The trend is well known to professionals in the outdoor tourism sector: the demand for accommodation with pets is growing exponentially year after year, and with it the demand for dedicated spaces and services. Two figures clearly demonstrate this trend. The 2022 CampingVillage.Marketing Observatory shows that the demand for accommodation with animals is rising sharply compared to the past. The percentage of households that include at least one four-legged friend has reached almost 22% of the total (and marks almost +2 percentage points in the first 70 days of 2023).
Demanding but high-spending tourists – demand increases and camping villages respond with more and better services
The tourists fond of outdoor holidays, interviewed by the CampingVillage.Marketing team in February 2023 in a specially created survey, loudly confirmed their desire to travel in the company of their animal friends. Among the various questions designed to understand what the target customer of outdoor tourism is looking for and desires from the ideal camping village, it was investigated what services a structure should offer to add value to the holiday, even including additional costs. Well, “services and comforts for animals” came second only to comforts for the comfort of the stay, with a gap of just 4 percentage points. This is a clear sign that pets are considered like family members in terms of the needs to be satisfied and that it is therefore no longer enough for them simply to be admitted to a facility but that – at the level of commercial proposition – it is necessary to think about their needs. Making the furry friend happy therefore means making the owner happy.
The Italian camping villages, which have always been attentive to innovation in what they offer their customers, have not been shy about services: walking areas, dog welcome-kits, reserved showers, and kennels are the top of the iceberg of a much more articulated proposal. The best open-air facilities have specialised in welcoming tourists with four-legged friends in tow. Not infrequently the CampingVillage.Travel portal network team is confronted with campsites and villages that want to give visibility to their pet-friendly private beach, the swimming pool where dogs can cool off, or even the possibility of having a vet and grooming on the campsite!
For all of them the advice is the same: in order to be found by a specific tourist, the thing to do is to highlight yourself on specialised channels. An example of this is CampingVillage4Pet.com, the only promotional portal in Italy dedicated to this market segment, i.e. camping villages that accommodate animals and offer dedicated services. User searches for Pet Friendly facilities are increasing both in terms of quantity and quality: people travelling with animals are increasingly searching specifically for facilities that offer services for their four-legged friends. With an advanced search within the CampingVillage4Pet.com promotional portal, tourists can easily find the facilities that best suit their needs, thanks to specific showcases by region, tourist area, and type of holiday, and filters for the type of pets allowed and other services offered by the facility.
Pet Friendly camping villages that want to be found by tourists travelling with pets can take advantage of the visibility offered by specific portals such as CampingVillage4Pet.com, highlighting their offers and services dedicated to animals. In addition to intercepting this market segment on the channels where it does its research, it is necessary to take care of its direct marketing channels with dedicated information.
Website for Pet Friendly Facilities
The main sales showcase of a camping village, the website must emphasise the characteristics of the structure and highlight its strong points, i.e. those services that can make the difference with its competitors and convince the user that this is the ideal accommodation for him. This is why a camping village that offers services dedicated to animal friends must have a dedicated section to speak to that tourist. This will be very important for search engine positioning, i.e. intercepting specific searches.
Reviews for facilities that accept animals
To win over a new customer, it is important to let them know what someone who has stayed there before thinks of a camping village. So why not let those who have already experienced a pet-friendly holiday in the campsite have their say? They can recount the experience better than any “pre-packaged” text, leaving a testimonial about the services and welcome. This content will be of great value both on the website (in the Pet-Friendly Travel section above) and in the marketing actions and campaigns you will invest in.
Dedicated sales campaign
No sales result can come without a well-defined strategy and a dedicated budget. This is why it is important to plan campaigns on Google, social networks, and newsletters dedicated to this growing market segment.
In conclusion, it is important that facilities that accept pets advertise this option clearly and transparently, so as to meet the needs of pet owners and attract a wider audience. More and more open-air tourists are looking for holiday ideas with their furry friends, and accommodation solutions that meet this need have a competitive advantage over those that do not. Therefore, if a camping village accepts pets, it should communicate this explicitly in its advertisements and websites in order to attract this growing customer base.
