Haven Holidays

Haven Holidays
Private
Industry Leisure / Holidays
Predecessor British Holidays
Founded 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 Increase£271.1m (2010)[1]
Increase£35.2m (2010)
Increase£25.6m (2010)
Number of employees
 2,802 (2010)
Parent Bourne Leisure Limited
Slogan Britain's Favourite Seaside Holiday
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.

Acquisitions

The current Haven chain is formed from a number of acquisitions by its former brand including Warner Holiday Camps (now trading as Warner Leisure Hotels), from the late 1980's. Haven wanted to distance it's self from the old style camp sites which resulted in Haven investing millions of pounds in the sites it acquired and re-branded them as Holiday Parks. Over the years Haven also acquired many smaller independent Holiday Parks enabling the brand to offer a wide range of Holiday's by categorising their park as All Action,Lively, Leisurely and Relaxing. After wanting to focus more on it's other brands such as Mecca Bingo, Rank Leisure decided to sell it's holiday arm to Bourne Leisure, subsequently many of Haven's smaller parks were sold off and the British Holidays brand ceased trading. Later all British Holiday Parks were re-branded as Haven.

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 of the British Holidays chain.[3]

Subsequently, the company disposed of 43 Haven and British Holidays resorts between 2001 and 2004. A number were sold to independent ventures and management buy-outs (for example, British Holidays' Lido Beach in Prestatyn, Clwyd [1]). 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 individual brands "Haven Holidays" and "British Holidays" continued to trade individually until Mid-2005, when 6 Haven parks and 2 British Holidays resorts were disposed of, reducing the number of parks in the British Holidays chain to 16 and the number of Haven parks to 18. In September 2006, both brands merged as "Haven and British Holidays" and released a new brochure and website under that name.

In 2007, most advertising for the chain solely used the "Haven" name despite the company still continuing to legally trade as Haven & British Holidays. Finally in January 2008, the company ceased trading as "British Holidays" and the Haven name is now used throughout the chain, however the British Holidays logo can still be seen in many old signs and materials at former British Holidays parks.

Activities and facilities

Activities and facilities across all parks use standardized branding introduced by British Holidays in 1997, including "Funworks" (main entertainment complex), "Showbar" (family entertainment centre), "Boardwalk" (food court), Big Money (gambling arcade), "Foodworks" (fast food outlets; many now replaced by Burger King, Papa John's and other external brands), "Ropeworks" (high rope activity centre), "SplashZone" (swimming pools), "SportsZone" (sports activities), "Oasis" (restaurant and bar) and "FunZone" (outdoor family activity / playground areas). In addition, all parks have a general store (branded as Everydays, Essentials, not at all or more recently SPAR or Londis), main reception and a special reception focusing on caravan sales, often branded as "Owners Exclusive" within the parks themselves. In 2002, Bourne Leisure began integrating the individual Haven and British Holidays brands and ever since, many activities and facilities at Haven parks have operated under the names introduced at British Holidays resorts in the late 90s.

The ShowBar entertainers, since 1997, have been known as "FunStars", replacing the "Haven Mates" title in former Haven resorts.

Holiday Parks

In the UK, Haven operate thirty-four parks, 18 of which were originally owned by Haven and 16 of which were owned by Haven's former sister company, British Holidays:

Parks originally owned by Haven

  1. Craig Tara
  2. Devon Cliffs
  3. Primrose Valley
  4. Blue Dolphin
  5. Reighton Sands
  6. Golden Sands
  7. Seashore
  8. Caister
  9. Wild Duck
  10. Allhallows
  11. Combe Haven
  12. Seaview
  13. Weymouth Bay
  14. Littlesea
  15. Doniford Bay
  16. Perran Sands
  17. Hafan Y Mor
  18. Presthaven Sands

Parks originally owned by British Holidays

  1. Seton Sands
  2. Berwick
  3. Haggerston Castle
  4. Thorpe Park
  5. Hopton
  6. The Orchards
  7. Church Farm
  8. Rockley Park
  9. Rivere Sands
  10. Burnham-On-Sea
  11. Greenacres
  12. Lydstep Village
  13. Kiln Park
  14. Cala Gran
  15. Marton Mere
  16. 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 Haven name is being dropped as is the use of the children's entertainment and clubs as featured at Haven in the UK (Club R n B, Little Cubs, T-CO, Rory the Tiger etc.). In Siblu parcs they now have Bubbles, Pirate Club and Barracuda.

Bourne Leisure also owns resorts in Ontario in Canada and Sarasota in Florida.[6]

Characters

The children's mascot in Haven was previously Rory the Tiger and in British Holidays was Bradley Bear. However, both brands began integrating in 2002. As a result, Rory the Tiger was introduced to British Holidays parks and Bradley Bear was introduced to Haven Holidays. Both brands completely merged in September 2006 as 'Haven and British Holidays' and 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 Seaside Squad however Merlin the Wizard, Sylvester the snake and Manic the parrot were all disposed of in 2009. In 2008, Haven launched a new kids program, 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 program in Haven is "Wake and Shake" which is a warm up program 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.

References

  1. ↑ Haven Leisure Ltd, Report and Financial Statements, 31 December 2010
  2. ↑ "About Us - Haven Holidays".
  3. ↑ "HavenHolidays.com - Review - We want Rory!!!!".

External links