Mapping Indoor Camping As A Tourism Product And Its Upgrade According To Youth Preferences

Less equipped than hostels, indoor camping provides shelter - which is what primarily differentiates it from classic, open-air camping. Beyond hospitality, it can be compared somewhat to squatting, but legally regulated for tourism purposes, since visitors sleep on the floor using their own sleeping bags. Unlike other solid tourism facilities, including second homes, the property is not only in function of holidaying but also in use for other purposes: it can be a gym, a local community club etc. This temporality and thus multifunctional use of the property is what makes indoor camping a unique model of hospitality. The attitudes of young generations regarding such a tourism product were investigated with the goal of forming a marketable model. The research was carried out on an intentional sample of students. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of sustainability as a prerequisite for youth festivals tourism destinations dealing with peak periods of visiting and to lobby for creating an adequate legal framework that would allow this model to take hold in practice. The originality of this paper is represented by conceptual mapping of indoor camping as an innovative tourism accommodation in the broadest sense according to purpose and time dimension. The potential of indoor camping might benefit all three basic entities of sustainability. It has the power to put into function vacant buildings or enrich already existing ones by adding hospitality as a new role, without, however, permanently modifying their primary purpose.