Many campsite owners spend most of the season chasing bookings, filling gaps and worrying about empty pitches. Seasonal pitch hire offers a very different arrangement. Instead of selling each night individually, you let a caravan or motorhome stay on the same pitch for an entire season. The income is agreed upfront, the pitch is occupied whether you see the guest or not, and the admin burden drops considerably. For many UK campsite owners, seasonal pitches become the financial backbone of the site, providing a reliable base on top of which all your touring income sits.

What Is Seasonal Pitch Hire?

A seasonal pitch is one that a guest rents for an extended period, typically the whole camping season from around Easter to the end of October. The unit stays on site permanently for that period. The guest pays a fixed seasonal fee upfront or in a small number of instalments, and they can visit whenever they like during the season without making individual bookings for each stay.

This arrangement is common on UK touring parks, particularly those with 20 or more pitches that dedicate a proportion of them to longer term use. It is distinct from static caravan ownership, where the guest owns the van and pays an annual pitch licence fee. With seasonal pitch hire, the guest parks their own privately owned caravan or motorhome on your pitch for the season and collects it again at the end. You retain full control of the pitch from year to year.

Why Seasonal Pitches Make Sense for Campsite Owners

The primary appeal is guaranteed income. When a guest signs up for a seasonal pitch and pays the fee, you know exactly what that pitch will earn before the season even starts. There are no voids, no last minute cancellations, no nights where it sits empty while you refresh the availability calendar and hope for a booking.

For the rest of your touring pitches, income is less predictable. A run of wet weekends, a wave of cancellations, or a quiet midweek patch can all eat into your revenue. Seasonal pitches provide a floor. Even in a poor summer, they still pay.

Beyond income certainty, seasonal pitch holders tend to become genuinely invested in the site. They look after their pitch, they get to know the other regulars, and they often become strong advocates for the site among friends and family. Some campsite owners find that word of mouth referrals from seasonal holders are among their best sources of new touring bookings.

The admin burden is lighter too. Instead of processing dozens of individual bookings, payments and arrival messages for that pitch throughout the year, you handle one agreement, one payment arrangement, and occasional friendly contact with a guest you already know well. When you are also managing a full schedule of touring bookings with the help of a booking management system, having a block of pitches that essentially manage themselves is a genuine relief.

How to Price Seasonal Pitches

Pricing seasonal pitches is more art than science, but there are some useful benchmarks. Most UK campsite owners price seasonal pitches at between 60% and 80% of what they would earn if they sold each night of the season individually at their standard touring rate. The discount reflects the certainty of the income and the reduced administration.

Here is a rough worked example. If your standard pitch rate is £30 per night and your season runs from late March to the end of October, that is roughly 220 nights. At 70% touring occupancy, the pitch might earn around £4,620 across the season. A seasonal fee of between £2,800 and £3,500 is a fair exchange for guaranteed income with no void risk.

Pitches in popular coastal or countryside locations, or those with premium hookups and views, can command higher seasonal fees. It is worth reviewing your pricing each autumn before sending out renewal offers.

What you include in the seasonal fee matters as well. Most campsite owners include the following:

Some owners charge separately for electricity above a set threshold, or for additional services like waste chemical disposal or premium facilities. Be clear about what is included in your agreement so there are no surprises partway through the season. Think through whether seasonal holders can invite friends to stay in the van, and set a simple policy on it upfront.

Writing a Seasonal Pitch Agreement

A clear written agreement protects both you and the pitch holder. It does not need to be drafted by a solicitor, but it should cover the key points without ambiguity.

A solid seasonal pitch agreement includes:

Get both parties to sign and keep a copy. Revisit the fee each year and send renewal letters in September or October, giving holders time to confirm their place for the following season. A modest deposit to secure renewal is reasonable and gives you confidence in your forward income early.

If you handle payments through a system like CampSuite, you can record the seasonal pitch as a long-running booking and track instalments through the same payments dashboard you use for everything else. No separate spreadsheet, no lost bank transfer notes.

Managing the Mix of Seasonal and Touring Pitches

Most campsite owners do not convert their entire site to seasonal pitches. A mixed approach, with a proportion of seasonal and a proportion of touring pitches, gives you the income stability of seasonal rental alongside the flexibility and higher per night yield of touring bookings.

As a general rule, keeping between 30% and 50% of your pitches as seasonal is manageable without the site losing its touring character. Beyond that, the feel of the site can shift in ways that may not suit your brand, and your planning permission may have something to say about it too.

You will also need to think about how seasonal pitches affect your touring guests. If your seasonal holders sit together in one area of the site, new arrivals may not even notice. If seasonal units are mixed in with touring pitches, make sure they are well presented and that holders understand the expectation around keeping their pitch tidy. A caravan that has clearly sat in the same spot for months, surrounded by weathered equipment and long grass, does not give touring guests the best first impression.

Using the parks and pitches features in CampSuite, you can mark certain pitches as seasonal, assign them to specific holders, and see the rest of your touring availability in the same diary. No guessing which pitches are free and which are taken for the season.

Rules for Seasonal Pitch Holders

Seasonal holders are often your most loyal guests, but because they are present all season, any friction between their habits and your site expectations gets amplified. A few clear rules, communicated at the start of the season and included in the agreement, prevent most problems before they arise.

Common rules for seasonal pitch holders include:

The tone of these rules matters. Frame them as maintaining the environment that everyone on site enjoys, not as a list of restrictions. Most seasonal pitch holders are reasonable people who want a well-kept site just as much as you do.

Finding Your First Seasonal Pitch Holders

If you are setting up seasonal pitches for the first time, start with your existing guests before looking further afield. Look through your booking records from the past couple of seasons and identify guests who have returned multiple times, stayed for long periods, or who have expressed a wish to come back more regularly. These are your strongest candidates.

A short personal email or letter explaining that you are now offering seasonal pitches from next season, with the fee and the headline terms, is usually all you need. Guests who have already chosen your site repeatedly are the most likely to say yes.

If you still have pitches to fill after reaching out to existing guests, campsite directories, local caravan club groups and your own social media channels are effective places to advertise. A post explaining you have seasonal pitches available will often attract interest within a few days, particularly if you include a photo that shows the site at its best.

Is It Right for Your Site?

Seasonal pitch hire works best on sites that already have a loyal returning guest base and the pitch capacity to dedicate a section to longer term use. It is less well suited to very small sites of five pitches or fewer, where giving up even one or two pitches for the season significantly limits your touring flexibility. On a site of 15 pitches or more, a block of four or five seasonal pitches can provide a meaningful income base without constraining the rest of your operation.

The other thing to check is your planning permission. Most touring sites can accommodate seasonal pitching without any change, but if you are converting a significant proportion of your site, it is worth a quick conversation with your local planning authority to make sure you are on safe ground.

Getting Started

Seasonal pitch hire is one of the most practical ways to build a stable income base into your campsite. The upfront paperwork takes a little effort, but once those pitches are filled, they largely take care of themselves. The key is getting the pricing right, having a clear written agreement and setting sensible expectations from the start.

If you are managing bookings across paper diaries, spreadsheets and memory alone, adding seasonal pitches to the mix gets complicated quickly. A system that keeps your seasonal and touring pitches in the same diary view, handles payments in one place and sends booking confirmations automatically is worth its weight in a busy season. Try CampSuite free and see how it handles both seasonal and touring pitch management. CL and CS sites pay nothing at all.