South West Tourism Awards

CELEBRATIONS FOR DREAM DEVON DESTINATIONS

Posted on May 10, 2023

CELEBRATIONS FOR DREAM DEVON DESTINATIONS

THE BEVERLEY TEAM is celebrating the park’s 65th anniversary.

Eighty years of providing happy holidays on the Devon coast are being marked this year by the family owners of Ladram Bay Holiday Park in Budleigh Salterton. The five-star park is possibly the oldest in Britain to have remained under the same family’s ownership for such a length of time – and a full year of celebrations is planned. The celebrations will come to a climax in June when an all-stops-out party is planned to mark the same month in 1943 when Ladram Bay first began welcoming visitors.

It was then that farmer Frank Carter and his wife Margaret decided to allow Scouts to pitch up on their front field amid some of Devon’s loveliest countryside. The spectacular views of the bay and access to the farm’s private beach soon won the site an enthusiastic following which quickly grew in numbers as news of it spread. Eight decades on, Ladram Bay now welcomes customers from across the world, and provides one of the West Country’s best equipped parks for family holidays.

Its high-quality standards have won a top five-star grade for excellence from Visit England, and past accolades in the Devon Tourism Awards and South West Tourism Awards. Attractions at the park include an indoor climbing wall, indoor swimming pool and outdoor splash zone, watersports equipment hire, and adventure golf course. In addition to the planned birthday celebration weekend in June, there will be other themed events throughout the year, and a competition to try and find the earliest memory of the park.

OWNED BY THE SAME FAMILY SINCE 1943, Ladram Bay Holiday Park is set to celebrate 80 years of service

Every guest aged 80-plus who pre-books their holiday in 2023 will be offered a cream tea. Meanwhile, more than six decades after the first families booked a seaside caravan stay at Beverley Holidays in Devon, the park is marking its 65th anniversary. Celebrating the milestone will be members of the Jeavons family, who originally opened up part of their farmland to visitors in 1958. A series of events is planned throughout spring and summer, including themed party nights, special get-togethers for children and grown-ups, plus live entertainment.

The year has also seen the opening of a new £800,000 holiday home development, and new facilities for camping, touring caravan and motorhome guests. The investment is on top of almost £2.5 million spent in recent years on a fleet of holiday lodges and caravans with private hot-tubs, and a nautical themed play park. Located in Paignton on the English Riviera coast, Beverley Holidays has won a raft of national and regional excellence awards over the years, plus accolades for its environmental work.

EV CONCERNS STALL STAYCATION GROWTH

Posted on May 10, 2023

EV CONCERNS STALL STAYCATION GROWTH

BBC CAMERAS ZOOM in on Martin Cox at his Dorset holiday park, Highlands End

Fears that ‘range anxiety’ amongst electric vehicle owners could put the brakes on domestic tourism growth have been voiced by a major holiday parks operator. Martin Cox, whose family business owns five holiday parks in Dorset, is now calling on government to address the lack of charging points in many rural areas. Their absence, he said, could dissuade visitors from venturing too far into the countryside because of uncertainty about being able to top up their electric cars.

Martin’s concerns were featured in a recent BBC television report in which he warned that rural economies could suffer substantial losses of tourism revenue as a result. Martin was filmed at his company’s flagship holiday park of Highlands End in Bridport which has six EV chargers – the maximum that the local power supply can sustain. “We have up to 500 cars a night in summer, and it simply isn’t enough to meet demand,” he told BBC Politics South reporter Frankie Peck.

“Many will have driven upwards of two hundred miles to get here, and their vehicles will need re-charging before they go out the next day, but we simply haven’t the capacity. “There are only around 275 charging points throughout the whole of Dorset, so the available options are very limited. “Nobody wants to spend their holiday in a state of anxiety about their car coming to a halt, and just one bad experience could deter a family from making a repeat visit.

“In our five decades of operating holiday parks, we have never supplied petrol or diesel to our customers, but there is now an expectation that we will be able to charge their cars. “It changes the dynamics of our relationship with guests who, of course, we want to keep happy - but who we know are sometimes frustrated at not being able to plug in,” he said. As vice president of the British Holiday and Home Parks Association, Martin says that many of the body’s 2,500-plus holiday park members report similar problems.

They would like to help EV owners, he says, but the limited electrical supply capacity in their regions is a major hurdle to them installing additional, or even any, EV charging points. “I am fully sympathetic with the government’s aim to drive up EV usage and have done all we can at present to provide charging facilities,” said Martin, himself an electric car owner.

“However, until the electrical supply infrastructure is improved in many rural areas, some EV owners may think twice about taking a holiday too far from home. “This will produce serious consequences for the visitor economy, and the victims will be the many small businesses who rely on tourism spending to survive and sustain jobs,” said Martin. Martin’s family has owned parks in Dorset for over 50 years, and in 2022 Highlands End Holiday Park won the top gold accolade in the holiday park category of the South West Tourism Awards.

MANY ELECTRIC CAR OWNERS are reluctant to travel far from home, says Martin Cox