Log: How Parc life has improved

People have some strange ideas about Center Parcs.

I remember another journalist telling me he couldn't understand the attraction of spending a holiday stuck inside a giant glass dome.

I couldn't think what he meant. At Center Parcs the dome largely encloses the sub-tropical pool - its signature attraction. And then I realised my colleague was somehow confusing Center Parcs with the Biosphere project in Arizona, which was launched at about the same time as Center Parcs started up in the UK.

The Biosphere was a bizarre scientific experiment in which a group of people were sealed in a large glasshouse to see how well they managed to survive. Center Parcs, on the other hand, is a fun holiday place.

It had been a few years since I'd last been to the Center Parcs Longleat village. I was anxious because it has been a fairly eventful past couple of years for Center Parcs. Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, which acquired the company from its original Dutch founders, decided to sell it in 1999.

But it took a full two years for the complicated sale to be completed: last summer the UK villages were bought by a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank while the continental villages were sold to a separate group - a partnership of the bank and the French self-catering operator Pierre et Vacances.

During these two years it would be easy to imagine the holiday villages suffering some degree of neglect. Yet I discovered last weekend that things have changed - but all for the better.

The old chaotic check-in process, which involved much to-ing and fro-ing from the car park, has been replaced by a more streamlined, drive-by check-in. The idea was borrowed from the Oasis holiday village in the Lake District.

When Rank opened the Center Parcs-style Oasis village five years ago, Center Parcs was quick to rubbish its new rival as a poor imitation. Center Parcs has now acquired the Oasis village, which is likely to be rebranded as its fourth UK site later this year. Now Center Parcs is quick to point out that Oasis wasn't that bad after all!

We stayed last weekend in another innovation: Center Parcs's 'executive' apartments. These were a revelation.

We were in a penthouse Pinewoods apartment, a block situated right next to the dome. The split-level accommodationis lavishly furnished: satellite TV, CD player and microwave. Upstairs, there is a jet bath and a private terrace with your own sauna. A phone is another valuable feature, since mobile phone reception in the Longleat forest is patchy. The one thing you don't get in the apartments, but which you do get in the villas, is an open fire.

The apartments are a clear sign of Center Parcs's shift up-market, which has been underlined by its highly impressive health and beauty complex - the Aqua Sana - which was extensively upgraded last year.

The adults-only Aqua Sana offers a lavish array of facilities: a Finnish sauna, a Greek herbal bath, an ice room, a Japanese salt steam bath, a Roman sauna-style Laconicum, a meditation room, an outdoor spa pool and a Turkish hammam. There are the usual array of beauty treatments and massages - and one or two unusual ones. The 'hot' attraction at the Aqua Sana is the Serail Suite, where couples can indulge in a private mud bath together.

Prices aren't cheap - an all-day 'indulgence' package at the Spa costs £105 per person and a Serail Suite mud bath, which lasts 45 minutes, costs £40 per couple. But everyone I spoke to considered it all very good value for money.

But perhaps just as impressive as the new facilities is the fact that Center Parcs has maintained its rigorous attention to detail: the place remains scrupulously litter-free, the accommodation shows no signs of wear and tear and the staff are welcoming and very efficient.

? A three-night weekend in a one-room executive apartment at Longleat costs from £279 to £423 per apartment depending on season. Villas cost from £331 per weekend. Tel: 08705 200 300; www.centerparcs.co.uk