HolidayFox vs GemaPark

If you run a UK holiday park or touring site, GemaPark is one of the names on the PMS shortlist. They sell cloud park management — bookings, owners, housekeeping, activities — and they publish real website widgets plus a booking API.

I run HolidayFox, so this is not a neutral page. GemaPark is a serious back-office. The useful question is not “who has the better widget docs.” It is: when a guest writes at 9pm, who takes the booking — you, or Pitchup?

What GemaPark is, and what they do well

GemaPark is a UK cloud system for holiday parks. Their public pitch is one portal for bookings, properties, customers, activities, maintenance, housekeeping and reporting, plus online booking, a guest area and an owners portal.

Things GemaPark genuinely does well:

• •It is a real park PMS. Arrivals, housekeeping, owner records, meter readings, activities with limited slots — not a marketing widget pretending to be software.
• •Website booking is a first-class product: hosted booking pages, iframe widgets that show availability on your site, or a full booking API. They publish developer docs for the widgets.
• •The widget search stays on your pages; completing the booking happens on GemaPark’s hosted secure portal, branded to look like your site.
• •Integrations parks actually use: channel manager, ANPR / barriers, pay-as-you-go electric, email tools. Parks that need that stack should take it seriously.

If your priority is “I need one system to run the park, including owners, extras and a branded booking portal,” GemaPark is a credible answer. Pricing is not published; request a demo from them. We will not invent a figure.

What HolidayFox is, and where we are different

HolidayFox is the after-hours desk on the owner’s own website: a live-chat assistant plus a booking widget. It answers from your listing, checks live availability, and helps the guest book on your domain. Widget checkout (Stripe on your site) is live. Paying inside the chat thread is still rolling out.

We are not trying to replace GemaPark’s park-management feature set. We sit beside it.

• •Job to be done. GemaPark runs the park. HolidayFox answers the guest who would otherwise email after hours and then book on Pitchup.
• •Where checkout lives. GemaPark’s widgets hand the guest to their hosted portal to pay. HolidayFox takes card on your domain in the on-page widget.
• •How you pay us. Pricing: free for the widget, or from £12.99/month for a full website plus 5% commission on bookings taken through HolidayFox. No joining fee. Quiet months cost less than a full PMS subscription you pay whether anyone booked or not — that is a different product, not a like-for-like undercut.
• •Risk to try. Dual-run via iCal. Keep GemaPark. If after-hours direct does not show up, cancel.

Side by side

GemaPark pricing is not published; check with them. HolidayFox figures from holidayfox.com/en/partners, reviewed 2026-09-11. Do not treat Fennec install counts as a GemaPark market-share figure — a bare /gemapark/i fingerprint mixed Hipcamp pages into older crawls.

Who each one is right for

• •You need one back-office to run a busy park: chart, owners, extras, channel manager.
• •You want their iframe widgets and are fine with checkout on the GemaPark portal.
• •You already have GemaPark, the diary is full, and after-hours leak is not a problem.
• •You already have (or will keep) a PMS and want a live assistant on the website that takes the 9pm enquiry.
• •You have a brochure or WordPress site and guests still bounce to Pitchup after hours.
• •You want guests to pay on your own domain, not a hosted portal, without ripping out the diary.

Talk to us

15 minutes with Hannah. She will ask whether you already run GemaPark (or CampManager), how evenings are handled, and whether a live-chat desk on your own site would change the maths. If you need a full PMS and do not have one, she will say so rather than pretend we are GemaPark.

Frequently asked questions