On the budget side, self-catering works in your favour with a bigger group. Cooking most meals in the caravan rather than eating out as a party of eight or ten keeps costs sensible, and splitting the shopping and cooking between the adults spreads both the effort and the spend. A shared static caravan holiday, or two units booked close together, usually works out considerably more cost-effective than the equivalent number of hotel rooms plus regular restaurant bills.

The first thing to check is whether you can move outside a Friday-to-Friday or Saturday-to-Saturday week. Many parks release short breaks, three or four nights rather than a full week, and these tend to have more late availability simply because fewer people search for them. If your dates can flex by even a day or two, you'll usually see more choice.

A static caravan is bigger inside than most people expect from the outside. Most units have a separate living area with a sofa and television, a kitchen with a cooker, fridge and the basics you'd find in a small kitchen at home, and two or three bedrooms depending on the size you've booked. It's closer to a small, self-contained holiday cottage than anything resembling camping.

Families with younger children often lean coastal, since a beach gives you a ready-made activity that needs very little planning: buckets, spades and a few hours, and everyone's entertained. Couples or those wanting a slower pace, or a base for cycling and walking rather than swimming, often prefer the countryside or Broads setting, where the pace of the holiday matches the pace of the surroundings.

Read more from coastal caravan holidays.

Bank holiday weekends behave the same way on a smaller scale. Even outside the main school holidays, a bank holiday weekend pulls in extra demand because it gives everyone an extra day off without using annual leave, UK staycation guide so these particular weekends fill up faster than an ordinary one either side of them.