What can campsites do to turn visitors into eco-friendly tourists?

Campsites across Europe offer fantastic opportunities for guests to immerse themselves in a region, often in areas of great natural beauty and diversity.

Many campsite guests already have an appreciation for natural areas, so are likely to be open and interested in information you can provide on local environmental highlights as well as environmental issues and what you do to address them. This also means potential guests are likely to look for environmental certifications, such as the EU Ecolabel for Campsites or the EMAS registration, as a sign of commitment to sustainability.

As a campsite owner or manager, you have a number of opportunities to both reduce your environmental footprint and offer different forms of environmental education to your visitors.

The main environmental impacts from campsites in natural areas are those related to transport to and from the site and disturbance to the local biodiversity by visitors. While both of these impacts are outside your direct control, providing information to guests and on-site environmental education can play a big role in reducing them. Moreover, environmental awareness raising actions on-site can lead to your visitors making behavioural changes and taking those changes home.

Limiting the access and use of motorised vehicles on site will reduce both local environmental impact and disturbance to other guests. Exclusion zones, time restrictions and low speed limits are all ways to encourage guests to leave their vehicle and use more sustainable transport options.

Offering bicycles for guest use is another great way to enable guests to reduce their vehicle use while staying at your campsite. Information on public transport options or offering a shuttle service from the local train station may also be options. Some campsites go even further and offer discounts or dedicated pitches in a premium zone to guests arriving by public transport.

Taking advantage of natural materials for buildings and play areas wherever possible will enhance your site by making it feel part of the surrounding area.

Energy savings measures, such as reducing the use of artificial light without compromising safety, may enable you to achieve cost savings through adopting best practices for sustainability that are easy to implement. Shower, tap and light timers can reduce unnecessary water and energy use in communal areas. Another aspect would be waste management: requesting waste be sorted into separate bins should prove easy to implement, and setting up a composting system for food waste will provide benefits for your green areas, too.

Staff training is an important part of making your visitors more eco-friendly guests. Staff should not only be well trained on maintenance for reducing energy consumption, with regular checks of relevant appliances and equipment, but also have a good understanding of how the campsite minimises its footprint and the local benefits gained. This is true for all of your staff, whether or not they are in direct service positions. Instilling a sense of ownership and pride in your staff over your environmental achievements will help information to be enthusiastically passed on to guests.

Let your guests know about your commitment to sustainability in your advertising and on-site. With many guests choosing campsites for their reduced impact over other forms of accommodation and for the proximity to nature they offer, you can benefit from sharing how you are committed to the environment.

Environmental education

Your on-site biodiversity gives you some wonderful ways to offer environmental education to your guests. In addition to providing information on local natural features, introducing a sensory trail to your site is a great way to introduce your guests to local habitats.

Establishing an animal refuge, such as a butterfly garden, is another way to attract your guests to learn more about the natural environment that surrounds them.

Setting up an education program for your guests can be far less daunting than it may sound. A program can be anything from a series of brochures and website content, providing advice on best practice for minimal impact, to an interactive on-site course on local biodiversity.

There is a lot of information and resources available to help you develop an education program. The Leave No Trace campaign, which aims to educate tourists about outdoor ethics (in America), provides lots of useful information on minimal impact best practices, which can be replicated and used as the basis of an education program.

Denmark Farm, in Wales, is an example of a campsite which has transformed itself over time to become a nature-focussed campsite and conservation centre. Originally on crop fields, the site has been rehabilitated and now uses the surrounding biodiversity as the focus of the site. While this may be beyond the scope of some campsites, Denmark Farm is a wonderful example of working within the available environment to create education, training and sustainable accommodation options.

Whether you are interested in making a few small changes towards sustainability, or creating an environmental focus like Denmark Farm, there are a wide range of resources and options available to help you move closer to a sustainable campsite. The European Commission's Best Environmental Management Practices for campsites [link to campsite part of BEMP interface] and the requirements for the EU Ecolabel for Campsites labelling are great places to start to give you an idea of what to aim for to reduce your impact through direct action, staff training and promoting change in guest behaviour.