#Prinsenmeer #manager #unknown #secrecy
The residents and guests of the Oostappen holiday parks are still in great uncertainty. Peter Gillis is forced to resign as operator. His permits are revoked, parks are forced to close and several lawsuits are pending. Someone else will now manage their Dutch parks. Who is still unclear and therefore also what residents can expect from the new manager. “Why all the secrecy?”
Roger has already taken into account that he will not be able to stay in his chalet on Prinsenmeer during the May holidays. “Unless I remove my house there, but that will cost many thousands of euros. Moreover, there are no other annual places in the entire region where I can put it.” Roger thinks that otherwise many people would have already left with their chalets.
“You can rake your garden and that’s about it.”
Guests of Prinsenmeer now have no use for their annual or seasonal location, says Paul Lap. He is chairman of the association of chalet owners at the holiday park. “I can rake my garden and that’s about it. I hope everything opens up as soon as possible. Everyone has now paid in advance for their spot for nothing, because everything has been closed since December.”
The latter in particular concerns Desiree Reddering of the Recreational Law Foundation. “We want to recover those costs, but it is unclear whether we should contact Peter Gillis, the new operator, or the municipality of Asten.”
In any case, Reddering thinks it is a shame that the municipality in its hunt for Peter Gillis seems to have forgotten that the recreationists and residents of the holiday parks have nowhere to go. “And guests and residents don’t hear much from the Oostapp Group either.”
“They say the new operator is clean.”
Like Paul Lap, Reddering is eagerly awaiting who will be the new operator of the Oostappen parks. “They say that the new manager is ‘clean’ and has passed the Bibob investigation,” says Lap. But the question is whether that is enough if Gillis remains owner of the park.
Such an investigation is carried out after the application for an operating permit. The municipality’s permit to run a catering business has recently become mandatory in Asten. Peter Gillis did not pass that test and that is why Prinsenmeer is still closed.
According to Reddering, a national Bibob investigation into a new manager will take twelve weeks. No application had been submitted two weeks ago, so she says the park may not reopen until mid-July at the earliest.
“I don’t think there’s a drastic change in direction.”
She does not think that the new operator will drastically change course. “It remains Oostappen and that stands for affordable recreational places. That is good news for guests with an annual and seasonal place.”
In any case, things look bad for the people who live permanently on Prinsenmeer. “They seem to have to leave at the end of this year because of that penalty, but where should they go? These people have nowhere to go,” says Reddering.
Chalet owner Roger is also anything but confident. “Peter Gillis also had a park in Flevoland and sold it to Europarcs. The people with an annual spot could then leave.” He hopes that this does not happen on Prinsenmeer. “A capital is then lost. People’s pensions and savings are sometimes in these chalets that have often been there for decades.”
“People want clarity.”
According to Desiree Reddering, there is a lot of ‘impatience’ at Peter Gillis’s parks. “People want clarity and that is why I do not understand why people are so secretive about the operator.” Paul Lap also finds that strange. “You just want to know who is in charge of the future of your holiday chalet, whether who has parks somewhere else and how things are going there.”
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