Welcome to the dark side

Weststar Holiday Parks

Exeter, Devon

Tel: 01392 447447

Fax: 01392 445202

Turnover, 1998: £10m

Anticipated turnover, 1999: £11m

Managing director: Deborah Meaden

Holiday parks: Mullion, near Helston, Cornwall; Looe Bay, St Martins, East Looe, Cornwall; Sandford, Holton Heath, Poole, Dorset; St Mary's Bay, Torbay, Devon

Annual refurbishment investment: £1.5m to £2m

Holiday-makers: more than 100,000 per year

Target audience: family, two children, primarily from South-east and Midlands, income £15,000, average stay one week

Repeat business: 53%

Staff: 70 permanent, 400 seasonal

Holiday facts: 35 million Britons holiday within the British Isles each year; 71% of these choose England as their destination. The West Country receives 31% of those taking long holidays within England. Camping and caravanning is the single most popular type of holiday, attracting 31% of the market.

There are six days still to go, and already the South-west is bracing itself for as many as a million visitors who could take to the roads this coming weekend to view the eclipse on Wednesday 11 August.

With no data available to make comparisons - the last total eclipse visible in Britain took place in 1927 - it is hard to gauge exactly how many people will make their way to the zone of totality. What is certain is that those who do make the effort will cluster in small areas such as Penzance and Falmouth which, at two minutes and six seconds, will see the longest period of totality. Whatever the outcome, the eclipse is an opportunity that has not been lost on marketing brains. Eclipse T-shirts, maps, complete viewing kits and even bottles of special edition eclipse scrumpy adorn the shelves of shops in small villages which, even at the best of times, lack the infrastructure to cope with high demand.

For many, the eclipse opportunity is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it represents a once-in-a-lifetime chance - the next eclipse will not take place until 2090. On the other, with scare stories of gridlocked roads and talk of survival kits, the eclipse has generated its fair share of negative hype. The Cornish police force is reinforcing its 20 motorcycle patrols with 40 from other forces and the military. The M5 and M4 motorways leading to the West Country have carried signs for several weeks warning of potential delays and giving motorists a radio channel to tune to for traffic information.

For hoteliers, the result is a mixed bag, with occupancy levels as high as 90% in some areas and as low as 30% in others.

For those travelling to the South-west, the eclipse may prove an exercise in traffic dodging. For businesses operating in the area it is a huge marketing opportunity, which should pull in first-timers and reinforce loyalty among existing customers. One such operation is Weststar Holiday Parks, the biggest family park operator in the UK, with four caravan and bungalow holiday parks in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

Managing director Deborah Meaden has mixed feelings about the eclipse. "It should be the best opportunity that we've ever had, but I think it's been mismanaged," she says. "The danger is that people will come, feel they've been ripped off and not come back."

For Weststar's parks at Looe in Cornwall, Sandford in Dorset and St Mary's in Devon, the eclipse will have little direct impact on trade - in a highly seasonal area, these holiday parks would aim to run at 100% occupancy during August anyway. Where the eclipse has had an effect on the bottom line is at the company's site at Mullion, near Helston, Cornwall, which will experience two minutes and three seconds of totality.

Here Weststar has opened a field for tent and touring customers, bringing in as many as 1,000 extra guests. An established eclipse team at Mullion identified the need for extra security, temporary shower and toilet blocks and a marquee serving light refreshments - all of which cost about £20,000. Revenue generated will be about £25,000. Where Mullion will benefit is in the main restaurant, which seats 100 and where tables would normally be turned twice in an evening. During eclipse week, Meaden anticipates that tables will be turned three times. At an average spend of £12 per head, that's additional revenue of about £1,200 per evening.

Meaden also scores in the long-term benefits to be gained by extending the facilities. "We open up a new database of people, who may not be our customers already but to whom we can market in the future," she says.

For the management of the individual parks, the biggest impact of the eclipse has been on the supply side. Faced with the unknown quantity of just how heavy the traffic in and out of the South-west will be, all parks have been forced to stock up with three to four times their normal amount of supplies. In the case of the 300-unit Looe Bay site in East Looe, this means 40 22-gallon containers of Carling Black Label instead of 10, and 60 cases of beefburgers rather than 10, not to mention the two additional freezers which have been brought in to accommodate the extra supply. Bass has already stated that it will not deliver any beer or spirits on eclipse day itself. Perishables such as milk come from local suppliers but will, even so, be delivered earlier than normal, just in case.

Staffing for the eclipse has also proven to be a challenge. Some 400 seasonal staff are employed across Weststar at the height of the season, 70 on a year-round basis. At Mullion, 20 extra staff have been drafted in to cope with increased demand. This means additional training, even if only for a short period. Weststar prides itself on its three-day induction course, which all employees undergo. In Disney style, the first day is spent learning company values, the next two working through situations theatre-style with an outside company called Steps, which has done work for major supermarket chains.

It will be some time before the total effects of the eclipse are known. Despite the mixed press, most industry watchers are hoping that good news will emerge for Cornwall, raising the profile of an area that has hitherto been best known for pockets such as Rick Stein's Padstow, Bude's outdoor activities or Newquay's famous surfing beaches. It should also help extend the season in a market that needs to look away from the traditional seven-day family break towards shorter breaks, particularly during the shoulder season.

Looe Bay, for example, is open from March until the end of October. But there is scope for longer trading, mostly in the form of events. Looe has held a wedding licence for the past three years, one of the first holiday parks in the UK to do so, and also allows functions in the form of exclusive use out of the main season.

And fresh from the lessons of coping with the eclipse, Looe is also planning to open 70 of its more robust units for the millennium, at a cost of £89-£99 per person for four nights, with a buffet at £25 per head. So far, the take-up has been slow - just 25%. But, as manager Paul Higgins puts it: "Let's get the eclipse out of the way first before we head to our second hyped-up event within the course of six months."