CL's for weekenders?
Interesting chat with a CL owner today. Had their inspection last week and all is well. Site owner comments that she has lots of bookings for next year especially bank holiday weekends. Inspector tells owner that shouldn't be doing that but aiming for longer bookings or putting a minimum night's stay over those weekends.
Discuss! My view is to look after the bread and butter customers but happy to accept other views.
Comments
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If there was a minimum booking period of longer than I wanted to stay I would go elsewhere and boycott that site in future.
Of course there will be bookings for weekends and especially bank hol weekends as that’s the nature of our social set up with schools and work places primarily operating Monday to Friday. For a site owner to shun that business in search of longer bookings could be biting the hand that feeds him/her.
It's also entirely up to the site owner to decide his terms of booking and not for the club to say what they 'should' do. I wonder if there has been a misunderstanding here.
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If the CMC feels that is sound advice for running a caravan site, it seems to me strange they do exactly the opposite for theirs, have a system that effectively blocks out those wanting longer stays.
However, given a large chunk of the users will be of working age and or with school children then positively discouraging week-end use seems a stupid business model.
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Ps - I should add that the owner has no intention if doing this.
It's a bit like the inspectors 'recommending' owners charge £15 at new sites - myth or truth
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Customer is King, as soon as a company tries to dictate what suits them I feel most independent minded folk will just walk away. We are blessed with many choices from many operators & if those operators give us what we want then we will stick with them. Brand loyalty started to die when operatators put customers at the bottom😤.
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The other aspect of weekend bookings is that it can serve as a taster for the customer who may come back for a longer stay in the future, particularly if they offer a 7 for 6 or 14 for 12 deal.
The nature of the location may also determine whether any individual CL would tend to attract weekenders of longer term visitors. An owner needs to study and know his market.
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I can understand it if a CL owner does not accept a single night booking ie a Friday or Saturday night, over a bank holiday weekend, if they feel that they will loose out in the long run, but it does seem strange the a member of the club's hierarchy is suggesting a system that differs from that worked by club sites.
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We visited a new CL last year with basic CL facilities, and were asked for comments about the advice the owner had been given by the club (really must stop calling it that). They had been advised to invest in a toilet+shower room, a drive over drainage point and to put in hard standings and stone driveway. Fees could be raised accordingly.
They were not financially in a position to do any of these things and were concerned that they could not succeed without it. We advised that the advice was nonesense in our opinion.
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That's what we thought. Having spoken to many CL owners over the last 20+ years, it is clear that inspectors often make suggestions to new(er) CL owners who think that this is what they should do rather than what they could do, but being new want to follow what they may feel is the best advice. The site in question is often full (never more than 5), with many staying for more than a weekend including us - it is our favourite site in that area, and we often visit for weekends, but also for longer stays (10 days in August) and a week at Easter, but would soon stop visiting if a minimum stay was applied.
There is a CL in Ravenscar, North Yorkshire who we would love to visit, but with a minimum of 4 nights at Bank Holidays and 5 nights over Easter, we just can't do it, and so have not visited as us working people just cannot do it without using precious annual leave, which impacts on other holidays throughout the year. This system obviously works for those CL owners, but not for us I'm afraid.
Thanks for the comments - it was a lovely weekend away.
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