Prices gone mad.

at the other end of the scale, its very easy to portray a scenario where (in season) a small cl in a nice location (no ehu/showers) could have 5 vans a night at £15 (£75 a night, £525 a week) for mowing a field (albeit a nice field, in a nice place).

I assume there would also be costs for insurance. Water / waste and refuse disposal at the very least. So not just mowing a field.

Ocsid got in ahead of me and put it rather better. 

all you say is true, hence my 'made up' scenario, which is what most customers might see....

at the end of the day, folk wont trawl through a load of calculations to make their 'value assessment', they'll just put the cost per night against their own level/maximum.

...and this is the quandry, no doubt, for small sites....

ocsid

Thanks for putting it that way, how very true in what you have said . So easy to see an area of grass and nothing else. As a retired farmer we set up our CL some years ago, and we have made many friends over the years. We find it is rewarding having the CL but our costs do increase year by year. In 2016 waste disposal cost us £850 that worked out at just under £1 per van night on site. 

I think some people overlook the fact that running a CL incurs overheads, Wildemere. There will be hidden costs and your example of the waste disposal cost is a frightening figure. 

Many CL owners don't do it for the money but I, for one, don't begrudge them a decent return on their outlay. 

Good luck to you all and I hope you manage to secure bookings despite being let down by the web site.

Before we brought our caravan and went on conventional holidays this often involved boarding our dog, generally at a cost of between £18 and £20 per night.

We can now take him with us so I regard the first £18 a night of site fees as already paid for. 

I don't really have a fixed max price in my head for a CL.

It can depend on what choice there is in that particular area. If like me you prefer a CL with a shower and toilet then sometimes the options are very limited, given that I favor CLs over commercial sites.

If I really wanted to stay in a chosen area and the CL price was £19 while a CC site nearby was £25, I would choose the CL depending on the reviews.

Speaking of reviews, please bring them all back CC.  

We have a maximum of £15 pn for our touring sites. We've managed to do so comfortable this last year. We've spent a total of 255 nights touring in 2016 on 42 CLs, 8 CC sites and 2 Commercial site at an average of £12:23 pn, an increase of 50p per night on 2105. All have had EHU, many with H/S pitches and/or a toilet. 

We've just booked a few nights on a CL at £20 per night. Sounds high and it would normally be for us. But we've been before and for our money we get a serviced HS pitch and 16A EHU. There's a toilet and shower, free wifi, the dogs are included and - oh yes, the main selling point - it has superb views in all directions. So we're happy, particularly since the large commercial site just down the road is much more expensive and is surrounded by woodland, missing out on those views.

So for an extra £1 you wouldn't want a view like this with HS and service pitch?

We had a site with a view very similar to that, H/S but no toilet or serviced pitch, and it was only £9 pn. You're paying a lot for a toilet, which you have in your van, and the use of a serviced pitch.