Case Study · Holiday Parks

How Sandholme Lodge sold its stock without changing a single thing about the park.

One sale in a year before. Sold out in roughly three months.

30 minutes · no obligation · a straight answer either way

Sandholme Lodge Holiday & Country Park · Newport, East Yorkshire

Zen Marketing Solutions · Holiday park specialists since 2014 · 30+ parks and not a single failed campaign

Figures from the campaign's first three months, 31 March to early July 2026.

If you run a park, you know the quiet worry that sits behind lodge sales. You can have the most beautiful setting in the county and still watch a whole season go by without shifting stock. A year ago, that was Sandholme.

Sandholme Lodge is one of those places that quietens you the moment you turn off the lane. It sits on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds near Newport, with York, Beverley, Hull and the coast all within easy reach, yet the instant you arrive the outside world goes soft. Twenty one lodges sit around two private fishing lakes that Sandra and Rob dug and landscaped themselves, each with its own peg, an island at the centre, and blossom along the lane as you drive in. Five rescued Shetland ponies graze the fields, geese return every spring to nest, and owners describe it, over and over, as somewhere they can finally breathe out.

It is not a corporate operation, and that is the whole point. Sandra and Rob have run it for 23 years, and it has been in Rob's family for over 35, growing from a few touring caravans in a single farm field into the exclusive, owner-only park it is today.

Our park is special because we offer peace and quiet. As a business we always try to be fully transparent and honest with our customers. And it is a family run business, which shines through and through.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

A park this special ought to sell itself. For a long time, it did not. And the reason why is the most useful part of this whole story.

Sandra had tried to sell her lodges the way most owners do. She listed with a national park sales company for a full year. It brought her a grand total of one sale. She brought in a marketing man who arrived full of ideas and delivered none of them. She posted on Facebook herself now and then. Alongside all of it there were pull-up banners in both of the family's garden centres, a sign-written trailer in a car park, and leaflets on every restaurant table. Plenty of activity. Almost nothing to show for it.

"Last year was just so hard," she says. "I kept getting enquiries, but nothing anywhere near anybody wanting to commit."

It got to the point where Sandra started looking at options she never wanted to take.

Sandholme does not allow subletting, and never has. It is one of the reasons her owners chose to buy there. But with sales so slow, she and Rob reluctantly considered changing the rules simply to bring money in. When they sounded out a couple of their owners, the answer came straight back: do that, and we will leave. They looked at going residential too, and their planning consultant told them what most owners in that spot hear, that the licences are rarely changed, and in truth it was not what they wanted anyway.

This is the part a lot of owners will recognise. When sales dry up, the pressure is not only financial. It quietly pushes you toward becoming a different park from the one you set out to build.

Sandra had seen Zen's advert on Facebook long before she got in touch. When she finally enquired, it was late in the year, so we agreed to pick it up in spring. Underneath the timing was the honest reason, the one nearly every independent operator will nod at.

It just seemed like such a lot of money for a park like ours, if it didn't work. Three months' worth was a lot of money if it didn't work.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

That is the real objection. Not "could this work for somebody," but "can I afford to find out that it doesn't." If you have felt that, you are in good company. Here is what she decided.

What tipped her over was not a spreadsheet. It was the advert itself, coming round again and again, and something in it that handed her back a bit of hope.

I said to Rob, in the end we just need to jump in with both feet and give it a go. If we only need to sell one lodge a month, then it's been worth it. There was just something about the advert that excited me and gave me hope again.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

So she set the bar where most owners would: one lodge a month and the campaign pays for itself many times over. What followed cleared that bar, and kept going.

A 30-minute call. We will tell you honestly if your park is not a fit.

The leads started arriving almost immediately. "I was hoping the campaign would get bums on seats and get the leads coming through," Sandra says, "and straight away it did. That gave me hope, and once I'd sold the first one, I felt more confident that this was going to work."

The very first lodge went to a buyer who had seen the campaign on Facebook and drove over to look. Then it began to build on itself. One of the clearest moments came when the team refreshed the advert for a particular lodge one morning, and Sandra sold it that same day. Another buyer came directly through the campaign after Sandra spent a month patiently following up. More than £135,000 of lodge sales traced straight back to the campaign, and the run of interest it created played its part in roughly half a million pounds of lodges changing hands across the park in those three months. Set that against the cost of the campaign and Sandra's "one lodge a month" bar looks almost quaint. One sale covered the lot.

By early July, she was able to say the thing every park owner wants to say.

Everything that was for sale on the park has gone.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

Sold out. A couple had even walked in that very morning wanting to buy a lodge she had sold the day before. She is now buying new stock with a confidence she did not have a year ago, and she has already renewed for another three months.

We will look at your park, your stock and your patch before we say a word.

Here is the bit worth slowing down on, because it is where the real lesson lives. A campaign brings you the enquiries. What turns those enquiries into sales is what the owner does next, and Sandra is very good at the next bit.

She adds people on WhatsApp first, because it starts a proper conversation in a way email rarely does. She sends seven or eight photos with every message: the aerial shot of the whole park, the ponies, the blossom on the lane, the view from the deck. She rings, and if there is no answer she tries again, at different times, at weekends, whenever. When one buyer did not pick up, Sandra sent a WhatsApp, kept the thread alive, and a month later that buyer came for a viewing and bought. Plenty of owners would have given up after the first missed call. She did not.

She is also honest that not every enquiry is a serious one. The genuine buyers are in the mix, and the owners who work the list are the ones who find them. What earns Sandra her buyers' trust is the line she gives them:

The most important thing is that they find the right park first, and then the lodge comes after.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

She is not selling at people. She is helping them choose. The campaign gives her the flow. Her graft turns it into sales. If you would work your leads the way Sandra does, this model was built for you.

Notice what did not happen. Sandra did not have to allow subletting. She did not have to go residential. She did not have to turn Sandholme into something it was not. She kept the park exactly as she and Rob built it, and cleared her stock anyway. The problem was never the park. It was distribution, getting it in front of the right people, and that is the part that got fixed.

The quieter win is what it means going forward. Buying new stock used to feel risky, because a lodge could sit unsold for months and tie up money she needed elsewhere. Now Sandra knows that when she buys a lodge, she has a reliable way to sell it. That changes how confidently you can run the whole business. She is planning her next lodges now, working around the second lake as Phase 2.

I feel so much more positive towards the lodge part now. I was getting quite disheartened, because nothing was moving. It has definitely worked for me.Sandra, Sandholme Lodge

We asked Sandra what she would say to another park owner weighing this up. Her answer was simple: give it a go. She has told us she would happily recommend Zen to any holiday park in the position she was in a year ago.

Her one piece of advice for owners sitting on the fence is about patience. "It does take a while for people to think about it, so three months minimum is a better time." That patience point is worth taking to heart. Some parks panic in the first fortnight if a sale has not landed. Sandholme sold in month one, again in month two, and then twice more in month three. It compounds. The enquiries you gather now become the sales you make later, sometimes much later. We have had a buyer at another park come back and purchase four years after their very first enquiry. Every one of those 87 conversations Sandra built is still there, ready for her next lodge.

• You have a park you are genuinely proud of, but stock that will not shift.
• Your enquiries dribble in from word of mouth, listings sites or the odd passer-by.
• You have quietly wondered whether you would have to change how you run the place to bring money in.
• You are ready to work the leads properly when they arrive, the way Sandra does.

Sandholme did not need a different park. It needed the right people to see the one it already had. That is the whole job, and it is one we would love to do for yours.

If any of Sandra's story sounds like where you are right now, this is the next step. Thirty minutes, no obligation, and you leave with:

• ✓An honest read on whether campaigns like Sandholme's would work for your park and your stock.
• ✓What your patch looks like: who is buying lodges near you and what price points are moving.
• ✓A clear picture of the numbers, timescales and what we would need from you, before you commit to anything.

30 minutes · no obligation · a straight answer either way

With thanks to Sandra and Rob at Sandholme Lodge. Story and quotes shared with permission. Sandholme Lodge Holiday & Country Park, Newport, East Yorkshire · sandholme.zenholidayparks.co.uk

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