What you need to open a children's camp - 10 features of business

A children's camp is a place where children spend their summer vacations in specially designed facilities. This is a promising, but not an easy business. Let's look at all the nuances.

Business Features

Children's camp as a business has its own peculiarities:

1. A pronounced seasonality. Since camps are most often focused on schoolchildren, they operate mainly during vacations - the main revenue of the camp falls in the summer. Although there are exceptions, and some camps can organize programs almost all year round.
2. Personal involvement of the organizer and love for children is a must. This is not a business where you can organize work and leave it to an assistant. The leader is personally responsible for every child in the camp. If you do not love children and do not want to be involved with them, and your main goal is to make money, it is better to choose another type of business.
3. The business is connected with children, which means that you will have to pass a lot of inspections for compliance with SanPin norms. On the other hand, the parents of your pupils will be checking you constantly. You won't be able to relax and breathe.
4. Often a camp requires serious investments, especially when it comes to buying your own base. But if you want to, you can do without them.
5. Camp requires creativity. It is not enough to develop a program and hire staff once. It is important to develop all the time, to improve programs, to look for new ideas. This is a business for active people with a great love for children.
6. In addition to developing a program, it is very important to keep the children safe. You are responsible for minors, and one accident can "bury" your business.
7. The complexities of marketing. In order for a camp to pay off, the vouchers must be expensive. At the same time, parents have alternatives in the form of cheaper state-run children's camps. In order to sell, it is important for you to position yourself and develop your own unique offer, as well as to launch a "word of mouth" campaign, which is the best way to attract customers to the camp.
8. Individualized Approach. Parents who give their child to an expensive private camp want an individualized approach. It is important to avoid the conveyor belt effect.
9. Family atmosphere. It is important to create a family atmosphere so that your child comes back happy and wants to come back again.
10. A clear concept. Just another health camp is unlikely to be successful. There is a lot of competition in the market for private children's camps. It is necessary to think through the concept and its "chips". We will talk about this below.

Market Analysis

It is important to analyze all the operating camps in your region. How many are there, are they public or private, what are their specialties, do they have a clear focus, which facilities are the most popular, what is their reputation, which camps work worse and why. This will help you find out what is missing in your region and what you should emphasize.

Classification of children's camps

Children's camps are divided into private and public camps. A private camp cannot compete with a public camp on price. That means you need to create a unique selling proposition (USP) so that parents understand what they are paying money for.

But even a private camp can get support from the state in the form of state contracts. However, it is necessary to have your own base for this.

The local department distributes hundreds of state-purchased vouchers to those bases that have won the tender. Parents receive discounted vouchers. For such a camp, the main task is to get a state contract, pass all inspections and avoid injuries during the shifts. The management does not need to think about marketing and sales, as the vouchers are bought and distributed by the state. But having your own base implies large investments of tens of millions of rubles. Not everyone has such money. In this article we will talk about ordinary private camps without their own base. This format does not require multi-million dollar investments, but it does require creativity and a creative approach.

For the camp, the natural surroundings (proximity to water, availability of air unpolluted by emissions) are important, but also a cultural program prepared before it is time to open your facility.

Types of camp vacations

Several approaches to organizing children's summer camps are known. Here are the main programs:

1. Recreational (sanatorium). It is realized in the presence of stationary buildings, including residential buildings, canteen and other auxiliary buildings. This type of children's recreation in camps is often organized on the basis of medical centers or similar institutions. As a rule, adolescents with health problems or for preventive purposes are recruited.
2. Sports - involves the opening of a camp of training type, which is based on sports education of the wards, focused on a particular sport. As a special case of this direction can be considered children's tent "tourist" camping.
3. Educational. It can be anything - languages, programming, preparation for the USE.
4. Labor. It mainly consists of teenagers who are ready to do various types of simple work (berry picking, for example, etc.) under the guidance of instructors. In this case, work is assigned only the first half of the day, after which the children can return to the recreation center. As a rule, they are paid for their efforts.
5. Developmental. Here there is a wide range of innovative techniques and methods. You can teach children goal-setting, communication skills, leadership skills - anything you like.
6. The simplest form of recreation available to all interested children involves their daytime stay under the supervision of an experienced tutor - without an overnight stay.
7. Weekend recreation organization, which consists in the stay of children from Friday evening to Sunday evening. During this time they are provided with quality 3 meals a day, entertainment and educational program, as well as qualified medical care.

This is the most general division. In order to stand out and offer parents something unique, it is important to choose a narrower specialization that is in demand in your region. For example, a sports camp for kids who don't like sports, or a camp for girls who want to learn programming, or a language camp with a guarantee of language immersion.

Think through your "chips." - For example, the opportunity for parents to come and check on their children every day (usually parent's day is practiced only once per shift), complete refusal of gadgets, no free time (the whole day is scheduled, the child has no time to be bored), etc. It is very important that parents understand exactly what they are paying several tens of thousands of rubles per shift for, and what they will get in the end.

Business registration

The activity of camps is regulated by "SanPiN 2.4.4.1204-03" (for stationary camps) and "SanPiN 2.4.4.2605-10" (for tent camps). If you are working with an age group of 6-9 years old or 15-18 years old, the groups should have up to 25 people, and for a group of 10-14 years old - up to 30 people. A shift lasts a maximum of 21 days2 to 4 days should pass between shifts. It is necessary to organize 2-4 meals a day. 

To register the camp you need to register a sole proprietorship or LLC, choose a taxation system (simplified), make your seal.

Main OKVED code 55.20 - Activities on provision of places for short-term accommodation

Be aware! If you do not have your own base, you may be denied the right to call yourself a children's camp. In this case, you need to conclude an agency contract with a base that is included in the register of children's recreation organizations, and sell vouchers under this contract. On the basis of this contract you will conclude agreements with parents of children. You will also conclude an agreement with the base to develop and conduct a leisure and play program in the camp.

In this case, you will need other codes - 85.41.9 "Additional education of children and adults other than included in other groups", 90.01 "Activities in the field of performing arts" and 93.29 "Other entertainment activities". The organization will not be called a camp, but otherwise - for example, a children's community.

Be prepared for regular inspections before the opening of the season and before each shift. The list of documents for opening is constantly updated. Sample list:

• license for educational activities;
• land lease or purchase agreement;
• conclusion from Rospotrebnadzor and SES;
• acts of acceptance from firefighters, as well as on disinfection, agreements on the regular conduct of such activities;
• an agreement with the Ministry of Health confirming the provision of medical services to children;
• plan/program of production control;
• documentation and menu of the canteen approved by Rospotrebnadzor, and certificates for all products;
• a contract for garbage, groceries, security;
• books of orders, internal regulations of the camp, staff schedule, job descriptions for staff, duty schedules, logbooks;
• Medical records for each child and health certificates for all staff;
• accounting documents;
• personal cards for all employees;
• A service agreement with each parent and a statement from the parent to the principal.

Choosing a facility for a children's camp

The camp building usually resembles a hotel. Children are placed in rooms of 2-8 people. The territory is also very important - there should be a place for games, activities and leisure time. Usually under the camp buy or rent vacation homes somewhere in nature. It is obligatory to comply with all SanPin norms and have all necessary communications - water, sewerage, gas, ventilation, electricity. 

You also need to organize meals - either in your own canteen, or arrange with the nearest cafes for the food delivery.

Staff selection

Working with children requires special responsibility, so the selection of employees is important preparation phase. Before opening the season, it is necessary to form a team of counselors, as which are most often recruited summer vacationing students of pedagogical universities.

Depending on the thematic focus of each particular institution, it is necessary to hire specialists with appropriate qualifications (teachers or coaches) who are able to work with children in their field. There should also be a staff of educators and certified medical staff, cleaners, cooks.

Advertising and promotion

There are paid and free ways of promotion. The most relevant at the first stage:

• you can make arrangements with schools and go to parent-teacher conferences and tell them about your camp.
• Make groups on social networks and ask people you know to share information. If you have worked with children before, write directly to your students and their parents.
• to have an open house.
• organize a test drive to get to know the parents. For this purpose, you can rent a room in the city center for 2 hours, arrange a free entertainment program for parents to see your approach and your counselors.
• use contextual and targeted advertising. It is important to qualitatively process each incoming request, call parents, answer their questions and close objections.
• Collect feedback on social media - a must for starting a "word of mouth" campaign.

The advertising campaign needs to be done in advance. Even in public camps, sales start as early as February-April. A private camp needs to start sales even earlier to be in time for the start of the summer season.

Cost of business

Opening a camp with its own base will require from you a considerable initial investment of at least 30 million rubles (the final price depends strongly on the scale of the project). You should also not forget about the ongoing costs of running the camp.

But you can open a camp for much less money, if you rent a base and sell vouchers in advance, that is, at the expense of early sales immediately offset some of the costs.

How much you can earn from a children's camp

The amount of income depends on the number of children, the price of vouchers and whether you work only in the summer or not.In any case, summer shifts will bring at least 80% income. If the price of a voucher is 30,000 - 35,000 rubles, you can get 100,000 rubles of net profit after 2 shifts, recouping all the initial and ongoing costs.

But such a financial result requires great creativity, sales skills and understanding of the specifics of this business. Further your net income can reach 30-40% from the cost of each voucher. That is, 100 clients for the summer will bring you 3-3.5 million rubles turnover and about 1 million net profit. Successful camps launch sales a year in advance, that is, in the summer they sell vouchers for the next summer.

We advise you to read interesting information on the topic of the article in the video:

To open a children's camp from scratch, you need to take into account a lot of related factors, be creative and solve a lot of organizational issues.

Also reading:

• Opening of a children's entertainment center
• Organization of holidays as a business
• Flower store business plan with calculations
  Where do I start if I want to open my own camp?

  Start by choosing a camp concept, determining the format, and finding a suitable location that meets safety requirements.

  What safety requirements do I need to consider when opening a children's camp?

  It is important to provide safe accommodation, organize medical escorts and develop emergency plans.

  Does the camp need to be officially registered?

  In order to operate the camp, legal registration is required, complying with the legislation in force.