BIG4 Traralgon Park Lane Holiday Park — Local services in Gippsland

Be aware of excessive charges by making minor changes to your booking

This caravan park may very well be a nice place to stay especially with kids, however you must be aware of unreasonable charges if you choose to change the dates of your booking, change from and standard site to an ensuite, change your cabin type, or reduce your one week stay by a day. In all of these cases you’ll be charged a $50 “administration” fee to make such a change as per the terms & conditions hidden in the fine print.

These charges are deemed fair & resonable by management based on their previous experience in working in hotels and restaurants. However in our many years of camping and in particular staying in excess of 80 caravan parks in the last 15 months have we never once been charged to make one of the changes listed above. Every caravan park has been fair & reasonable, have appreciated our business, until now.

Management imply that these charges are fair and that their customers are accepting of them? I don’t know anyone who would be happy to be charged $50 to change the date of their 3 day getaway, to reduce their 3 week booking by a day, or to swap sites or cabins to something more accomodating.

In our case, we provided 7 weeks notice for our stay in an off peak period to BIG4 Traralgon to reduce our 5 night stay to 4 nights and were soon reluctantly phoned by the reception staff to inform us that we would be charged a $50 administration fee and would therefore receive a refund of $30 instead of the full rate of $80. We were informed that this could be used as credit towards a future booking, thing is we are from Perth so that’s not a practical option for us.

Therefore we are being penalised over 60% of the single nights tariff that we no longer required, yet we’re still committed to the existing 4 nights (or 80% of our original booking) worth $300. So they would rather penalise you and create conflict and then still expect you to stay? Another way to look at it is, that we were penalised the same amount to take one day off our booking as someone cancelling their whole two week booking?? What part of that equation provides a fair & reasonable customer service experience?

Australian consumer law exists to prevent such unreasonable charges such as these examples, but management of this caravan park are completely oblivious to how their policy negatively impacts those customers who need to make minor changes to their bookings.

I write this review hoping that management will review their policies for the sake of future guests wanting to make minor changes to their bookings, as not everything works out as planned, providing 7 weeks notice of such a minor change should be accepted and not penalised as all our previous experiences have been.

May I suggest that management of the Traralgon BIG4 reads the terms and conditions of other BIG4 affiliated caravan parks? Some even offer a full refund up until 10am on the day...

Shocked at the "quality" of my cabin for the price charged. I booked for 7 nights as I was waiting for settlement of my house so needed somewhere to stay with my small dog. Had been a stressful time so I'd hoped to get a comfortable, quiet place to relax and de-stress but that's definitely not what I received at over $200 a night!

I was charged before arriving and definitely didn't want to end up homeless but was shocked when I entered my cabin. Broken bedroom door, no bathroom door, stained carpet, dirty oven, stained dish cloth, no DVD player, old TV which you couldn't mirror cast to, no ironing board and limited tea, coffee, sugar, salt and dishwashing liquid (all in satchels) which were never topped up. Of course the cabins are close together so you really needed to shut the bedroom blind to use the shower, with no door you're stepping out of the shower where someone next door could see you through the window!

I started reading some reviews and saw it wasn't a good idea to complain as you'd be told "this isn't a motel" so thought oh well at least the bed is clean, there is a fridge/freezer, I had WiFi and the water is hot. I did find after 3 days my towels were changed which was appreciated but nothing else was topped up. I had luckily brought my airfryer with me as I definitely wouldn't use the oven so really services provided were limited.

The worst part was the beginning of the "cup" long weekend. The park was inundated with campers, cramped in like sardines and they took over the park. Kids ran rampant riding bikes, scooters and skates around the park taking over all the roads so making it very difficult to drive in and out of your cabin - they'd appear out of nowhere running out onto the road from behind a van and then just playing there so you couldn't safely pass - even travelingat 10km you need to be VERY careful. There is a playground there but the kids seemed to prefer the roads. My cabin and car were continually hit with balls being kicked around, it seems the cabins and camping are mixed and there is no open area for the kids to play. Nowhere to walk your dog either so it's not really "pet friendly".

WiFi died with the influx of campers so not sure if that was due to too many people using it but was back up and running once they'd left. The smell from the "ensuites" near me for the camping sites was bad on Tuesday morning, you opened your cabin door to a "sewerage" smell.

I have often stayed in cabins around parks in Australia but this is the worst for the price that I've experienced as far as quality and service, it was very disappointing. I'd rate my cabin 2 stars which I think paying $200+ a night for is very overpriced - no discount either for a long stay which obviously saves them money when they aren't cleaning or servicing the...

Unfortunately the recent reviews are a sad reference of the condition of this park. While the photos are promising, reality is, the park has a long way to go. The only reason I can give it one star is because the lady Jules at the front counter was so nice. I would give it zero stars if it weren’t for her and if I could. The toilets were disgusting. There was urine and poo on the floor and walls. And it was like this for some time. Such a health hazard. For such a family focussed park, the pool is ridiculous. Like it’s the size of a home pool. We were there on a hot day and we had to go and buy a misting system because we couldn’t even fit in the pool. It was so murky and looked like it could give you some infection! The high ropes course looked great but does cost extra. There was bad weather so we could not use it. I had booked for it but was not able to get my money back, instead I was allowed to get things from the shop - which was pretty expensive. So that was annoying. There was a lot of rain and it had tipped over rubbish bins. We called the office to tell them that there were nappies and all other things floating and settling right by our van but no one came in any great hurry and they were still there the next day. We were down the back of the park and the drainage was so bad. Lucky we were in our van, but the campers next to us were not so lucky! For the price of this place we were expecting so much more. We will not be going back. And will not be recommending to our friends. The park needs to have more cleaning staff and a much...