Slight of Hand "Head Line" Pricing
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I think you've got the meaning just right.
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Getting back to the op and trying to avoid what is now the par-for-course "exchange of views regardless of content" by regular protagonists ....
The club offers eye-catching headline prices to advertise its products:
The club prices are rising rapidly:
The club is a business not a club:
These appear to be the main points of contention and I agree with ever one of them. The club is a business that offers possible but rarely feasible eye-catching offers and has recently escalated prices ahead of the RPI (or so I suspect based on my own experience)/
Agree with everything. It is no different to the loaf of bread I buy, the glass of wine I buy or anything else. If I think I can get better value or a better experience elsewhere then I go elsewhere.Why complain? The only way any business adapts to change is when it appreciates the need to stop it's existing customer base from walking away or needs to attract custom disenchanted from elsewhere.
On that basis I still think the club site offers excellent value for a predictable and well-presented product.
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agree with two, but what is your evidence for club prices rising rapidly? what do you mean? every year? every month? Or the increase itself? (£1.40 over a year doesn't seem to be that bad for me personally)
btw I didn't have you down as one of the ones that doesn't allow people to exchange their views on whatever (sort of your own censorship or moderating ideas?) without being called a protagonist
However thanks for the compliment 
- the leading character
- an advocate or champion of a particular cause or idea.
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My only further comment would be to say that more reviews are coming in with "expensive" in the title. I tend to sign in via latest activity, this is the time of the year when the reviews start to pour in and it's noticeable in the titles and comments.
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I find that strange, as they knew the price before booking and before arrival? If they thought that then why did they carry on? Of course how many write reviews compared to those staying?
Perhaps they do think that, yet consider it good value? but sites continue to attract large numbers. I've never know an Easter break with so many sites completely full and whole areas completely full. The lakes has one pitch Saturday, Cotswold, only two pitches on the Friday, get in quick as there is one all weekend pitch at Great Yarmouth in East Anglia. None north west, the peak a handful across all sites.
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I don't find it strange at all, people have booked a site they like but think the costs are getting higher and they are at liberty to comment as such. Although some sites are busy for two or three days over Easter maybe more people would have visited for longer with lower costs. I'm sure CAMC keep a watch on costs v uptake so as I said I've noticed there have been more review comments recently about rising costs.
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costs getting higher and expensive are two different things. You mentioned expensive before not costs getting higher at all, which is it in the reviews? expensive or costs getting higher? Costs getting higher is just the usual ways of most things.
Of course they are a liberty to state if they are expensive as you say, what is strange is that they knew the price before going yet still went, and still complain. It does not make sense, to me at least.
Consider that many of the people staying over Easter work (otherwise why go at this short window) so that staying longer is not an option.
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Read my post.
The evidence that you ask for is there, My experience.
So far this year I have stayed on 4 club sites that I have previously stayed on and I am paying probably around 40% more than I did up to 4 years ago. This week, 14th May, I stopped at Hunters moon, £22 per night compared to the £14 I paid in May 2016. I think an increase of over 50% in three years could constitute a rapid price increase.
However, as I also make clear in my post I do consider the club still offers excellent value.
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"However, as I also make clear in my post I do consider the club still offers excellent value."
And at the end of the day, Jen, that is all that matters. I think those who use club sites do so because they've considered location, facilities, price etc and come to a rational decision that it works for them. Not because they're too stupid to realise they're being fleeced!
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I was talking about the Easter weekend using the late availability page
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Anecdotal but I was at a wake this afternoon chatting to a former commodore of my sailing club who also caravans and one of his first comments was about the escalating site prices.
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My return to "camping", after a 10 year lay-off due to others factors, was in 2014.
Quite interesting. I naturally continued where I left off, preferring CL's. However I last remember paying around £4 a night and suddenly I'm paying two figures for a muddy field in the middle of winter. However I persisted, stuck in the mindset of "many years ago".
Finally I got sick of my brand new camper looking like a bit part from a paschendale movie, encrusted in mud, and myself smelling like something that's just crawled out of a trench from the same movie.
I wanted hardstanding, a hot shower, water which I did not have to trek over a swamp to get to. I booked into Tredegar house.
It cost me £7.45 per night. I was astonished. In my view totally underpriced. Astonishing value as I stayed there for three nights and luxuriated on my hard standing, water 50 yards away, two showers a day to catch up to when I had nowt, civilised waste disposal, a nice warden to make local enquiries from.
If it was now twice the price then it would still be excellent value. Having just checked it would not be, around 20% more than then, so perhaps not all sites have had substantial price increase, perhaps only those where the club felt it was underpricing compared to regional competition, or, perhaps where the lessor had increased lease prices substantially.
Either way, I really don't have to think twice about renewing my membership.
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Totally agree Brue. We are just back from 3 nights at Bridlington. It's where we wanted to be and we paid the £35.50 ( standard pitch) without complaint. It doesn't however prevent me from commenting that I think the CAMC have got the pricing wrong at this and several other sites. Last Friday and Saturday showed around 50 spaces on late availability, Sunday 60. Monday and Tuesday from my observation there were considerably more. OK it is full over the Easter weekend, most places in this part of the country are. It's the rest of the inflated Easter Peak that I think they need to address.
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and of course prices for 'pitching' or whatever it's called, a boat/yacht/ship has gone down?
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Corners, if you were running a business I'd have my lifejacket on.
Prices on sites now will fluctuate through two further bank holidays until they hit a peak in July and August. The average prices have to be taken into consideration and I think you'll find in the last few years, due to rising utility costs, changed employment laws etc plus a profit margin they have noticeably increased.
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indeed as shown for Jen a £1.20 per year increase is vastly noticeable.
I'll be paying £1.40 more per night next Easter (and that is like for like), I suppose that could be a vast increase for some? If so don't pay it.
Not sure what the life jacket is for or why you said it? Didn't have you down as play the man type but noted.
I'd be quite happy if I was running the club atm and got the money/bookings the club is getting in, wouldn't you?
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Good grief...
26%
40%
15%
Either represents a well above RPI increase.
What on earth does "even more excellent value" mean? Does everything have to be pedantically broken down into the smallest possible particle.
I go camping.
I go camping sometimes just me and my camper, sometimes with my sister and her caravan, sometimes my dogs or just one dog are with me. I camp around 100 nights a year from wild camping to club sites, both clubs.
Over the last few years I have noticed substantial increases in prices. I do not restrict that comment specifically to club sites but all sites and all types of sites. As I have said in one post in this thread I have been astonished at how so many CL's are now charging what appears to me to be a large chunk of money for very limited facilities.
This is a consumer observation I can make based on my own experience without resorting to a spreadsheet analysis to substantiate it or to have to justify it in the smallest minutiae of detail.
Within that observation I have also repeatedly expressed the view that whilst the Caravan club prices for some sites have followed a price escalation comparable to the rest of my experience they still represent excellent value for money for the facilities offered, and, relevant to the OP, if I felt they did not then I would simply exercise my consumer choice and go elsewhere.
End of story.
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To the great bulk of the members who use The Caravan Club sites it probably does not matter one iota what the precisely calculated increase in price has been, but what will matter is what they think the price increase has been.
From the number of full sites, I would asume that that they are content with what they think the increase has been.
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I'd be quite happy if I was running the club atm and got the money/bookings the clubs is getting in, wouldn't you
Jumping to conclusions there Corners. I would wait until you've seen the accounts. I have been told you cannot trust the availability figures and of course they don't show what happens in the week.
peedee
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but every years the accounts are good? But yes you are right.
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I wonder if the Club has worked out yet what the new breed of "tourer explorer" IS like after all . . ?
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But as mentioned to me and two other oldies by two much younger working age parents with young children when here last week ,we oldies are out of touch with today's salaries and costs of running a successful leisure company,and they both were quite comfortable with what they were paying for their holiday here
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