Deposits?
Comments
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Good post David but I think what has changed is the introduction of the rolling system and with no brake on booking as much as a year in advance, there is no real incentive to consider whether you will be able to fulfill the booking. It is just all too easy to cancel. Any other holiday being booked so far in advance would require a deposit and if there was a lot at stake you would insure against canellation and losses. I was against the rolling system being introduced without deposits and I hope the specualtion turns out to be true.
peedee.
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I'm afraid David that I have little faith in the club's statements .....
Remember the integrity (or lack of) they showed with their statements about the H/S booking trial....?
They may well be able to fill a pitch on the honeypot sites at short notice when someone cancels just outside the 72 hours, but that is presumably where demand significantly exceeds supply.....
At less popular sites it's probably not as easy to fill the cancelled pitch and results in lost revenue...
If a site is showing as full when I look for one, I will book elsewhere, quite possibly with another provider, and would not then cancel that booking just because a club site showed a vacancy 72 hours before I was due to set off...!
No deposits may well be the USP of the club, but that doesn't mean it is good business sense....
But interesting to hear now rumours of diffential pricing for pitch types. Perhaps the club, and it's IT systems are catching up with the 21st century,,,,,,,,,
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Bookings on 'frenzy day' could be up to a year in advance, so there is no real difference except that the 'year in advance' now applies to the whole year rather than just the Christmas season.
I have always thought that a 72 hour cancellation was too short and should be extended to either five days or a full week.
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Just a thought. If deposits are to be introduced perhaps it will happen at the same time as the site price increases. The current Handbook ends soon too so maybe all will be updated.
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So if you are going to pay with site vouchers how does that work??
Also with the C&CC the booking fee is £25 I think and that is for 1-21 nights, if your pitch is only £14 and you are staying 1 night how does that work?
One of the reasons we cancelled our C&CC membership was the useless booking system and inflexibility of the deposit system. Like others we had bookings we could not make due to circumstances completely beyond our control (MH not delivered) so tried to amend at short notice. Was tole no not allowed you have to lose deposit and re-book, so we just did not turn up and got a call each night from the site asking us what time we were arriving, so they lost out on several nights fees as there is no incentive to actually cancel once you have lost your deposit.
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I have no problem with deposits for pitch booking It seems good business practice if I owned a site I would require deposits. Block bookers and cancellations especially last minute ones would be quite a challenge business wise as would last minute scramble for pitches.
Now here is a thought, as sites start operating at capacity maybe a leaf out the airline business model could be applied. Escalating pitch fees with late booking?
The club booking system also seems reasonably adept I.T. wise. Would it not be feasible to monitor members booking/ cancellation habits and impose a non refundable deposit on repeat no show members?? Say £50 or full payment depending on nights booked.
Anyone up for a new business venture, a chain of short stay sites.
Ryan Aires?
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I have no problem with deposits for pitch booking It seems good business practice if I owned a site I would require deposits. Block bookers and cancellations especially last minute ones would be quite a challenge business wise as would last minute scramble for pitches.
The C&CC (at least when I was a member) takes a £25 deposit per booking, that booking can include many sites so I can for £25 boot a whole tour and still pick and choose what nights I turn up for and what ones I do not (not that I do that).
Also what evidence do you have of block bookers or last minute cancellations? Pure speculation and see my post above re not cancelling pitches I have paid a deposit for!!!!
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In the past I could reserve a ferry crossing with Brittany Ferries costing perhaps £500 to France or £1000 to Spain, and if I cancelled I simply lost £25. Now I have to put down a quarter of the full cost at the time of booking. I can guess why they have made that change. Perhaps they had a lot of late cancellations which they couldn't fill at short notice.
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We've been members of the other club for just over a year and in that time we've never had a problem getting a pitch even (h/s) at short notice. Whether this is down to deposits taken I couldn't say, in the past I was not sure if I liked the idea of deposits but if it means folk can get back to 'touring' at short notice then maybe it's a positive.
Not had any problem with the C&CC booking system either once I'd 'learnt' how to use it, its been fine. As to the £25 deposit, that is only taken if your booking is greater than £25, if your 1 nighter is £14 then that is what you pay at time of booking with nothing to pay on arrival.
We've not had to cancel any booking with C&CC, as we've booked at last minute,but it is my understanding that under 30 days you will loose your deposit unless you rebook for a future date at that time. Changing a site booking to another site is a bit more complicated I agree but its doable.
If C&MC do go to deposits, hopefully they will keep the best bits of their current booking system and make it easy to still be able to switch sites.
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Without wishing to go down the well trodden path of whether deposits would solve any perceived problems re booking or not, there is a common misconception about automatically losing ones deposit if cancelling a C&CC booking.
A couple of years back we were booked to stay at Priddy (Cheddar) but on the morning when we should have been arriving the mover on the van failed so there was no way we could get it out of storage. I phoned the site to explain and ask if we could possibly transfer our deposit to a later date. The warden said the system wouldn'the allow it but "ring me back in 10 minutes and I'll see what I can do". When I rang back he said, OK all transferred and even apologised that it would be a couple of quid more expensive on the new dates.
So although it may not be as simple a system as CAMC bookings, nothing is actually out of the question - one just has to ask!
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We recently booked trips with the C&CC whilst on tour, booking a couple of nights at different sites a few days in advance. Deposit was £25 per site. I have no problem with that. Haven't ever had to cancel any bookings so far, fingers crossed for the future!
I love the idea of booking what I want e.g. hardstanding, grass, awning or not EHU or not - so simple. 😁 sometimes it's possible to change on arrival should it be required - we haven't.
I too think 72 hours is too little advance notice of cancellation, genuine emergencies can occur within that time, was this why they bought in late availability? We'll never know the answers.
I don't think a deposit will be a cure all in anyway. Maybe lengthening the cancellation in advance would be better. We as members will never have access to the thoughts and what basis decisions are made.
As for this club having an IT system that is robust enough to interrogate patterns etc I've seen no evidence to support that theory 😉
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Call them what you wish, we 'customers' all have that equal opportunity to choose from what is available on arrival. The difficulty lies in that we do not all book whole weeks starting and ending on specific days and there is no minimum night stay. If booking specific pitches was adopted pitches may have to remain empty for several days prior to the pre booked member arriving. Either that or some of us may have to change pitches during our stay.
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With the C&CC the deposit is a proportion of each booking, if it's one night this means you pay the whole amount and for other bookings it's a minimum of £25. Of course with this you can book a pitch type which has a structured price range ranging from grass non EHU through to a serviced pitch. I assume if the CAMC does introduce deposits they will also have to introduce a similar system to attract future bookings.
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sorry MT Yes it was pure speculation as I don't own a site, you may have missed the intention of my post.
I have no problem with deposits for pitch booking It seems good business practice if I owned a site I would require deposits. Block bookers and cancellations especially last minute ones would be quite a challenge business wise as would last minute scramble for pitches.
Now here is a thought, as sites start operating at capacity maybe a leaf out the airline business model could be applied. Escalating pitch fees with late booking?
The club booking system also seems reasonably adept I.T. wise. Would it not be feasible to monitor members booking/ cancellation habits and impose a non refundable deposit on repeat no show members?? Say £50 or full payment depending on nights booked.
Anyone up for a new business venture, a chain of short stay sites.
Ryan Aires?
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But thankfully variety is the spice of business as well as life. Catering for different markets and all that, it wouldn't be good for all providers to adopt identical systems in my opinion. The Club is a touring club and regarding choosing pitch on arrival this clearly works. Many members be they motorised or otherwise caravaners enjoy this and prefer the differences me thinks.
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If the Club are thinking about deposits there must have been a fundamental change somewhere given that the Club have always claimed to be against taking them and even put forward the argument that it would be costly to do so. I am inclined to agree with Peedee when he says that the new rolling booking system must have been central to this change of thinking. Either that or even more people are abusing the 72 hour cancellation period. So we will need to be convinced that reverting to deposits is not a case of taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut and there are deeper underlying concerns. Perhaps the cancellation rules will remain the same but members who cancel within 72 hours of arrival will lose their deposit which would at put them on an even footing with those on site that leave early and have to give up on a days site fees. To me that would be fair. The Club should be well aware of how unpopular the C&CC system is with no refunds after 30 days so hopefully they won't go down that route. If deposits are on the way then it would also be an idea time for the Club to embark on a system of being able to book a pitch type, one of the better elements of the C&CC system.
As someone who tends not to book that far ahead I can't in all honesty say that the introduction of deposits would be a big issue for me although I prefer the simple system we currently have in place. However I am used to paying a deposit when using either a C&CC site or commercial sites.
David
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I certainly hope this isn’t the case as I have to book all my holidays a year in advance, I know it may stop the large block bookings that allegedly occur but it will stop your genuine booker who may have to amend especially if deposits are non refundable and can’t be moved to an amended booking
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David, do you mean the C&CC policy of no refunds 30 days prior to the booking being taken up? I feel that is reasonably fair in the circumstances. I can't think of many other holiday bookings where refunds are available close to the take up date and at least no-one is asking for the balance to be paid in advance.
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+1
We book our NZ flights 9 months in advance if we can, cheapest way 😉. Pay in full immediately or sometimes within days. Additional charge for credit card payment, or there used to be not sure with recent changes. Refund none, change of date/time etc additional charge 😲. Booking conditions accepted as you purchase.
In this day and age I'm surprised the club doesn't have a deposit system purely from a business point of view. Yes we know club claims folks didn't cancel when deposit paid. We have to take their word for this as with 72 hour. We join we accept the T&C's. But with pitch fees as they are now late cancellations and no rebook of the pitch looses a substainal amount. With easier contact these days, mobiles emails etc a no show can be checked out after 1st night and re-offered, I'd offer immediately unless the booker had contacted, but I'm harsh 😂😂.
Could no shows be one reason membership fee has increased? Club has fixed costs for sites and they must be covered. Is earlier winter closing later spring opening another element?
We can speculate all we like things may change and we stay or go as suits ourselves.
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Brue
What I was meaning was that the C&CC policy is no refunds if cancelled within 30 days of arrival on site which many C&CC members feel is too severe. Now it may be possible to work round that with a sympathetic site manager but some have found HQ not to be so flexible. That refund period used to be 7 days so a very big change. What we are talking about here is what the Caravan and Motorhome Club decide to do. All I am saying if they followed the same route that would be a massive change of policy and I am mindful the the CMC likes to keep a point of difference between the two clubs. Firstly, of course, we need it confirmed that the Club will indeed be taking deposits. I don't buy into this comparison between what the Clubs do and what the rest of the leisure industry does as surely the point of being in a "Club" is to derive some benefits not available to non-members? Deposits outside the Clubs are by no means universal. For example if I book a room in a Premier Inn I don't have to pay a deposit and I can cancel up to the day of arrival.
As I have said I can live with deposits if they are introduced but we will need a system that is fair to both members and the Club.
David
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David, I'm sure like many others I always compare things although I'm equally happy with the way both clubs run their different bookings systems. So I'm not voting for deposits but know that it certainly stops speculative bookings and maybe wastes less pitches with no shows where a 72 rule might deter some but not all.
As you say, we don't know if the club are planning changes yet.
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