Anneville-sur-Mer, in Manche.
It is there, in a small campsite near the dune, that Dany and Annick, 78 years old, have owned a mobile home since 1986. “We were the first!”, they testify in West France. We even chose the location. Closest to the sea.”
Since then, the couple has spent entire weeks there every year, 50 km from home. But their mobile home, replaced in 1993, is now more than 30 years old.
However, in 2022, the campsite changed ownership and is offering new contracts to pitch tenants. They stipulate that mobile homes over 25 years old cannot stay, for security reasons. Considering their mobile home to be well maintained, Dany and Annick refused to sign, like around thirty residents.
Their case is expected to be resolved in court early next year. In the meantime, their campsite, like almost all the others, has just closed for the winter. And the couple doesn't know if they will be able to spend another summer there.
And this story is not an isolated case…
As evidenced by the investigation carried out by my colleague Marion Dubois in West France.
Some figures first: today in France, there are 850,000 campsites, of which 200,000 are counted as leisure residential. That is to say that they are occupied at least one month in the year by the same person for their vacation.
An example: Frédéric, 60 years old, lives half the year at the Saint-Boil campsite in Saône-et-Loire. He testifies to France 3 : “I live 30 minutes from the mobile home, so I enjoy it like a second home. I go on vacation, but close to home. I'm there from April to September.”
But other owners, for whom their mobile home is the investment of a lifetime, feel driven out. According to them, campsites prefer to have their own seasonal accommodation to rent for greater profitability.
Lawyer specializing in collective trials, Bertrand Salquain says he has between 250 to 300 files concerning disputes like that of Dany and Annick.
At the end of October, a collective of 50 owners and the National Federation of Leisure Residence Owners even attacked the French State “for inaction and failure to protect consumers”. They denounce “an imbalance in the rental contract for the benefit of the campsite manager”.
I called the president of the National Outdoor Hotel Federation, Nicolas Dayot. He recognizes the conflicts, while indicating that they remain very much in the minority. According to him, it is necessary to better explain to owners of mobile homes that it cannot be a second home for life in the same place and that campsites must be able to modernize and offer more services. “The strength of camping in France is that it is constantly changing,” he says.
But now that the season has just ended, what conclusions do we draw from it?
With around 141 million room nights booked this season, the figures are on par with last year, which was a record year.
Geographic trends: reservations fell in the northern two-thirds of the country and on the Atlantic coast, they were stable in Corsica and Occitanie, they increased in the southern region and Ardèche. Explanation: the weather.
Professionals already have their minds set on 2025, because the annual outdoor hotel equipment show opens this morning in Montpellier. We will talk about the latest mobile homes – in all, 20,000 are sold each year in France – and perhaps also, a little, about the dismay of certain owners.
