Center Parcs staff have revealed what it’s really like to work for the family holiday retreat – and it may surprise you to find out what really goes on behind the scenes
With five parks in woodland settings – including Longleat, Whinfell and Woburn forests, Center Parcs has become one of the country’s most popular family staycations since opening in the late 1980s.
Loved by many for its Subtropical Swimming Paradise, Aqua Sana Forest Spa and great choice of activities for kids, more than two million Brits took a Center Parcs family holiday in 2024 with the villages booked up for 97% of the year.
Breaks at Center Parcs aren’t cheap – often costing thousands of pounds for a family of four, but what’s it like to work there? While many current and former employees praised the company and the perks of the job such as day passes to the parks, others criticised the ‘toxic’ work environment and ‘unrealistic workloads’.
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On Indeed, the company scores an overall 3.5 out of 5 rating across two review pages, based on five categories: work-life balance, pay and benefits, job security and advancement, management and culture, according to the Daily Mail.
Workers can expect more than the minimum wage – Center Parcs roles start from around £12.40 an hour and workers can often access day passes and receive discounts on services while in the villages.
But one food and beverage assistant claimed they had to work in 30-plus degree heat because staff areas didn’t have air con at the Suffolk park they worked at this summer.
And other posts slate it for being ‘degrading’, ‘stressful’ and a ‘toxic’ work environment. Entitled ‘Unrealistic work load’, one scathing review sees an anonymous former employee recounting their experiences of working as a cleaner at Center Parcs Elveden in Suffolk.
Giving an overall rating of just one star out of five, they wrote: ‘Management made me feel unwanted and very defeated’.
Another ex employee, who’d worked at Longleat, firmly disagreed however, saying in August this year that their experience as an employee had been ‘wonderful’ and the team was ‘extremely kind and collaborative’.
Yet an ex-employee at the UK’s first Center Parcs, which opened in Sherwood Forest in 1987, said they’d experienced a ‘degrading’ and ‘stressful’ workplace.
The beauty therapist, posting last summer, said ‘what goes on there is shocking’ without clarifying, and said a typical day was ‘stressful, you just don’t know how you will be treated day-to-day’.
A food and beverage assistant at Elveden described in a one-star post in July how staff were ‘left to struggle’, saying: ‘The perfect example I can think of is that our storeroom and our customer area had air con. The staff didn’t, and you’re left to combat 30 plus degrees of non stop service.’
The company responded to the post: ‘We’re always happy to receive feedback from current and former colleagues so we would like to hear more about what specifically isn’t positive and how we can improve. Please do not hesitate to contact your local HR department to discuss further.’
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