Pitch price

Mikey RV

Mikey RV

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I know there is a thread running at the moment on the clubs putting up prices which is why I am starting this thread. Please be honest and serious in your answers before posting.
The question is if you owned a campsite with all the facilities,clean toilet block, hot showers, staff, machinery to cut grass, strummers, hedge cutters which have to be serviced every year, security barriers, water points around site, drive over drains and not forgetting all the office stuff, printers, and then there’s the play parks, rubbish Cole tions etc etc.How much do you think you would charge,bearing in mind you have to make a profit and and put money back into the business for repairs and new items. Please be honest and think before posting. (y)
 
Mikey RV said:
I know there is a thread running at the moment on the clubs putting up prices which is why I am starting this thread. Please be honest and serious in your answers before posting.
The question is if you owned a campsite with all the facilities,clean toilet block, hot showers, staff, machinery to cut grass, strummers, hedge cutters which have to be serviced every year, security barriers, water points around site, drive over drains and not forgetting all the office stuff, printers, and then there’s the play parks, rubbish Cole tions etc etc.How much do you think you would charge,bearing in mind you have to make a profit and and put money back into the business for repairs and new items. Please be honest and think before posting. (y)
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Interesting question. I guess the equation is ((number of pitches x % occupied per year) / total running costs) + 10% for profit. It is surprising to me that you can get an all singing all dancing pitch of the sort you describe for less than £20 per night.
 
I accept your implied point and feel sure many will pay for your facilities.
However from my days cycling and camping, through VW type 2s even a Land Rover Dormabile pop up, I have never paid for facilities.
For me it's not easy to judge, as my ethos does not embrace paid facilities, if it were forced on me my choice would be budget pre booked hotels.
I realise you may critique my response and quite rightly so.
 
Seriously, unless I had a lifestyle reason to set up/run a camp site I'd invest the money in something else.
The MD of Haven Holidays was on the R4 'Today' prog this morning and (from the bits of it I heard) he was giving some interesting details of occupancy rates (very high) staff recruitment and training, running costs, the seasonal trends and the staycation effects of the pandemic and cost of living increases.
 
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I think there are other factors which bring in market factors. Location, time of year, school holidays, who you want to attract (no dogs, or adult only). We rarely look at this from the point of view of the seller. If I had a product that was rare I would charge more for it. An example would be Rock in the high season. I do not hear of a hotel charging £400 a night making the news but a campsite charging £150 might. I have never understood why we rage against the main sites owners adding a little to their prices when they might still be full in high season if they doubled them. Airlines and hotels abroad do this. Some Premier League football clubs put up their prices by more than inflation and then say to their fans “if you don’t want a season ticket, someone else will buy it”.
In conclusion, I think we are lucky that campsite owners in the main seem to have a conscience and don’t charge market rates.

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Mikey RV said:
I know there is a thread running at the moment on the clubs putting up prices which is why I am starting this thread. Please be honest and serious in your answers before posting.
The question is if you owned a campsite with all the facilities,clean toilet block, hot showers, staff, machinery to cut grass, strummers, hedge cutters which have to be serviced every year, security barriers, water points around site, drive over drains and not forgetting all the office stuff, printers, and then there’s the play parks, rubbish Cole tions etc etc.How much do you think you would charge,bearing in mind you have to make a profit and and put money back into the business for repairs and new items. Please be honest and think before posting. (y)
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£ 27 to £ 30 per night .
 
It would depend how busy the site was. Each site needs to no doubt make a projection sales, only they can guess how busy they will be but if folk stopped paying stupid prices the fees would have to come down..An attached aire to campsite is what's needed.
 
You have to realise that belonging to one of the clubs is about more then just about the pitch. Belonging to a club gives endless hours of moaning about how bad it is , and this is for 52 weeks a year, not just one visit like a private site. Haha
 
sonar said:
£ 27 to £ 30 per night .
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The idea as far as I am thinking is to keep the site filled all the time.
if it was say £ 50 per night you would most likely not fill a site and maybe not the same nightly total.
 
Why do some hotels charge £20 off-peak and others will charge £2000 ?

Both offer the same basic amenities... a room, a bed, a bathroom... etc etc.
 
People will pay any price if they have to, but that's the point isn't it, it they have to. I've paid for sites twice over the past 5 years, both were £45+, but on both occasions we had no choice. We've also toured Europe and had to pay up to 5 euros on an aire.
 
There's an adage used in hotels that says that, if the customer dictates the time( they want to stay there) then then the hotel dictates the price. Similarly, if the customer dictates the price then the hotels tells them when (if) they stay at that price. It's all about supply and demand.
We used to calculate the basic cost of letting a room ( standing costs of having the hotel open plus the variables of linen, utilities and wages for servicing the room) to reach a base price below which is wasn't worth lettng the room anyway.
Knowing the market, local demands/events, seasonality, marketing- and the cost of reaching the target audience eg booking agents, consortium(club ) membership rates- all come into it and much will be the same for sites.Yield marketing whereby some rooms (pitches) will be sold at a lower rate, with lesss flexible conditions eg no refunds if cancelled go first and then a series of building blocks/rate hikes as demand increasess is how both airlines and hotels maanage their available seats/rooms.
However the most perishable item in the world is last night's unsold room(pitch)- you can't use it agian, the opporunity is gone forever so, sometimes, you might get lucky and get an incredible bargain at the very last minute but, if you need to be in that place for that occasion, are you going to take that risk?
Raising prices in times of heavy demand is NOT profiteering, it's ensuring the business stays alive and is there for the quieter times when others might want to pay less and demand is lower but still at a level.

Remember you can't just open another packet of housekeepers when it gets busy, you have to have a base level of staffing that covers at least the average occupancy.
 
I'm happy at £20 to £30 pn if all facilities and a nice club house to spend more.
Just booked Laneside in Hope from tomorrow at £25. Nice site all EHU blah blah but no site club. Village is only a couple hundread mts so no issue.

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all site will pitch their fees based on two main things there target audience and there overheads .There are sites out there getting very high rates because they have pitched(pun) there sales at the top of the market the deluxe pitches with waste water and tv on each plot
compared to mostly hikers occasional motorhome /caravan with a compost toilet and a tap
 
I agree with MikeyRV,s post.it totally gets the message across. Further to that we have friends who work for both clubs and a hidden cost that is never mentioned to the members is the amount of various types of training the staff go thru to achieve the usually good high standards. According to them there is also the high turnover of staff is due a few wardens who apparrantly would have to look up the the term "man management" Hence more spent on recruitment and training to add to the costs
 
SteveRallye said:
I agree with MikeyRV,s post.it totally gets the message across. Further to that we have friends who work for both clubs and a hidden cost that is never mentioned to the members is the amount of various types of training the staff go thru to achieve the usually good high standards. According to them there is also the high turnover of staff is due a few wardens who apparrantly would have to look up the the term "man management" Hence more spent on recruitment and training to add to the costs
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I bet they get a high turnover of staff because they get fed up with all the motorhome owners moaning, haha
 
Interesting just over 12 hours into the thread nearly 700 views and 19 reply’s but only two saying how much they would charge after having a good think about it for them to be able to make money.
 
Haven't a clue about the costs of running such a site. If I was running a site it would be the sort I would wish to stay on myself ie good location water and dumping. Under £10. No toilets or ehu which are expensive to install and run, and motorhomes mainly don't need.
 
Mikey RV said:
Interesting just over 12 hours into the thread nearly 700 views and 19 reply’s but only two saying how much they would charge after having a good think about it for them to be able to make money.
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I don't think it is possible for us as mere onlookers to say what a business needs to charge to provide a service and make a profit, OK we all have opinions on what we think the cost should be but that dream does not always match reality for whatever reason.
 
I think I would rather stick pins in my eyes then run a campsite. We have been on rallies where it’s run by volunteers and still heard people moaning that the stewards have not paid for their pitch or they have saved a space for their mates to pitch next to them. What ever is done they would all still moan.
 
funflair said:
I don't think it is possible for us as mere onlookers to say what a business needs to charge to provide a service and make a profit, OK we all have opinions on what we think the cost should be but that dream does not always match reality for whatever reason.
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Exactly, a lot of peaple have no idea what goes into owning a campsite and running it cost wise etc. But they all moan about the pitch fee without thinking of the costs involved of running that campsite and making it a campsite to start with. (y)

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Reallyretired said:
Haven't a clue about the costs of running such a site. If I was running a site it would be the sort I would wish to stay on myself ie good location water and dumping. Under £10. No toilets or ehu which are expensive to install and run, and motorhomes mainly don't need.
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and how much does an acre of land cost in a good location either to buy or rent? Plus get water to site as well as drainage? Then mow said site maintain access etc. Most business would want to make a profit not just run a site for a hobby and unlike some on here who think 10% is a good profit I bet if the companies they worked for only made 10% then they would have been out of a job long ago.

Personally I think £25 would be appropriate but it will depend on size of site, location, cost of wages to run, equipment to maintian so I am thinking I would make a loss::bigsmile:::bigsmile:::bigsmile:::bigsmile:::bigsmile:
 
I'm happy paying £25 with EHU.
We have paid as much as £45.....................and no did not complain.
 
I'm currently parked on site in Spain paying €10 a night.

The UK is a complete rip off for many things, campsite fees are one of those things. There's a few places I used to use to a regular basis that I no longer go to because prices have increased beyond what I'm willing to pay. Sadly I have to come back to the UK for May, I'll hopefully be back in mainland Europe by June.
 
TDub49 said:
Interesting question. I guess the equation is ((number of pitches x % occupied per year) / total running costs) + 10% for profit. It is surprising to me that you can get an all singing all dancing pitch of the sort you describe for less than £20 per night.
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I've worked in positions needing to be aware of the 'bottom line' for years, and have run my own business for five years, and in my experience (admittedly NOT in campsite running) a 10% profit would mean the site would be out of business very quickly. There are too many variables which can impact a company and 10% doesn't give anywhere near enough cushion. About 30 years ago my then boss said to me that for any sale I was aiming for, anything 12% or under was effectively only breaking even, not making a profit.
I think that many people just don't factor in the costs both immediate and associated (ie admin, which is important and needs doing properly) in running any business and there's a relentless push to the lowest possible margins.

A site with all the facilities listed in the OPs post is going to have to cost more and I'd certainly expect a seasonal shift in the charges. That said, I generally choose places (when I, rarely, am on sites) which have basic facilities and not playgrounds, entertainment etc. I realise that even basic sites cost money to run though, and I'll pay for nice places, kept well, with nice staff/owners, while trying NOT to go to places where I have to pay for stuff I don't need or want. I realise this doesn't answer the OP's question, but that's hard to assess without understanding the base costs.
 
Simples... 18% on avg plays out at £5 per night extra. Cut backs only drives business profit to the bone and failure so should see slightly off balance portioning of services to business development of 12%/6%.

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