In the summer of 2019, in order to gain a more recent overview of the camping market and its economic importance for Germany as a travel destination, the tourism research organisation Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Institut für Fremdenverkehr (dwif) and GfK published their findings based on a 2018 caravan holiday survey.
In its ’Camping Compass 2019’, the ADAC’s camping platform Pincamp has information on the average travel behaviour of German holiday campers.
“Camping is currently booming in Germany“, says Uwe Frers, managing director of Pincamp. “For many, the big advantages are flexibility, being close to nature, and sustainable travel.“ Glamping, a new trend, has brought comfort and luxury to camping sites.
High-class bungalows, spacious mobile homes, safari tents with a touch of the wild about them, treehouses, barrel-shaped houses, construction trailers and growing numbers of well-appointed mobile homes and caravans are opening this market up to a wider audience. There is no exact definition of glamping.
For Daniel Onggowinarso, the managing director of the caravanning association ’Caravaning Industrie Verband’ (CIVD), “the conventional stereotype of camper vans and caravans as something for older people and pensioners is now clearly a thing of the past. Young people in particular and high earners are fascinated with caravanning.“
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They appreciate being independent, spontaneous, flexible and making their own decisions. In Germany, registrations of new mobile homes have been witnessing high double-digit growth for some time now.
Last year, turnover from camping and caravan tourism boosted the German economy by 14 million euros. This statistic was published by the dwif in its Camping and Mobile Home Tourism Report 2019. According to a report by GfK, 14.2 million German citizens – almost a quarter of all adults – aged over 18 could imagine spending their holidays in a mobile home or caravan during the next five years – 85 per cent of them in Germany, 58 per cent in France and the Netherlands respectively, closely followed by Denmark and Italy. Millennials with a penchant for caravanning account for 23 per cent of travelling campers.
Pincamp’s Camping Compass 2019 has information on how, on average, German campers travel, how much money they spend, and what is most important to them. Around 1,000 campers took part in the survey. This was followed in September by an analysis of over 80,000 routes. The ADAC and CIVD made this alarming development their key topic and extended an invitation to attend the first Specialist Forum on Mobile Home Parking Sites at the Caravan Salon in Düsseldorf.
Text: Sabine Neumann, Redaktionsbüro Schwartz
