Event and Festival Camping Guide

Camping at a festival, especially multi-day festivals, can be a significant undertaking but can also establish your festival as a destination event, where people will travel great distances to enjoy a full weekend and increase the amount of revenue streams for your festival.

• Determining whether or not to offer camping at your festival
  • Factors to consider:
    • Space for campers, and is good for tents / vehicles
    • Any existing infrastructure (lighting, power, buildings)
    • Is the demographic coming the kind that would camp?
    • How many days is your event?
    • What time of year will it be and what sort of normal weather patterns exist?
    • What sort of insurance will we need to have proper coverage for having people live onsite?
    • Do we want to close off the campgrounds during certain hours / require quiet hours?
• Planning out the camping area
  

  The Campgrounds at CounterPoint 2015

  • Coordinating with local Fire Marshalls / City or County Staff to ensure there are proper ingress / egress routes as well as emergency routes
  • Deciding on what to offer:
    • Tent Camping (with vehicles parked elsewhere)
    • Tent Camping with a vehicle next to it
    • RV Camping – with specific size limitations
    • VIP Camping – deciding what to offer (usually if there is also glamping, VIP camping will offer closer access to the main festival grounds as well as showers / comfort stations)
    • Glamping – deciding to do this in-house or hire a third party, and what all should be offered (tent size and style, showers / bathrooms, lounge, proximity to main festival grounds, etc)
    • Music Festival Junkies has a great section devoted to the latest and greatest in festival camping
    • Hiring a run of show camping manager and team
      • Decide on whether or not to offer a 24/7 general store / information area
    • Campsite Elements / Amenities to consider:
      • Yoga
      • Sports and Games (i.e., volleyball courts, frisbees, soccer, other lawn games)
      • Campground Stage with separate live music lineup
      • 5K or other types of group running
      • Showers / Comfort stations for an upcharge
  • Coordinating with Creative, Ticketing, Marketing, and Site Departments
• Site Build / Run of Show / Strike
  • Having all site elements put in place – fencing, restrooms, power, lighting, signage
  • Having your Camping Manager and crew oversee the load-in of campers
    • Having the parking lined out properly and with the proper amount of staff to guide so it’s easy to load in vehicles
  • Manning a 24/7 information area / general store (all but the smallest of campgrounds should be offering this) that includes
    • Medical / Security area
    • General information / Help area
    • Cell phone charging station
    • Items for sale – general sundries, ice, bottled water, beer (if allowed)
    • Possible restaurant if the size of the campgrounds warrant
    • Trash / Recycling / Composting area (with others spread out throughout the campsites)
  • Overseeing load-out, which usually occurs in two major phases
    • After the last band is finished, many will want to leave that night
    • The rest usually stay until the next morning
    • Enforcing the deadline to leave may take some manpower, depending on the demographics of the crowd and other factors such as weather and campground size
    • Having the Green Crew come in and remove all trash