We have done many holidays to a European destination over the years and started out using a company called Al Fresco who we were very happy with. Staff very welcoming, would take you to your accommodation, pop in the day after to check you were all good, then visit again the day before departure. Site was very spacious between caravans, lots of space for kids to play.
They were taken over by Eurocamp post covid and we visited the location again in 2023. Lots more caravans had been installed, making the open spaces minimal so there's now about a 2m gap between the caravans, making it very claustrophobic in feel. Minimal interest from the staff, hard to get hold of anyone if there were issues.
In addition, they had an expectation on guests to do a full clean of the caravan. Property had a tiny plastic bucket (too small for the mop) and when DH was cleaning the floor the bucket tipped and sent hot water over his foot. Thankfully he had trainers on so wasn't hurt. We were instructed on day 1 to wait at our accommodation until the rep arrived to do a cleanliness iinspection, which we did. She commented on how the floor wasn't fully clean and might need to retain our housekeeping deposit, to which DH got annoyed and told her he had almost had an injury due to their substandard cleaning equipment. He also had to use our own towels to mop up the excess dirty water which took time so yeah, it maybe wasn't 100% sparkling. She backed down at this point and apologised.
We would like to go back to this place next year but we're tempted to use their own accommodation instead. It's more expensive but we feel it would be worth it, their customer service seems better from what reviews we've read anyway.
I get that they were maybe recouping costs lost from covid by plonking more caravans into their spaces on the site, but all those personal touches vanished along with Al Fresco itself and it's definitely not the same. Or is this just what's to be expected from companies these days?