Croatian outdoor tourism has just closed a very successful season, with almost 21.5 million overnight stays, a growing number compared to the record already recorded last year. Also good news is the 3.2% increase in tourism in the continental area of the country, which still has great growth potential. The data was released during the opening work of the 17th Croatian Camping Congress organized by the Croatian Camping Association (CCA).
Adriano Palman, director of the Association, underlined the health of the sector: “Croatian camps are one of the highest quality in Europe thanks to intensive investments, and some of our camps are already open all year round thanks to adapted infrastructure. We are convinced that camping can be the leader of sustainable, year-round tourism, which is confirmed by this year’s results and the growing interest of our guests in camping in continental counties as well”.
The work of the Congress was introduced by Slavko Štefićar, Director of the Sustainable Development and Competitive Tourism Sector of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, who took stock of the Croatian Government’s commitment to supporting outdoor tourism. The next objective is to organically reform the regulations concerning Croatian tourism. Within a framework that puts sustainability at the forefront there will therefore be a specific law, funds of €1.3 billion and a sustainability monitoring system are foreseen. “Respecting the natural and cultural heritage and unique identity of all regions, we will create year-round sustainable tourism, attractive for investment, work and life, to contribute to the harmonious economic development of Croatia,” said Štefićar.
The development of the sector
The most important moment of the opening day was the round table entitled “The current state and future trends in the development of camping in the Mediterranean – which way to go?”. The discussion began by analyzing the season that has just ended. And one of the key themes immediately emerged, that of the price of accommodation and pitches in relation to the quality level. There is no doubt that prices have increased, but to ensure that they are sustainable it is necessary to offer superior quality. “Only in this way will we be able to receive an adequate response from the market,” underlined Veljko Ostojić, President of the Croatian Camping Association and Director of the Croatian Tourism Association. “We had to focus on increasing quality following the principle of sustainability. If prices grow in step with quality, I am optimistic for the years to come”.
Alberto Granzotto, President of the Italian FAITA FederCamping, defined the season as the best ever. “We have surpassed 2022, which had already been a year of full recovery, with a +4% in terms of flows and even more in terms of turnover. We recorded a positive trend in destinations with foreign tourism, while those where the Italian presence was more significant suffered a little more. The connection with the real economy of the country is therefore evident. The balance is very positive and has seen the structures that have invested the most in foreign markets and above all in quality, which is the dominant trend in the coming years, rewarded“. The qualitative growth should allow us to intercept new customers who are approaching the sector for the first time.
Prices rising almost everywhere
Confirmation of the price increase also came from Spain and France. “Our sector has been undervalued in recent years, but thanks to the Covid pandemic it has been revalued, and because of this we have been able to increase prices a lot,” said Ward Wijngaert, of Yelloh! Village. “This summer, however, we noticed for the first time that we had more difficulty selling premium products than lower quality products. So, I think we’ve reached the top. Now we have to work to continue to evolve the campsites”.
“This is one of the main challenges for our campsites. If we have 1,300,000 beds in family accommodation with low prices, we inevitably attract low spenders,” added Ostojić. “Croatia today is in the midst of a transition from a country with below-average prices to a country with higher costs”. And campsites are already far ahead on this path.
According to Sandra Janković, from the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management in Opatija, prices have risen rapidly in the last two years. The average price of mobile homes in Croatia has reached €170, those of pitches at €40: these are the highest figures ever, in some cases even higher than in the 4-star hotels. For a campsite, seasonal revenues for mobile homes have gone from €8,200 in 2013 to €17,000 today.
But if prices rise and sustainability is an increasingly important issue, are customers willing to spend even more to stay in a “green” mobile home? According to Sergio Redaelli, CEO of Crippaconcept, the costs of building a mobile home with a higher percentage of recycled or recyclable materials are certainly higher. “But the industry already has a product today that has the characteristics to be sustainable: having wheels there is no soil consumption,” he said. “More important is to understand if the guest himself is willing to be green. In this case perhaps he is also ready to spend a little more for a sustainable holiday, taking into account that this concerns not only the product, but also the entire surrounding environment. This is the direction, but the process is slow. However, the product is ready”.
Choice of destinations, prices, and investments
With increasing price levels almost everywhere in Europe it is important to understand on the basis of which elements a guest decides for one destination rather than another. “Each destination is chosen for its particular characteristics and peculiarities,” said Granzotto. “There is no single product, but there are destinations and campsites with their own personality, and this attracts a certain type of clientele. Campgrounds have historically seen very high customer loyalty. In our area there was talk in the past of 70% of customers returning regularly. In recent years, as campsites have grown in terms of quality of services, they are attracting new customers characterized by greater mobility and looking for different experiences. This can also be understood from online reviews, in which campers compare not only local facilities, but also different destinations”.
According to Granzotto, the issue of prices is very delicate, because it also arises in terms of changing the clientelethat will frequent open-air accommodation facilities. It is essential to know how to evolve to welcome a new type of customer. This is the great challenge to understand how sustainable the growth of the sector is. Obviously, higher quality also means greater investments. “In recent years, campsites have given the best responses in terms of investments and quality,” said Granzotto. “From a study we carried out on the balance sheets of companies in the North-East, it emerged that the growth rate is greater in the structures that have invested more and in those that have improved the quality of their products, and open-air tourism is positions better than the hotel sector”.
The effects of climate change
Another topic that was talked about a lot at the Croatian Camping Congress was climate change and its impact on open-air accommodation facilities. Wijngaert underlined how in Spain and France there are two great risks, linked respectively to water and fire. “The biggest problem is that the Spanish government does not offer solutions other than closing the facilities,” he said. “In France there are more flexible and tailor-made solutions. For example, closing activities only in certain periods, perhaps those most at risk of floods. Spain is still working on a warning system for rivers, but the latest tests have not worked. So, we are still discussing with the administration explaining that we are ready to invest for the safety of our guests. However, the answers are very conservative and arrive late, while things evolve rapidly”.
There may also be technological solutions to help in case of emergency. “Mobile homes, for example, could become floating in the event of flooding, but the Government does not take them into consideration and does not support us in their adoption. Regarding fire, the problem is that most campsites are located near forests and parks, and therefore we cannot keep the surroundings clean to create natural barriers. We must therefore try to have permits to be able to carry out prevention even in protected places”.
In Italy there have been no shortage of cases of natural disasters caused by climate change in recent months. “We certainly can’t move campsites to avoid the problem,” Granzotto said. “We need to implement strategies that allow us to predict these phenomena and limit their consequences. The Italian fire and safety regulations have been subject to a profound review in recent years and they are very restrictive: we have burdensome but necessary obligations to make the structures safe. Thanks to this, in recent years we have only recorded damage to property and not to people”.
Between risks and opportunities
Risk factors must therefore be addressed consciously. “With Crippaconcept we have worked to make mobile homes safer in case of fire hazard. For water we have a law that limits the positioning of structures near waterways. As FAITA, we have developed an important project to develop environmental policies that make us increasingly sustainable”.
Climate change is an issue we must deal with, which in addition to great risks also brings with it new opportunities. “This year’s climate also led us to extend the season: in October we worked like never before,” confirmed Granzotto. “There are therefore also opportunities. To grasp them, we need to create infrastructures and services to welcome customers in a different period and with different needs”.
The importance of regulations
Another challenge for the world of outdoor accommodation is linked to regulations, which obviously are different depending on the country. In Croatia things are particularly complex, so much so that – as mentioned at the beginning – a comprehensive reform is necessary. The most felt issue in outdoor tourism is that of competition from family accommodation, as Ostojić underlined. It is a very widespread social phenomenon that must be addressed and regulated. Just as the issue of overtourism and taxation cannot be ignored.
In Italy the legislation is very complex, especially in the world of open-air tourism where the installation of mobile homes touches on urban planning, environmental and tourism-related issues. The relevant laws are managed by autonomous bodies that perhaps have different visions. And this sometimes leads to conflicts, creating development problems. “The outdoor tourism sector at the government level is not yet well understood,” Granzotto said. “For this reason, we try to make people understand the quality of the tourism we express, underlining that it is linked to foreign tourism, which compares the offer with the best European benchmarks”.
“Regulation is therefore a very important issue and must evolve rapidly,” he added. “More than asking for help, we ask for simplifications. I thought this was a predominantly Italian issue, but since I have been attending EFCO (the representative body of the campsite, holiday, and caravan parks industry at the European level, ed.) I have understood that it is instead a problem that characterizes all European countries. The market has a speed, while regulations are much slower. In Italy it can take up to five or six years to obtain a building permit. We must have laws that guarantee harmonious development of the sector and in line with the needs of environmental sustainability. The entire European system must address this problem, because the evolution of demand is faster than the responses we can obtain to improve supply”.
Spain, on the other hand, experiences a situation where the regulations take very little into consideration the needsof open-air accommodation facilities. “We have no strategic guidelines from the government,” Wijngaert said. “We try to report to the institutions how we are moving, but the sector is developing in an uncoordinated way. Our primary objective remains to satisfy the needs of our customers and we honestly do not rely much on our government institutions. It could be that a phenomenon like glamping appears in our legislation only in 10 years…”.
The campsite of tomorrow
Finally, the round table tried to outline the contours of the campsite of the future. “This is a fast-moving market and understanding what will happen in five years is very difficult,” Redaelli said. “To evolve we must be able to always stay in touch with our customer. The destinations will remain the same, but I hope that the sector continues to grow, erasing the culture that sees camping as a cheap holiday”.
Alberto Granzotto expressed optimism. “I believe that the sector is destined to experience a growth path, compatibly with all the obstacles faced in recent years, from the pandemic to natural disasters, up to wars. Ours is a sector that will grow more than others. However, there will be important changes. We have seen how this evolution is followed more by larger companies that have already made investments. As an association we must understand how to help other operators to specialize and evolve to intercept new trends”.
“In our opinion, there is room to create new models based on company size and destination. In all of this there is also a theme of generational turnover among companies, and this poses a problem: often young people do not go on to manage the family business, but hand it over. We therefore see many acquisitions carried out by large groups. The market will therefore change, moving from family capitalism to industrial capitalism. Following an evolution like the one that occurred in the hotel world”.
Granzotto also underlined that “the outdoor tourism sector is still partially backward in technological terms: artificial intelligence, revenue management, analytics will be increasingly crucial for the strategic positioning of the company, and this will clash with the internal lack of qualified personnel. This is why we see the creation of training courses very well”.
Wijngaert‘s vision is very “concrete”. “The future is difficult to predict, but we believe that eventually there will be fewer customers and higher prices and quality,” he said. “We see the return of pitches, given the increase in motorhome sales, especially in the winter period. The future will be more premium and more in pitches, which will have to be larger. Due to climate change, we think the low season will improve, because in summer it gets hotter and hotter, and for this reason I don’t think there will be a great future for glamping, especially at this time of year. Digitalization will grow and mergers and acquisitions will increase. We see greater humanization of our product and ever greater customization, with more diverse campsites. Because we must not forget that camping is an experience and not a destination.”
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