The European tourism market

After the European Union was expanded to include a large number of countries in Eastern Europe, caravanning tourism has grown enormously in the accession countries over the past few years. The Deutsche Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Institut für Tourismusforschung (German Economic Institute for Tourism - dwif) at the University of Munich and the European Caravan Federation (ECF) have analysed the new markets in detail for the first time.  

The dwif calculated a total of 18.75 million overnight stays on around 1,300 camp sites for Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania. These overnight stays and spending on tourism at the holiday resort resulted in sales 600 million Euro generated by camping and caravanning tourism in Eastern Europe.  

The dwif calculated 393.75 million camping and caravanning overnight stays for Europe as a whole. These figures involve overnight stays of a purely touristic nature, i.e. they do not include long-term camping. This enormous amount surpasses the number of overnight stays in all lodging operations and lodging types in Germany in one year. The spending on overnight stays alone on more than 26,000 camp sites in Eastern and Western Europe adds up to 3.6 billion Euro. On top of this, there is further tourist spending on, say, meals, entertainment and cultural attractions, which amounts to 9 billion Euro. This means that sales from overnight stays on camp sites amount to around 12.6 billion Euro.  

However, caravanning tourism is not confined to the camp site. Motor caravan tourism accounts for a further 50 million overnight stays outside of camp sites. A further 40 million day trips without overnight stays complete the picture of caravanning tourists. Day trips and overnight stays on motor caravan pitches thus generate another 3.33 billion Euro.  

Overall sales generated by camping and caravanning tourism in Europe therefore total  15.93 billion Euro.  

Based on information provided by its members, the ECF calculates additional sales of 12.4 billion Euro p.a. for purchases of recreational vehicles and further equipment. New vehicles account for 5.56 billion, second-hand vehicles for 5.04 billion, accessories for 1.16 billion and maintenance services for 0.63 billion Euro. Together with the spending on caravanning tourism, this therefore gives rise to sales of 28.33 billion Euro in Europe.

dwif-Study "Economic impact of touristic camping in the ECF-member states"

ECF-Presentation "Camping Tourism in Eastern Europe"