I thought it rather churlish of my son to announce to his mother yesterday that the £3,500 that she had paid for the family holiday at Centre Parcs was, in his opinion, worse value than an alternative that he had in mind at a resort in Mexico. However, this sort of gift-horse dental inspection did lead me to consider the business model that we were all experiencing this week.

As I write this, we are participating in a staycation at one of the six parks that the company operates in the UK and Ireland. Today it is raining. If you want all the facts and figures, the Wikipedia entry is a useful start and then there are the accounts for the year ending April 2019.

The business seems to operate with a £360 millions turnover and generate an operating profit of say £100 millions with a 97% occupancy 365 days per year and about 7,000 employees. The debt seems to be about £1.7 billions and the fixed asset value is £260 millions. The cost of constructing the most recent site in the UK was about £250 millions and each site occupies in the region of 350-400 acres and includes 7-900 lodges of various shapes and sizes. Ours was a six-person unit, each room with an en-suite shower room and a central lounge and kitchen dining area. The lodges are mostly single storey wooden framed structures with flat roofs and good quality interior fittings including TV in every room and central heating. Interestingly there was no washing machine and I found my bed damp which was borne out by the black mould in the shower-room grouting. I couldn’t get a mobile signal anywhere on site but the WIFI was excellent.

Once on site and having unloaded their baggage, guests are required to take their cars to a car park near to the site entrance and thereafter travel within the boundary by foot, bicycle or the company “land train” that continually circuits the site at twenty-five minute intervals. There are central facilities including an enormous swimming pool with slides and things, shops, restaurants and innumerable activities from zip wires to pony rides and pottery painting. Everything a young family could want if their map-reading skills and bicycle riding are up to it.

Our visit was a few weeks after the reopening from lock-down and there were many restrictions in place to ensure social distancing and the safety of one and all. Some facilities were not available and others required pre-booking or the use of i-phone apps and QR codes. It will be interesting to see from the notes to the accounts for year ending April 20, and the following ones, what the financial impact of Covid-19 has been. The efforts to do the right thing seem to have been unstinting.

The staff were all attentive and friendly and seemed to be well treated. The site appeared to be well maintained and given that it occupied a coniferous forest, was manicured just short of the point of not being a wilderness. Occasionally there was wild-life to be seen, apparently much more so during the lock-down.

So what do I think of the experience? Well, for £100 per person per night it was cheaper and less stressful than a London hotel and considerably less unpleasant than flying across the Atlantic. There were many features of the design that I admire and I would very much like to have the opportunity to discuss with the company management how they set about their response to the Covid-19 safety requirements. If I was a shareholder, I would feel proud of the company and pleased to expect continued good returns on my investment. One thing puzzles me though. Why did I feel that the entire enterprise had such a low participation from the BAME community?

More from the sharp end of mixing and packing next week having returned from this unaccustomed break and resumed the role of Godfather rather than Grandfather.