Welcome Family - Working Our Way Forward Together

Guest Blog Post - Welcome Family

Working Our Way Forward Together

One of the things we love the most about our holiday park is that we are totally independent and family run and that means that we are able to treat our guests exactly as we would treat our own family.

Over the last few months, we have all been struggling to find a way through, sometimes to even see a light at the end of the tunnel. The first few weeks of lockdown were particularly hard given the uncertainty and unprecedented situation we all found ourselves in, but we made all our existing bookings our top priority.

The question we always ask ourselves here at Welcome is ‘what do our guests want’ and as much as we can we always do our best. We knew that many of you were not only anxious about your holiday but also that many of you had been furloughed off and some even lost their jobs completely.

Finances were exceptionally challenging for some and we wanted to ease that pressure as much as we could.

We decided there were only three simple and pain free options we could offer to help. Firstly, you could have a refund. No questions asked, no challenges and no hidden charges – just a plain and simple refund. These were processed as quickly as we could to reimburse anyone that requested it as soon as possible.

The second option was for us to hold your holiday. All you would need to do is let us know when you what date you would like to rebook to and we also gave a £50 discount to you new holiday.

Lastly, if you wanted to simply rebook for another date we changed the booking and gave £50 discount on your new holiday. We are applying this to every booking that we cannot fulfil which is currently for every one up to the end of June.

When we're allowed to open in July we will do our best to deliver fabulous holidays from then onwards.

In the background the very small team we had were working hard behind the scenes and you were all so very patient with us whilst we set up these processes as effectively as we could. 

As part of this, our amazing Entertainment team have never stopped – every week they have produced and aired a complete show, just one sample of their incredible performances is this one for VE Day.

During this time, we were seeing how some other holiday companies, both large and small, were dealing with their guests bookings and this made us even more determined to do right by our customers. They have supported us so loyally during past years, the very least we could do was to support them in their own hour of need.

We are extremely lucky to have such a wonderful Welcome Family, many of you have chosen to rebook or postpone your holiday and for those that have had refunds we very much look forward to welcoming you back when you are ready.

So, we want to say a very big thank you – not only to our amazing team who have done such a remarkable job in very challenging circumstances – but also to you for your support and kind words during this time.

What We’re Doing to Keep Everyone Safe 

The safety and protection of everyone is our top priority so we’re leaving all holiday homes vacant for at least 5 days after every family has departed.

This allows plenty of time for the virus to completely die out in every known circumstance on all surfaces. Only after that we will go in and do a thorough clean, that way our fantastic housekeeping team, as well as our next visiting family can be assured there is absolutely no risk of cross-infection anywhere inside the accommodation.

However, this will mean for each booking we must allow 2 weeks and we therefore must reduce our available booking capacity by 50%.

Then there is the thorny subject of opening shared facilities. Again, to ensure the safety and protection of everyone – staff and customers alike, it became clear that by opening some of them we would be compromising this vital principle.

Included in this list of potentially hazardous locations are the swimming pools, the launderette, sportsground, crazy golf and the children’s playground. The reception is one area where folk also tend to congregate and spend time together, therefore we have decided to keep reception closed. We have worked out simple ways for customers to check-in and check-out, plus report maintenance issues and other requests using free phone numbers & text messaging.

Cruisers Club is one facility which we are trying very, very hard to keep open. By reducing our booking total, it remains potentially feasible, Government ruling permitting, to open this with strict social distancing and hygiene disciplines. If we are allowed to do this, we believe most of our customers will come away having had a great time, in spite of the ongoing pandemic.

We’ll share any and all developments with you on our Covid-19 update page which can be found here.