Mount Maunganui has made Vodafone's list of the most connected holiday spots in New Zealand over the festive period.

The top 10 is based on mobile data traffic carried over any of its 1500 individual cell sites around the country between December 23 and January 7.

The Mount ranked fifth on Vodafone's holiday hotspot list.

Mount Maunganui was the fifth most popular holiday location by data usage, just behind parts of the Coromandel, and beat other popular holiday destinations including Queenstown and Wanaka.

Holiday makers in Mount Maunganui chewed through 2,191GB of data during the above period - the equivalent of nearly 4,400 hours of video streaming, 1.3 million photos uploaded or 26,000 hours of music streaming.

Vodafone's Consumer Director, Matt Williams says the results show how hi-tech the holidays have become.

'The New Zealand summer holiday – more than any other time of the year – is about staying close to the things and people who matter,” says Matt.

'Smartphones are at the heart of that now, and while texting and calling are still popular, Kiwis are using data services to stay in touch more and more.

'Along with the skim boards and cricket sets, Kiwis are taking their office, TV, and music library on holiday with them in their tablet or smartphone.

Matt adds: 'We monitor our network activity closely and are constantly investing in the network to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile population.

'Ahead of each year's holiday season, we boost the network around the country to manage the high volume of calls, TXTs and data.”

Vodafone deployed a Cell Site on Wheels (COW) at Mount Maunganui for the summer period to help cope with the influx of holiday makers using smartphones.

Top 10 holiday hotspots:

1. Parts of Coromandel: Whangamata South, Whitianga Central, Matarangi and Hahei

2. Leigh

3. Marsden Point

4. Mangawhai

5. Mount Maunganui

6. Pauanui township

7. Wanaka

8. Winton

9. Queenstown

10. Kinloch