Families with younger children often lean coastal, since a beach gives you a ready-made activity that needs very little planning: buckets, spades and a few hours, and everyone's entertained. Couples or those wanting a slower pace, or a base for cycling and walking rather than swimming, often prefer the countryside or Broads setting, where the pace of the holiday matches the pace of the surroundings.
Timing affects cost as much as accommodation type. Travelling outside school holidays and bank holiday weekends, even by a few days either side, tends to bring costs down considerably, simply because you're avoiding the weeks everyone else is trying to book. If your circumstances allow any flexibility on dates, this is worth more than almost any other single budgeting decision.
Finally, read a handful of recent reviews rather than just the star rating. Look for comments on cleanliness, how the caravan or lodge compared to its photos, and how helpful the on-site team were if something needed sorting. A pattern across several reviews tells you more than any one glowing or grumbling comment on its own.
Neither setting rules out the other entirely. Most coastal parks are still within striking distance of countryside walks and market towns inland, and most countryside or Broads parks are usually within a reasonable drive of a beach for the day, so you're rarely choosing one to the total exclusion of the other. It's more a question of which one you want as your daily backdrop and which you're happy to visit as an occasional day trip.
Next, think about park size. A larger park usually means more on-site facilities: a pool, a clubhouse, perhaps a shop and a play area, which suits families who want options if the weather turns. A smaller park tends to be quieter, with fewer people about and a slower pace, which some guests prefer, particularly couples or those travelling without children. Neither is better, they just suit different trips.
A hotel stay suits a different kind of trip. If you want your meals cooked and cleared away without any thought, and you'd rather not do any washing up on holiday at all, that's a fair trade for a smaller room. Hotels also tend to sit centrally in towns and cities, so if your break is built around walking to restaurants, shops and evening entertainment on foot, tingdeneholidayparks.com that convenience counts for a lot.