Booking Fairness... Time for a Rethink??
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As another member posted ,Not my word
But again if club sites are full then there are plenty other places to use.
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I suggest you read the opening post for this discussion ,It states the club
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How often do you book 3 taxis and meals etc months ahead ?
Have you paid a to be a member of that taxi firm
Have you paid to be a member of the restaurant0 -
Maybe your different to me but i talk to other members when on site, and this comes up as a regular topic
Most members , ( especially weekends ) , openly admit they book for ward, not for definite, but just in the hope they will be able to go.,directly because of this issue, and they know many other members do this0 -
I was pointing out from the way that you look at bookings does it matter whether you are a member or not. They are still speculative from the way you look at it, because at the end of the day anything can happen to make you cancel the booking. Do you need to be a member to book then cancel a club site?
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Maybe you missed it, I explained that in the post before yours
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As ET said, 3 forward bookings only are no use to those of us who plan a tour and want to use particular sites. What would we be supposed to do if we found number 4 intended stop fully booked only 2 weeks, or less before we want to go there? You really have not thought this through.
No doubt there will be a few members who book lots of weekends and cancel at the last minute, but these pitches usually get taken up, and the Club have stated they monitor this behaviour.
We do not do weekends, never have, but every week contains a weekend so we need to book well ahead to get the sites we prefer. Our tours have, in the past, been up to 90 nights, but more recently the average in UK has been 30 nights, 3 times per year. A stop will be anything from 3 to 5 nights.
Every booking we make is made with the intention to use it, but as TW said, life can get in the way, especially at our age!
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Your first paragraph neatly sums up the flaws in only 3 forward bookings, Kj.
In normal times we have often toured for 4-6 weeks in Scotland and the islands stopping 1, 2 or 3 nights on each site. Three forward bookings would usually get us to Perth. A lot of use that would be if we were bound for Shetland🤣🤣🤣.
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I think most members will feel the same way as me, extremely happy with the way the booking system works. Nothing in this world is perfect or always fair. I’ve been a member for 25 years and in that time it has been very rare that I haven’t been able to book the site I’ve wanted. If I can’t get the one I want I either wait for it to become available or book a different site. My time as a member covers both my working life and retirement, so I’ve seen both side’s of the so called problem.
I have cancelled on occasions in those 25 years but only for illness or death, so I think we should just leave things as they are or we might create more problems than we solve.
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For people who are in work, and especially with families, the bookings will not be speculativ
really? are you saying working and family folk do not do speculative bookings but others will.
I cannot understand that at all.
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I agree and posted similar to your first paragraph.
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As another member of the club posted to me
But again if club sites are full then there are plenty other places to use.
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We’re in East Anglia at the moment, staying at Thetford Forest CMC site. We stopped at Clumber Park for a couple of nights on the way here, and we have 2 more sites booked before we return home. All 4 sites booked a few weeks ago. If your 3 site limit was in force, our trip would not have been possible to book. 🤔.
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The only way this gets resolved is that the club publish the statistics on how many bookings are made and cancelled and how many are subsequently taken up by last minute bookers. This along with the occupancy levels would let the membership make informed decisions about the current booking system suitability for all members.
This is not going to happen, possibly because they don't want to but probably because they can't due to the decades old booking system and paper records.
One thought, what if every member joined the arms race and booked every possible combination of their following year requirements on the day of release?
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The only way this gets resolved is that the club publish the statistics on how many bookings are made and cancelled and how many are subsequently taken up by last minute bookers. This along with the occupancy levels would let the membership make informed decisions about the current booking system suitability for all members.
No resolution required by me. Totally content with the present system.
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Son of Sunday Departures rides again.
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What's to resolve and since when has the membership made such decisions?
We have a few posters who, for whatever reason, didn't book early enough. Should the system be changed to suit the few? I don't think so. Neither do I think the likes of you and I are in a position to judge what the best method is. We are not party to knowing the workings of head office or the constraints of the system.
For a long time people complained about booking frenzy day and the fact that they couldn’t book far enough ahead. That was changed but folk still complain and want restrictions put in place. Sometimes I despair. 🤦🏻♂️
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TW you assert that the the "few poster" who dont book early enough, for whatever reason are to blame for their situation.
Its not a few, it is many.
The current system suits the few.
The release dates currently are on a Wednesday so am I supposed to take a Wed every month off work to book for the following year?
I may have children, so do I book every possible combination of possible school holiday?
I may have care for family members that needs cover whilst I am away, this can not be pre-booked so do I book every weekend and combination of 2 weeks I may possibly need?
How about restricting the honeypot sites to one visit a year? Oh no we only go there 5 times a year!!!!! you cant do that.
There are sites that some members have never been able to get a booking for whilst others visit often.
Just because we are not retired, have little leisure time, can not possibly guess the availability of carers, school holidays, etc.etc. does not mean I am in some way to blame for something.
AND NO....I will not phone the site to see if the warden can fit me in on whatever is left over from the cancellation pool. As an equal member to you I deserve the right of the same choice of pitch type as you. But more than this my leisure time is very precious to me as I do not get much so I can not risk not getting a decent week or two because the weekends are choked by speculative bookers.
Unless it looks like rain of course then its easy to pick up a booking!
This will only stop when the wider membership wake up and have a deliberate systematic booking of every date they can until the whole booking network falls over and the regular users cant book their usual multi visits.
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Whilst I agree the Club don't give out much information on booking statistics. On the other hand giving it out in depth would probably be quite commercially sensitive. The Club have done two things in recent years. They have moved to a rolling system on bookings rather than releasing them all on one day. This seems to have been reasonably successful. Before that, having recognised there was a problem with late cancellations, they introduced the 72 hour rule. The Clubs primary objective is to achieve a high occupancy rate on their sites. The current systems seems to achieve that. The Club will judge the success of their business plan by the occupancy figures and whether people book a year ahead of just days ahead it makes no difference.There is no other system that you can put in place which is as simple as the current one.
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Just because we are not retired, have little leisure time, can not possibly guess the availability of carers, school holidays, etc.etc. does not mean I am in some way to blame for something.
With respect, you aren’t anywhere all those retired folks that are getting highlighted haven’t been, and without the benefit and ease of todays booking technology. I for one have certainly been there, and in some respects these last few years have never been as awkward for me, as I share parental care for my family with my sister, and we juggle all sorts of other things as well. I found myself having to commute back and forth from wherever my OH took our MH, so not only did we have to get very organised booking our Sites, I had to negotiate the maze of a booking system that serves our railways. Trust me, getting the Sites was the easy part. I managed it because it was something I was committed to doing, and I wanted it so badly I made sure I found time, linked all the requirements, and dedicated effort to doing it. This was pre rolling site release dates as well, so it’s easier now. It takes a bit of time, it takes some dedication, but it can be done.
It’s like getting a Tesco delivery in a pandemic.......I wake up to go to bathroom at 4am in the morning, I look on line, I book and hold my delivery date with two pints of milk and some crumpets and I slide back into bed a minute later a happy bunny...... 😁
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Its not a few, it is many.
sorry who are you basing your 'many' on? People on here? Hardly a representative sample I am sure.
The release dates currently are on a Wednesday so am I supposed to take a Wed every month off work to book for the following year?
There will always be a release day, even on the super booking system you often promote. And so even if it were a Sunday somebody would be at work? What do you suggest? Anyway there are no problems in getting a pitch if you book a year ahead. I know I have done it many times.
I may have children, so do I book every possible combination of possible school holiday?
I may have care for family members that needs cover whilst I am away, this can not be pre-booked so do I book every weekend and combination of 2 weeks I may possibly need?
YES, why not that is allowed under the current procedures.
I think, as other do, that people who expect a pitch a short notice and can't get one start to complain the system doesn't suit them and start stamping their feet. Your last paragraph is irrelevant, even with the best booking system in the world if too many people are chasing not enough pitches it doesn't matter what system is in place.
The real problem is that club sites are popular.
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TDA - Well said.
Corners - ditto.
Phishing - I'm not getting involved further into your angry tirade except to say you are overlooking the fact that only a very, very small percentage of members use this forum and, of that small %, even fewer complain about the booking system.
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and +1 for me too
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