Price drop on over 1.5 million pitches
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Yep, I’ve said from the start that DP is a reflection of supply and demand so prices can go down as well as up. Perhaps this price drop is simply DP in action while making a headline splash about it. 🤷🏻♂️
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Agreed, if 'last minute' price drops were a mirror of the 'book early' ones, you'd get the shape of prices most folk think of when looking at other organisations.
if you want to get in early and book, there's a small discount...well not actually, prices just start to rise beyond a certain point in time...OTOH if you wait will there are unsold pitches a few days before arrival, shouldn't the price fall then to attract folk into booking?
if this were the way things worked, as David is suggesting (and most would have assumed also) then it might be the incentive needed to fill vacancies near to arrival.
looking to reduce prices wholesale, months before due dates certainly seems to be something far more fundamental to me.
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...not within strolling distance of Broadway...
it's 'value' not 'cheepnis' (Frank Zappa) that I was referring to.
ML😉
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if you want to get in early and book, there's a small discount...well not actually, prices just start to rise beyond a certain point in time...
Rather than just a small one in my experience of actually booking sites a year or six months in advance and then comparing prices on arrival BB. I think others (one was it Steve?) have posted the the same. I've noticed it's been about 10% with a high of 14% once, not that big but it mounts up, but not a small discount and not in the way you suggest I would say? Worth doing if one can.
OTOH if you wait will there are unsold pitches a few days before arrival, shouldn't the price fall then to attract folk into booking?
Depends on circumstances surely, if there are a good number of empty pitches maybe but if only one or two or low and the break even point has been met or there's a lot of interest in that site then perhaps raise the price, or if there's two lows either side say Friday and Sunday the price goes up for the Saturday, I've seen this twice - hence my rarely in an earlier email although as posted the vast majority of Saturdays do not rise in price unlike as you suggested).
Slightly off topic but I've been tracking Ryanair for the past month to spot patterns for a day trip to Dublin in November, on Tuesdays there's a flight out at 7am and a return one at 10pm. Now Dublin is a fair city but I don't want it to rain so I would book as close as possible. I've noticed that a few weeks in advance the basic price (which would work for us) has been very cheap (early November is £14.99 both ways though the week before it's half term it's £40-50).
Now sometimes the price the few days or day before before goes up and sometimes it stays the same, I did a dummy booking and found when the price goes up, sometimes triple the price which is still good for me, there's very few seats left when you try and select your seat, perhaps less than ten and once we wouldn't have been able to get seats together, but when the prices are still low there's plenty of seats.The club could be doing the same?
unsold pitches a few days before arrival, shouldn't the price fall then to attract folk into booking?
So no, not always
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The problem I find now is where is the baseline price by which to compare? I appreciate that those that don't book all their sites a year in advance will go onto the booking page when they are ready to book and accept the price they see. We have just come back from a week at Seacroft in Cromer and we paid £38 a night for a standard awning hardstanding pitch (booked 15th August 2023) . We were also at Cromer exactly a year earlier, but on that occasion we booked a service pitch which cost £37 a night so if I subtract the serviced element £32 a night an increase of just under 16%. If I book now for the same week next year for the same type of pitch I had this year it will cost me £34 which doesn't seem bad value and over the two years is only a very modest increase. So am I to assume that £34 is the baseline price and if I book next year a month or two before arrival the price is likely to be around £40 a night? I do have to add that Seacroft was full for most of the time we were there and they were even using some of the grass pitches which normally close on 1st October so I can see there would not be much justification for a discount unlike sites which seemingly are half empty. It seems that the deposit system has delayed that mass booking we used to get when pitches first become available and everything the Club has done since seems to be based around getting people to go back to booking a long way in advance by lower deposits and lower prices.
David
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OH makes our bookings, so I asked her what she thinks.
She says she cannot be bothered with all this chopping and changing of prices and would rather there were reasonable fixed prices as in the past. That way you can easily decide if the site offers you value for money.
Special offers on certain sites in certain seasons seem to indicate that the price has been set too high to start with.
And the special offers do seem to have too many restrictions to them. The other Club have removed quite a lot of their restrictions.
Price reductions across the board, or on individual sites, if costs like electricity fall could be easily applied without anyone needing to cancel and re-book. Less hassle all round.These days, we only book a bit ahead for our 5/6 week summer trip, and only because it is busier then than at most other times. Even then it will be only a couple of months ahead.
At our stage in life, we never assume we will be 100% able to travel, so naturally prefer a low deposit, so the reduction to 10% was good. Even better if it was made permanent.
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I suspect you are not alone K. I have only used new booking system once so far, and still had to go into reception to sort things out as I only wanted to book for pitch plus one. Didn’t know if I could go, so added on at my arrival.
Common sense would say only book a pitch plus one person if booking ahead. That way, you pay the least possible deposit in the hopefully unlikely event something happens inside 21 days of arrival. Staff can easily add on any other family members on arrival.
The whole booking experience is one we don’t like. Thankfully, we don’t have to as we are happy to use alternatives.
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We only used one Club site this year, the rest were either CLs, CCC sites or commercials, whatever offered best VFM for where we wanted to be, so dynamic pricing has had minimal effect on us so far.
OH has only had to deal with the Club booking experience once, and now most of the glitches have been sorted it went OK, and the price at that particular site was not bad.
However, with Club site prices what they are now, it is unlikely she will be making many bookings in the future either.
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Peedee
My experience this year is that there has been little difference between the commercial sites we wanted to use and Club sites. Whilst Club sites may in some instances be a bit more expensive the T&C's are still far more generous than the commercials sites we have used. Perhaps we have just been unlucky in the last two years but we have lost £450 in site fees because, a) last year I got covid and couldn't honour the paid booking for the next site and b) This year because of Margaret's sudden deterioration of her hip we had to return home without actually getting to the sites we had booked and paid for. We are now very reluctant to use non-club sites unless we could manage a booking literally days ahead of arrival. Trouble is, in this country, we have never been seat of the pants travellers!
David
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David, I do most of my booking at short notice unless I think the site might be one of the popular ones. This latest trip I only booked the first site of the seven I eventual used or will use 6 days before I left home. The rest I booked as I went along and decided where to stop. Two of the stops were on Club sites with no facility blocks, they are never in much demand. With the exception of the first site, a CL, none of the sites have been anywhere near full. If you can be flexible I see no need to books weeks in advance let alone months.
peedee
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I thought this but when it came to the site staff adding another person on to booking they were not happy and we had to come back later to have it done.
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We too have just booked for one adult as you suggested TTDA. It makes sense in case we were to lose a deposit.
Also we book each site individually (not in a so-called basket) so that if we cancel within 21 days we only lose one deposit. I believe that if you book several sites in one ‘basket’ of bookings, that deposits are not refunded if you cancel one booking with more than 21 days notice. The deposits are transferred to other bookings within the ‘basket’. If you then had to cancel those within 21 days, you lose the entire deposit, including the one that you cancelled with more than 21 days notice. This was reported on this forum by another member.
To summarise, keep each booking separate, and book for pitch and one adult. We have found it simple in 2023 to add an extra adult on arrival.
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Every time we go away there's usually one of our children who joins us for the (very cheap, sometimes free) weekend and we've been doing this for years and never had any problems adding one on arrival or whenever they turn up during our stay.
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We too have just booked for one adult as you suggested TTDA. It makes sense in case we were to lose a deposit.
It does depend on the popularity of the site and how long before you book. At an up and coming booking the cost of an extra adult has increased by £2 a night since I booked. Therefore, if loosing the deposit on a week booking the saving would be marginal at 20%, and would actually cost more if they stay with 10%. Much below a week you end up paying the minimum £25 / 20, so there is no difference.
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Some have been wondering why the club should have suddenly decided that wholesale action (price reductions) was needed for 2024.
the piece of narrative below was included in the 'sites to inspire' thread where Black Knowl was the award winner. The comment is by the Regional Manager.
"The Site Staff have worked tirelessly as a team in not only delivering a high (in the 90s) % occupancy that is significantly ahead of the Club trend (May-Jul 2.4% YoY decline vs. Club 14.8% decline), presenting the site in pristine condition at all times and delivering a constant high NPS score (74.6 YTD); they still find the time and motivation to undertake extracurricular activities whilst still delivering every aspect of the 'day job'. Extra focuses have been on sustainability, cost control and members first."
Mark Houghton, Regional Manager
now, i may have read this incorrectly, or indeed don't understand 'managerspeak' but this looks to me that BK did 'well' by only losing 2.4% of its 'summer quarter' occupancy figure compared to last year, while the overall CAMC figure was 14.8% down across the network?
Figures like these aren't usually bandied about but it seems the posts we get re quiet sites are accurate.
it looks like the Club has taken sensible action in reducing prices to try and halt the documented slide in occupancy.
the change in deposits and T/C, along with high prices, seems to have had a significant effect on customer take up...perhaps the hardcore membership really didn't like the changes?
however, lower prices should benefit customers and help the club get its numbers back.
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But YT, they have only lowered prices at 60 sites, what about the other 95? (There are about 155 sites)The fact that not all site prices have been lowered makes this statement from the Club farcical.
We recognise that higher costs of living are challenging many members - that’s why we’re doing everything we can to make booking a trip at one of our sites as accessible as possible, including lowering our site fees.
What they really mean is it is for the benefit of the bottom line not the members.
peedee
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It was a warden that told me just to pay for one adult and add any extras when you got there and that's what I've done since. Never had a problem and at all the sites we've been too they're very happy for me to go and pitch then go back to the office to sort everything else out.
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YT
I was somewhat surprised to see that information, once it had taken me a minute to work out the TLA's! I almost wonder if that information was intended for publication? A 15% decrease in occupancy is massive. Not being mean in saying this but I am not convinced, however brilliant the site staff are, I somehow doubt they have the amount of influence on occupancy as suggested? I am sure that had the new system been introduced a couple of years before covid it would have all settled down by now but we seem to have had so much happen within a short space of time, especially with the cost of living the change has come as a bigger shock than it would normally have been. All the emphasis is on encouraging people to book a long way ahead in the hope because the have paid a deposit they won't cancel on a whim. The trouble for the Club is that the new system seems to make people consider leaving booking to much nearer the time and in the meantime another event could get in the way so they lose bookings that way. I am sure price is part of that but I wonder if it is as big a part as we might think. As I mentioned earlier Seacroft was full for the week we stayed there and its not cheap. The same is probably true for sites in a similar situation location wise but the trouble for the Club is they don't have enough sites with the ease of access that Seacroft has?
David
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If you arrived just after 1pm, along with most of that days arrivals queuing behind you, then to be honest, that would seem sensible to me. Go in, choose a pitch, get set up, then walk back to reception after any queue has dissipated a bit later. Easier for staff at their busiest time, a whole lot better for any others arriving, and you can take your time. I was well after 1pm arriving, staff on duty were very helpful, despite their system working very slowly. It was no issue whatsoever, for either staff or us.😁
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We only booked the site three days prior to arriving, and I knew it wouldn’t be busy. It wasn’t, the price hadn’t been DPed.
That kind of price increase, on a single occupant nightly fee just shows how much Members are being subjected to very sharp business practice😡 The Club are very slowly killing the trust and goodwill of more and more folks. Newbies don’t know any better, those who can afford whatever the Club algorithm dictates, or don’t want to try anything different, will simply soak it up.
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Don't forget that, before these price reductuions, there was no increase in prices for 2024 over 2023 anyway. So with inflation still high in real terms, these reductions should become more attractive. I guess that occupancy on the sites with no reduction was deemed to be OK and so lower prices were not needed.
And where Dynamic pricing is applied it only goes upwards as dates fill so the idea is that early bookers always get the best price..
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+ 1
I've posted the same up-thread somewhere agreeing with the points you make.
And it makes no business sense at all to discount sites that are performing very well. What's the point of offering discounts at full sites, that's just losing money.
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You mean quieter sites and not quiet sites? Did you notice it was quiet at Chatsworth?
As for high prices, again higher prices not high, high is perhaps your interpretation.
Like others such as DK who actually use club sites I've not noticed sites this year being quieter and remember that the annual review said that levels were in line with pre-covid figures.
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im just quoting the figures. overall occupancy seems to have dipped by just shy of 15%.📉
Prices were 50% higher at Sandringham CAMC over the same stay at C&CC next door.....I'd say that's 'considerably higher'.
the extra day we stayed at Chatworth was over £46....I'd say that was 'high'.
we've just stayed at Broadway on the small commercial for £30, the CAMC site was £43, again 'considerably higher'.
yes, these are my interpretations, I'm sure you'll have a different view...
at the end of the day members will vote with their wheels and it looks like a fair proportion have🚎
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I'm glad you admit it's your view about high prices BB and not a fact that they are high.
I know you like to compare prices between club and non club but there's more to it than prices as you said value not cheapness and of course higher standards. Hard to know and compare these as the non club sites are not named.
I'm sure you will admit that these figures were not reflected in your visit to Chatsworth? And it appears that it's full on the vast majority of days/pitch types for November.My experience on the various sites I've been to those figures are not reflected as others has posted too.
So where does that 15% come from? I don't think it's case of people voting with their wheels as you think but rather a return, as said in the annual review, to pre-covid levels, no doubt about it the staycation was a boom for the club.
As the review says a solid and successful year
Also I suspect it's from sites that do not have SP and/or probably more basic sites. In my view SP always sell better than standard.
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What it written down anyway what the staycation percentage increase was? If the increase was greater than 17.5% then even with this decrease of 15% the club will come out ahead.
I know it states a YoY decline but we don't know the figures before?
Just a (more positive) thought.
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+1
I was thinking the very same thing.
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Thank you to those who have expressed their views which we value at the Club. In order for this discussion to remain open please can we ask that posts are kept friendly and constructive and that no one dominates a conversation. Many thanks.
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