Sébastien Manceau (European Camping Group): Share Your Power - Episode 13

A mix of Accor and Europcar: that is how Sébastien Manceau, CEO of European Camping Group, sums up the business he runs. In this thirteenth episode of Share Your Power, the podcast powered by OneFlash, he explains to Lucas Di Franco the operational complexity of premium camping and the keys to a successful customer experience in outdoor accommodation.

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A business far more complex than it looks

After sixteen years of strategy consulting at Roland Berger, Sébastien Manceau readily admits that he himself underestimated the complexity of the sector when he arrived. Unlike a hotel, where room stock is fixed, a campsite manages a stock of accommodation that is constantly moving: mobile homes, bare pitches, chalets, tents, sometimes even the owner's former house. Every year, the group buys between 2,000 and 3,000 new mobile homes and moves as many units across its European network, a logistics operation close to that of a vehicle rental company, run by specialist teams under constant recruitment pressure.

Wifi, a textbook case of operational complexity

Sébastien Manceau takes a deliberately simple example to illustrate this complexity: installing wifi throughout a campsite seems obvious, but managing a site horizontally, with its isolated rural areas and mismatched infrastructure, makes the exercise far harder than in a vertically organised hotel. This kind of operational friction, multiplied across hundreds of destinations with sometimes contradictory local regulations, with the same development allowed in one département and refused in the next, takes up a large share of the group's management time.

Moving upmarket without losing the popular DNA

ECG chose to modernise its mobile home fleet (design, home automation, terraces enlarged up to 40 m²) while avoiding two pitfalls: losing its historic, more price-sensitive customers, and being seen as a "default" choice by households who prefer Club Med or a traditional holiday residence. Sébastien Manceau acknowledges a difference in philosophy with some competitors who completely standardise the experience: ECG instead focuses on showcasing the local destination, with common standards on mobile homes but real freedom left to on-site teams to embody the regional identity of each site.

Loyalty: a third of customers come back

In a tourism sector where, according to Sébastien Manceau, even the best players struggle to exceed 50 to 60% retention, ECG reports 30% of customers returning each year, including a core of historic customers markedly more loyal than average. The group admits it is behind the hotel industry on the maturity of its loyalty programmes, a delay it chooses to treat as an advantage: watching what has worked elsewhere rather than suffering the teething problems of the sector's first failed programmes.

Direct distribution: the lesson learned from hotels

Sébastien Manceau looks back on a deliberate strategic choice: ECG makes 90% of its sales directly, while part of the hotel sector remains more than 50% dependent on third-party booking platforms. The line he uses to sum up the issue: every point of repeat business gained is a point you do not hand back to Google in advertising acquisition. This discipline of direct distribution, combined with a network of 450 destinations that lets the same customer move from one site to another, is presented as one of the pillars of the group's resilience.

Climate and geopolitical resilience

With a portfolio of destinations stretching from the Netherlands to the south of Spain and Italy, ECG is building geographical resilience against climate hazards (heatwaves, fires) and swings in demand. Sébastien Manceau also mentions, unfiltered, the paradoxically positive impact of certain macro factors (geopolitical tensions, constrained purchasing power) on European short-haul tourism, of which camping is one of the main beneficiaries.

What this conversation says about the outdoor experience

What this episode reveals is how much the customer experience in camping rests on an accumulation of well-controlled operational details: availability of facilities, quality of the on-site welcome, comfort despite the constraints of the outdoors. In this context, access to electricity and to mobile charging remains a very concrete friction point for visitors constantly on the move between pool, restaurant and activities.

This is precisely the ground OneFlash occupies. A self-service mobile charging station, installed at the reception of a campsite, near the pool or in a food area, meets a real need of outdoor holidaymakers: keeping their phone charged to stay reachable, sharing their holiday photos or simply enjoying their stay without battery anxiety. A self-service phone charging station fits the logic of comfort standards that Sébastien Manceau describes as non-negotiable, while leaving each destination its own local identity.

In summary

This conversation with Sébastien Manceau outlines a camping sector far more complex and strategic than it looks from the outside: fleet logistics, direct distribution discipline and patient loyalty building. In this equation, every comfort detail added to the stay, from the quality of the wifi to access to reliable mobile charging, helps turn a passing customer into a loyal one.

Hear the full conversation between Lucas Di Franco and Sébastien Manceau by listening to episode 13 of Share Your Power.