Claire Flower, Director at Beverley Holidays and HARPA Chair, on why relationships sit at the heart of every successful park business, and what operators should know about the sector right now.
Claire closed the day at Beverley Holidays in the best possible way: as the host of the venue, as HARPA Chair, and as someone who has spent years building exactly the kind of relationships she was describing. The session was unscripted in feel, generous in spirit, and practically useful in a way that only comes from someone who has lived the topic.
The central idea was simple. Opportunities in this sector do not tend to arrive through cold calls or marketing funnels. They come through relationships: with your industry association, with local partners and businesses, with the experts and peers you spend time with at events like this, and with the people inside your own teams and the guests who keep coming back. That is not a soft observation. It is a description of how parks actually grow.
Claire walked through what HARPA offers its members in concrete terms: expert guidance and best-practice support, a dedicated helpdesk, access to specialist referrals, networking and peer connection through the NextGen Network, and a direct line into policy and lobbying work that affects every operator in the room. The association exists to make the sector stronger, and that work only happens when members are engaged with it.
She also covered the HARPA Parks Make Places campaign, a nationwide effort to showcase how holiday and residential parks support communities, drive economic growth and contribute to a more sustainable future. The message is one the XP room understood instinctively: parks are not just businesses. They are part of the fabric of the places they operate in. Making that case loudly and clearly, to government, to planners, to local authorities, matters.
She closed on the Tourism Levy, which she described plainly as a risk to the sector: UK holidays becoming more expensive, families paying more, spend shifting away from local areas and, in the worst case, some of that spend going overseas. Her ask to operators was clear. Lobby your MP. Understand the policy. Be part of the conversation before the decision is made for you.
Claire Flower
Director, Beverley Holidays and HARPA Chair
Claire Flower is Director at Beverley Holidays in Paignton, one of the South West’s best-known family destination parks and the first Holidaymaker client.
She serves as Chair of HARPA, the Holiday and Residential Parks Association, where she leads the sector’s engagement with government, policy and industry best practice.
Claire hosted XP Hospitality Devon 2026 at Beverley Holidays and closed the day with a session on the relationships that make parks work: with associations, local partners, expert communities and guests.
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