Campsites are no longer those simple plots of yesteryear where you could practically only camp. Today, most of these complexes have become authentic resorts where you can spend a vacation with all the necessary services. For this reason, spending a few days in facilities like this becomes a habit that goes beyond mere accommodation for many families. Campsites with water parks, golf courses, playgrounds, private beaches, gyms, movie theaters and even an astronomical observatory…
Faced with such proposals, there are those who believe that improvising a trip and planning it is overrated and for this reason they decide to make the campsite a permanent destination where they can spend their leisure time. Like Pere, Noemí, Mariona and Oriol, a family from Teià, in the province of Barcelona, ??who have been going to the same destination for ten years now, Camping Bassegoda Park, in the Empordà town of Albanyà.
Their recidivism is not exceptional, since the person in charge of the complex admits that 92% of their clientele “does like them” and “has made the campsite their second residence” where some spend their vacations; others, their holidays and still others, on weekends. “Here customers have everything they need to disconnect and, in our case, enjoy the nature that the Alta Garrotxa landscapes and the aquatic experiences of the river provide us,” explains Esteve Guerra.
And it is that each camp has become something unique and exceptional. Each facility has an attraction that attracts certain profiles who find what they are looking for there, “always in a family environment that cements the experience of staying,” adds the director. Closed enclosures, children’s entertainment, water attractions and, above all, friends are the main advantages that many families value.
“Children play with other children and, therefore, fathers and mothers end up making friends”, acknowledges Noemí Subirats. This mother of a family says that friends are already an added value for the campsite, because we even “synchronize calendars to balance calendars and vacations for the following year.” Along these lines, Guerra often records reservations for groups of 15 or 16 people, which usually corresponds to three or four families at a time.
The fathers and mothers of other boys and girls, the neighbors of the bungalow or the store, the other clients with whom you meet in the pool and, even, the work staff can end up becoming a good friend with whom you can share facilities and services.
For Oriol Pérez, the secret of this loyalty also lies with the workers, since for a long time they have detected that “a good relationship of affinity is established between clients and house staff”. This contributes “without a doubt, to us being in the third family generation that enjoys its facilities.” “Those children who came with their parents are already the parents of the grandchildren of our first customers,” argues the head of Eurocamping in Sant Antoni de Calonge (Girona). The director de Bassegoda Park remembers fondly when a young client told him one day: “Here, in this campsite, my parents gave birth to me”, a testimony of the roots that campers keep.
Julián, Montse, Paula and Iván are another family from the city of Barcelona that regularly visit Eurocamping de Sant Antoni every year. Its maxim falls on something already proverbial “if something works, why change it” and in this way almost twenty years have passed since the first day they set foot on the facilities.
For the Sánchez family, the campsite has seen their children grow up and has even played a very important role for the eldest daughter, who “met here who is her boyfriend today”. “The love for camping is practically ingrained in each one of us, when we can we escape, together, separately or with friends, but this is always a cozy place where we feel at home”, explains Julián Sánchez.
Today, campsites are valued not only for their original purpose, accommodation, but also for restaurants, entertainment shows, children’s activities and those aimed at adults or the shops and supermarkets that are found.
The Sánchez family, for many years, was enjoying Eurocamping regularly for five months a year. “We went every weekend, every long weekend and every time we could, apart from the month that we allocate in summer, we have made all this our home on the beach”, explains the father of the family.
Campsites are going through a kind of golden age where more and more people are interested in this type of holiday proposal. “The clients who come do not necessarily have a camping tradition,” explains Esteve Guerra. Many, like Pere and Noemí, came to Bassegoda Park thanks to a suggestion on a social network and through which they knew how to recognize that this equipment could satisfy their family needs for those holidays.
According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), during the month of August 2022, more than 2 million people passed through the more than a thousand Spanish campsites, with more than 11 million overnight stays, of which more than 7 million correspond to national tourists. Many of them have already repeated this year and will do so for a long time.
