The world in numbers, and why there is no such picture

We went through nine countries looking for official statistics, and no comparable world figure exists. What does exist: the British statistics are the only ones in the world that name glamping separately, and they measure that a glamping night brings in 47% more than a campsite night.

The market · October 2026

This article went unwritten for a long time, and the reason was the same throughout: we found no nameable source for the size of the world glamping market.

We still have not found one. But the search itself produced a result that is more useful than a number would have been, so now it gets written.

What we looked for, and where

The European Union's data series is clear: Eurostat's `tour_occ_ninat` dataset states, by country and by year, how many guest nights were spent in the category of campsites, recreational vehicle parks and trailer parks. The EU27 value for 2025 is 432,766,548.

For nine countries outside the EU we looked for the counterpart of this, at the national statistical office or an official tourism body. Not market research, not press reports.

The three gaps that make these numbers impossible to add up

1. Who states the number. The Eurostat data is supply side: the campsite reports how many nights it sold. The Australian, British and Canadian data are household surveys: the resident asked states where they slept. The two methods measure two different things, and cannot be converted into each other.

2. Whether foreigners are included. Eurostat counts domestic and foreign together. The British and Australian figures cover only the domestic trips of their own residents; inbound visitors sit in a separate survey.

3. What is being counted at all. Eurostat counts guest nights. South Africa counts unit nights sold, where four people may sleep in one unit. Canada's 2012 data counts trips, not nights.

This is why there is no world figure, and anyone who nonetheless states one either has an estimation model of their own that they do not show, or has not looked at what they are adding up.

And now the finding that makes this article worth it

During the search something came to light that we were not looking for: the British statistics are the only official source in the world that names glamping SEPARATELY.

The 2024 annual table of the Great Britain Tourism Survey gives it a separate row among the accommodation types: "Glamping / Alternative accommodation e.g. Yurt, Tipi, Tree House, Ecopod etc." Not part of a collective category, but its own row, with its own numbers.

Glamping is 3.4% of British domestic camping nights, and 0.44% of all British domestic guest nights. In other words, small.

But that is not what is interesting about it. The spending is.

A glamping night brings in 95 pounds, the average of the camping category is 65. That is 47% more, in the same country, in the same year, from the same survey.

And a second difference, which comes from the same table: a camping trip averages 3.78 nights, a glamping trip 2.33. Glamping is shorter and more expensive.

What a Hungarian investor should do with this

One thing for certain not to do: do not carry this 95 pounds over to Hungarian price levels. This is British domestic spending by British guests, and the spending includes the journey there.

What can be taken over, however, is the structure, and that is three sentences:

1. Glamping is small within the camping category (3.4%), so anyone looking at campsite traffic is not looking at glamping traffic.
2. Revenue per night, however, is substantially higher. The business is not the larger volume but the higher unit price.
3. The stay is shorter. This means more bookings, more cleaning, more changeovers for the same number of nights, and that is an operating cost.

These three together make a different kind of operation from a campsite, and that is precisely why a glamping plan cannot be made from campsite numbers.

Sources, and what CANNOT be claimed from them

• EU: Eurostat `tour_occ_ninat`, `nace_r2=I553`, `c_resid=TOTAL`, `unit=NR`. EU27 2025 = 432,766,548. Retrieved 2026-10-09, the dataset updated 2026-10-07.
• United Kingdom: VisitBritain, Great Britain Tourism Survey, 2024 annual table (`GBTS 2024 Great Britain Annual Tables.xlsx`), "Total Trips" sheet. We downloaded the table and read the numbers directly from the workbook, not from a summary. Cross-check: the table gives a share of 12.80% of all nights for the camping row and 0.438% for the glamping row; working back from both gives the same 307.5 million total nights, so we read the rows correctly.
• New Zealand: MBIE Accommodation Data Programme, `ADP_All_Measures.csv`, `Property = "Holiday parks & campgrounds"`, `Measure = "Total guest nights"`.

What cannot be claimed from these:

1. No world total can be formed. This is the point of the article. Because of the three gaps above, the numbers cannot be added up, and such a total would suggest a false precision.
2. The British glamping figure is not the size of the market either, but the nights of the DOMESTIC trips of British residents. The glamping nights of inbound tourists are not in it.
3. The 95 pounds is not a price, but spending divided by nights, and the spending includes transport and meals.
4. South Africa's recent figure is missing. The category exists and fits conceptually, but the statistical office's website returns 403 to automated requests. A figure seen in a search-engine summary does not appear here, because we could not measure it back.
5. Eurostat I553 is still not glamping, but the whole campsite category.