Campsites are booked by pitch, not by person

Booking a campsite works on a different unit from booking a room. The product is a marked area of ground with services attached, and that unit shapes everything about the stay.

The pitch is a serviced plot

A pitch has a size, a surface and a defined set of connections: electricity in some cases, water in fewer, and a drainage point in fewer still.

Pricing follows those attributes. A hardstanding pitch with power costs more than grass without it, regardless of whether one person or four occupy it.

Occupancy still matters, since most sites add a per-person charge on top, but the pitch category is the larger part of the price and the part that can be sold out.

Type of unit determines what fits

Sites classify pitches by what they accommodate: a small tent, a large tent, a caravan, a motorhome with a specified maximum length.

Arriving with a unit larger than the pitch was sold for is the common failure, because the site cannot simply extend the marked area and neighbouring pitches are occupied.

Access matters as much as area. A pitch large enough for a vehicle may sit behind a turn that vehicle cannot make, which is why length limits are stated precisely.

Facilities are shared and rationed by layout

Washblocks, kitchens and drinking water points serve a district of the site. A pitch near them is convenient and noisier; one at the edge is quieter and further from everything.

Sites usually publish a map, and choosing a pitch number from it is a request rather than a guarantee at most, but it is a request worth making at booking.

Shower blocks are also the point where a site's capacity is felt, since a full site concentrates demand into the same hour each morning regardless of how much space the pitches have.

Seasons open and close the whole product

Many campsites operate for part of the year only, closing when water systems risk freezing or when staffing is uneconomic. The site does not exist outside its season.

Facilities are also reduced at the edges of a season, so a site listed as open in early spring may have a heated block closed and a shop that is not trading.

Cancellation works differently again

Weather makes camping cancellations common, and sites respond with deposits that are non-refundable more often than in hotels, sometimes with transfer to another date instead.

Where a site is busy and small, the deposit is the mechanism that keeps pitches from being held speculatively, which is why the terms are firmer than the price would suggest.