Cancellations

I think a lot of members would find it useful and it could also reduce over booking,
if a certain number of pitches are kept available as freedom to roam. This would mean that you could just drive without having to worry about being in a certain place by a certain time. Just play it by ear and when you feel tired, you look
for a site to stay the night. That's what caravanning used to be all about. If pitches were always available, there would be no need to pre-book at all!

That would be very nice, but what would happen if you were the last to turn up when all those pitches had been taken? How would you feel then? The club can't afford to leave some pitches open just in case units do arrive when they can fill them by
taking advance booking.

i agree Nellie, although its a shame that the 'touring' ethos of the club (in its purest, impromptu state) has been lost.

this is where i think the LNA or 'parking' areas could be used to accommodate genuinely 'touring' vans.....after all, i think they would have as much 'right' to this space as a non-paying 'visitor'.

a set rate of (say) a tenner would attract one-nighters and yeild income.

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

Write your comments here...Happy days, we started the shortage by pre booking pitches, pity we can't go back to good old days when touring was fun, but as cars get smaller and vans get bigger seasonal pitches become more popular it is going to get worse
so fine people enjoy whilst you can

WW, i agree with your post....the club needs more sites/pitches, however there are other providers in the market place.

many folk restrict themselves to certain areas of the market by applying certain caveats....

.....i could never stay on a CL/CS

.....i could never stay on site without showers/toilets

.....i could only ever stay on a CC site

....i could never use C&CC sites

...i could never use a commercial site

once you start to narrow down selections of sites, availability becomes tighter.

campers who are more flexible about site type and provider are more likely to find pitches (in their desired area) even in the more crowded periods.

It was good when you could ‘chance it’ by just rolling up to get a pitch but that’s pretty impractical now, apart from mid-week.

I think the Club is hardly likely to assign any pitches as non-bookable because it would not make sense to turn away bookings. It might also create more of a 12 o’clock scramble at popular sites to grab an unallocated pitch.

I may have said this before: we need a lot more pitches.

...But apart from the usual honeypots its seems its only W/end  that are short of pitches?

And as you already know there is not the space for the "old-fashioned" type of just touring sites unless you use cls,and the one we have been using over Xmas ,the owner was saying they now tend to have Sat-Sat/Sun bookings that in the peak periods sometimes  means that an odd night with one extra  ,and people just "touring" are now vary rare as most want to book to be sure of a pitch

 

if you like a place, youll want to stay a bit longer....if you run out of interesting things to do, you'll want to move on anead of time...

this is not easy to do on sites in this country, and you cant book 'site 2' while on site 1, as its likely to be booked....

 

I typically book 5 nights at each location on a tour. However I have on occasion changed whilst on site and decided that the site or the next site warrants longer or lesser time. Never had a problem changing my agenda. Similar when I have had a mechanical problem with a car or 'van. As it happens the 'next' site has always been a caravan club site and therefore no penalty for late changes anyway. If it were an affiliated site (and I do use those as well) I might loose a night's fees. No problem to me if that were to happen on occasion. On a 5 or 6 week tour a nights fees are neither here nor there in the overall scheme of things.

this is not easy to do on sites in this country, and you cant book 'site 2' while on site 1, as its likely to be booked....

We have done it as the warden at the new site agreed to hold a pitch for us until we cancelled where we were.

Write your comments here...+1,I think some make a problem when it does not really exist ,on one occasion the warden on the site we were on did it all for us while we were in the office

That reminds me of the song: 'Everything changes but you.'

..... its a shame that the 'touring' ethos of the club (in its purest, impromptu state) has been lost.....

Like everything the ethos of the club has to move on with those who are in it and run it. Not many people tour by relying on just turning up at a site anymore so if they held back pitches then they might well stay empty and yet people who wanted to book
in advance wouldnt have been able to.

Things move on - in days gone by pitches werent marked out, toilet disposal was just an open manhole. The club is a business, if it can sell its pitches in advance of course it will. Plus keeping pitches back for a certain sector of the club isnt really
as it should be in the interests of equality surely.

Write your comments here... I think you'll find it's called pre planning , that's how you manage your booking now days , too many members are living in the past

Like you say, Deleted User User, 30,000 sites in Europe. However, there are only just over 200 club sites in UK. So what is needed is for the Caravan Club to acquire more sites to cater for this section of the growing leisure market. So lets not complain about rising costs and instead support the club in its plans to grow and expand so that there is plenty of available pitches for us to use. People need to stop putting their caravan to bed for the winter and start to see winter as a season where they can continue to tour. This could result in more sites, not less, staying open all year thereby giving us more choice of places to stay in the winter.

The answer, Deleted User User, is for the Caravan Club to buy or lease more land to develop into new sites and keep all 200 or so existing sites open all year. This would be more viable if people could be persuaded to use their caravans in the winter and take advantage of the discounted deals that the club offers to winter caravanners. This would enable the Caravan Club to have the additional revenue necessary for an expansion in the network that could eventually cater for future growing demand. 

We always book in advance and we always would as I couldnt stand the stress of  not knowing we had a booking. We dont caravan in winter - the two main reasons being the horses (asking someone to get up at 5am to muck out 5 stables is a lot to ask!!) and
also because OH has a finite amount of holiday days, we use all these over spring, summer and autumn and have non to spare over the winter. I would think a lot of people who work are in the same situation with regard to holiday days.

It would be great if sites opened all year, but presumably at the moment they offer discounts because they are quiet. Running costs in the winter would be higher so they would have to at least break even to make it viable - which presumably it isnt at the
moment.

Oddly enough you do not have to break even to justify keeping a site open over winter. If the site is closed then it is losing money so what you have to do is get enough income to reduce the loss substantially and you are then improving the sites performance.

I may be miss-reading this but if the site is closed I presume it has no variable costs (except possibly some very minor power cost if there are security systems left in place).  The fixed costs (which in any event are sunk) are the same whether the site
opens or not. Consequently most rational entrepreneurs would argue that to open they must cover the variable costs - wardens salaries, light heat and power, extra maintenace whilst open etc. Provided they do this then a contribution to fixed costs is made
and then (all other things being equal) the rational decision is to open.

That might be what you were trying to say - not sure.

I'm not sure how this is relevant to the thread title but I just read this and felt it necessary to comment.

All the sites I've stayed on this winter seem to have been well occupied. So I can't see why more sites could not be kept open all year.