We have met Thomas Daddi, Administrator of Campeggio Puntala srl (PuntAla Camp & Resort). In his early forties and with a degree in economics, Daddi welcomed us into his office overlooking the sea, inside the prestigious 4-star campsite spreading over 30 hectares, with 500 pitches and about 200 mobile homes. The business was started by his grandparents in the ‘50s and progressively developed until the arrival of his father in 1972 and then of Thomas himself in 2002.
Camping Business: how was the season, what the difficulties and what the mix of customers in 2020?
Thomas Daddi: the foreign customer, who for us normally accounts for 25%, this year only accounted for 5%. We have suffered an 80% decline in foreign tourism. The first major difficulty was to make up for a season that would otherwise have lasted 4 or 5 months with July and August. The lack of knowledge and information on what the current situation was has led to caution and uncertainty in the investments by all entrepreneurs in the sector. We had to choose which activities to keep and which not. For example, this year we did not open the sailing school. We have reduced investments and personnel on other internal services by 30%. But even with a small staff and always under pressure, we have guaranteed services and professionalism. The results, thanks to the month of August, are better than forecasts and in September we expect some surprises, both from the Italian and foreign markets. We hope to be able to contain losses by 30%. In October, unlike in the past, we will close to have an extra month to prepare for the next season with all the renovation regarding the campsite.
Camping Business: What renovations are you planning?
Thomas Daddi: We have received the permits to renovate toilets and this year we will proceed on that. We have also received financial aid from the SME guarantee fund, thanks to the Covid emergency, which we will invest in the renovation of many obsolete parts of the structure. We will also renovate some of the older houses by replacing them with new structures built by us with Italian companies.
Camping Business: Your campsite remained in a legal limbo until 2016 when your urban plan was finally approved. What changes now?
Thomas Daddi: It has been a very long journey. After almost forty years from its birth, we obtained the final destination of use as a campsite in 2007. But this conditioned the continuation of the accommodation activity to the approval of an urban plan in accordance with the conservation of the soil, animal species and their habits wild. Therefore the absence of fences, the identification of a biotic corridor in which animals can transit along the coast. It is also planned to eliminate any anthropogenic passage from the area thanks to walkways and elevations. The general development project, however, always takes respect for the natural park in the first instance. Then there are hydraulic interests related to flood events that affected Liguria and Tuscany, which led to times in which it was increasingly difficult to carry out any building and urban planning work in the areas subject to risk. In September 2016, the approval for our works finally arrived. Now the structure is perfectly legitimate and we finally have the planning tools to invest.
Camping Business: If this authorization didn’t come, did you have a “B” Plan?
Thomas Daddi: My father had already invested to acquire areas, in the second coastal strip, on which to move the business, if on the coastal ones the permits had not been renewed. This happened to the Torraccia campsite, which turned into the Albatros campsite, given in compensation for the closure on the coastal strip. In our valley, which is very narrow, difficult to convert into something other than agriculture, the philosophy according to which, since the territory had already been occupied, to enhance this presence but under the right regulations has been adopted. Today the same administration recognizes, thanks to aerial shots alone, that the coastal areas occupied by private activities are greener and more luxuriant than average, well cared for and maintained. Even just the identification of a pathogen on plants, in a private area, is immediately managed because the simple shadow is part of the company’s product! This does not happen on land that has no economic aspects behind it. The public has verified and understood that the territory in private hands is being enhanced.
Camping Business: Even in your area there are not always easy relationships with the hotel hospitality sector. What do you think?
Thomas Daddi: It is incorrect to say that a campsite can offer a complete alternative to traditional hotel accommodation. The accommodation facilities that we offer to guests are temporary, set up with important installation costs because only through temporaryity we can guarantee respect for the environment. A traditional hotel has a large footprint, consumes a lot of land and resources, upsetting a natural area. Temporary structures do not involve this and the merit of the campsites is that they have maintained this approach.
Camping Business: Among the investments you mentioned the in-house construction and production of new mobile homes. Can you tell us more?
Thomas Daddi: We have already built a core of ten mobile homes before we had to stop work due to the pandemic. We plan to build 20 more next winter. We collaborate with a studio in Florence with which we have had relationships for 10 years. The future development foresees two types: the small house with access on the long side with a large veranda and the type with entrance on the short side, which fits into the niches once reserved for campers and caravans. The houses are developed on a “shotgun” or train wagon model, in which, like a cowboy on the prairie, we can keep an eye on the front and back! The houses are called passive and the temperature remains constant over 24 hours. The thermal transmittance, therefore, the delay in returning the heat of the day towards the night and the opposite process ensure this constant. In the last series of houses we have introduced a pilot project, in collaboration with BTicino, of home automation. We have various technologies that interface with the Rfid and bluetooh home. All systems control the opening of the house, remote air conditioning and all services. The customer has maximum comfort and we can monitor the efficiency of every service in the house. Other innovations are the introduction of induction hobs in all homes as a fire protection standard. An innovation that absorbs a lot of energy and brings the average consumption of homes to around 7-8 kw. We therefore had to build two new electrical substations suitable for supporting the loads. We also started our own external company for the construction of the frame, a steel platform that rests on the ground and supports the house. They are transportable structures, which rest on the ground on a frame and which can be removed. At sight the object is immobile but in reality it is a so-called instrumental good.
Camping Business: What do you mean by instrumental good?
Thomas Daddi: The use of the mobile home as an instrumental good helps to keep up with the times: every decade makes it possible to transform the product into something more suitable for the evolving market. And an instrumental good can also be financed through the measures of the Ministry of Economic Development.
Camping Business: We know that you have recently created an special water system …
Thomas Daddi: Right. We have built a tank where we store the camping’s drinking water and service water. It is sized for 350 m3 of drinking water and 150 m3 of service water. Drinking water comes from some wells and 60% from a desalination plant. The water produced is stored in the plant that replaced the old external tanks. It was necessary to recreate an internal water plant, a difficult project because it was necessary to work below sea level. We used technology to continuously pump water out of the excavation.
Camping Business: Can you meet every water requirement of the campsite?
Thomas Daddi: Yes, we are not even connected to the municipal aqueduct. The water comes from the desalinator and also feeds the fire-fighting system which is implemented by a second hand military truck equipped with a fire-fighting kit that has been discontinued by the Calabria Region. The fire team always has 5 people on alert for every emergency. Our service is also available to the Tuscany Region for any eventuality. The water system throughout the campsite has three pipes that run along each street: one for drinking, one for service and one for fire protection. At the same time there is a sewer that directs the water to a biological chemical purifier which brings the values back to non-dangerous levels and directs them to recycling for watering and flushing, in a sort of almost closed circuit, for at least two cycles. The water on the pitch is drinkable, comes from the desalinator and well and is perfectly in compliance with the disinfection process required by law. Here, in fact, a final process of chlorine elimination takes place with a low pressure reverse osmosis stage, a remineralization.
Camping Business: We found absolute rigor in the application of the anti-covid 19 spacing and sanitary measures.
Thomas Daddi: : Of course. For us it was taken for granted that the reopening of economic and accommodation activities was strongly linked to the management of the health emergency and to the prevention measures to protect the guest. I found disappointing the lack of attention of some towards the emergency. Fundamental elements of our prevention are: dedicated routes, controlled gates, complete tracking of people present in the campsite, tracking of every small symptom, sample temperature verification even within the campsite among guests who have stayed longer. It was certainly useful to have identified a certain type of mask, comfortable to wear, in hypoallergenic fabric. Then a careful screening of the staff and an initial training phase as part of the rules to which we were required has followed. The success of the measures is, I believe, conditioned by the good example that is sent from top to bottom and I personally have to thank all my collaborators for their excellent work, even in passing the example between them.
Camping Business: Is there a positive legacy left by the pandemic emergency and what are the next future developments?
Thomas Daddi: : Unless a vaccine is found, the correct setting given to the facility may well reward next year too. At the basis of these choices there is no commercial reasoning, but there may be a return in this sense. For the future we want to give a strong boost to social interaction, web activities and applications designed to make every guest check-in and check-out operation and the internal management of the structure more and more usable and comfortable. The anti-covid measures, in fact, gave me the opportunity to implement improvements that I already had in mind. For example, also for experiences lived in campsites abroad, for some years now I have considered the use of cash within the structure to be anachronistic, and I have decided to exclusively introduce electronic payment. The next step should be the use of widely used applications and platforms for the exchange of economic credits and overcome even that barrier. It will only be a matter of understanding which ones. Everything can be managed on the customer’s smartphone or bracelet. For example, we already have a rechargeable card for children, linked to electronic payment.
Tomforde: Looking at the future