ACSI Camping Card membership review- What is it & is it worth it?

Hey guys, I'm Kat from the Motorhome Travel website, Wandering Bird, where we share tips and tricks for taking your motorhome and campervan around the UK and Europe. Today I'm answering a question from one of our readers about the ACSI scheme. Whether it's worth joining, what benefits you get from it and how you navigate their website, which honestly is not the easiest thing in the world. So if you're thinking about joining the ACSI and you haven't yet, this is the video for you. Before I get started, if you're new to the channel, hi, welcome. If you'd like to get tips on motorhome and campervan travel around the UK and Europe, then by all means subscribe and click the little bell, which will tell you when our next video is out. If you are planning a trip to Europe, either now or sometime in the future, don't forget that you can grab our free checklist, which tells you everything that you need. It has been updated for Brexit changes, so you can grab that, download it absolutely free and then you'll know exactly what you need to take with you on your next trip, whenever it may be. Right, ACSI. We have been members of the ACSI scheme for, I'm going to say three years, pretty much since our first trip to Europe. And we think it's well worth it. The scheme gives you access to discounted campsites all across Europe, including the UK, I think that's some of them. But mainly they're focused in, I would say, Western Europe, although we use them in places like Croatia and things like that. Most of Europe has got some form of campsite in the ACSI scheme. Now, one of the funniest things is, what does ACSI stand for? If you Google, what does ACSI stand for, you get the Associated Christian Schools something or other. Obviously, that's not what we're talking about. Further investigation revealed that it stands for the Auto Camper Services International or possibly Auto Camping Sites International. Now, I've looked all through their book, all through their website, all through everything and I cannot find an actual explanation of what it stands for. So, I think they've obviously dropped it and it is now just ACSI. The other thing to be aware of is, their website is really confusing and there are several sites for pretty much the same thing. So, you have an ACSI site, you have a camping card site and then you have a Euro Camping ACSI. And they are all slightly different schemes, but trying to find the one that you want is quite difficult. So, we have got, with our motorhome, we are members of the camping card ACSI scheme. And this gives us access, we get it every year, and it was £17.95 this year. This gives us access to campsites all over Europe. These are normal campsites, so you can book into them if you're not an ACSI member. But you get a huge discount as long as you're travelling outside of peak school holidays. If you are only able to travel in the main school holidays, ACSI is not for you. You don't get any discount. The benefit is if you can travel on the shoulder months, or even in the tips of winter for those that are still open, you can get up to like 60 or 70% off on some of the campsites, which is massive if you are able to travel then. So, for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to do that, it's definitely worth it. But again, if you can't, this is not for you. You can still book into these campsites. It's not like camping and caravan club sites where you really need to be a member to be able to get a booking. These are normal campsites that you can book in online on their own websites, or book in, turn up, and if they've got space you can go into. But you'll obviously pay full price, as opposed to with the ACSI where you can get a discount. So, when you first go on the ACSI or you first tap ACSI into Google, the website that I suggest you go onto is campingcard.co.uk, which brings you up to the ACSI site. And the main reason that I suggest this one is it's all in English, which makes life a lot easier. You can, of course, translate the other one, but I just find this one easier to use for some reason. But there are several. There's also ACSI.eu, and there's eurocampings.co.uk, and there's webshop.acsi.eu. So, there are like four different sites for pretty much the same thing. But if you go to the campingcard option, you will find more information about this. And this is what you want. This is your little guidebook, and it comes with a little atlas. If you've bought into any of the motorhome club sites, very similar setup. You've got a little atlas that gives you where all the sites are as you go through Europe. It's all split up into countries. And then you've got more details about each of the sites and their facilities and things that you can see there, like places that you can stay, what the pools are like. All of that stuff is available in this booklet. Now, we've actually got two parts, because we've got this one, which is for the UK and pretty much anywhere in Europe, apart from the southwest, so that goes all the way down to Croatia and Greece. And then this option, which does France and Spain and Portugal and Italy and a couple of the islands as well. So, it's split into two. And we pay for the whole of Europe with this guide. I believe on some of the schemes, you can pay for one half or the other. But because we tend, in normal world, to travel so much, it was worth us doing it. And I think it was only 17.95 for the lot for the year. It renews every year. One of the things that's a little bit frustrating is that if you buy ACSI in November or December, you're paying the same price, but you're only getting it for two months, because it renews on the 1st of January every year. So, if you are planning on travelling the next summer, I would wait until after that January before you buy your membership, because you don't gain anything by buying early on this one. You'll lose out, unfortunately. The other thing that they have, which is really worthwhile, and now I'm trying to find my phone. I can't find my phone, because I'm using it to record. Excellent. It's an app. And I use the app all the time, because it tells you where the campsites are, and obviously where the nearest campsites are to you. And I find the app easier to use than the Atlas, but that's just because I'm an app girl, and I'm used to using Park4night and all those things. So, yeah, I use the app a lot. The app, again, can be a little bit confusing, because you download the countries that you want to save space on your phone, or your iPad, or whatever you're using the app on. But, yeah, it can be. The first time I used it, I didn't realise you had to download the countries that you want to go on. I think we went, that was on our Croatia trip. So we did France, we did Northern Italy, we did Slovenia, and then we did Croatia. And I think we were in Slovenia, and I hadn't downloaded that section, because I didn't realise that you had to live and learn. But, yeah, make sure you download the countries that you're planning on visiting. They don't take up a huge amount of space on your device. I think I've pretty much got most of Europe on my phone at the moment. I believe you have to have a phone up to a certain level. I think it might be an iPhone 6 or above, or an Android equivalent. So, obviously, only slightly more modern phones can run the app. But, yeah, that's well worth doing. The problem is, when you come to purchase, you have to buy the camping card, which gives you the access to the books, and then you have to buy the app as a separate add-on thing. Now, you can buy the app separately, and I believe you can buy it without buying the camping card, but you have to be an ACSI member. Which brings me into the next confusing bit. So, you've got the camping card section, which is this. This is the camping card ACSI, and that's access to motorhome and campervan campsites. Now, caravan users, most of these campsites will allow caravans as well. So, I'm not going to say 100% all of them, but I would say most of them. These are normal European campsites, so caravans are welcome on pretty much all of them. If you decide to become an ACSI member, which off the top of my head is something like €5 for the year, you can get discounts on a lot of their shop products. They have an ACSI shop, and you can get discounts on them. Obviously, the discount amount varies depending on what. There are also some other member benefits, with money off discounts for their partners that they work with. We are not ACSI members as such, so we haven't bought that €5 addition to our camping card description, and we've never used any of their discounts or any of their products, so I couldn't recommend them. But that is there if you want to buy it. The last thing is something called Eurocampings ACSI. Eurocampings is something like 9,000 campsites across the UK and Europe that you can get access to and discounts on if you buy the extra pack. Now what I find really confusing is how does that differ from this? From what I can gather, this is mainly for motorhomes and campervans and caravans, but the Eurocampings also includes things like tents and cars with tents and the smaller campsites and things. Again, we aren't members of that. We've never used it. If you have got a car and a tent, and ACSI obviously isn't right for you as a camping card, then the Eurocamping side of it is perfect for you. If you have a motorhome or a campervan, I don't think you need more than this, plus using the air system, so you would use that through part of the night, which is free. So again, we haven't added on the Eurocampings, but there are so many in this that I don't see why you would need to. And we tend to do two or three nights using an air and then we'll book into a campsite using an ACSI if we can and get a discount on it. And the way it works is you just turn up at your campsite or book in advance and you'll obviously know it's an ACSI because it's in the book. They're not very good at asking if you're an ACSI member. There have been loads of times where I've forgotten to take my ACSI card and we've paid full price and then I've realised that they're an ACSI campsite and that's really annoying. So make sure you have your card to hand when you are going in to pay and you can always ask them, are you an ACSI member? And they will give you a discount if they are. You do have to have your actual card. You can't just show the book. So yeah, you do need to carry your card and only one person in the motorhome or campsite needs to be an ACSI member so you don't all have to have a subscription because it's done on the vehicle, not on the actual people inside. So that is the ACSI scheme. Definitely worth it but only if you are travelling out of high season. Right, I hope you found that useful. Don't forget again that you can grab your free Europe checklist and download it. I'm going to leave the link to our blog post about ACSI below which also explains the different links and all the different parts and the sections that you can buy because again, I find it quite confusing and I find it quite confusing even when I'm explaining it to you so if you prefer seeing things written down in a more organised format that might make a bit more sense to you. And lastly, if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to see more then by all means, hit subscribe and we'll see you in the next video. Thank you for your time. Bye!