What is the obsession with attracting the yoof

"fitted exterior mirrors, or a retrovisor' What is a retrovisor?"

Corners, I think the Retrovisor was the name given to a big mirror in a casing which was fitted to the car roof at the top of the windscreen on the driver's side. It was angled inside the box to give a view over the car roof and through the caravan windows. Effectively, if was a rear facing periscope.

True, but the next generation of oldies will come from the middle aged, not the younger generation. Natural progression is that the younger generation (20 - 30 years old)  will become members in another twenty years while the 30 - 40 year olds will fill the vacancies left by us oldies in ten years while the 40 -50 are presently applying for membership.

Anyone wishing to give up their long haul foreign holidays or not wanting to enjoy sun and sand of foreign climes can always jump the queue.

No business can thrive on 6 weeks full income for the year.

wow, thanks! look fun, who need dash cams

Who needs dashcams?, wow, that Heath Robinson set up records footage as well as uses positional gps logging & G sensor for impacts? That was very advanced for its time Mr C

The club don't have a chance of filling the sites with younger people other than during a very limited few weeks of the year. Primarily this is because children are at school. Of the approximately 30 weeks of the year when most of the sites are open there are only 9 weeks of school holidays and the majority of these are during very late July, August and very early September. That leaves 21 weeks which, apart from weekends, are very likely to be devoid of younger people. It is therefore these weeks that the club need to concentrate on and, like it or not, it is only the older generation that have the time available to be able to fill the pitches.

Couple this with the retirement age getting later and many others with aspirations to caravan will not have the time because of work even if children are off their hands.

In view of the limited time available to use a caravan, if my circumstances matched the above I'm damn sure I wouldn't spend tens of thousands of pounds, whether a caravan or motorhome to have it stand idle most of the year.

The one positive side to this is that us older generation are living longer and are generally healthier so we can carry on using sites all week for a lot longer.

bang on, John....

And when the marketing dept wake up to this fact instead of the "blue sky thinking?"that seems to be how some ideas?are formulated,and if as said the "Ego trip" that was launched in February was from feed back? it makes one wonder who was the target generation they got  it from,   it certainly was not from the older generations that keep the sites in buisiness for the majority of the season

If you read motorhome forums, and magazines,  it is quite obvious that there are a lot of motorhomers who are not Club members. Also not all of them are retired. When questions are asked and suggestions given that perhaps they could use Club facilities and services there is almost a degree of ignorance as to what the Clubs have to offer. Unlike people in my position who have progressed from a caravan to a motorhome and  are long term members of the Club. I imagine it is this group of people that have been identified by the Club as a potential for increasing membership. Sales of motorhomes have increased significantly  in recent years against a caravan market which is more static. Sales of new motorhomes are as yet not of the same order as caravans but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that within the next ten years that they may equal those of caravans on an annual basis. Now people can take a head in the sand attitude to those facts but the Club can't afford to do that. 

David

When on our last trip,we were in a local pub,and there were two couples next to us talking about the new caravans they had just used some of their retirement money to buy them,,  we got talking to them but neither had wanted to join either of the clubs  ,as they wanted quiet places to go as they had had children,and thought the clubs catered for them more than adults,   after being"advised",that out of school holidays very few children are around(had not thought about that)i think we sold them the idea of one of the clubs

You may be correct, David, about an increase in M/H sales - I just don't know. The other question that needs to be answered, though, is who is buying them. What age group do they fall into?

If, as I suspect, it is older people, (and I'm using that term very broadly), who are buying M/Hs and may have done the same as you and changed from a caravan to a motorhome, it still means that the younger generation will not be taking up the hobby. They haven't the time available during the week and, dare I suggest it, many don't have the money available to buy an outfit in the first place.