Camping to be well: a renewed focus for BelgraviaPro

By Amber Hughes, Senior Business Operations Manager, Bpro (QLD and NSW)

Many of us may already be aware that travel is becoming a form of wellness, with 84% saying it’s essential to their wellbeing (Broadsheet Well Travelled Report 2026).

This fact delights me, as I lead a very active lifestyle and have always been passionate about both wellness and travel. It therefore goes without saying that when the opportunity came up to unite the two in my newly created role as Senior Business Operations Manager, Bpro (QLD and NSW), I embraced it wholeheartedly.

And I think there is a much bigger opportunity ahead.

For several decades, Belgravia Leisure, the parent organisation of BelgraviaPro (Bpro), has been making an impact on community wellbeing. More recently, that has included a growing range of spa, recovery and treatment experiences.

Having been part of the company for many years, I’ve played a role in introducing some of these wellness offerings across our leisure venues, but I’ve always felt there was an opportunity to bring that thinking to life in a bigger way for our overnight tourist park guests. Why? Because wellness isn’t something that should begin and end at the doors of a spa.

It can be a cold swim in the ocean. A long bushwalk. Sitting quietly beside a lake. Moving your body first thing in the morning. Putting your phone down for a few hours. Or simply sitting around a campfire with people you care about.

Perhaps camping has always been a form of wellness, but we just haven’t necessarily called it that.

Camping remains one of the staples of Australian travel culture. Data from Tourism Research Australia tells us that almost 938,000 caravans and campervans were registered nationally in 2025, and Australians took 17.3 million caravan and camping trips that year. Similarly, New Zealand mirrors this deep-rooted outdoor passion, boasting an exceptionally high per-capita rate of RV registrations and millions of domestic overnight stays across its two islands. For me, that scale makes the opportunity particularly exciting.

Bpro is the tourism and holiday parks arm of Belgravia Leisure, with almost 40 holiday parks, campgrounds and unique accommodation destinations under management across Australia and New Zealand.

Being part of the broader Belgravia Leisure family gives us access to shared knowledge and experience in health, leisure, access and inclusion and wellness that isn’t necessarily available to a traditional holiday park operator. This setup gives us a unique opportunity to take what we know about helping people move, feel good and connect with others and apply it to tourism in thoughtful and accessible ways.

That doesn’t necessarily mean turning every campground into a wellness retreat. I think the future is about creating opportunities for wellness at different levels, allowing people to engage as much or as little as they want and, importantly, meeting them where they are.

At one end, it can be incredibly simple: yoga mats in accommodation with QR codes linking guests to a session, wellness teas, shower steamers, designated wellness walks or even simple signage encouraging people to stop and be present.

At the other, we’re exploring dedicated infrastructure and experiences. Lake Wivenhoe Campground and First Sun Holiday Park have introduced sauna facilities, and we are exploring the addition of cold immersion. Wellness sessions have also been held at First Sun Holiday Park.

Wellness retreat brings visitors together

And then there are opportunities to create an experience where wellness isn’t an addition to the stay; it becomes a reason to travel in the first place. We recently explored exactly that at Lake Wivenhoe Campground in Queensland.

Working with ALI Wellness and wellness facilitator Ali Oetjen, the campground hosted a two-day nature-based retreat built around wellbeing, relaxation and connection. Guests could participate in guided meditation, yoga, breathwork, journalling, wellness ceremonies, sauna experiences and self-guided walks, with glamping, traditional camping and day passes giving people different ways to experience the weekend.

What I love about that experience is that it wasn’t wellness transplanted into a campground; the campground was fundamental to the wellness experience.

The bushland, the lake, the opportunity to slow down and the distance from everyday routines were as much a part of it as the programmed activities, and that’s an important distinction for where I think we can take this.

We’re not trying to replicate a resort-style wellness model outdoors. We’re exploring what wellness looks like when you start with the things camping already does incredibly well and build from there.

We are now exploring further opportunities at the campground, including the feasibility of an on-site Wellness Expo. That willingness to test, listen and refine is important to me, as wellness shouldn’t become a checklist of ‘in-trend’ amenities, whereby whatever we introduce needs to genuinely add something to the guest experience.

Making wellness more accessible

There is another reason I’m particularly passionate about this direction. Wellness has increasingly become associated with high-end retreats, expensive treatments and premium experiences. Those experiences absolutely have their place, but I don’t believe wellbeing should be restricted to just the people who can afford it.

Some of the best wellbeing experiences cost very little, and camping gives us an incredible platform for that. A family might never book a three-day wellness retreat, but they might spend a weekend beside the lake, go for a walk together, join a morning yoga session, enjoy a sauna, put their devices away for the afternoon and realise they feel noticeably different when they leave. To me, that counts.

Guest experience remains central to how Bpro operates and grows. Our focus is on creating parks where guests, families and children have positive experiences and reasons to return. Increasingly, I believe wellbeing can be part of that experience too. The exciting thing is that we’re really only at the beginning.

As we learn from initiatives at Lake Wivenhoe, First Sun and across the broader network, I see enormous potential to keep experimenting with how nature, movement, recovery, connection and traditional camping experiences can work together.

Camping doesn’t need to become something completely different to embrace wellness. Perhaps we just need to recognise the wellbeing benefits that were there all along and find new ways to make more of them.

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