How to Start a Campsite: Permits, Costs and Daily Operations

Most people who dream of starting a campsite picture a warm July evening: full pitches, children on bikes, the smell of barbecues. The real work starts about two years earlier, in a municipal planning office, with a zoning map on the table. If you want to know how to start a campsite, that map is where you begin, because everything else, from your budget to your opening date, depends on what the local authority will actually allow on your land.

This guide walks through the whole journey: permits, budget, layout, sanitary facilities, reception, staff, cleaning and waste. It is long, because the job is long. Skim the headings and go deep where you need to.

Start with zoning, not with land

The most expensive mistake we see aspiring owners make is buying a beautiful plot first and asking the municipality second. In most European countries, recreational use is tightly regulated through zoning or land-use plans, and converting agricultural land to a campsite can take years, if it is possible at all.

Before you sign anything, sit down with the local planning department and ask three questions: is recreational overnight use permitted on this parcel, is there a cap on the number of pitches or accommodation units, and are there seasonal restrictions on occupancy. Get the answers in writing.

Beyond zoning, expect to deal with several permit families. The names and thresholds differ per country and municipality, so treat this as a checklist of topics to raise, not a legal reference:

• An operating or exploitation licence for the campsite itself.
• Environmental permits covering wastewater discharge, noise and sometimes light.
• Fire safety requirements, including minimum spacing between pitches and access routes for emergency vehicles.
• Drinking water testing obligations if you operate your own supply points.
• Building permits for the sanitary block, reception and any rental accommodations.
• Registration for tourist tax collection, which you will administer per guest per night.

As a rough rule of thumb, allow 12 to 24 months from first enquiry to a fully permitted site. In some regions it goes faster; in protected landscapes it can take much longer. Budget for professional help here. A planning consultant who knows the local authority is usually worth their fee many times over.

The business plan: what it really costs

Numbers vary enormously by country, region and the state of the land, so treat everything below as experience-based ranges to sanity-check your own quotes, not as promises.

Two honest warnings. First, glamping units earn well per night but the upfront cost and replacement cycle (canvas rarely survives more than 8 to 10 seasons) eat into the margin people expect. Second, banks treat campsites as specialist property, so expect to bring 30 to 40 percent of the investment yourself.

On the revenue side, be conservative in year one. A new site without reviews, without an ACSI or ADAC listing history and without returning guests typically fills well below its long-term potential. Plan your liquidity so you can survive a first season at 40 to 50 percent of target occupancy.

For the digital side of the budget, we have broken down what a camping website costs separately, because it is one of the few line items where you have real control.

Laying out pitches and utilities

Pitch size drives everything: your capacity, your guest mix and your rating. Touring pitches of 80 m² feel cramped to modern caravanners; 100 to 120 m² is the comfortable standard, and larger comfort pitches of 130 m² and up justify a premium of a few euros per night.

Electricity deserves early attention. Motorhome and caravan guests expect at least 10 amps; 16 amps is becoming the norm for sites that want good inspection scores. Retrofitting heavier cabling later means digging up your own roads, so lay capacity for 16 amps even if you start by offering less.

Do not forget the unglamorous infrastructure that inspectors and experienced campers check first: grey water disposal points, a chemical toilet disposal point (CDP) that is ventilated and easy to rinse, and a motorhome service point with drive-over drainage. These cost little compared to the goodwill they buy.

One layout lesson learned the hard way: keep seasonal pitches (the vaste gasten or Dauercamper) in their own zone. Mixing long-term caravans with touring guests creates friction in both directions, from garden gnomes and fences on one side to late-night arrivals on the other.

The sanitary block will make or break your reviews

Read the reviews of any campsite in Europe and count how many mention the toilets. Guests forgive a lot, but not a poor sanitary block. As a rough planning ratio, aim for one toilet and one shower per 12 to 15 pitches, with family washrooms and an accessible bathroom on top. Under-dimensioning here is the classic error of first-time builders working to a tight budget.

Design for cleaning from day one. Wall-mounted toilets, coved floors that can be hosed down, and materials that tolerate chlorine save your team half an hour per cleaning round for the life of the building. During peak season a block needs a full clean two to three times per day, plus a rotating deep clean; in practice that means roughly 1 to 1.5 cleaning hours per day per 10 pitches in July and August.

Hot water is a real operating cost. Push-button showers with a set run time cut water and energy use by a third compared to free-running taps, at the price of some grumbling. Most owners accept the grumbling.

Reception: more than a check-in desk

Reception sets the tone for the whole stay, and it is also where inspection organisations such as ACSI, ADAC and ANWB form their first impression. Plan for three functions: check-in and payments, guest information, and a small shop or at least bread service, which guests ask for everywhere in Europe.

Staff it realistically. In high season a 100-pitch site needs reception coverage from roughly 08:30 to 19:00, which is more than one person can work. Outside those hours, a clear late-arrival procedure (a board with pitch assignments and a barrier code) prevents most of the 22:00 phone calls.

The information function is moving to guests' phones. Opening hours, activity programmes, bread ordering and local tips answered once digitally save your reception team the same twenty questions per day. We wrote a separate piece on the digital guest guide and what it replaces at the desk.

Staffing a seasonal business

The staffing puzzle of a campsite is that your payroll must breathe with the season. As a rough rule of thumb for a 100-pitch touring site: two to three people year-round (owner included), growing to eight to twelve heads in July and August across reception, cleaning, maintenance and animation if you offer it.

Recruit your summer team in January and February, not in May. The good seasonal workers, and the students who come back every year, are booked early. Returning staff are worth a modest loyalty bonus; training a cleaner or receptionist from zero costs you two weeks of reduced output at the busiest moment of the year.

Plan for the nights too. Someone has to be reachable at 2 a.m. when a guest has a medical scare or a tree limb comes down in a storm. The first summer we ran a site without a formal on-call rota, both partners were awake for every incident all season. Write the rota before opening, not after your first sleepless week.

One trade-off to be honest about: animation teams and kids' clubs lift occupancy for family sites but add cost, noise and management overhead. Adult-oriented and nature campsites often do better without.

Cleaning routines that scale

Cleaning is the largest recurring labour cost on most sites, so it pays to organise it like a production process rather than a chore list.

• Sanitary blocks: two to three full rounds per day in peak season, one in the shoulder months, each round checklist-based and signed off.
• Rental accommodation: 45 to 90 minutes per unit on changeover day depending on size; stagger arrival days across unit types so Saturday does not become impossible.
• Grounds: a daily morning round for bins, playground and pool surrounds before guests are up.

Buy professional materials from the start. A €600 floor scrubber and colour-coded cloths (one colour for toilets, another for sinks) are not luxuries; they are what keeps quality stable when the second-week seasonal worker is cleaning instead of you. Keep a simple log of each round. When an inspector or an unhappy guest raises hygiene, a signed cleaning log changes the conversation entirely.

Waste: the unglamorous contract that matters

Nobody starts a campsite because they are excited about waste logistics, and then it becomes a daily topic from April to October. A camping guest produces noticeably more waste per night than a household resident, and it peaks exactly when your commercial waste collector is at their busiest.

Get quotes from at least two commercial collectors and negotiate a seasonal schedule: weekly collection in the shoulder season, two or three times per week in July and August. For a mid-sized site, expect waste contracts to run into several thousand euros per year, and check what the collector charges for contaminated recycling, because that is where the surprise invoices come from.

Practical points that save money and complaints:

• Central waste islands beat per-pitch bins: faster to service, easier to keep clean, and they keep wasps away from guests.
• Separate streams (glass, paper, packaging, residual) where your region supports it; clear signage in several languages cuts contamination sharply.
• Underground or semi-underground containers look tidy and hold more, but cost €5,000 to €10,000 per unit installed, so they are usually a phase-two investment.
• Green waste from your own maintenance needs its own plan; a corner of the terrain quietly becoming a dump is a fire and vermin risk.

Taking bookings from day one

Your booking process is part of operations, not an afterthought. Every reservation that arrives by phone or email is ten minutes of reception time: checking the plan, writing it down, sending a confirmation, chasing the deposit. Multiply that by a few hundred bookings and it is weeks of labour per season.

Set up online booking before you open, even if the site is half-finished. A simple flow where guests pick dates and an accommodation type and submit a request, and you confirm with one click, removes most of that manual work while keeping you in control of allocation. That is exactly the model behind our camping booking system, and it matters even more for a new site, because early guests find you online, not through the guidebooks.

Whichever tools you choose, prioritise direct bookings over platform listings in your first years. Platforms bring reach, but commissions of 10 to 15 percent on a business with thin winter liquidity hurt, and the guest relationship stays with the platform.

Your first season: a realistic timeline

Working backwards from a spring opening in the March to October core season:

• 24 to 12 months before: zoning confirmation, permits, financing, detailed design.
• 12 to 6 months before: groundworks, utilities, sanitary block construction.
• 6 to 3 months before: reception fit-out, website and booking system live, waste and linen contracts signed, seasonal recruitment.
• 3 months to opening: furnish rentals, test every tap and socket, soft-open for friends and a first weekend of paying guests before you announce widely.

Resist the temptation to open in July because the season is slipping away. A half-ready site in peak season generates the one-star reviews that follow you for years. The first time we were involved in a mid-July opening, the team spent August apologising instead of hosting. Open softly in spring or wait a year.

Is starting a campsite worth it?

Financially, a well-run campsite is a solid but patient business: heavy upfront investment, modest margins in the early years, and real value built through returning guests and a strong review profile. Personally, it is a lifestyle choice as much as a business, with seven-day weeks from Easter to autumn and quiet winters for maintenance and planning.

If you are serious about how to start a campsite, your next step is not buying land or designing a logo. It is a meeting with the municipal planning department, a conversation with two campsite owners in the region you are targeting, and a first draft budget using ranges like the ones above with local quotes filled in. Everything good in this business is built on that unglamorous groundwork.