Prices gone mad.
Just looked at one of our favourite CL with a view of going away early Jan. Basic price now "from" £18-50. Awnings £1-50. Showers extra etc. Bear in mind its squeezed in between two commercial sites under the same ownership and you have to wonder. Another off our list. Makes even CC sites look reasonable at this time of year. Are Cls now pricing themselves out of the market, or moving on to the commercial sector.
Comments
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Many on here regularly post that commercial sites have very competitive prices and special deals off peak, to keep them filled, so logically that would not be the reason. As to pricing themselves out of the market, that would seem a strange thing to do. You say it was one of your favourites, why was that? Perhaps they are finding they are getting so much interest they can afford to inflate prices with no loss in customer numbers.
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We would refuse to pay £18.50 for a CL and would find somewhere else. After all many CLs are stuck in the back of beyond and you need to be careful when travelling down a narrow winding lane. They will soon wake up when they have a lot less visitors.
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We only go up to £15 for a CL but then again all we want is electricity and waste disposal and don't begrudge that amount. We have found and used CLs with toilets/showers but generally suspect if you want those facilities you have to pay for them.
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It was convenient and not too far away. In the shoulder period we go for 3/4 nights. Now we find commercials in the same area, some for £9/10 per night - full Euro pitch. After trying them we found them clean, quiet and excellent value. Unless I've tried it I don't post.
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Same as us. We would never pay £18:50 for a CL pitch, regardless of the facilities available.
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Of course they are, but we as CL users can choose what price we are willing to pay and can also express our opinion on prices rises, too.
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I am rather opposed to separate fees for awnings. It is often a way to disguise the headline price. Effectively the CL under discussion is £20 per night and we are in commercial site territory here. What then is it's USP? At that price it has to be more than merely being restricted to five vans.
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I am jumping to a conclusion here, so forgive me please if I am incorrect! Suspect you are looking/talking about a CL in North Wales, Gwynedd, Clwyd area? If so, the price comes as no surprise to us. We looked at an early Spring holiday in this area (no BHs) some five or six years ago. We could find little in the way of CLs for under £15 per night at the time, most of them basic. So we looked at alternatives, and ended up taking a fantastic cottage (dog friendly, open wood fire, ensuite bathroom, all appliances, half a mile from Rievaulx Abbey), closer to home, worked out at £16 per night, everything included. Ok, we booked it late, and probably got a bargain, but it was better value for money.
We have found North Wales one of the most expensive areas to visit, no doubt due to the wonderful scenery and things to do, and the CL owners are probably just taking a look at other sites around and pricing accordingly. I for one don't begrudge them that, and trust they do get plenty of visitors.
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I'm sure that you will correct me if my sums are wrong.
If a CL site charges £20 a night for each pitch then the owner has earned £100, which when maintenance expenses are deducted is in minimum wage territory. The situation is further worsened if the site is not 100% utilised throughout the year. I cannot imagine commercial site operators being the slightest bit interested in that level of return so it must surely be a case of a labour of love?
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We will pay what we feel a site is worth to us; top of our "values" are a site's location in respect to where we want to be.
As already stated CL/CSs can only operate on a maximum of 5 units so have a totally different and quite minimal opportunity to recover cost so it hardly surprises that they can seem expensive compared to commercial operations.
That they do exist is to us invaluable and those we use by choice are far removed in what they offer to commercial sites, that is a massive part of their charm. What we are buying with 5 van sites is thankfully quite a different camping experience. I doubt there are many that even at £18.50 or £20 pn are really exploiting their clients and even fewer that get anywhere near a 100% 365 occupancy on which some critics must be doing their arithmetic.2 -
at the other end of the scale, its very easy to portray a scenario where (in season) a small cl in a nice location (no ehu/showers) could have 5 vans a night at £15 (£75 a night, £525 a week) for mowing a field (albeit a nice field, in a nice place).
with just 9 weeks full occupancy, a good 2 month summer, (even spread over the whole year) thats an approximate £5k return.....
even with an EHU supply, in summer the usage will be very low, around 10% (£1.50) a night, so return still around £4.5k.
money for old rope?
just playing Devil's Advocate....
CL's can sit anywhere between the (made up) scenario above, right up to those with showers and toilets, where the costs are much harder for suppliers to keep down and for customers to weigh up on value...and all combinations in between....
each of is have an idea of what we think is good value, a d we tend to vote with our wheels to get it.
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Plus, there is water to be paid for, most likely commercial rates for garbage/recycling disposal, sewerage charges and if on part of a farm much bigger than a small holding then there is legally VAT to be paid. On top of those somebody has to sit on the mower, invest in the mower, fuel the mower, keep the returns paperwork the club needs and the returns the accountant needs for the IR, as well as answer the phone and in most cases be polite enough to spend time interfacing with you even if only to collect the fee. That is without mentioning that the land has to be purchased and set aside for being a CL rather than other income earning use.
A bit more than "mowing" really if looked at properly.
We are not looking for bargins, just paying what makes things viable. Whilst not wanting to be ripped off we have direct experience of the costs involved and armed with that insight want the owner to get enough out of providing these CLs to keep doing it.
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at the other end of the scale, its very easy to portray a scenario where (in season) a small cl in a nice location (no ehu/showers) could have 5 vans a night at £15 (£75 a night, £525 a week) for mowing a field (albeit a nice field, in a nice place).
I assume there would also be costs for insurance. Water / waste and refuse disposal at the very least. So not just mowing a field.
Ocsid got in ahead of me and put it rather better.
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all you say is true, hence my 'made up' scenario, which is what most customers might see....
at the end of the day, folk wont trawl through a load of calculations to make their 'value assessment', they'll just put the cost per night against their own level/maximum.
...and this is the quandry, no doubt, for small sites....
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ocsid
Thanks for putting it that way, how very true in what you have said . So easy to see an area of grass and nothing else. As a retired farmer we set up our CL some years ago, and we have made many friends over the years. We find it is rewarding having the CL but our costs do increase year by year. In 2016 waste disposal cost us £850 that worked out at just under £1 per van night on site.
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I think some people overlook the fact that running a CL incurs overheads, Wildemere. There will be hidden costs and your example of the waste disposal cost is a frightening figure.
Many CL owners don't do it for the money but I, for one, don't begrudge them a decent return on their outlay.
Good luck to you all and I hope you manage to secure bookings despite being let down by the web site.
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Before we brought our caravan and went on conventional holidays this often involved boarding our dog, generally at a cost of between £18 and £20 per night.
We can now take him with us so I regard the first £18 a night of site fees as already paid for.
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I don't really have a fixed max price in my head for a CL.
It can depend on what choice there is in that particular area. If like me you prefer a CL with a shower and toilet then sometimes the options are very limited, given that I favor CLs over commercial sites.
If I really wanted to stay in a chosen area and the CL price was £19 while a CC site nearby was £25, I would choose the CL depending on the reviews.
Speaking of reviews, please bring them all back CC.
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We have a maximum of £15 pn for our touring sites. We've managed to do so comfortable this last year. We've spent a total of 255 nights touring in 2016 on 42 CLs, 8 CC sites and 2 Commercial site at an average of £12:23 pn, an increase of 50p per night on 2105. All have had EHU, many with H/S pitches and/or a toilet.
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We've just booked a few nights on a CL at £20 per night. Sounds high and it would normally be for us. But we've been before and for our money we get a serviced HS pitch and 16A EHU. There's a toilet and shower, free wifi, the dogs are included and - oh yes, the main selling point - it has superb views in all directions. So we're happy, particularly since the large commercial site just down the road is much more expensive and is surrounded by woodland, missing out on those views.
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So for an extra £1 you wouldn't want a view like this with HS and service pitch?
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We had a site with a view very similar to that, H/S but no toilet or serviced pitch, and it was only £9 pn. You're paying a lot for a toilet, which you have in your van, and the use of a serviced pitch.
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