A holiday park in the Dutch countryside with seventy chalets. Reception closes at 6 pm; guests arriving after that ring at the barrier and read the out-of-hours number from the board. The duty manager answers, asks for the name, looks up the reservation, reads out the barrier code and explains how to find chalet 34. Seven to ten minutes per call. On a busy Friday evening that happens five or six times, at moments the manager would rather be elsewhere.
Revtek · 15 September 2026
Holiday parks receive guests in waves. Friday afternoon and evening are the busiest arrival windows of the week; Saturday afternoon follows at a distance. During the day, reception can keep pace and process arrivals one by one. Guests who arrive after closing time find a locked desk and a note with a phone number.
That note signals a structural management problem. The barrier needs someone to grant access, the chalet needs a key or a code, and the guest wants to know where to go. All of that can be arranged in advance, so that nobody needs to sit by the phone in the evening. The question is which system handles this without creating extra manual work for reception staff during the day.
Almost every Dutch holiday park uses a reservation system: Booking Experts, Recranet, RecreOs or a comparable platform. These systems know exactly who is arriving when and which accommodation belongs to each booking. They also know which licence plate the guest drives, provided the guest entered it during online check-in.
Booking Experts provides a module for licence plate recognition and access control. A confirmed, paid reservation links automatically to the barrier: the registered plate is added to the access list for the exact booking period. Early arrival before the agreed date is blocked; access expires automatically at checkout. No manual step from reception is required.
Guests who forget to enter their plate can still do so via a link in the confirmation email or via WhatsApp before they arrive. The system registers it immediately and the barrier works from that point on.
On the day of arrival, the guest drives up to the entrance. The ANPR camera reads the plate and checks it against the access list. The barrier opens. The guest drives through to the chalet.
This works at any arrival time, including 11 pm after a long drive. There is no intercom left unattended, no lost access card and no ten-minute phone call that wakes the duty manager. For guests, arrival matches what they expected when they booked: park the car and go straight to the accommodation.
When a plate is not recognised, for instance because the guest brought a different vehicle, the system sends an alert to the manager. They can grant temporary access from the dashboard without being on site.
The barrier opens automatically, but guests also want to know exactly where chalet 42 is, what the WiFi password is and how the heating works. That information is sent via WhatsApp in the days leading up to arrival, compiled from the reservation data.
Holiday park De IJsvogel delivers this through a connection between Booking Experts and a WhatsApp assistant. Guests receive a message before arrival with the chalet location, parking instructions, the key code and park information. Questions about opening hours, the swimming pool or cycle routes go through the same channel after that, outside reception's working hours.
This approach replaces a significant part of the reception desk briefing. The information is available when the guest needs it, including on the motorway while the reception desk is already closed.
The most visible change is in the on-call duty. Routine calls about barrier codes and chalet locations largely disappear. What remains are the queries that genuinely need attention: a broken lock, a heating fault, a guest who needs assistance.
On busy arrival days such as Friday afternoon, automated check-in helps spread the pressure at reception. Guests who registered their plate in advance drive straight through. Reception staff have more time for guests who do come in with a question or an unexpected situation.
Suppliers of leisure software report that holiday parks are increasingly adopting automation solutions that were once confined to hotel chains. Licence plate recognition at the car park entrance is now among them, partly because the connection to existing reservation systems has become technically straightforward.
A licence plate is personal data under the GDPR. A park that processes plates for its barrier needs a legal basis, a retention period and a data processing agreement with its reservation system and ANPR software providers.
The most common basis is performance of a contract: the guest books accommodation and provides their plate as part of the check-in process. Record the processing in your privacy statement and do not retain plate data beyond the stay period plus a brief administrative window. This is general guidance, not legal advice; consult a specialist for your specific situation.
More background on licence plate recognition and data protection is in the article on ANPR and the GDPR. What Revtek offers for holiday parks is on the holiday parks page.
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