The EU as a market: the growth did not come from new places

In the EU27 the number of campsite nights grew by 34.4% in ten years, while the number of campsites grew by only 7.9%. The overwhelming part of the growth came from better use of existing places, not from new ones opening, and for a Hungarian newcomer this means a different strategy from what the growth figure suggests.

Europe · October 2026

So far this series has been reading lists of accommodations: ten names per country, with reviews. Such a list is concrete, but edited, and it says nothing about size. This article had to wait because the size of the market needs a source that does not select.

Now there is one. The statistical office of the European Union keeps two separate data series on campsites: how many guest nights were spent in them, and how many such accommodations there are. Put side by side, the two reveal something that neither figure says on its own.

The figures

In ten years, the number of nights spent at European campsites grew by more than one hundred and ten million. Over the same period, the number of campsites grew by 1,876. Demand grew more than four times as fast as supply.

What this means for someone who wants to build

The usual reading is that a market growing by 34% is worth entering. That is true, but it is not the finding of this article. The finding is that this growth did not come from many people opening.

France is the best example. It has the continent's largest campsite market, with 153.8 million nights in 2025, which on its own is more than Italy and Spain combined (119.3 million). The number of French campsites, however, fell over ten years: from 8,131 to 7,996. Meanwhile the number of nights grew by 36.3%. A French campsite today sells on average 19,239 guest nights a year; in 2015 it sold 13,882.

This means that in a mature market the source of growth is the longer season, the higher occupancy and the more expensive, year round units, not the new site. Whoever opens a new place in such a market today is not stepping into a growing empty space, but in next to existing places.

Where supply ran ahead

Two of our neighbours are the counterexample, and both are countries that Hungarian investors look to as models.

In Slovenia, the number of campsites grew from 81 to 277 in ten years. Demand grew too, but by a fraction of that, and the result is that a Slovenian campsite today gets 45% fewer guest nights than ten years ago. The market got bigger, while the position of a place within it got worse.

This does not say that a campsite is a bad business in Slovenia. It says that market growth and traffic per place are two separate figures, and the investment decision depends on the second, not the first. Article 11 of this series said that Slovenia is the one to learn the most from. This set of figures adds what: also what it costs when supply is built faster than demand catches up.

Where Hungary stands

Two figures stand here side by side, and both point in the same direction.

A Hungarian campsite gets 42% of the EU average in guest nights. And Hungarian growth over ten years was roughly half of the EU's. Hungary did not take part in the growth this article measures.

There are two readings of this, and the difference depends on the plot, not on the statistics. One is that domestic demand can bear this much. The other is that the domestic supply is not the kind the guest would come for, and so a different kind of supply finds an empty place. The finding of article 10 of this series, that in the Hungarian selection five of the ten entries have a yurt in their name, supports the second rather than the first, but this is not proof, only a fit.

The most important limitation, and it has to come first

This data series is not about glamping. Eurostat's NACE I553 category is "camping grounds, recreational vehicle parks and trailer parks", that is, the conventional campsite, the motorhome pitch and glamping TOGETHER. Glamping is a subset of this, and Eurostat does not break it out.

Therefore this article cannot be read as saying that glamping demand grew by 34.4%. It can be read as saying that the broader category's demand grew by that much, and that within it the traffic per place rose. How much of that is glamping cannot be determined from this source.

The second limitation is two weak points in the data. Cyprus reports 21 guest nights for 2025 from two accommodations, while in 2015 it reported 2,871. This is obviously a break in reporting, not a market collapse, so Cyprus appears in no claim at all. Romania's data stands out similarly: 312,512 nights for 1,241 accommodations, which means 252 nights per place per year. This figure is a fraction of the surrounding countries', and it is more likely to reflect a different registration threshold than Romanian campsites standing empty. No claim is built on this either.

Sources, and what CANNOT be claimed from them

• Guest nights: Eurostat `tour_occ_ninat` (Nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments), `nace_r2=I553`, `c_resid=TOTAL`, `unit=NR`. Last update of the dataset 2026-10-07, retrieved 2026-10-09.
• Accommodations and bed places: Eurostat `tour_cap_nat` (Establishments, bedrooms and bed-places in tourist accommodation), `accomunit=ESTBL`, `nace_r2=I553`, `unit=NR`. Last update of the dataset 2026-09-22, retrieved 2026-10-09.
• Every ratio and quotient comes from the two data series above, computed by machine. The raw responses are saved, the figures can be traced back.

What cannot be claimed from these:

1. They are not about glamping. I553 is the whole campsite category, glamping is a part of it, and it is not measured separately.
2. Nights per place is not occupancy. We do not know how many bed places a place has and how many days it is open, so this figure also contains size and season length effects, not just full houses.
3. They are not about price or revenue. The number of nights is not turnover. A 34% growth in nights can go together with falling prices.
4. The two datasets have different update dates (10-07 and 09-22). A possible later capacity revision could shift the quotients.
5. The data of Cyprus and Romania shows a break in reporting, so they were left out of the claims. Not because they do not fit the picture, but because they contradict their own time series.