The Dorset holiday park market

Dorset sits within the South West holiday park and caravan park market. The first recorded Viking raid on the British Isles took place on the Dorset coast in 789 AD. We arrange holiday park acquisition finance, caravan and lodge park mortgages, bridging, development and expansion finance, refinances and multi-park portfolio facilities across the county, covering 6 park catchments, led by Weymouth, Bridport, Christchurch, Lyme Regis and Swanage.

The market figures below are reported nationally or at regional level by the sector's research sources, attributed to each source, and used as context rather than a Dorset-specific measurement. The named parks and the sale-price data are genuinely local: parks are linked to source and the price data is drawn from HM Land Registry price paid records.

Holiday park catchments across Dorset

Dorset's holiday parks cluster along Jurassic Coast, Purbeck AONB, Christchurch Bay and Poole Harbour, and a recognisable coast or national-park setting is what drives the occupancy and pitch values a park can achieve. We track 17 named parks across the county's catchments, each linked to source on its town page.

The UK holiday-park market in context

Across the UK there are around around 6,200 holiday parks and campsites with around around 440,000 pitches (UKCCA, Pitching the Value 2024, 2023). High-season pitch occupancy runs at about around 68% (UKCCA, Pitching the Value 2024, August 2023 (high season)), and the sector generates around £12.2bn a year of direct visitor spending a year.

What a holiday park earns, and how it is financed

Holiday parks are lent against as trading businesses: the lender sizes a park mortgage principally on EBITDA, with operator profit conversion averaging about around 29% in 2024 (Savills, Holiday & Home Park Update 2025, 2024). Pitch-fee income makes up roughly a third of park turnover, with holiday-home sales a further large share. Transaction values averaged about £34,192 per pitch on holiday static parks in 2024 (Savills, Holiday & Home Park Update 2025, 2024), and the average park Savills valued in 2024 was worth over £7m.

Local property-market context in Dorset

For local context, the 3 Dorset areas we track show an average median residential sale price of around £350,000 on HM Land Registry data, across 1,775 transactions in the last twelve months. Holiday-home and lodge values on a park are a separate market, but the local property market signals the strength of the catchment a park trades in.

Holiday park finance in Dorset

We arrange the full range of holiday park and caravan park finance across Dorset: park acquisition mortgages on trading static, touring, lodge and glamping parks, bridging for auctions and fast purchases, development and expansion finance for new pitches and facilities, and refinances and multi-park portfolio facilities for the long-term hold. Send us the deal and we will come back within one working day.

Holiday park market figures are published nationally or at South West level (Savills park research; UKCCA sector data; Christie & Co leisure research) and are presented as context for Dorset rather than a county-specific measurement. Housing-transaction figures are HM Land Registry price paid data for the towns we track. We are an arranger and introducer, not a lender, and we do not give financial, legal or tax advice.