An altogether better booking experience
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Whether they do or not, JV, it doesn’t make this lack of forethought and poor presentation acceptable.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, JV, that is utter tosh and has no bearing on the club’s handling of this issue which is what we are discussing here.
Your defence of the club does you no favours.
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I am not sure about Focus Groups but would like to know more about them and how people are chosen to contribute to such groups.
Most focus groups are afflicted with myopia.
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Do you use the internet?
The booking section of the club is 10 years behind the best in class for travel search and booking.
You ask what is poor well start with the list of improvements that is listed in the OP, why improve them if they are not poor.
Quite frankly the current booking platform is clunky, slow, with no where near enough search features. It is the printed book on the internet not a custom booking platform.
Quite simply I want to be able to have a search string something like:
Caravan, fully serviced pitch, site or CL,date x to date y, near pub, fishing on site, dog walk, hardstanding, in a geographical search area defined by me, near a beach, open all year, dogs allowed.
You can do this on commercial search sites so why not on the club platform?
On the club site I can have a search string of region and date (even then it asks you to check availability on each page) and it is up to the user to pour over dozens of site details to see if the site suits by translating those little symbols.
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I can't say as the improvements hold any interest for me due to the way I plan my trips and the type of sites that we use.
As for pouring over the symbols in site details I don't as there are none which are of any importance or real interest to me.
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Very much my views. Personally I think asking for the complexity that Phishing wants, is just asking for trouble, given the track record of improvements on this site.☹️ Search strings are only any good if you can trust the results. I will shortly become interested in those sites that have a drive over waste water disposal, however it would have no influence in picking a site.😂 To me it's the fact that the site is a known quantity, easy to book in the right area that counts. Information such as nearest bus stop / frequency / nearby attractions / shops etc, I will establish from more detailed online sources.
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If the CC website said that the bus stopped 100 yards away would you trust it to be accurate and up to date if it was important to you? Personally I would do a quick check for bus times etc on Google Maps followed by the bus companies links.
I did use the CC's map search back in 2013 to find a suitable CL close to Alde in Wellingborough and, for me, it worked fine. Such a search is rare though as we simply look at a map and plan a series of 5 night stops. Often a longer first run and then trying to keep the rest to about 1.5 to 2.5 hour hops. First choice is usually a CC site unless it is not near enough to where I want to be. Then I will look at C&CC sites. If neither seems where I want to be then I do what I would in the past. Google the post code, expand the resultant search area by zooming out and then search touring caravan sites to see alternative options.
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well you must be using a different club booking to me, apart from HS and open all year, I get all that
Caravan - does it matter? caravan or MH?
SP - yes
site - yes. Can't really expect CL to be part of the club's booking? That would mean CL owners would need something their end so increase work time/costs?
date to date? This one is intriguing? how else do you book???
geographical area, - yes by map, or region, even county
DOGS ALLOWED? are you serious???
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The club is a network of many sites which have similarities and also differences, thankfully. Given that we members are similar in ways yet different makes for a difficult if not impossible task as far as standardising a website is concerned. That 'good for families' label, what does that mean? What's good for one family may be hell for another! As a young family we loved being together on those walking, climbing holidays with the opportunities to escape into the great outdoors. The very mention of playgrounds, games fields and clubs would have turned our children off straight away. They got all those at home and at school. They, and we, made the most of new environments and family time. On those quiet, possibly some would say good for adult sites, we had some of our best holidays and our children still made friends on these and had fun.
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Agree. Luckily none of which affects our use of a few Club Sites or CLs. All those are much discussed moans that have never been issues for us. If there are a few folks out there that do book lots of dates, don’t turn up if the wind direction changes and do it because there is no financial penalty then the Club is way overdue in terms of sorting it out. Many of the busy CLs have far better booking policies than the Club.
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Agree about the CL's who have their own booking systems, but each is separate and I dread to think what the outcome would be should the CC get their hands on them!!
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What I described is the norm for booking platforms. Its not some radical new technology.
I agree that some CLs have better booking systems than the club but this just simply should not be the case. The club should be leading and have a platform that is so good that the CLs want to utilise the booking platform. This isn't even an option.
"And how big is the website on a commercial site compared to what would be needed to do as you would "like" with nearly two hundred sites?"
I can guarantee it is smaller than the current club website. When the internet happened two schools of thought prevailed. one was to take what you already had i.e. a brochure or catalogue and transcribe it into a website. Huge data, poor commercial outcome. The other way was to develop new platforms that gave the user a pleasant experience, fast, intelligent, nice to use.
There are commercial travel sites with tens of millions of searchable options and destinations, scale is not an issue, quality of the user experience is.
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The club should be leading and have a platform that is so good that the CLs want to utilise the booking platform.
Totally impractical that CL bookings should be on the same platform for many reasons. On searches fine. The map search for CLs has seemed fine in the past however
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It wouldn’t work having CLs on same platform. Some of the nicest we have used don’t even have a website. They probably remain nice because they are undiscoverable via the website. Fanstastic though it is, and I don’t recall we have ever had an issue using it, online booking isn’t our preferred method.
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agree, was reading an article only today re the advances in technology that will be available with the advent of 5g etc and there was a quote that i thought was very appropiate
"you build something for where the world is going to be not for where the world is now"
perhaps the East Grinstead crew should get out more
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indeed they are doing a terrible job aren't they?
Perhaps all those high tech booking sites caravan sites would love to have the occupancy rates of the club? Where does that come from? The booking system or the quality of the product?
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I think the booking system is working fine as it is, so why change something just for the sake of it, Quite a few things are in need of changing before the booking system, things that have been talked about on here for years but no changes made, If the club really wants to here the thoughts of member, send an open blank sheet to all members and then study that for twelve months, but I can not see that happening.
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I agreed that the current system works well and only needs a few improvements.
The most import I believe is to be able to book hard standings but we are unlikely to get it as the site staff would feel that it could take away their flexibility in bad weather. The search facility also need improving so that you can search on all pitch types ie grass/hard standing & serviced etc.
Any attempt to stop the mythical block bookings is bound to end up penalizing the genuine person who wants to book multiple sites. The same applies to the introduction of deposits which would penalise the less well off.
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