The people choose BIG4 Bellarine as the best

THE BIG4 Bellarine Holiday Park is again at the top of the charts with its guests, winning this year’s People’s Choice Award across the entire national chain of accommodation sites.

Presented at the BIG4 group’s national conference, which was held online last week, the award is for the parks that have the highest ReviewPro rating across Australia during the whole 2020/2021 financial year.

The winners are drawn from the highest rated reviews in each of the three categories – Classic, Holiday and Premier – and there is also an overall national winner.

BIG4 Bellarine Holiday Park in Marcus Hill was both the Holiday descriptor winner as well as the overall national winner for the People’s Choice Award.

The park won the same award in 2018.

“It was a very nice surprise to know there’s so many organic brand advocates out there cheering for us despite a very truncated and abrasive year for the business,” BIG4 Bellarine Holiday Park co-owner Sophie Bone said.

She said operating the park in and out of COVID-19 lockdowns and changing restrictions was a challenge.

“It was about refining our product offering and making sure the comms were super-tight so that everyone knew where they stood and how they needed to interact with the property once they got there, which was slightly different to normal.

“The constantly changing parameters meant that consumers just needed to know what they needed to do to be able to holiday and feel relaxed despite there being a few extra hurdles they needed to overcome – mask wearing, diminished numbers, diminished numbers in the pool, et cetera.

“Most people, for the greater part, are really interested in contributing to the greater good – I’d give it a 97 to 3 ratio – and for that reason, our job was made easier. They were really quite terrific.”

She said BIG4 Bellarine had its share of returning customers over the past financial year but there was also a significant shift towards “non-considerers”, or people who would normally not choose to stay at a holiday park.

“That’s been driven by not wanting to be in apartment with air-conditioning, not wanting to be in a high rise with all of those various factors, so that’s been an interesting journey as well, as it takes some time for people to relax into that setting because it’s so open, there’s so much space, and there’s so many things to do that they’re not quite sure how to interact with the property at first.”

Mrs Bone said her two parks, BIG4 Bellarine and BIG4 Anglesea (which also picked up an award for online highest weighted sales), were both booked out every weekend for the rest of the year.