Campsites. Travellers and occupancy rate. By tourism brands

The Campsite Occupancy Survey (until 1998 called the Survey of Movements by Travellers in Campsites) of the INE is one of the statistical sources for measuring tourism activity. Its main objective is to understand the behaviour of a series of variables that describe the fundamental characteristics of this type of accommodation in these tourism sectors: travellers, overnight stays and occupancy rate per plot.

The survey is aimed at campsites registered in the Tourism General Direction register, the one that can be consulted in the lists of tourism establishments published by the Ministry of Business and Knowledge.

Campsites are understood to means establishments that by charging a price, provide a temporary accommodation service in duly delimited public spaces, used for the grouped coexistence of people in the open air, using tents, caravans, camper vans and other mobile homes or in chalets. They are classified into four categories: luxury and first, second or third class, depending on the size of the camping units, the existing facilities, the services offered and the staff available.

Traveller means any person who stays for one or more consecutive nights in the same campsite. The survey classifies travellers by their country of residence which makes it possible to distinguish between domestic tourism (people resident in Spain) and foreign tourism (people resident outside Spain). In the case of people resident in Spain, information is requested about the autonomous community they are from.

An overnight stay or occupied vacancy is each night that a traveller stays in these types of establishment.

The occupancy rate per plot is the percentage relationship between total plots occupied in the period and those available on the campsite in the same period, multiplied by the days in the reference month.

On the basis of INE data, Idescat expands on the quarterly results for Catalonia according to the category of the establishments and tourism brands of destination.

Until year 2003, Terres de l'Ebre tourism brand was included in Costa Daurada and Val d'Aran formed part of the Pirineus. At the end 2011, the Catalan Tourism Agency approved the creation of a new tourism brand called Costa Barcelona. This brand includes the territory of the former Costa del Garraf and Costa de Barcelona-Maresme.

In 2015, two changes were made to the tourism brands, approved by the Catalan Tourist Board. The first change is that the counties El Vallès Oriental and El Vallès Occidental, which used to be a part of the Catalunya Central brand, as of 2015 will come under the Costa Barcelona brand. The second change is to the name of the brand: Catalunya Central will now be known as Paisatges de Barcelona.

On the occasion of the creation of El Moianès county, the municipalities of Castellcir, Castellterçol, Granera and Sant Quirze Safaja (which were part of the Costa Barcelona brand), from the first term of 2016 they become part of Paisatges de Barcelona brand.

Thus Catalonia is divided into 9 tourism brands:

• Barcelona: Barcelonès
• Costa Brava: Alt Empordà, Baix Empordà, Gironès, Pla de l'Estany and Selva
• Costa Daurada: Alt Camp, Baix Camp, Baix Penedès, Conca de Barberà, Priorat and Tarragonès
• Costa Barcelona: Alt Penedès, Baix Llobregat, Garraf, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental
• Paisatges Barcelona: Anoia, Bages, Moianès and Osona
• Pirineus: Alt Urgell, Alta Ribagorça, Berguedà, Cerdanya, Garrotxa, Pallars Jussà, Pallars Sobirà, Ripollès and Solsonès
• Terres de Lleida: Garrigues, Noguera, Pla d'Urgell, Segarra, Segrià and Urgell
• Terres de l'Ebre: Baix Ebre, Montsià, Ribera d'Ebre and Terra Alta
• Val d'Aran: Aran

Until 2011, the territorial disaggregation by tourism brands was calculated using special estimators for small areas. This methodology does not guarantee that the total amount is exactly the same as the result for the whole of Catalonia using the traditional estimator. However, the discrepancies are of little significance

Given the limited implantation of this type of tourism in some brands of Catalonia, the year-over-year variation rates can be considerably volatile.