Nobody Stayed Longer links five peak seasons of booking records to a survey of 118 coastal park managers, and finds a regional association's published length-of-stay figure rising by more than a third while the same households book the same nights.
A survey of 118 coastal park managers finds the minimum-stay rule that moves the published figure is set for the changeover roster
One hundred and eighteen caravan park managers were asked why their park will not take a two-night booking over Christmas. Eight of them mentioned the figure that decides how the region’s shared marketing money is split.
Nobody Stayed Longer, published today by the School of Emergent Priorities, sets that survey beside five consecutive peak seasons of booking records released by 64 parks in the same regional accommodation association. Dr Fenna Okoro, Dr Iben Chikere and Dr Petra Umbile report a published mean length of stay rising from 4.12 to 5.63 nights across the window, a gain of more than a third, over a period in which the share of member parks operating a three-night minimum went from 12.2 to 77.6 per cent. Among the 18,342 households who booked the same park either side of such a rule, mean nights per booking moved by 0.07.
Three-quarters of managers described the rule as a way of protecting a changeover roster. Fewer than a third could name the criterion that assigns their park’s marketing tier.
The next question is what the same average looks like computed over enquiries rather than bookings. We think the association’s members would find that version more useful, and we would like to be in the room when somebody first runs it.
— Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Horizon Register, School of Emergent Priorities
“Managers gave us a very clear account of a labour problem,” Dr Iben Chikere said. “The figure the association publishes is a different account of the same rule, and it is the one the money follows.”
The paper extends a line of work the University has been building across sectors where a published average carries a decision, and the School regards its arrival in the accommodation setting as a meaningful widening of that program.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.u1gkii.