So many people are still convinced that going camping means essentially detaching themselves from the urban life’s habits, including a huge part of all the modern conveniences that we are used to exploit almost every day.
Moreover, it’s a common opinion that camping amounts to diving into nature and wilderness, forgetting all the city life’s amenities, as well as all the leisure activities related to an urban lifestyle.
The most frequently raised question is: how am I supposed to enjoy a proper nightlife being stuck in the middle of nothing? It could sound rude or even inappropriate, but as a matter of fact this results to be a serious concern, especially among the youngest ones.
The truth is that many of these assumptions are – in the best-case scenario – outdated, and belong to a widely bygone era. In this day and age, matching camping with an enjoyable and yet fulfilling nightlife is not a utopia anymore. We can even say that the whole camping facilities’ situation has totally changed its profile during the last two decades: they were subject to an overall improvement, with a particular attention to the variety of amenities put at the disposal of the tourists. Going more into detail, we can observe that this process has been given a remarkable boost of speed within the last two years. And it may sound like a paradox, but the main agent that pushed the camping lots’ owners and managers to raise up the bar of their leisure offer was the pandemic. During the first Covid-19 wave, in fact, camping was for many individuals the only solution to experience a proper vacancy in complete safety. And while all the other kinds of vacation facilities had to face probably their hardest time in the last century, for the first time the demand of camping lots nearly overcame the supply.
The enhancement of camping facilities has been a direct consequence of this process: as a result of it, the top-notch camping sites are now fully provided with any kind of leisure amenities, both daily and nightly. In France, for example, it’s now customary to have a restaurant, a movie theatre, a ballroom or at least a multi-functional recreation room inside the camping lot. And many other countries (firstly the other big Mediterranean venues, such as Italy, Greece or Spain) are scrambling to catch up to that standard.
As an alternative, many camping sites that don’t have the change of being settled in a location with a lively nightlife nearby have established and organized a nightly shuttle service heading to the nearest town or city, so that their customers can easily leave the camp and enjoy all those urban night entertainment facilities. One thing is for sure: this new approach to the camping lifestyle is kind of a point of no return. The image of camping will never be the same, like if this kind of activity has definitely entered the Third Millennium. And the most interesting thing is that it did it without losing its true nature: which is, and will remain, to rediscover the magic of nature and outdoor living.
