Price drop on over 1.5 million pitches

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.

The problem I find now is where is the baseline price by which to compare?

The only comparison I make is with other site providers.

peedee

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.

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

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

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.

Do you mean you were sent away and only allowed to enter the site later, or were you able to pitch up and return to the office at a less busy time?

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. 

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. 

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.