Selling extras at your campsite is one of the simplest ways to increase revenue without adding more pitches. Most guests arrive expecting to spend money beyond their pitch fee. They want firewood for the evening, a late checkout on Sunday morning, or a bag of ice for the coolbox. If you are not offering these things, someone else is getting that spend, whether it is the petrol station down the road or the farm shop around the corner.

The good news is that campsite extras do not require huge investment or complicated logistics. Many of the best add-ons cost almost nothing to set up and can add hundreds or even thousands of pounds to your annual income. This guide covers what to sell, how to price it, and how to make the whole process smooth for both you and your guests.

Why Extras Matter More Than You Think

Pitch fees are your baseline. They cover your costs, pay the bills, and (hopefully) leave a margin. But pitch fees are constrained. You can only charge what the market bears for your area, your facilities and your pitch type. Raise them too high and bookings drop. Keep them low and you stay full but underpaid.

Extras sidestep that constraint entirely. A guest who balks at paying an extra two pounds per night for their pitch will happily spend five pounds on a bag of firewood without blinking. The psychology is different. The pitch fee feels like a cost. The firewood feels like a treat.

Consider the numbers. If you run a twenty pitch site and sell an average of three pounds in extras per guest per night across a 180 night season, that is an additional 10,800 pounds in revenue. From firewood, ice and a few other bits. No extra pitches, no planning permission, no capital expenditure.

The Best Extras to Sell at a UK Campsite

Not every extra suits every site. What works for a large touring park with a shop will not work for a five pitch CL site in a field. But here are the options that consistently perform well, ranked roughly by ease of setup.

Firewood and kindling

This is the single best selling extra on almost every UK campsite that allows fires. Guests love an evening around a fire pit but rarely arrive with their own wood. A net bag of seasoned hardwood at five to seven pounds sells itself. Kindling bags at two to three pounds go with it. Buy in bulk from a local supplier and your margin is typically 50 to 60 percent.

Keep it simple. Stack bags near reception or in an honesty box shelter. If you allow fire pits on pitches, mention the firewood in your pre-arrival email so guests know it is available before they stop at a garage.

Late checkout

Standard checkout is usually 11am or noon. Offer a late checkout (2pm or 3pm) for five to ten pounds per pitch. Guests on their last morning love it. They can have a leisurely breakfast, pack up slowly, and avoid the rush. You lose nothing if the pitch is not booked that evening, and the guest feels they got a luxury upgrade for a few pounds.

The key is availability. Only offer late checkout when the pitch is free that night. A booking system that shows you same day arrivals makes this easy to manage.

Electric hookup upgrades

If you have a mix of standard and electric pitches, offer guests on non-electric pitches the option to upgrade on arrival (if an electric pitch happens to be free). Charge the difference plus a small convenience premium. The guest gets a better pitch, you fill your higher value stock first.

Ice and cold drinks

A chest freezer near reception stocked with bags of ice (two pounds each) and cold cans or bottles (one to two pounds) requires minimal effort. Restock weekly from a cash and carry. Ice in particular sells constantly in warm weather. Guests do not want to drive ten minutes for a bag of ice when they could walk thirty seconds.

Equipment hire

Think about what guests forget or cannot travel with: camping chairs, windbreaks, portable BBQs, cool boxes, bike locks, phone chargers, torches. You do not need a huge inventory. Five or six items available for a small daily hire fee (three to five pounds per day) will surprise you with how often they go out.

Local produce and provisions

Partner with local farms, bakeries or dairies. Sell eggs, milk, bread, bacon, jam, and butter from a small fridge or honesty table. Guests want local and fresh. They will pay a premium for eggs from the farm next door versus driving to Tesco. Your cut might be modest, but it adds to the guest experience and earns goodwill with local suppliers who may refer guests back to you.

Experiences and activities

This works best on larger sites, but even small sites can offer simple activities: guided walks, star gazing evenings, fishing permits for a nearby river, or a discount code for a local adventure centre. You do not have to run these yourself. Partner with local providers who pay you a referral fee or agree a commission split.

Pricing Your Extras

The golden rule: price extras so that guests buy them without hesitation. You are not trying to maximise the price of each individual item. You are trying to maximise the number of transactions. A bag of firewood at five pounds sells ten times more than a bag at eight pounds. The five pound bag makes you more total profit.

Some guidelines that work well in practice:

Round everything to whole pounds where possible. Guests paying cash at an honesty box do not want to fumble with coins. And if you accept card payments, even better. The friction disappears entirely.

How to Offer Extras Without Extra Hassle

The biggest concern owners have about selling extras is the admin. If every firewood sale means interrupting your evening to walk over with a bag and take payment, it quickly stops being worth it.

Here are the approaches that keep things manageable:

Honesty boxes and self-service

For low value items (firewood, ice, eggs, kindling), an honesty box works surprisingly well on campsites. Guests at your site are already trusting you with their holiday. The vast majority will pay. Position a clearly labelled shelf or cabinet near the entrance or toilet block with prices displayed, a lockable cash box, and a contactless card reader if you have one.

Add extras at the point of booking

The most effective time to sell extras is when guests are already in buying mode. If your booking system lets you offer add-ons during the checkout process, guests can pre-order firewood bundles, late checkout, or welcome hampers before they arrive. This is better for everyone. You know what to prepare. They know it will be waiting.

Pre-arrival emails

Send a message a day or two before arrival listing what is available on site. Keep it brief and friendly. "We have kiln-dried firewood, fresh eggs from the farm next door, and late checkout available if you fancy a lazy Sunday. Just let us know or grab them on arrival." This plants the seed without being pushy.

A small information board on site

A chalkboard or laminated sheet near the toilet block listing extras and prices catches guests who missed the email. Update it seasonally. In summer, push ice and cold drinks. In autumn, push firewood and hot chocolate supplies.

Extras for CL and CS Sites

Running a small site does not mean extras are off the table. In fact, the personal touch of a five pitch CL or CS site makes certain extras more appealing because they feel curated rather than commercial.

What works well at small scale:

Taking Payment Without the Headache

Cash honesty boxes are simple but leaky. You lose some to dishonesty, more to guests who genuinely do not carry cash any more. The shift to card payments is real and ignoring it costs you sales.

Options for taking payment on extras:

Whichever method you choose, the goal is to remove friction. Every barrier between "I want firewood" and "I have paid for firewood" is a sale you might lose.

Tracking What Sells

You do not need a sophisticated stock system, but you do need to know what is working. At minimum, track:

If you are managing bookings and invoicing through a system like CampSuite, extras added to guest invoices are tracked automatically. You can see at a glance what sold, when, and to whom. That data tells you where to invest more and what to drop.

Getting Started This Week

You do not need to launch ten extras at once. Start with one or two that require minimal setup and see what happens.

The quickest wins for most sites:

Each of these can be running within days, not weeks. The revenue starts immediately. And once you see what guests respond to, you can expand from there.

If you want to offer extras at the point of booking and add them to guest invoices automatically, try CampSuite free. It takes about fifteen minutes to set up and it handles the bookings, payments, and guest communication so you can focus on running your site.