An altogether better booking experience

And how big is the website on a commercial site compared to what would be needed to do as you would "like" with nearly two hundred sites?

It looks like the "most common subjects" mentioned in the Op are the ones which might be addressed ie block bookings, cancellations and deposits.

well you must be using a different club booking to me, apart from HS and open all year, I get all that

Caravan  -  does it matter? caravan or MH?

SP - yes

site - yes. Can't really expect CL to be part of the club's booking? That would mean CL owners would need something their  end so increase work time/costs?

date to date? This one is intriguing? how else do you book???

geographical area, - yes by map, or region, even county

DOGS ALLOWED? are you serious???

The club is a network of many sites which have similarities and also differences, thankfully. Given that we members are similar in ways yet different makes for a difficult if not impossible task as far as standardising a website is concerned. That 'good for families' label, what does that mean? What's good for one family may be hell for another! As a young family we loved being together on those walking, climbing holidays with the opportunities to escape into the great outdoors. The very mention of playgrounds, games fields and clubs would have turned our children off straight away. They got all those at home and at school. They, and we, made the most of new environments and family time. On those quiet, possibly some would say good for adult sites, we had some of our best holidays and our children still made friends on these and had fun. 

Agree. Luckily none of which affects our use of a few Club Sites or CLs. All those are much discussed moans that have never been issues for us. If there are a few folks out there that do book lots of dates, don’t turn up if the wind direction changes and do it because there is no financial penalty then the Club is way overdue in terms of sorting it out. Many of the busy CLs have far better booking policies than the Club.

Agree about the CL's who have their own booking systems, but each is separate and I dread to think what the outcome would be should the CC get their hands on them!!

What I described is the norm for booking platforms. Its not some radical new technology. 

I agree that some CLs have better booking systems than the club but this just simply should not be the case. The club should be leading and have a platform that is so good that the CLs want to utilise the booking platform. This isn't even an option.

"And how big is the website on a commercial site compared to what would be needed to do as you would "like" with nearly two hundred sites?"

I can guarantee it is smaller than the current club website. When the internet happened two schools of thought prevailed. one was to take what you already had i.e. a brochure or catalogue and transcribe it into a website. Huge data, poor commercial outcome. The other way was to develop new platforms that gave the user a pleasant experience, fast, intelligent, nice to use. 

There are commercial travel sites with tens of millions of searchable options and destinations, scale is not an issue, quality of the user experience is.

The club should be leading and have a platform that is so good that the CLs want to utilise the booking platform. 

Totally impractical that CL bookings should be on the same platform for many reasons. On searches fine. The map search for CLs has seemed fine in the past however

It wouldn’t work having CLs on same platform. Some of the nicest we have used don’t even have a website. They probably remain nice because they are undiscoverable via the website. Fanstastic though it is, and I don’t recall we have ever had an issue using it, online booking isn’t our preferred method. 

agree, was reading an article only today re the advances in technology that will be available with the advent of 5g etc and there was a quote that i thought was  very appropiate

"you build something for where the world is going to be not for where the world is now"

perhaps the East Grinstead crew should get out more