Planning next season starts in December

December is the strangest month in the campsite year. The field is empty, the inbox is quiet, and it is tempting to believe the season is a long way off. It is not. The guests planning their summer are doing it now, on their sofas, over the holidays. The decisions you make this month set up everything that follows.

Decision one: prices

Do this first, because everything else depends on it. Pull up this year's occupancy by week and be honest about two things: the weeks you sold out early, and the weeks that never filled. Nudge the first group up and consider what would actually move the second group, which is usually not price but reasons to come, like events or midweek offers.

If you have not moved prices in two years, you have had a price cut. Costs certainly have not stood still. Our seasonal pricing guide covers how to structure the bands.

Decision two: the pitch mix

Look at what sold out and what sat empty by pitch type, not just by week. Common findings:

• Hardstandings with electric sell out first almost everywhere; grass tent pitches without hook-up increasingly linger.
• One or two pitches are always the last to go. Walk to them and figure out why. It is usually shade, slope or distance from the toilets, and sometimes it is fixable for the cost of a weekend's work.

Converting two grass pitches to hardstanding, or adding electric to a popular corner, often pays back within a season.

Decision three: one capital project

Everyone writes a winter list with nine projects on it. By March, none of them are finished. Pick the single project with the best return, book the contractors in January when their diaries are empty, and let the rest of the list wait a year. If you are stuck choosing, guests reward, in roughly this order: better showers, better wifi, a covered washing-up area, and a decent camp shop.

Decision four: when bookings open

Opening day for bookings deserves as much thought as opening day for the site. The pattern that works:

1. Open to this year's guests first, with a short email in early December. Loyalty gets the best weeks.
2. Open to everyone in early January, when the post-Christmas browsing wave hits.
3. Make sure the booking page, prices and minimum stays are correct before either email goes out.

A booking taken in December is not just early revenue. It is a guest who never went looking at other sites.

Decision five: what you will stop doing

The cheapest improvement to next season is subtraction. The paper diary that duplicates the online calendar. The three phone calls it takes to confirm a booking. The listing site that sent four bookings and forty emails. Every season adds processes; December is for removing them.

If the thing you want to stop doing is retyping bookings between systems, that is roughly why Pillowcase exists: one calendar, one price list, one place guests book. But whatever tools you use, spend December deciding, January building, and February testing. March will arrive sooner than the forecast suggests.