JOINED-UP THINKING

JOINED-UP THINKING

A complete park management and booking system...

Visitors to Folly Farm, Pembrokeshire’s award-winning tourist attraction of 30 years, often commented that you needed two days to do everything on offer. With 100 acres of land to the North of the attraction, the team listened to their visitors and set about creating their own Folly Farm Holiday Park. Offering a wide range of accommodation for the family market to suit all budgets, to date Folly Farm boasts a 43 pitch-touring park, a 20-pitch campsite, four Showman’s Wagons and six fairground themed luxury lodges with hot tubs. A further eight luxury lodges and six safari tents will open soon.

 

 

LOCKDOWN LAUNCH
“We were confident there would be huge interest in our accommodation offering from our strong and loyal customer base but then the pandemic hit and we found ourselves launching our touring park after the first lockdown in July 2020 with just three weeks’ notice,” explains Zoe Wright, Head of Marketing “We achieved a 76 per cent occupancy rate that first August and followed that in August 2021 with 94 per cent.” Ease-of-use was top of the list when Folly Farm was selecting a booking system so the team partnered with the highly recommended GemaPark . GemaPark has exceeded our expectations in terms of a booking system for our touring park and campsite,” confirms Zoe.

“In fact, we also import into GemaPark partner bookings for accommodation we don’t sell directly, because it provides top line booking, arrivals and performance information in a much more user- friendly way than our booking partners’ systems,” she adds. GemaPark is used by many members of the team at Folly Farm. Holiday park wardens use it to generate arrivals reports and to check if customers are returners so they can welcome them back. Office staff confirm all the bookings and chase payments while the marketing team can easily upload or change tariffs and run property performance reports and push any availability. The finance team can easily reconcile payments, run spend-per-head reports and financial forecasts.

EASE OF USE
“Every member of staff finds it easy to use and it’s one of the few software systems we use that the staff don’t moan about,” says Zoe. “Reporting was a key consideration as we’d little to no experience of running accommodation so to be able to easily query occupancy rates, property performance for our different accommodation options and check financial performance has been pivotal to the future development of the holiday park,”

Zoe continues. “CRM was also important as we were building an accommodation audience from scratch. “We would happily recommend GemaPark to anyone looking for a booking solution for their touring site or campsite and the fact they can easily integrate with leading booking partners is a bonus.”

Netguides/GemaPark
T: 01983 282420
W: www.netguides.co.uk
W: www.gemapark.co.uk

Demand Soars For Family-Run Holiday Park

wayside

The expansion of Wayside Holiday Park represents a £450,000 investment that will lead to the creation of 38 new lodges.

Demand Soars For Family-Run Holiday Park

A holiday park in North Yorkshire is expanding onto a new ten-acre lakeside site after demand for its luxury holiday homes soared by 20 per cent over a three year period.

The Wayside Holiday Park in Wrelton has recently enjoyed a spell of dramatic growth, leading to the sale of all its 154 plots on the existing site.

Now, a £450,000 investment by the park owner Mark Goodson will see the addition of 38 new lodges to the picturesque lakeside setting, as well as the creation of four new jobs.

Mark is the third generation of his family to own and run Wayside Holiday Park, which combines five star static caravan holiday homes with a small AA four star-rated touring site.

Mark comments: “We’ve worked hard to ensure that we’re marketing our products effectively and it has really paid off, sending demand for our holiday homes through the roof and prompting us to expand onto a new site.

“Most of our customers live within a two-hour radius of Wrelton because they love the convenience of being able to head over here on a Friday, have a full weekend enjoying some of the best countryside Yorkshire has to offer and then still be back in time for work on Monday morning. Armed with that knowledge, we’ve been able to get our marketing mix just right and it has really paid off.”