Sadly had to raise complaint as despite booking in July arrived to find half the facilities were closed from June until rest of year- so despite paying high season prices site set up as in low season! Complained and offered to move site!! Informed reason for this was to save money!! Grass not cut for 8 days long and ensured wet feet every day. Very disappointed. Also staff abrupt and rude regarding 1pm arrival even where campers have travelled for more than 5 hours! Wi-Fi not available all year! Spoke to several other campers disappointed also in attitude and lowered standards Have visited numerous times a year for past 5 years so very sad at decline.
Response from the Club:
Many thanks for your review and we are sorry to read you are disappointed with your recent stays at New England Bay. As such we wanted to address your concerns raised.
Firstly, unfortunately the grass hadn't been cut because of the continuous rain we have been experiencing. Please be assured our site staff do cut the grass regularly when possible but with wet weather this isn't possible.
As a Members Club, funded by the Membership and with utility charges at a record high, you’ll understand we have to operate as efficiently as possible from a financial perspective, and also support our sustainability objectives at the Club too. Having carefully considered the occupancy and bookings we currently have at some of our Campsite's for the months ahead, we've made the decision to keep some of our 2nd or 3rd facility blocks closed. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely and where we see increases in bookings and higher usage, we'll review this decision.
With regards to the 1pm arrival time, we realise this may cause inconvenience for some, and for this, we’re really sorry. We’ve made details of the closure's available in our pre-travel information and members with any accessibility concerns or disabilities have always been able to make a request to be pitched closer to our facility blocks or service points; we’ve made this request even simpler, for those that require it, in our new booking system too
Arrival times have become an increasingly emotive issue and feedback on this subject from the wider membership has grown over recent years. We know it causes mixed feelings if we allow one or two guests to check in early, but then ask other arrivals to come back later because we can't accommodate everyone equally. The fairest approach is of course to ask anyone arriving early to find an alternative place to wait, and as well as this, we feel it's reasonable to expect members and guests to plan their departure from home, or location to arrive from 1pm or the advised time, planning a suitable 'pit stop' or two en-route to allow for variations to their journey. This change was made in the 2022 season and going forward, our Director of Sites & Accommodation and Senior Management team have asked our site teams for greater consistency of service across the Club’s campsite network and maintaining arrival times is a big part of this consistent approach.
