no holiday deals, no influencer feed. Just a planner that respects your time.

The data we use

Touring Brain stitches together open and licensed data sources, which we credit on the relevant tool pages:

• Department of Conservation (DOC) — campsite metadata, used under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence. Powers the bulk of the public conservation campsites in our camp finder.
• OpenStreetMap contributors — holiday parks, freedom camping spots and additional campsite data, used under the Open Database Licence (ODbL).
• Mapbox — New Zealand road network data, turn-by-turn directions, the Optimization API for multi-stop loops and forward geocoding for less-known place names. Powers the route planner.
• Open-Meteo (Commercial) — three-day forecasts including wind, gusts, rain and temperature. Powers the weather briefing.
• NZTA / Waka Kotahi published guidance — legal limits and definitions used in the towing calculator, motorhome GVM check and tyre safety check. Our calculators provide rule-of-thumb guidance only and don't replace the compliance plate, vehicle handbook or professional advice.
• Resend — the transactional email service we use to deliver trip recaps and (if you opt in) daily morning briefings.

What we don't do

• No ads. The site is free to use and we don't run display, native or any other kind of advertising.
• No data sold. We never sell, rent or share the email addresses or trip details of our users with third parties.
• No tracking pixels in emails beyond what Resend provides for delivery diagnostics.
• No app to install. Everything works in your browser. Save us to your phone home screen if you want a one-tap shortcut.
• No marketing emails unless you actively opt in to a daily briefing — and the unsubscribe link in every email is one click and instant.

Get in touch

Email feedback@touringbrain.co.nz — bug reports, feature requests, a "this saved my trip" note, or pointing out a NZ town we've missed in the autocomplete: all welcome.

Touring Brain is independently operated and not affiliated with the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association (NZMCA), Tourism New Zealand, the Department of Conservation, NZTA, or any vehicle manufacturer or insurer.