Cancellations - facts not speculation

The question I have been asking myself is, “Are cancellations a significant problem?”

Because the Club has so far not produced any absolute figures to pass judgement, I set about trying to answer this question by checking  and recording in a spread sheet the number of pitches available for the weekend of 10^th to 12^th April. I did this on a number of days on the run up to the weekend for all sites and for a number of popular sites.

The late availability checks were carried out in the early mornings of the 26^th and 31^st March and the 5^th,6^th,7^th and 8^th April, Tuesday the 7^th April being the last day Friday cancellations could be made without penalty. Here are graphs of the results with my comments. These can be enlarged by clicking on them.

All sites

 

 

Changes in the day to day figures showed there were some cancellations, but not enough to cause concern. There is certainly not enough evidence to indicate a large number of last minute cancellations and there was plenty of availability in the network largely in Scotland and the south and southwest of the UK. Over the 15 days of monitoring, availability for the Friday and Saturday nights decreased by about 15 percent which indicated a steady trend of late bookings, possibly driven by a fine weather forecast.

Popular sites

 

The individual sites I checked were:

Broadway Caravan Club Site

Moreton-In-Marsh Caravan Club Site

Burrs Country Park Caravan Club Site

Southport Caravan Club Site

Wirral Country Park Caravan Club Site

Chatsworth Park Caravan Club Site

Abbey Wood Caravan Club Site

Brighton Caravan Club Site

Lady Margaret's Park Caravan Club Site

Bridlington Caravan Club Site

Knaresborough Caravan Club Site

York Beechwood Grange Caravan Club Site

York Rowntree Park Caravan Club Site

The same trends which were seen over the whole network were largely reflected in the popular sites selected for monitoring with the observation of a peak of cancellations 5 days before the start of the weekend. This represented less than 2 percent of bookings and these were again picked up by late bookings and by the 7^th April, the availability had declined to almost zero for the Friday and Saturday nights. Again this may possibly have been driven by a fine weather forecast.

It is evident that if this pattern is repeated over the year then cancellations are not a problem and it appears there is no need for the Club to change its cancellation policy.

It would be interesting to repeat the exercise when there is a forecast for a wet weekend.

The Club certainly does not seem to be losing money because of cancellations however late these few maybe therefore has no incentive to change.

peedee