My husband and I joined our friends for a one week holiday from Jan 1 - 8, 2012. We set up our camper trailer at site 130. The sites are all extremely close together, and ours was located very close to the nice covered BBQ area and not far from the main office, toilets, showers and indoor swimming pool, which our friend's 11 year old daughter used often and enjoyed very much.

While the camp site itself has great potential, our biggest issues came from poor customer service. On Day 2 of our stay, we entered the park extremely slowly. After being parked for a couple of minutes, a woman ran down to our car screaming 'Walking pace! Walking pace! Only drive at walking pace!' My husband asked her where she was from and she replied with a scowl and a bark 'I'm the owner!' Sadly, I believe she got the wrong car entirely as my husband barely rolled his car through the park. Even if someone had been a tiny bit faster than her expectation, I believe there are ways of communicating such messages to customers without being downright nasty and hostile. This set the scene quite well for the level of customer service and the lack of friendliness we experienced from park staff. For the most part, the staff felt more like prison wardens than hospitality industry workers (several times we heard the park PA being used to reprimand campers), with one notable exception.

Despite the park having strictly stated guidelines about noise that would be tolerated after 10pm (one of the reasons we booked here), we had reason to complain about excessive noise on 4 of the 7 nights we stayed. The first night had to do with a pack of drunken, obscene teenagers who disturbed the peace for a long period of time after 10:30pm. As the office was closed, I went in to complain the following morning. A staff member called Darren gave me his mobile phone number and said to call him any time if there were further disturbances. On another night, there was a loud, guitar playing / singing teenager running around outside our site well after 10:30pm, and to my relief Darren was onto him right as I was about to call him to investigate.

I was very impressed on another night when there was a very loud adult 80s-themed party in the BBQ area when Darren took the initiative to visit us at our camper trailer after 10:30pm (just as I was about to call him) to see how we were coping with the noise and to assure us that a party had been organised with permission and would be moved on soon. On the last night, some of the regulars in their little unit very close to us sat outside until after midnight, playing cards and swearing loudly for several hours. Desperate for some sleep, I called Darren who was very quick to respond and ask the adults to quieten down which they did to a large extent.

All that said, the treatment we received and observed from other members of staff and management led us to decide we would not return to Anchor Belle in the future. On the day before we were scheduled to leave, we realised that our toilet key was missing. We turned the camper trailer upside down to no avail. In the morning, I went up to the toilet block and found the cleaner (a round man with a dark moustache) who was there early each morning and asked him to let me in. I also asked if he knew whether any keys had been found in the toilet block the day before. He said, yes, he had found the key for 130 in a toilet cubicle and had deliberately left it in the ladies bathroom on the vanity. He said to check in with the office when it opened at 8am to see whether anyone had handed it in.

At 8am, I went to the office to ask about my key, only to find the same cleaner and another white haired man sitting behind the desk. I asked whether my key had been handed in and the cleaner said no. I said I was very perplexed that an employee of the park had actually found the missing key in the toilet and didn't return the clearly marked lost key to the office as lost property (less than 20 steps away) or return it to our clearly labelled campsite (which would have demonstrated customer care and initiative). Instead he deliberately left it on a communal bathroom basement, so anyone could decide to take it as an extra key for their tent or caravan (which is no doubt what happened).

His reply was beligerent, saying it wasn't his job to return lost property; he said he'd also found a lost pair of earrings and his job was to just attend to the cleaning. I said earrings weren't park property, but the lost key was, and that I would be upset if I was charged the $10 lost key fee, given that the key had been found by a staff employee and then 'lost' again due to the park employee's intentional behaviour. As I said this, the more senior, white-haired gentleman beside him repeatedly made comments like 'I agree with you totally' and 'You are definitely right about that' (I believe he was agreeing with me), but then left the room, refusing to become involved in the dialogue between myself and the cleaner behind the desk. When the cleaner tried to fob me off and told me to come back later in case the key was eventually handed in, I replied that we were packing up our camper trailer now to leave and I would prefer the issue to be sorted out at this point. At this point he gruffly pulled out a $10 note and handed it to me as a refund of the deposit I had been charged on credit card for the key.

Dear Anchor Belle Cleaner and Management: The bottom line is that the 'job description' of every employee of every business is to uphold the standards by which that business will be judged. In the hospitality industry based primarily on customer service, flagrant disregard for customers and a failure to see customer courtesy and service as part of the job means good-bye customers. In our experience, beyond Darren (who should set the standard for all staff in this regard) there is no such thing as 'the extra mile' and little evidence of basic common courtesy at Anchor Belle, which in my experience is highly unusual for the Australian tourism industry. Sadly, I believe this poor customer service standard is modelled from the top down.

Check out from Anchor Belle is at 10am, and this morning we and our friends began our pack up our camper trailer and their caravan at 9am. At 9:40, the lady owner who had barked at my husband at the start of our stay about driving at walking speed stormed past at close range, giving us the evil eye to make sure we would all be off the site by 10am. No smile, no friendly word, just a prison warden making sure we obeyed her check-out time rules and got off her land, even though there was absolutely no risk that we would be even a moment late; in fact, by this stage, we were more than happy to be leaving the park. I don't have any reason to believe that this treatment was targetted specifically at us - we were definitely some of the very quietest people staying at Anchor Belle. I strongly believe that people who work in the hospitality industry should actually like people and have some desire to connect with them (even if only with superficial civility) if they have a desire for any sort of return business.

While some people would suggest that people like my husband and I (who like to go to bed at a reasonable hour (10ish), sleep well and rise early) should stay in a hotel rather than a 'Holiday Park', we selected this park largely because of its policies about noise. To Darren's credit, he was very responsive to our concerns about excessive and often offensive noise levels and content. However, 4 poor nights of sleep out of 7 due to noise levels and the impression that many staff and management don't see customer service as part of their job description leads me to sincerely hope their are better options for anyone wishing to holiday in Cowes, including anyone reading this review on Trip Advisor, my travel blog or Twitter.

I appreciate that early January must be a stressful time for those working in this industry, but making quiet customers feel unwelcome by omission of basic customer care and courtesy quite simply loses current and prospective customers. I sincerely hope the staff and management of Anchor Belle lift their game significantly in this regard as they do have a nice, conveniently located property with some good facilities, including an adults tv room, good laundry and nice kiosk. It's not the site itself that would keep me away, but the many loud, inconsiderate people the park seems to attract as customers (both adults and teenagers, at least in January) and the dubious customer service standards demonstrated by staff and management.