This year’s spring and summer holidays are currently being affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, due to travel restrictions as well as other precautionary measures taken in response to the pandemic. To still be able to discover the world, eager travellers might need to adjust their holiday choices.
For those who like to have a camping holiday in the European Union (EU), there were 23 200 campsites in 2018 to choose from. The vast majority of these were located in rural areas (68%) or towns and suburbs (26%), while 6% of campsites were located in cities.
Over two thirds of these campsites (70%) were in just four EU Member States: France (35% of EU’s campsites), Germany (13%), the Netherlands (12%) and Italy (10%).
Visitors spent a total of 352 million nights in EU campsites in 2018, accounting for 13% of all nights spent in tourist accommodation within the EU.
Late spring and summer are the most popular seasons for camping. In 2018, the number of nights spent in campsites across the EU in August (31%) and July (27%) together accounted for more than half of the annual total. June (11%), May and September (both 9%) were also popular months for camping.
Camping most popular in Denmark and Luxembourg
Among the EU Member States, the highest proportions of tourist nights spent in campsites in 2018 were recorded in Denmark and Luxembourg (both 33% of all nights spent in tourist accommodation in the country), France (28%) and Sweden (26%).
Source datasets: tour_cap_natd and tour_occ_ninat
In absolute numbers, France recorded the highest number of tourist nights spent in campsites in 2018, with 35% of all nights spent in campsites in the EU, followed by Italy (16%), Spain (11%) and Germany (10%).
Spotlight on campsites across EU regions
Camping patterns vary across European regions. Among EU regions, Languedoc-Roussillon on the border of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea recorded the highest proportion of tourist nights spent in campsites (59% of all nights spent in tourist accommodation in the region) in 2018. Loire Region in France also recorded over half of nights spent in campsites (51%), followed by three further French regions: Brittany (50%), Aquitaine (49%) and Poitou-Charentes (48%), and three Danish regions: Zealand, Central Jutland and South Denmark (all 48%).
Other EU regions where camping was relatively important were the Scandinavian countries as well as the Adriatic basin. With the exception of capital regions such as Copenhagen, Stockholm and Zagreb, the share of camping nights in total nights spent in tourist accommodation was higher than 20% in all other regions of Denmark, Sweden and Croatia.
Source dataset: tour_occ_nin2
In most central and eastern European countries, campsites were of limited importance in the tourism sector in 2018. In none of the regions of Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania or Slovakia did the share of nights spent on campsites exceed 5%. In this part of Europe, the only region with a share exceeding 15% was Central Transdanubia (16.3%) in Hungary, bordering Lake Balaton.
Notes:
- The comparison at regional level analyses regions at NUTS 2 level. More information on the NUTS classification of European regions can be found here.
- Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro and North Macedonia: single regions at this level of detail
- Regional data of Slovenia: 2017 instead of 2018
- Regional data with low reliability: Île-de-France (FR10)
- This list shows translations of the names of regions in the EU Member States into English.
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
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