Shared Vision
The Inside story on the rise and rise of Bridge Leisure..
ABOVE: Witht he help of its experienced team, Bridge Leisure is stamping its mark on holiday park locations around the country.
Founded in 2008 by Andrew Howe and Simon Williams as a holiday park consultancy and management business, Bridge Leisure initially focused on operating holiday parks for third parties. Both Andrew and Simon worked in the holiday park industry before setting up the company and both shared the vision of wanting to own a portfolio of individual holiday parks across the country. Andrew has worked in the leisure industry for 16 years, within both independent and plc companies including Talarius PLC, the UK’s largest High Street slot machine operator, and UK holiday parkoperators, Park Resorts. He shaped Sandy Balls Holiday Centre into the UK’s benchmark independent park and developed Park Resort’s lodge strategy. Equally at home on the park or in the boardroom, he expertly bridges the gap between the two. With 20 years’ experience of holiday parks, including at Bourne Leisure’s and Park Resorts’ leading locations, Simon has extensive industry knowledge. He heads the operations of our parks, both owned and managed.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Their first office was based in the spare bedroom of Andrew’s house where they spent two years building the business and looking for an opportunity to work with financial backers to help them purchase their first park. In 2010, with the backing of Kings Park Capital, the pair expanded into the operation of owned parks with the acquisitions of Trevella Park in Cornwall and Sand Le Mere Holiday Village on the Yorkshirecoast, followed by Turnberry, in Ayrshire, at the end of 2012. The recent acquisition of Yorkshire’s Bowland Fell takes Bridge Leisure’s estate to nine parks as it continues to consolidate the fragmented UK holiday park market. The Milton Keynes based company has now trebled the number of parks it owns since completing a management buyout supported by Phoenix Equity Partners (“Phoenix”) in 2015. Bowland Fell is a beautiful park set in an expanse of countryside between the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Forest of Bowland – an area of outstanding natural beauty.
KEY PLAYERS
Andrew comments: “We are excited about the prospects for the park under Bridge Leisure’s ownership and plan to invest to further improve and grow the park in the coming years. “The park is run by a great team with lots of experience and enthusiasm, so we are really looking forward to joining forces and working together to take the park from strength to strength.” Bridge Leisure already own parks in Cornwall, Scotland, The Peak District and a second Yorkshire based park in Tunstall while in addition provides operational consultancy services to other park operators. Other key team players include Richard Hunt, chairman of the restructured Bridge Leisure Management, who boasts 20 years of board and executive level experience in senior general management roles in the leisure sector, with both private equity-backed businesses. Operations Manager, Alison Watson, has worked in the holiday park industry for more than 25 years, starting in 1989 as a children’s entertainer at Rockley Park in Dorset and then working across the country in roles covering retail, caravan sales and general management, running holiday parks in North Wales, Yorkshire and Scotland. As operations manager, Alison works closely with holiday park owners so that Bridge Leisure can help grow their business fi nancially and ensure a superb experience for their holiday home owners and holidaymakers. Andrew concludes: “It’s been a very successful few years for the company with a sustained period of growth and investment. “When we undertook the management buyout in 2015 we owned three parks but had a clear and ambitious plan to grow the group through acquisition and organic growth. “A little under four years later, with the backing of Phoenix, we have been able to add a further six parks and substantially grow both our existing and acquired parks.
Bridge Leisure
Tel. 01908 067900
www.bridgeleisure.com
National hot tub supplier Park Leisure Solutions has won the UK Pool & Spa Awards 2018 for Spa Product of the Year and Energy Efficient Product of the Year for its ground-breaking Climacube heat system. The arrival of the UK designed Climacube is set to revolutionise the commercial hot tub and spa industry, say creators, Park Leisure Solutions. In test results against current conventional heating systems the Climacube saved on average just under 60 per cent less time to heat up a Hot Tub and a massive 85.7 per cent reduction in energy cost, which is great news for both customers and the environment. With major UK Park Operators already using or ordering the energy effi cient design, saving them energy, time and money. Backed by a worldwide patent the Climacube works off a standard 13 amp power supply and can either be supplied from new or retro fitted to any contemporary hot tub or spa.Park Leisure Solutions, Managing Director, Stuart Mulcahy commented: “Our design offers the very latest energy saving heat technology, dramatically reducing running costs, reducing the carbon footprint and enables customers to use their hot tubs and spas all year round, at the desired temperature without the concern of cost.”
tablet erosion feeder, called SpaPodTM to make a highly effective combined, integrated hot tub water treatment system. The SaniStreamTM system offers a solution to the problem posed to holiday let owners and operators by Section 76 of health and safety guidelines, HSG282, which states that hot tubs installed in a setting where used ‘... as part of a business activity (eg in a holiday park rental unit or hotel bedroom(s) with their own dedicated spa, or as part of a rental agreement for a single family or group use)’ must be ‘disinfected using bromine or chlorine through the use of an inline disinfectant feeder’. The big issue with Sec. 76 of HSG282 is that few hot tubs sold on the UK market feature inline disinfectant feeders. Worse still, HSG282 made no legacy-exemption provision, meaning many thousands of hot tubs already in the fi eld became non-compliant overnight. Following much investment by Darlly Europe in R&D and fi eld-testing over the last eighteen months, the launch of the SaniStreamTM system at the Spatex 2019 expo heralds the solution to this issue. Heather Gilmore of Paith Holiday Cottages owns three holiday lets with hot tubs near Aberystwyth and sources the SaniStreamTM system from local supplier, Welsh Hot Tubs. Heather says: “The SaniStream gives me great peace of mind knowing my customers are in safe hygienic water conditions, and inspection and maintenance for us is easy and painless.”
The Camping and Caravanning Club will invest £7.5 million into its network of 106 UK Club Sites in the coming months, with large-scale capital works taking place at seven sites, including Wyeside near Rhyader in the Cambrian mountains of mid-Wales and West Runton on the north Norfolk coast. Money has been spent as part of the Club Sites investment programme which improves facilities for the future enjoyment of campers; both members of the Club and non-members. Proceeds raised by the Club through camping on Club Sites over the course of the year are invested into the site network annually as part of the programme. Bob Hill, Sites Director, said: “The site investment programme has been running in its current form since 2010 and in the last five years alone we’ve increased the number of hard-standings on our Club Sites by 7%, helping more members to enjoy camping year round – plenty to keep us busy.”
WEATHER-PROOF
LASTING IMPRESSION
Back of Beyond Touring Park is set in rural Dorset and boasts 80 pitches with electric hook-ups, 40 camping pitches and a glamping village, as well as an amenities block, reception and shop. Victoria takes pride in the park’s outdoor areas and keeping them well looked after is a high priority all year round. She comments: “As we are 30 acres we can't possible compete with beautiful natural foliage, however, we make the most of the busy areas of the park, such as the reception and shower blocks by planting carefully selected flowers, bushes and trees.
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