DOES CL BOOKING WORK? The facts speak for themselves. We know (based on the Club research) that 22% of members join the club ‘mainly or only’ for the CL Network, that’s about 78,000 members. At least 30% of members who want to use CL sites do not tend to plan ahead, they may not know their work commitments, or simply wish to book at the last minute based on their family preferences or the weather forecast. We also know that about 50% of members booking CLs would like to / prefer to book or enquire online, without the faff of ringing around, leaving messages etc. 50% of the 78K members who join the club ‘mainly or only’ for the CL Network is 39,000 members. To date (May 2022), over 40,000 people have viewed the website, and about 14,000 have gone to the trouble of registering to use the website (for free). The 3,000+ members who have actually made a booking/enquiry have generated over £350,000 (as of May 1 2022) worth of bookings. WIN-WIN-WIN For Members - who want to book online they can quickly (the website is fast) see which CLs have availability, what they cost and what they look like. All CLs listed have photos and useful ‘extras’ such as their What3Words location. Members can filter their search to find sites with (or without) features such as EHU, dogs or toilets. For the Club - the CAMC has not had to fund or build a solution that members have been asking for. In fact, as the service is 100% focused on CAMC CLs and CAMC Members, it insists on a Club membership number as part of the registration and can thereby be seen to promote membership of the Club. It’s certainly ahead of the ‘other’ club. For CL Owners - it answers their needs (if they choose to participate) because they can instantly advertise their availability to a wide audience of CAMC members. The service even emails out - on a weekly basis during the main season - availability reminders and CL-related news to the registered user base, and gets a 50%-60% ‘email-opening rate’ on each weekly mailing, which just shows the high level of interest and engagement in a service that’s not even a year old. CAN I TRY CL BOOKING FOR FREE? Yes. You can sign up, create your listing and test CL Booking in 'test mode'. Once you are ready to go live, you can subscribe and use the service for 2 weeks free of charge to see if it works for you. The 2 weeks will start when your site listing goes live. You may cancel during those 2 weeks, but if you do not cancel, your subscription will start. DO I HAVE TO SIGN UP? No. We only want to include CLs that are happy to be involved and are looking to fill their sites. You can continue to advertise your CL however you wish outside CL Booking. However, the CL Booking Group on Facebook will now only allow adverts from those sites listed on the website. WHO DESIGNED CL BOOKING AND WHY? CL Booking has been designed by a small group of 20 CL owners. It was born out of the CL Booking Facebook Group which has grown to circa 18K members (Jan 2022). Whilst successful, the group become impossible to administer effectively. Facebook is not designed to support this kind of activity. We either closed the facebook group down, or sought an alternative platform that was tailored to the specific needs of matching members with available CL pitches. WHAT ABOUT THE CARAVAN CLUB? Whilst the club has talked about setting up a booking system for CLs for many many years, it’s still only talking about it. We’ve saved them the effort and the expense! HOW IS CL BOOKING DIFFERENT FROM OTHER SITE LISTING SERVICES? Two key reasons; No other listing site provides up-to-date availability information Other listing sites (like PitchUp) are ‘general’ and not specifically tailored to CAMC members or CAMC CL sites DOI HAVE TO SIGN UP? No. We only want to include CLs that are happy to be involved and are looking to fill their sites. You can continue to advertise your CL however you wish outside CL Booking. There are loads of other CL-related groups. WHY WOULD I WANT TO PARTICIPATE? The key to profitability (or at least covering your costs) for a site is increasing your occupancy. Our research shows that 49% of CL users want to book online. They want an easy-to-use service that provides them with the ability to find, review and book a CL. CL booking has been designed to meet that need. We believe it will become the ‘go to’ resource for all CL users. If your site isn’t listed, you’ll lose out on many potential bookings. MY CL SITE IS ALREADY FULLY BOOKED - WHY DO I NEED CL BOOKING? Two main reasons; When you have a cancellation you can advertise your availability immediately to all users without having to create a special Facebook Post etc. As more CL users adopt CL Booking you’ll receive fewer phone calls or emails about dates that you're fully booked for. HOW MUCH WILL IT COST ME? After your initial 2 week free trial, the charge is £18 inclusive of VAT per month based on an annual contract, or £180 per year as a one-off payment. Payment is made by credit card. HOW DOES CL BOOKING WORK? If your site has an online booking system, see below. If you don't, this is the process... You will receive an email enquiry, complete with full details so that you can either accept or decline the enquiry. If you accept, the booking will appear on your dashboard and the enquirer will be sent an email confirming. If you decline the booking, you can say why. If you accept a booking the pitch will come off your availability on CL Booking and show in your Owners Panel. If you decline the enquiry your availability will revert to your pitch being available. MY SITE USES A BOOKING SYSTEM Short Answer: CL Booking will work with the outgoing ‘iCal’ feed from three common booking systems; Free-toBook, Anytime and InnStyle. For users of these systems your availability will automatically update onto CL Booking and enquirers can be directed to book directly with your booking system. We are looking at adding other iCal compatible systems. More detail on iCal. Context: iCal is an industry-standard way for online calendars to 'talk' to each other. They can be set up as one-way or two-way. We are using the one-way version. If you use one of the supported booking systems ; Anytime, Free-to-Book, Bedful, Qbook or InnStyle you will be able to 'export' the availability as shown in your booking system to CLBooking. The iCal feed will update CL Booking every few minutes. The customer using CL Booking should therefore see the same availability on CL Booking as they would by looking at your own website. When they press the 'enquiry/book now' button on CL Booking they will be sent to the page on your own CL website where they book, as normal. You control in the Owners Panel (pricing tab) where the customer goes to on your website. Your website/booking system then takes the booking as normal. I DON'T HAVE AN ONLINE BOOKING - CAN CL BOOKING SEND ME ENQUIRIES Yes! We have designed it for you too. When a customer sees you have pitches available they will complete a Form to send you an Enquiry. The form will contain all the information you need to accept or reject the booking. You will receive an email AND you will see the Enquiry on your Owners Panel > Enquiry page. You then choose to Accept or Reject the Enquiry. If you Accept it will go into your Bookings. WHAT INFORMATION DO I NEED TO LOAD UP TO GET STARTED? Here’s the good news, not much! We’ve already imported all the basic details about your site. You can now add or amend the details, fine-tune the location of your site (move the pin) and upload as many photos as you like. You can even add a YouTube video. As ever, the better your photos are, the better your site will come across. Please note that we won’t accept listings that don’t have photos. CAN I CHANGE MY DETAILS / PRICES / ADD PHOTOS? Yes, of course! We’ve made it super-easy for you to change, amend or update any of your details yourself. Note, you are in charge. It’s your data. WILL CLBOOKING BE AN APP ON MOBILE PHONES? Yes. CL Booking will be downloadable from both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store (Android) as a fully-working App. with all the same features and data. WHAT HAPPENS IF I CLOSE OR LOSE MY CERTIFICATION? CL Booking is strictly for CAMC CL sites. Unless your CL site is listed on the CAMC website we will not allow a listing on CL Booking. DOES CL BOOKING OFFER REVIEWS? No. We might offer this facility in the future, but for now, we want to keep life simple and reviews bring a whole level of complexity! DO I HAVE TO ADVERTISE ALL 5 PITCHES No. If you only want to show 1, 2, 3 or 4 pitches on CL Booking that’s fine. Just set it up that way on your setup process. However, you may find that it’s easier to have 5 shown. HOW DO I UPDATE MY AVAILABILITY? You can enter Manual Bookings (ones you take outside of CL Booking, by phone or email) on the ‘Manual Booking’ tab. HOW CAN I PROMOTE THE FACT THAT MY SITE IS ON CL BOOKING? Use the ‘We’re on CL Booking’ round badge logo that’s available in white or colour on our comprehensive Help Website. GDPR / PRIVACY / COOKIES / DATA ETC.. From the outset we realised that CL Booking would need to be compliant with all the regulations and follow best practice. Hence we are registered with the ICO as Controllers and Processors of the data stored. Data is stored on UK-based servers. We have a full Privacy Policy , Terms & Conditions, and Service Agreement. All credit-card processing is handled by Stripe. The information stored on CL Booking about CL sites is publicly available information. The information sent by customers to CL sites is the minimum necessary for a CL site to accept or reject a booking enquiry. The data regarding individual bookings are the property of the CL owner. CL Booking is not transacting any monies between customers and CL Sites. BACKUPS CL Booking will be backed up every 12 hours. 6 rolling copies will be kept (3 days) in the event of issues. MARKETING CL Booking is widely promoted by the sites that are subscribing, by Social Media (Facebook) and through on-line reviews on You Tube etc. I DON'T HAVE A WEBSITE - CAN I STILL USE CL BOOKING Yes. In fact CL Booking could be your simple 1-page website as it should have all the information you need to tell customers about your site. You have full control over your page and can update it at any time. If you already have your own Domain Name, you could 'point' it to your CL Booking page. Ask us for more information.