SANDY Balls Holiday Centre is celebrating record figures thanks to changes which have seen a 68 per cent increase in profits in the last three years.

Changes have included a new business plan, a comprehensive strategy for reinvestment, targeted marketing, a customer loyalty scheme and the adoption of a new staff mission statement.

These have all formed part of an ambitious plan to turn the award-winning holiday centre at Godshill near Fordingbridge into a year round holiday destination and are set against a backdrop of price increases of less than five per cent in the same period.

Achieved in just three years, not the five originally planned, this is no mean feat for a business that traditionally has seen full occupancy only during the school summer holidays and other peak periods. It is perhaps all the more notable having been achieved despite the havoc wreaked on the county's tourism industry by the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

Occupancy rates have increased by almost 30 per cent and 2002 saw the centre's own accommodation - a mixture of luxury two, four and six-berth timber lodges and caravan holidays homes - full from mid May to October.

The key to its success has been diversification, identifying new potential markets for visitors to its leafy 120 acres, a programme of investment and refurbishment across the site, the introduction of secluded two-berth lodges and a highly successful loyalty programme for regular visitors.

"We are delighted to have come so far so fast," explains Andrew Howe, Sandy Balls' managing director. "At the end of the day, tourism businesses are people-driven and everything we have achieved is because our staff has been dedicated to making it happen.

"They have taken on board the fact that they are the key to making Sandy Balls an exceptional place to stay and have truly embraced the Sandy Balls' mission statement, 'to ensure every guest leaves us wanting to return."