Reviews of Greenways Of Gower Premier Leisure Park

Management response: Thank you for your review.

We are sorry that your stay was not as enjoyable as it should have been and you were clearly disgruntled leaving, however camping is a highly subjective experience and to say we are not family friendly is utterly unfair and only represents a personal opinion of one VERY busy weekend. I'm not saying there we no issues that weekend, however I do feel that your review paints a very negative picture of an experience which most other campers simply did not have.

We have received numerous compliments from other families staying over the past few busy weeks. You have only got to look at the two reviews following your own (written about the same period) and 10/10 reviews on other sites, to see that this was essentially a bit of a one off. The vast majority of people have had a thoroughly enjoyable stay in the recent busy weeks. Most other times, people have a thoroughly enjoyable stay, as there is ample room for everyone to have their own space, especially in quieter periods (i. E. Not on really busy weekends during a heat wave).

It is clear that a SMALL number of people had not been paying attention to the park rules regarding their music and the fields (in some areas) were noisy at times. I have therefore had a chat with the park management to ensure that the staff are telling people to keep music levels low throughout the day, which should set the tone for the evenings. We can only apologise if you were disturbed during your stay, however I can assure you that there were no groups of 'yobos' or single-sex groups on the park. They would have ALL booked in as families, with their wives and/or children or they would not have been let on. Occasionally, we do get families and couples booking in individually and then 'meeting up', however you can't just stop people coming to the same campsite, it's practically impossible.

Music is permitted at reasonable volumes, however there should not have been any music playing after 10pm, so even if it was low and you could hear it, that is not acceptable and we sincerely apologise for that inconvenience.

Further to our staff meeting to address this, we now have an extra evening patrol on busy weekends, on top of myself, the manager & assistants being available on the park. We have also ordered outdoor signposts, in order to allocate two fields as 'Quiet Fields', where noise should be kept to a minimum all day & night. We hope these steps will ensure that everyone can enjoy themselves in a happy environment. The night patrol will now ensure that music is kept low and that all music is off by 10pm.

With regards to the road access to the park, Gower is typical rural countryside with narrow lanes in places, however we do get 40ft static caravans up that lane on the back of lorries without issue and innumerable people take boats up and down the hill, plus farmers with tractors and trailers and so forth. Occasionally you may have to wait for the likes of a bus to get through on a busy weekend, but that happens all over Gower in the summer, not just in Oxwich.

Regarding the dogs running loose. In all the years we have been there, there have never been countless dogs running loose, if there was I would simply ban all dogs. However, again I have now brought this up with the staff. We received one complaint in recent weeks of two small dogs being off their leads and when the complaint came in the staff went straight up the field and addressed the problem. If your neighbours did not look after their dogs properly, we are sorry, however we can only do something about it if there is a problem when we go up to the fields. We did tell one couple to restrain their dogs recently or they would have to leave and that, as I understand it, solved the problem at the time.

The ice-cream van was on the park from 8pm, however he should not have driven up the fields with his lights on, if as you say that is what he did. This issue has now been dealt with, this won't happen again.

A taxi turned up late at night? He certainly did not have a barrier access card from us, so a camping customer must have let him on to the park. There is little we can do about that unfortunately, we have an expensive barrier access system to negate the need to monitor the gate all night long, however if a client let him on, we certainly knew nothing about it.

Regarding the toilets being a 'right state' on Sunday morning. They were cleaned all day on Saturday and again throughout Sunday just like every other day, so you must have been there before the staff. There is a constant cleaning regime in place, however, please understand that when the showers and toilets are being used by a LOT of people, the staff sometimes have to wait until it quietens down before they can go in and clean, this is sometimes as late as 9 or 10am, depending on the number of customers using the facilities.

Regarding the bins, we are aware of the bins overflowing on Sunday morning, unfortunately our (new) recycling program has not negated the need for so many general waste bins on busy weekends. We have therefore had a further 6 bins delivered to try to ensure this does not happen again. The bin area and bin bags were all cleared by our staff on Sunday however, so there was not a mess there for very long.

Customer care is VERY important to us and we are sorry you had a poor experience on this occasion. The manager in fairness does usually answer his mobile phone, so I don't know why you could not get hold of him when you tried, he was clearly sleeping if it was in the middle of the night, after his 14 hour shift. The head office is only open during normal office hours and myself, the manager and park staff are the only ones available on the weekend. The lounge-bar was open until 11:30pm and you could have called in there up until that time to report any issues. I would have been happy come to assist you before the bartender left or after closing time.

Please appreciate that for the most part, Greenways campsite is very quiet compared to most parks and we've spent a fortune bringing the facilities up to a high standard, which is going to take many, many years to pay back. We do our best and are continually looking to improve our services.

Kind Regards,

James

Management response: Thank you for your review. I do not however agree with much of it and therefore wish to contest some parts as I believe that the problems have been blown out of all proportion, even though I appreciate that we did have some minor problems on this particular weekend, especially with the water supply.

I shall begin with regards to the showerblock getting 'dirty' over that busy weekend.

The rooms of the showerblock are all cleaned under a daily cleaning regime and they were cleaned every day during your stay, whether you saw this or not. This is the first complaint of this nature we have received and I feel it is unfounded. Obviously, during the day the floor may get a little dirty from peoples muddy feet or sand from children returning from the beach etc. The showerblock is within the camping fields after all, but this is hardly akin to 'dirty' in the unclean sense of the word.

For the sake of clarity the showers are also cleaned daily in this process so for you to say they were not is incorrect, we have a lady who cleans them along with our park assistants (in order that both the ladies and the gentleman's sides are cleaned) and I am confident that they do a very good job overall. We supply all forms of cleaning products for this purpose and spend a lot of money on these each year so for someone to say that we do not have a regular cleaning schedule is untrue, but even so I have asked the park manager to keep an eye on things and double check the showerblock on busy weekends from now on to see that everything is being done as it should be.

We can only apologise for the water problem regarding the toilet cisterns on this particular weekend, we had a problem with the main water feed coming in to the building due to a restrictive float valve. This problem was resolved the following Monday when we had plumbers in and we doubled the feed-in capacity. This was only an issue for this one weekend and there was nothing we could have done about it on-site at the time. The problem was only an issue for a couple of hours at 'peak times' when the showerblock was being used by many, many people at once.

On the Sunday that you left the park, the washroom was cleaned as usual and as it was on every other day of your stay. Perhaps they had not got around to it by the time you departed on the Sunday morning, but I am confident that it was cleaned, as usual

Finally, yes the rubbish bins were overflowing for a couple of hours on Sunday until we took empty bins up to the camping fields and removed the full ones. This happens on practically every busy weekend and is to be expected when we have between 100 to 180 tents leaving the park on the same morning and all within a couple of hours. Everyone dumps their rubbish on the way out, as you'd expect and we have to deal with this regularly, as do most other busy campsites. This is a complete non-issue and is not detrimental to the amenities or to anyone's stay.

We work hard and spend a lot of money to run a really good caravan park & campsite and I feel this is reflected in our 4 star Visit Wales grading and in the fact that we do not have one single static caravan pitch left available for sale, which in itself, speaks volumes in this economic climate. We also have lovely families that camp with us year after year.

Suffice to say, I do not feel that sufchicks review is a fair reflection of our campsite. Please see our other reviews which average 9/10.