Pitch Pricing for Caravan Club CLs
I reckon that the recession has been slow to hit caravanning as the main cost is the purchase of the ‘van, which might have been several years ago. Having said that, my feeling is that caravanners are saving fuel by not travelling as far, or as often. Having run a CL for 12 years, my impression is that our guests are mainly savvy empty-nesters who like value for money. For a couple of years, we charged £14 per night but have watched our bookings decline and rather than sit back and do nothing, we dropped our all-inclusive price to £12 with effect from 01 Aug 14.
We run a traditional ‘farm field’ CL with EHU & free Wi-Fi, and felt that £14 was justified, having been national ‘CL of the Year’ and voted ‘Best Small Site’ in the UK for the past 3 years running. Our local commercial sites charge about double our fees (depending on add-on charges) and cannot compete with our spacing, exclusivity or panoramic views. We are in a quiet rural location – good for relaxing, walking, cycling, bird-watching, visiting National Trust properties etc. but without any big ‘Alton Towers’-type local attraction to draw crowds of families.
We like having Club members as guests – we seem to get very nice people staying here, and many are repeat visitors who have become friends over the years. By remaining as a CL, our prices are constrained by market forces within the Club, i.e. the prices charged by other CLs, and various offers at Club-owned sites such as ‘Tour for £12’. We might be the best small site in the UK, but in a recession and with so much competition within the Club, ‘price’ is slowly winning against location, exclusivity and views.
If we installed toilets and showers, we would probably use that as a step towards leaving the CL network, increasing the number of pitches and bumping-up our prices to match our commercial neighbours – we certainly have the capacity to do so. The fact is that my wife and I each have full-time jobs unconnected with the CL - we find a 5-van CL comparatively easy to manage, and our guests seem appreciative of our efforts.
There is no option to add words such as ‘CL of the Year’ to our entry in the Club Sites Directory. The Directory is a level playing field, so potential guests select CLs from the Directory based on location, facilities and price.
There is a balance to be had: when we previously charged £12 per night, we had lots of enquiries, but had to refer them to other local CLs as we were often full. This was frustrating as our mealtimes, child’s bedtime stories and evenings were regularly interrupted by enquiries that did not result in bookings. Increasing to £14 per night meant that the phone didn’t ring as often – this did gave more ‘family time’ and the conversion-rate of phone calls to bookings increased.
Whilst not triskaidekaphobic ourselves, we feared that some potential guests might have been put off by a pitch price of £13. When we increased the price from £12 to £14, we acknowledged that we might lose some business, but thought that the extra couple of pounds per night would have offset the drop in attendance. This has not been the case: bookings were not helped by 2012 having the wettest April in 100 years, and snow for Easter 2013.
Things are starting to perk-up since we dropped the price back to £12, but the reduced price is not yet in the Sites Directory, so the increased bookings could be due to other factors such as good weather this September, or empty-nesters venturing out now that children have gone back to school.
Ian Kelly
01691 622951
Caravan@BirchHill.co.uk
www.BirchHill.co.uk
Birch Hill Farm – a multi-award winning caravan site in the beautiful lake-lands of Shropshire - exclusively for members of the Caravan Club
Read the reviews - look at the photos.
Number 1402 in the Sites Directory