Booking Abuse!
Comments
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Ian while I agree members do make speculative bookings, it is the only way to get a booking sometimes, the cancellations seem to be gobbled up fairly quickly so the Club doesn't actually lose anything. It is just members like the one complaining in the March magazine letters pages that suffer and me who wanted a four day booking over a weekend in the northwest. It just couldn't be done 3 weeks in advance other than at the Wirral Country Park which I didn't want so I have booked a commercial site for my four days.
Did you see >this thread< I'll try and update it idc.
peedee
I have been monitoring the late availability for this weekend, I'll print the graph in >this thread< idc but on the 6th March there were only 907 pitches available on the Saturday night in the network. This morning the 8th March, with only a few hours to go before the deadline where you can cancel without penalty there are 1000 pitches available on the Saturday night. i.e. 10.25 percent of booked pitches have been cancelled over 2 days with 8.3 percent of them being cancelled yesterday.
Do the Club and membership think this acceptable??????
peedee
p.s. at the site I wanted to book, 7 percent of the pitches are now free.
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Figures cannot lie. Speculative booking is a reality. To address this the CC needs to implement one of the following:-
1. Non-returnable deposits
2. Extend the cancellation period to 5 days instead of 48 hours
3. Hold credit card details and levy a fee for late cancellations/no show.
4. Only allow 'weekend only' bookings to be booked four weeks before the date.
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Perhaps a bit controversial but why not an item 5, any booking of 2 nights or less has to be paid in full at time of booking. If cancelled, the fee would be forfeit. Although you would retain the right of appeal and could submit your reasons to the CC.
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It seems to me that the current system is working. If 93 extra pitches become available across a network of 200 campsites that is less than half a pitch per site. OK I appreciate that it will vary from site to site in terms of number of pitches becoming
available. To me that figure suggests they are more likely to be cancelations for genine reasons rather than speculative bookings simply because the figure is so low?David
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I agree with David K. The present system seems to work well for most people. The 72 hour cancellation policy releases a small number of pitches which gives folk the opportunity to book a site last minute if they are unable to book weeks in advance.
David
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...david, put like that it sounds low, but turn it back to Peedees observation that over 10% of all pitches were cancelled in the 'just allowed' period and that cant be 'genuine' reasons like illness, car breakdown, family incident etc.....just too many.
some will definitely be for worse weather than was expected, when booked back in December
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Perhaps a bit controversial but why not an item 5, any booking of 2 nights or less has to be paid in full at time of booking. If cancelled, the fee would be forfeit. Although you would retain the right of appeal and could submit your reasons to the CC.
i sort of agree with this, but even better, if one/two night 'transit' breaks could be booked on the carpark/LNA or similar (where available) it would stop the majority of these tiny bookings stymying those who wish to take a full week (or longer) but find
the odd day in the middle scuppers plans....i realise this is a difficult thing for the club to implement (as are most things.....) but it might be a way of freeing up more contiguous nights for those who need them.
im sure there are many MHers (and some caravanners) who are just passing through and would be happy without the bells and whistles for a slightly reduced price knowing that they havent booked a one nighter right in the middle of someone elses plans...
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Ian while I agree members do make speculative bookings, it is the only way to get a booking sometimes, the cancellations seem to be gobbled up fairly quickly so the Club doesn't actually lose anything. It is just members like the one complaining in the March
magazine letters pages that suffer and me who wanted a four day booking over a weekend in the northwest. It just couldn't be done 3 weeks in advance other than at the Wirral Country Park which I didn't want so I have booked a commercial site for my four days.Did you see
>this thread< I'll try and update it idc.peedee
I have been monitoring the late availability for this weekend, I'll print the graph in
>this thread< idc but on the 6th March there were only 907 pitches available on the Saturday night in the network. This morning the 8th March, with only a few hours to go before the deadline where you can cancel without penalty there are 1000 pitches available
on the Saturday night. i.e. 10.25 percent of booked pitches have been cancelled over 2 days with 8.3 percent of them being cancelled yesterday.Do the Club and membership think this acceptable??????
peedee
p.s. at the site I wanted to book, 7 percent of the pitches are now free.
...How many of the pitches that appeared on the 8th march were put back into the system by site staff,for what ever reason?
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It seems to me that the current system is working. If 93 extra pitches become available across a network of 200 campsites that is less than half a pitch per site. OK I appreciate that it will vary from site to site in terms of number of pitches becoming available. To me that figure suggests they are more likely to be cancelations for genine reasons rather than speculative bookings simply because the figure is so low?
David
I disagree. For a start less than a 100 sites are open and 8.3 percent cancellations in one day just before the deadline says a lot. At A time when the Club is trying to maximise site income to pay for the NLW, I think they need to rethink their cancellation policy. What nobody knows is how many like me have been and booked a non Club site because pitches were not available until 3 days before?
peedee
p.s. A quick count shows the actual number of sites open is 62.
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Well, of course, you can use statistics to prove anything. Even from 62 sites, 93 cancellations is a mere 1.5 per site (put it another way, 91.3% of the bookings appear as if they are going to be honoured!) - and given that the weather forecast seems reasonably favourable for this weekend there is little evidence to support the claim that the majority of these cancellations are down to that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the CC system is anything like perfect, but it does seem to me to work pretty well in the vast majority of cases. CY has made an excellent suggestion for tweaking the system to deal with the small number of "late" cancellations.
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...How many of the pitches that appeared on the 8th march were put back into the system by site staff,for what ever reason?
None, do you know otherwise?
peedee
but do we know that it was allso all last minute cancelations?..
Yes, I will post the graph on Thursday morning when it is clearer how many have been re-booked. there are signs some have already been snapped up. If you try and put a monetary value on those cancellation it is not an inconsiderable amount of loss to the Club if that is happening every weekend over the year! Conservatively it is in excess of £100,000
peedee
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I'd guess, though, that the vast majority of those are re-sold. There must be many others out there, like us, who don't often book ahead for short trips but regularly snap up these late availability pitches when circumstances permit. I'm sure that's particularly
so from, say April through to October. Therefore the monetary loss to the club is maybe not as great as it might appear.0 -
...How many of the pitches that appeared on the 8th march were put back into the system by site staff,for what ever reason?
None, do you know otherwise?
peedee
but do we know that it was allso all last minute cancelations?..
Yes, I will post the graph on Thursday morning when it is clearer how many have been re-booked. there are signs some have already been snapped up. If you try and put a monetary value on those cancellation it is not an inconsiderable amount of loss to the Club if that is happening every weekend over the year! Conservatively it is in excess of £100,000
peedee
...Are you saying you have access to the last minute cancelations or are the late availability figures what you are working on, which will also include wardens putting posibly a couple of damaged/under maintainance pitches in for the w/end,
Which would give more flexibility for their dicretion for a later dep for a few if req
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Write your comments here...Are you saying you have access to the last minute cancelations or are the late availability figures what you are working on which will also include wardens putting posibly a couple off damaged/under maintainance pitches in for
the w/endThe number of damaged/repaired pitches being brough back into service, if any, will be small and is unlikely to effect the figures.
peedee
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Write your comments here...Are you saying you have access to the last minute cancelations or are the late availability figures what you are working on which will also include wardens putting posibly a couple off damaged/under maintainance pitches in for
the w/endThe number of damaged/repaired pitches being brough back into service, if any, will be small and is unlikely to effect the figures.
peedee
...One or two per site?
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The sites that have appeared could be where teh club has released some grass pitches as the weather has improved, or another site has opened after the winter, not attributed to cancellations especially as the weather is supposed to get warmer this weekend.
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It has been confirmed in the past by the club that a number of pitches may be held back and released into the system. I've seen it happen myself on a bank holiday weekend when the weather forecast was good and grass pitches were going to be usable. This
was at Wirral CP which gets very boggy in wet weather.We will never get a clear picture as the information we need to get it is held by the CC and cannot be determined by the data available. We can only make assumptions which may or may not be accurate
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I doubt that they have peedee. I was just using an example of one occasion when there was a sudden boost in available pitches.
I have no clue how many pitches get held back and released later but the Club did confirm that it happened. It wasn't many per site as I recall
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Lots of sites opened up a few days ago, is this reason that more pitches have appeared?
No, these site have been bookable for some time and included in the late availablity I have been monitoring for this weekend 11/13 March. e.g. Stover.which incidently is now all hardstanding.
peedee
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I doubt that they have peedee. I was just using an example of one occasion when there was a sudden boost in available pitches.
I have no clue how many pitches get held back and released later but the Club did confirm that it happened. It wasn't many per site as I recall
Jayess, I haven't notice any significant jumps in availablity on the 6 days betwen the 27th March and 8th of March I have so far monitored. The trend until early this morning had been a reducing availability. I don't believe the Club suddenly released a big block on deadline day, I am firmly of the believe these were last minute cancellations and if you inlcude the figures for Friday and Sunday it is very much worse and the total cancellation between the 6th and this morning for this weekend was 486 nights. That said there does seem to be some late booking activity and it could well be by Friday these might all be snapped up?
peedee
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That's the pattern I've noticed in the past as well. I have seen jumps in availability on some sites during the summer which I have always put down to grass pitches being able to be used but not at this time of year.
It very likely is late cancellations but if they get rebooked then the Club aren't going to see that it's a problem
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