Club sites - advance booking system

Apologies - instead of:

"I'm sure the Club does measure the cancellation rate outside the 72 hour limit"

I should have said:

"I hope the Club does measure the cancellation rate outside the 72 hour limit"

It seems to me to be one of the things a professionally-run organisation should be doing, and fairly simple to program into the system.

I do think we as members ought to be encouraged to question the system, highlighting potential problems with it and suggesting solutions.

I don't feel very encouraged at the moment!

I'll pop back later on and see how the discussion is progressing...

That's going to be a bit like plaiting fog I am afraid. We have been members for 30 + years, in all that time, we had never cancelled a Club Site very close to arrival date. However, last 12 months have been a nightmare. OH was taken seriously I'll couple of days before we due to set off. I rang Site as soon as I could ( they were excellent). But you can't plan or know such will occur. Deposits of a few pounds make no difference to such occurrences.

As for booking specific dates, despite all we are going through, we have an event booked at York RP and our fingers are crossed we will get there. I logged on for first time ever on Frenzy Day and very easily got what I needed.

On the plus side, allow me to recommend The Nags Head Inn, slap bang in the middle of Castleton, and very nice. There's lots of other places to stay not far away as well, including Scotsman Pack Inn at Hathersage.

It's best to stop obsessing about getting in to honeypot Club sites. Things won't change in my lifetime. In this particular case I would go to Laneside Caravan Park at Hope village and drive or take the bus into Castleton. What is it ? Two miles ? 

Hi takethedogalong, obviously I am not talking about members like you!  I hope your OH is better now, and thanks for your Castleton tips - it is a lovely part of the world.

Or do what I have just done, and take a look on UKcampsites. I quickly found over 10 sites listed as being in Hope Valley area. Some are large, some are small, there appear to be reviews on each example.

There are four sites on the Club network that are notorious for being ultra busy, booked up very quickly, Castleton is unfortunately one of them. When I cancelled at York, our three nights were gone within hours of me phoning, according to the website. On the other side of the coin, we have not infrequently got a booking through a late cancellation, so have also benefitted from system.

Thanks for the tip, eurotraveller.  Yes, that's what we would normally do, but on this occasion we want to be right in Castleton - evening pub meals and a few drinks are planned.

I hope I'm not obsessing about Club sites though!  If there were any CLs in Castleton, I would be delighted to use them instead!

On the subject of improving booking systems though - another idea which would just require some simple programming - if a site is showing as full, you could join a "queue" so that if a cancellation is made, the first person in the queue is contacted.  Sounds a nightmare on paper, but dead easy for a computer to do!

Don't we wish Ask! The Club's computer system is not bad at basic stuff, but doesnt raise the bar high for coping with anything too fancy! 

Yes, popular sites do get booked up early and a few people will cancel for very good reasons (illness, problems with outfit, weather conditions etc) nearer their booked time but this is what happens in life. Even hotels in popular areas get fully booked. It may be frustrating but hey, not worth getting worked up about. You may have booked your stay back in December and it might subsequently get cancelled in which case you would be in the same position as those you choose to be frustrated with. Swings and roundabouts. We have all been disappointed at some time in not being able to get what we want but as is said in many other comments, deposits wouldn't solve the problem. 

Nothing wrong with having big ideas!

We have just booked a site that was showing "full" for Mayday W/end so as said so many times "it pays to talk"