2023-07-23 05:00:21
LIBERTY AZENSTARCK
Talk to campsite managers about the movie Camping and they will have a smirk. Exaggerated. Cartoon image. Outmoded. There is just one point that seems to them to be more documentary than comedy: the character of Jacky, played by Claude Brasseur, has been hanging on pitch number 17 for thirty years. Each campsite has its own Jacky. “The film has Claude Brasseur, we have Mr. Pradel”, explains Christine, from the Chartres campsite. In Ondres, in the Landes, Mrs. Schmidt, 88, waves to us from her caravan, one of only two in the area. When Patrick Dauga took over the campsite founded by his older brother, he decided to ban this kind of house on wheels. Until the moment when he thought of Mrs. Schmidt, who, for twenty-five years, had just come from Alsace to settle there, next to the caravan of her German friend. They were able to stay in the middle of the new redesigned campsite after asking: “Can I keep the same location? »
According to the National Federation of Outdoor Hotels, nearly 20% of campers return each year to the same campsite… and no doubt a significant proportion to the same place. The important thing, says Fabien Onteniente, the screenwriter and director of the film Campingis the little sentence of Claude Brasseur-Jacky: “If we want, we can go elsewhere. » In other words, coming back is a choice.
At Camp du Domaine, in Bormes-les-Mimosas (Var), Anne Caillat, who manages the place with her brothers, settles from June to October in a caravan facing the sea. She moves it several times during the summer so that each holidaymaker can find “his” place. The most coveted are, of course, by the sea. New visitors have little chance of discovering them. When leaving, at the end of their vacation, customers can ask for options for the following year. They confirm them in mid-November by paying a 30% deposit for the following summer. Last year, the institution tried to get rid of the options system. To go back immediately. “There were too many people complaining. »
Consult the plan on the Internet
The concept of the “good” place has imposed itself with reservations, points out Jacques Gout, author of Camping, the saga of a profession (ECB Presse, 2008). “In the past, customers did not book. With the need to book, we began to be able to choose a particular place. » And so, of course, thinking about what the best location might be.
When they test a campsite for the first time, some consult the schematic plan of the places, upstream, on the Internet. Of course, not everything is listed there. Neither the nest of doves ready to coo non-stop above the tent nor the sound volume of the look-alike of Francis Cabrel, who comes to liven up the campsite every evening. Hence the desire, when you hold the ideal location, not to let go. It is this customer loyalty and their desire to secure the right place that explains why no reservation platform has succeeded in developing for camping the hegemonic equivalent of Booking for the hotel industry, believes Cathy Alegria, author of a study by the Xerfi institute on the camping market in the face of new competitive balances.
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