Aggressive takeover by motorhomers
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Thanks. That’s pretty much my experience too on sites in Scotland, both CAMC and C&CC. No aggression at all and a feeling akin to camaraderie perhaps generated by a shared feeling of being away from it all. The further north, the more it became apparent.👍🏻
It's looking as if the TP reviewer was way off the mark when he used the term "aggressive takeover" so WTG need have no fears of being omitted from a plot. 😀
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I suppose we could start plotting our own takeover of CAMC. Oh, hang on, I’m no longer a member and you’ve got a foot in each camp. Foiled again! 🤦🏻♂️😄
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Motorhomes are definitely on the increase....so what.
It doesn't effect me personally because i rarely use club sites & prefer Cls & that's a completely different matter.
A number of Cls & their owners i use don't like motorhomes at any cost , they don't tend to stay as long as caravan members do one or two night stays can & do cause issues for their regular long stay caravanners & they just don't want that trade curtailed regardless of availability for a few nights.
I know of two Cl owners that will not take motorhome members , they are always fully booked when enquiries are made from motorhomes .
That's their choice they run the show.
Club sites have no option but to take bookings from the whole membership.
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Maybe it was one of your anti motorhomer cl owners that wrote the Trust Pilot review that WayToGo is referring to?
Club sites thankfully take bookings from members with any type of roadworthy outfit, we don't need options as there is or never will be any discrimination.
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I know of quite a few stunningly beautiful camp sites in western Scotland where campervans and smaller motorhomes regularly stay but larger ones and caravans are actively discouraged by the site owners from attempting the journey in. Last year we toured here towing the car behind the motorhome. When we reached the tricky bits the car was detached and Mrs SF drove that behind. Fantastic experiences in such remote places. The owners of these sites do not act aggressively against caravaners but more with the safety of their clients in mind. Don’t think any were CLs mind.
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I suggest Compass looks at a new CL that has just opened, The Swallows, that only wants campervans. So, both M/Homers and Ccaravanners can feel aggrieved, WTG doubly so!
Can't say that I've ever had a request refused for a 1 night stay at any CL in over 30 years of using them. The only reason that I have heard from a CL owner for not taking a Motorhome was on the basis of weight and the effect it might have on the pitch, this rule was also applied to the larger caravans.
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We have never been refused a booking regardless of what we have toured in (including a tent one emergency stay😱). As far as I’m concerned, CL owners can manage their sites as they see fit. I can understand a long staying caravan (or MH) being good for business, but we happily pick up those short few nights that others don’t want. And we are still out and about in the colder months, when a few caravans might be in storage, happy to keep Winter opening CLs ticking over.
MH or Campervan? I tend to think of PVC’s as Campers, even the larger ones. Our little monocoque sort of spans the divide in some ways. Smaller than some PVCs, definitely at the smaller end of the MH range of sizes. We have never been turned away as being “not a Campervan”.
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We are out all year round (250+ nights last year) and have found that, contrary to idea that there are more M/Hs on sites, we have found that throughout the year, including the winter months, there are more caravans on the sites that we have stayed on throughout the country. However we have found no aggression on any of the sites.
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We've never been turned away either from a CL, in fact rarely do they ask what unit we are in (could be either as we have both)
I'm always the one that will check if its ok for a MH as I would hate to do any damage to the ground, wouldn't want to get stuck either.
WTG, we have a PVC but at 6.3m we refer to it as a MH
its a discussion we got into on our FB group once, someone asked "do you refer to it as a camper or a MH" the consensus was if its got a shower room its a MH if not its a camper 0 -
Talked with two gents in the pot wash area just now. One French in a motorhome touring southern England and the other an English man in a caravan. The latter told us that he is currently homeless due to the present economic climate and that he, his wife and dog were now living on site whilst ‘arranging’ the future. He seemed very philosophical about it all but said he wasn’t the only caravaner in his situation. I’d bet there will be a mixture of motorised and non motorised caravaners is similar situations this winter. At least he said home energy bills were not a concern for him currently. A positive spin maybe but sad non the less.
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On motorhomers? Ooer!
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A number of Cls & their owners i use don't like motorhomes at any cost , they don't tend to stay as long as caravan members do one or two night stays can & do cause issues for their regular long stay caravanners & they just don't want that trade curtailed regardless of availability for a few nights.
I have been charged extra on a CL because of having a motorhome and I was speaking to one owner last year who said he was think of charging more for short stays.
Reading the wright up of the Swallows it says motorhomes not accepted and I got the impression it is quite a small CL and cannot accept larger outfits.
peedee
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Too late CY there has already been an aggresive explosion in the manufacture of MH's
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Spanish are quite into them you see a lot on site June thru Aug, a lot have aircon with the condensing unit in the front locker, quite noisy on some sites. Of course if you have a caravan or anything else that you tow for that matter it has to have the equivalant of an MOT, how some of the Spanish caravans pass the MOT is anybodys guess.
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Could be, that trailer MOT thing, but I’m not sure that’s the main reason why they, caravans, haven’t caught on over there. Motorhomes seem to have been far more numerous over the decades. We see a few in Spain and in Holland in particularly but they are still massively outnumbered by those motorised caravans ‘over there’ and always have been!
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I disagree Micky.
For the first 15 years or so of touring Europe we found caravans more prevalent, especially in France. Most of the clientele using them were elderly and the caravans well aged as well. Maybe we noticed it more because we used Municipal type sites. Certainly there was a sprinkling of Campervans but not that many Motorhomes.
It was only about 10-15 years ago that we noticed a significant increase in Motorhome usage, probably due to the newly retired French wanting a different style of touring, hence the decline in Municipal sites.
I am only talking of what we found in France but even last year on a tour of the Netherlands we came across more caravans on quite full sites, mostly used by Dutch.
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That’s fine Wherenext, I was of course quoting from my experience of the situation over the decades and what I witnessed across there. There certainly hasn’t been an aggressive explosion of any kind in recent years that I’ve noticed. Like I said we had seen them in Holland and in Denmark more recently, but never in the same numbers across mainland Europe as a whole as campervans\motorhomes.
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This conversation has brought back some wonderful memories. Back in the late sixties early seventies we drove over to Switzerland from Hull several times, well dad did and I remember being in awe of the motorised caravans commonly seen over there. Only a very few indeed had I seen in GB.
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One has to be a little bit careful about analysing French caravan usage. The clue is what you say about the age group using them. Many of those would not have toured in the accepted sense as they only bring them out of storage to go to one site for the season, hardly touring? Many will have had them transported to site by the owners of the "garage mort" to the site, so many of those caravanners don't even tow! It is not so much that motorhomes have caused the demise of some sites but the fact that the French no longer follow the tradition of using campsites for the summer. Like in the UK many have gone for static type accomodation and that has been the major change on French campsites over the years. Whilst there is a tradition of towing caravans in France I don't believe it to be as prevalent as for example as the UK or even Germany and Holland.
David
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Caravans were very popular in Europe back in the late 70s through to the 90s. We lived in Germany during those years and had one ourselves.
The Germans loved to have caravans on permanent pitches, usually located round lakes. They visited as often as they could usually weekends then during the school holidays mum and the kids would spend the whole holiday there while dad would turn up at the weekends. Sometimes grandparents would take over from Mum but the kids would stay. Sometimes the caravan would be taken off site for 2 to 4 weeks to go to Italy.
In Italy we noticed that their preference was for very large frame tents or trailer tents. Again families would set up camp on the coastal sites for the whole of the summer, with family members dropping in for a week or so at a time. Come the end of August the sites would empty over a matter of days.
We had an English make of caravan an Eccles Topaz and used to look longingly at the German caravans, the Burstner, Dethleff, Hobby and Fendt.
Yes caravans were definitely very popular in Europe.
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Our memories of Cornwall 1980’s thru to 2010 ish is of a good few Dutch and German folks in caravans, rather than MH’s. Most of overseas MHs we saw were parked up on sea front overlooking Mounts Bay, some very old examples at times. Along with some very dodgy looking UK plated examples as well, spoiling the view. I do recall being on Yeate Farm one 1990’s Summer and a huge American import, size of a big coach with slide outs was parked up in one corner, with a runaround parked up alongside. they had previously worked on farm, set up a window cleaning business that absolutely boomed, and had retired early to live on the road in the huge camper.
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We bought our first motorhome in 1994, prior to this we had a campervan for 5 years. It was our visits abroad that had whetted our appetite for a motorhome as they were common over there. I remember visiting Brownhills for the first time when the old man owned it and situated on the Trent bank. Even then they had continental vans and a few British built models. I believe the Brits were late to the market. I also sold Westphalia Campers in the VW dealership I worked in during the 70s. There were a few British campers then but the VWs were the aspirational van to own and probably still are today.
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Until you meet a Rotel tour bus on a campsite you ain’t seen nothing yet.
It’s a German company running coaches with 24 seats up front, and 24 beds in capsules behind. We saw one similar at HighfieldTouring Park near Cambridge once. Quite a queue for the showers when they unloaded.
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We saw them many a time with a similar wagon at North Ledaig back in the 90s and also in Eire.
Sorry, somewhat off topic as they weren’t aggressive but did perhaps takeover in view of the number of occupants.
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