Interesting Announcement.
Article on Out and About Live website, eliciting a bit of debate elsewhere. Have to say it would be interesting to know a bit about how the Club's Marketing Dept has come to the results it has, especially as there is no mention of the South West amongst the results. Currently pondering on how the survey may have been put together, and what criteria has been used too draw the end conclusions. Does it allow for Winter site closures? If it ain't open, members cannot visit? Yorkshire is the only single county used as one of the Club's regions?
Hull, by the way, is nearly 30 miles from the nearest Club Site, but lots of CLs closer for those interested in visiting.
Apologies if the link doesn't go live, but hopefully someone can help, thank you.
Comments
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Yes that seems strange to me - I would have thought the West Country would win out but figures are a strange thing aren't the?
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Thank you pippah, appreciated. Don't know why it never works for me!
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Thanks Bugs. If it doesn't happen in two clicks, as it does elsewhere, I lose interest!
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I agree, that's why I was hoping for a bit more information. It's like one of those spurious ads that claim 90% of some women say their skin is softer, only to find that 10 women have been surveyed! The detail of how figures are obtained are the most interesting bit. Hope we get a bit more information.
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It would be very interesting to know how the results were obtained.
Logic says that areas with the most sites are bound to get more bookings than areas with fewer sites.
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It says Members, not overall numbers.
Also its the number of bookings, I suspect the south west are popular for a 2 week holiday but not for a few days away due to distances so if the majority of people live north of watford gap then a number of bookings throughout the year in the north for a short break or BH weekend would far outweigh the number of bookings to Cornwall.
You can also see this in the late availability numbers, there is always space in the SW but very little elsewhere except perhaps in peak season in summer.
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Were do all these stats come from. Going to the bottom of the page on the article, read: Caravan Club Members Spent £37 million in Scotland in 2016
Scotland doesn't even get a mention on the list. So were do the figures come from.
How do they know what a member spends. Nobody has ever asked me in a restaurant or shop if I'm in the Caravan Club
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Whatever they've done to come up with these figures seems to me to be an exercise in smoke and mirrors.
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No, they are spot on
I totally agree with the findings, it's what us Yorkshire folk have always known.0 -
Have you never taken part in any survey?? If yo did you will know they ask such questions as how much do you spend a day when on holiday or similar so if on average people spend £50 a day on food , drink and entertainment say then its easy to multiply that by the number of nights sold on club sites and the figures received from CL's etc.
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you mean:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics
I actually prefer:
A well-known lawyer, now a judge, once grouped witnesses into three classes: simple liars, damned liars, and experts
But my favourite is
the truth is anything that cannot be disproved
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I can only total it to 99%.
Even on TV adverts, however small the writing, they have to give numbers used to get to their figures. I agree it's smoke and mirrors.
With regard to spend there is a figure that is considered 'acceptable' as a guide to visits converting into spend and thus bringing income into the area. We had to start collecting postcodes, only first part, to prove we brought income into the area. They still cut us 😂😂😂😂.
As pointed out no Scotland or Wales no relationship of number if sites or them being open.
You can fool some if the people some of the time BUT you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Old and cynical- moi???
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I am not saying the Club's findings are incorrect, nor that the suggestions above are wrong either, I can't because I don't know how the figures were obtained.
If it is on a county basis, then stands to reason Yorkshire will come top, as it has more sites than any other county, and those that are available, probably stay open longer (all year round for some), some are big sites, and the county is very diverse, dales, moors, cities, coast, with excellent road links from both North, South and West, even in poor weather. So easier to get to all year round.
Some areas, SW, in particular Cornwall, will be rammed full in Summer, but then all bar one Cornish site closes. That will limit Cornish members (who I am sure are like the rest of us and enjoy a weekend away) to that one site, using alternative sites, going further afield or just staying at home. In Winter, we probably have around a dozen Club Sites within one and a half, two hours of us, so easy to get away.
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I expect it's taken from the most popular site bookings, no doubt 1 York Rowntree Park, followed by 2 Chatsworth, Derbys then 3 Baltic Wharf, Avon & Bristol (not doing as well due to impending closure.) Then it's plumped up a bit with some tourist bumf and a plug for the CC.
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Perhaps a more pertinent question should be is why do we have to read about these things in other communications independent of the Club? Why on earth can't we have a section on the forum (even if closed to discussion) where the various press releases are published at the same time as they are released elsewhere. As a member organisation sure we are worthy of being kept in the loop. Had the OP not taken the trouble of posting this many of us would have been none the wiser?
David
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Indeed, how did this miss our attention:
Caravan Club awarded top accolade for customer service
link at the bottom of that page
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Totally agree DK. I did look for it on the website, but just haven't found it, certainly not under the news section, that has some sort of win a motorhome header and the congratulatory backslap from last years Customer service win.
As I said in my opening post, it is interesting, but more information would make it even more interesting. I do quite a bit of survey completing, happy to help improve goods and services. Never done one for Club though as far as I can recall. When I first joined CT some members kept mentioning surveys, but I could never access them.
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Before people start to point too many fingers at the Club, can I just point out that:
a) This article was from "Out & About Live" not from the Club
b) If you look in the Club's Press Release Section of the website - there is no recent press release containing this data!
Cheers
Bugs
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Unless I've missed a vital bit of information, having only skimmed the article quickly, it didn't seem cleat to me how the conclusion in the artical was reached.
I wonder whether the conclusions were reached on the occupancy of CC sites? If that is the case it dooesn't really surprise me that the 'West Country' doesn't feature. I guess occupancy here is more seasonal and as there are so many other sites in Devon & Cornwall that members might and do use (I'm one who uses a private site in Cornwall), it's no great shock to me (assuming it's CC sites only that they've looked at).
Lots of other factors too e.g. How did they draw the conclusion taking there are a different number of sites in each area. Look at where some of the most popular CC sites are: York sites, Chatsworth (others too in Derbyshire), Baltic Wharf (Bristol), Seacroft and Sandringham (Norfolk), etc.
Just thinking of reasons why certain conclusions may have been reached.....
David
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You are right Bugs. Perhaps I have jumped to a conclusion too quickly and it is in fact a third party using data, with just a "sound bite" from CC marketing. Although they must have got the information from somewhere?
Hence the reason why nothing amongst Club press releases.
Certainly a debating point though, interesting article.
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Now which category is that, lies, damned lies or a statistic?
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