Haven Holidays

Haven Holidays

Britain’s Favourite Seaside Holiday
Type	Private
Industry	Leisure / Holidays
Founded	1964 (1964)
Headquarters	Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, UK
Number of locations	35 Caravan Parks in UK
Area served	UK
Key people	John Dunford (Chief Executive) Jane Bentall
Products	Caravan Holiday Parks Caravan Sales
Revenue	£271.1m (2010)[1]
Operating income	£35.2m (2010)
Net income	£25.6m (2010)
Employees	2,802 (2010)
Parent	Bourne Leisure Limited
Website	www.haven.com

Haven holidays owns and operates 35 family holiday parks, providing caravan, touring and camping facilities across Britain in predominantly coastal locations. Haven provides touring holiday facilities at 23 of the 35 holiday parks it operates, with 14 of these also offering camping pitches for tents and a further 4 offering pitches for trailer tents. Over the last ten years a rolling investment programme has provided new accommodation, landscaping, Spas, golf courses, adventure golf as well as enhancements to some of the leisure pools with flumes, slides and Space Bowls.^[2]

Haven holidays is part of Bourne Leisure Ltd who also own Warner Leisure Hotels and Butlins Resorts. The current company was created as in 2004, following the amalgamation of the British Holidays chain with the Haven Holidays chain, which parent company, Bourne Leisure, purchased from The Rank Group in 2000.^[3] It now entirely trades as Haven.

Although the Haven name is now used for the combined chain, the existing company is, in effect, a continuation of the previous company.

Funstars

The "Funstars" (Former name "Haven Mates") are coat-styled entertainers who perform daily and evening activities to entertain 1,000's of guests throughout the season. They work alongside the Seaside Squad; Rory The Tiger, Bradley Bear, Anxious Elephant, Greedy Gorilla, Polly and DJ Ned. Since 2013, the Funstars have rebranded in a Funstars Go Live (although still known as Funstars) program which was launched to refresh the entertainment and bring it more appealing to time. At the same time the characters were rebranded from the "Zoo Troop" to the "Seaside Squad" which is more related to where the holiday parks are located near to the seaside.

History

Acquisitions

The current Haven chain is formed from a number of acquisitions by its former brand, British Holidays, from the late 1980s, culminating in the acquisition of Rank Leisure in 2000.

In October 2000, Bourne Leisure purchased The Rank Group's UK leisure arm, Rank Leisure, for £700 million, which included the Haven, Butlins and Warner Leisure Hotels chains. At the time of acquisition, Rank Leisure's Haven Holidays operated 55 resorts, whilst British Holidays operated 23.

Bourne decided to retain larger operating units which accounted for approximately 85% of their customer flow, making it possible to upgrade the Haven parks to the same standard.

Subsequently, the company disposed of 43 resorts between 2001 and 2004. A number were sold to independent ventures and management buy-outs (for example, Lido Beach in Prestatyn, Clwyd ). However a number of growing leisure chains acquired larger quantities of sites, including :-

• Park Resorts, a management buy-out backed by CBPE, acquired 12 freehold resorts from the Haven chain in 2001.
• Parkdean Holidays acquired 3 Haven and 2 British Holidays resorts in 2004
• Park Holidays UK, at the time known as Cinque Ports Leisure, purchased a further 9 parks.

Far Grange Park & Golf Club,^[4] Skipsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, was purchased by Bourne Leisure in 2007, being the first acquisition by Bourne Leisure since Rank Leisure in 2000. The park appeared in the Haven 2008 holiday brochure, issued in November 2007.^[5] However it has since been removed and now trades as a separate entity to the Haven chain in the Bourne Leisure group.

Re-branding

Following Bourne's acquisition of Rank Leisure, the company began integrating its Haven and British Holidays chains during a seven year development phase. The brands "Haven Holidays" and "British Holidays" continued to trade independently until 2004, when both released a single brochure and website under the name Haven and British Holidays.

In November 2007, the company ceased trading as the former and the Haven name is now used throughout the chain, however the old logo can still be seen in many old signs and materials at former non- British Holidays and caravan parks.

Haven moved away from a multi-coloured brand logo which had been in place for most of the late 1990's to its current brand logo in 2011, which sees the brand move to a blue lettering and white logo with the brand tag line of "Britain's favourite seaside holiday".

Activities & Facilities

Activities and facilities across all parks use standardised branding introduced by British Holidays in 1998, including "Funworks" (main entertainment complex), "Showbar" (family entertainment centre), "Foodworks" (fast food outlets; many now replaced by Burger King), "Ropeworks" (high rope activity centre), "SplashZone" (swimming pools), "SportsZone" (sports activities), "Mash and Barrel" (restaurant and bar) and "FunZone" (outdoor family activity / playground areas). In addition, all parks have a general store (branded asEverydays, Essentials, not at all or more recently SPAR or Londis), reception and a Haven Holiday Homes focusing on caravan sales, often branded as "Owners Exclusive" within the parks themselves. The ShowBar entertainers, since 1998, have been known as "FunStars", replacing the "Haven Mates" title in former Haven resorts.

Characters

The children's mascot in Haven was previously Rory the Tiger and in British Holidays was Bradley Bear. However, since merging, both mascots are seen in all parks, alongside other children's characters from both former companies such as Greedy the Gorilla, Anxious the Elephant and human characters Ned and Polly forming the Zoo Troop (now known as the Seaside Squad) however Merlin was scrapped in 2009. In 2008, Haven launched a new kids programme, Kids Alive to help encourage children to exercise and enjoy active lifestyles, which is part of the company's attempt to take on board the advice of the British Health Council in tackling childhood obesity. Part of the Kids Alive programme in Haven is "Wake and Shake" which is a warm up programme the kids do in club R n B as a warm up to start the day. However this has since been replaced by B Fit with Rory, a wake up show were children get active with Rory and the FunStars.

Holiday Parks

In the UK, Haven operate thirty-five parks: Scotland Seton Sands, Craig Tara Northumberland Berwick, Haggerston Castle Yorkshire Blue Dolphin, Primrose Valley, Reighton Sands Lincolnshire Thorpe Park, Golden Sands Norfolk Caister, Hopton Seashore, Wild Duck Essex Orchards Kent Allhallows-on-Sea Sussex Combe Haven, Church Farm Dorset Rockley Park, Little Sea, Seaview, Weymouth Bay Devon Devon Cliffs Cornwall Riviere Sands, Perran Sand Somerset Doniford Bay, Burnham on Sea South Wales Lydstep Beach, Kiln Park, Quay West North Wales Greenacres, Hafan y Mor, Presthaven Sands Blackpool Marton Mere, Cala Gran Lake District Lakeland

International Parks

Until the acquisition of Haven by Bourne, Haven Holidays ran several parks in Europe as Haven Europe. However, these have now been sold to Siblu as part of a management buy-out. Slowly the British Holidays name is being dropped as is the use of the children's entertainment and clubs as featured at British Holidays in the UK (Club R n B, Little Cubs, T-CO, Bradley Bear etc.).

References

External links

• Haven Holidays Official Website