Camping is a great way to travel and sightsee without spending a lot of money. However, just like any traditional vacation, the cost may vary significantly. One thing you may have wondered about is if it is better to stay at the campgrounds rather than hotels.
Hotels are usually not always the most accommodating places to stay at. Whether it’s a luxury suite or a beaten-down room, being away from your own home and sleeping in places where other people have also stayed is not always the greatest feeling.
Although hotels are sometimes okay if you really have no option while traveling, there are still numerous reasons why camping is a better choice. Whether it’s RV camping, tent, or car camping, the benefits camping provides make it a better option.
If you’re still wondering why you should choose camping over staying at a hotel, we have the answers below.
Your tent is not the only necessary equipment that you need to bring when you’re going camping. There are a lot of important things that you need to bring and it can get a bit overwhelming. We listed all the camping items you’ll need for the great outdoors to help you make sure that you have everything that you need for your camping trip.
15 Reasons Why Camping Is Better Than Hotels
1. Camping Costs Less
Staying in a hotel can be expensive, although this depends on the hotel you choose. However, even the lowest-rated hotels in popular locations can be a costly choice. On the other hand, when you choose to camp, you are reducing this cost by using your own space.
Whether you camp at a paid campground or another place, you will probably spend less money than when staying in a hotel. With the average price of hotel rooms in the U.S. rising to over $180 per night, it is easy to see why cost plays a huge role. This is utterly expensive when you are just looking for a place to lay your head down for the night.
Meanwhile, you might expect to only pay around $45 per night on campgrounds with full amenities at most places. More premium campgrounds that feature high-quality amenities may cost more, but will not be as costly as staying at a hotel.
2. Experience Nature
Nature has an amazing way of healing us. Thus, we all need to commune with it from time to time instead of spending most of our lives indoors, living conveniently with modern technology.
Although modern-day devices are great, sometimes, it is beneficial to get away from them and experience simplicity while out in nature. In this way, you can see the beauty that the outdoors provides and experience the sights and sounds that you normally don’t get to experience from the comfort of your home.
If you live in the city, you may be in need of a camping trip because being able to live more simply is beneficial in so many ways. The calming effects nature provides can help us recharge our batteries from the demanding world we live in.
3. Disconnect
Camping will also allow you to disconnect completely if you opt to. Nowadays, with smartphones, people want to stay connected no matter where they are. However, it is also good to get out and unplug from all of these distractions. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t enjoy modern technology when you are camping — you still can, of course — but they shouldn’t consume a huge amount of your time.
You should take your time camping as an opportunity to unwind and disconnect from the clatter of the modern world. You should be able to stay away from social media and the internet altogether, although you still can use it to plan your trip, for emergencies, or navigation.
Disconnecting will allow you to better connect with yourself and help you get rid of some worries or stress. With social media at our fingertips and an addiction to the world wide web, we scroll through our phones many times a day just to look at other people’s lives and be consumed with what others are doing, which sometimes results in stress, pressure, and even depression.
When you go on a camping trip, you can always choose to avoid this part of life by being more connected to everything nature has to offer. Instead of the bright lights at the hotel, it is better to enjoy the bright lights that the star-filled sky has to offer.
4. A Clean Bed
It can be a bit gross to think about the number of people who sleep in hotel beds. Just knowing that a stranger was sleeping in that same bed the night before may be enough to make you want to dodge it. You don’t know who it was and how well the sheets have been cleaned. Plus, you don’t even know if the bed you are sleeping in has bed bugs or any other kinds of dirty liquids left behind. If you want to reveal all kinds of gross things on a bed, you can use a black light.
If you think about it, people do all kinds of things in the privacy of their hotel rooms, so it can be pretty disgusting to even lay down on the bed. Compare this to the bed in your RV, your air mattress, or the sleeping bag on your tent. It’s probably more comfortable and cleaner than the hotel bed, and you don’t have to worry about who has slept in your bed as it belongs to you and your family. This gives you more peace of mind, hence giving you a nice and restful night’s sleep.
5. Feeling at home
When you go camping in an RV instead of staying in a hotel, you will feel at home as you will have everything you need while driving around. Everything you personally own is already positioned the way you like it and are most comfortable with. You can use your food out of your own fridge and cook your meals on your own stove, using your personal utensils. You know where silverware, dishes, pots, and pans are and do not have to worry about whether or not they are clean and sanitized.
This experience will allow you to travel and stay in other locations while enjoying the benefits of having the comfort of your home right along with you, which you can’t get by staying in a hotel room.
6. Campfire
There are many fun things you cannot do in a hotel room, one of them being building a campfire. If you choose camping over staying in a hotel room, you certainly have no problem doing this. A campfire is a great way to allow yourself to de-stress and enjoy sitting by the fire.
Building a campfire is almost always allowed in numerous campgrounds and is usually an event that people love to attend. Sitting by a fire makes for a nice, peaceful evening where you can choose to unwind or talk to your friends, play, sing, and roast marshmallows.
It makes camping more interesting and allows you to do something out of the ordinary or out of your daily routine. You certainly wouldn’t even come close to doing something like this if you were staying in a hotel room. The best you could do at a hotel would be to order food and watch a movie. Why do that when you can choose to build your own campfire while camping outdoors?
7. Healthy Experience
Spending our lives confined indoors is not healthy for our body and mind. Staying in a hotel just gives you another location to go to and turn on the TV and get on your phone or laptop, which you have had enough of at home. However, when camping, you get to breathe in fresh air, hear new sounds, see new sights, and be immersed in the world.
A study from the US National Library of Medicine
shows that camping and being outdoors benefits us in many ways. It can improve our mental health by lowering our stress levels and reducing the symptoms of anxiety and depression. This can also be great for children as we introduce them to a healthier lifestyle and teach them to build up awareness of what nature has to offer.
Camping is a good way to disconnect from the rest of the world, even for just a moment. If you are looking to get away for a few days or weeks, you should consider off-grid camping. We know of 7 amazing off-grid campsites that you should definitely consider for your next trip.
8. Pet-friendly
For people who do not like to go anywhere without their dog, traveling in an RV will allow you to always involve your pets without having to worry about whether the hotel is pet-friendly — which most are not.
The RV community and campgrounds are dog-friendly. Thus, you will be able to camp in a spot and not have to worry about your dog. Your pets will be right at home and know the space is comfortable to live in as their food and water bowls will be set up in a way that they are familiar with.
Since most RV parks and campsites are dog-friendly, it’s easier to take your pets on trips and walks around the campground or on nearby hiking trails.
9. Peace and Quiet
Hotels are often loud and annoying because of neighbors or live music in the lobby. Many hotel buildings have thin walls through which you can hear your neighbors all night long. Even worse, you may hear the opening and closing of doors all night long from people going in and out of their hotel rooms as some of your neighbors may be having a party.
These kinds of scenarios don’t happen when you are camping, unless, of course, you are in a campground where rude people may also be having a wild party. But most of the time, you will have no issue when camping and your time outdoors will provide you with a much-needed peaceful experience as most campgrounds are usually policed very well and have enforced quiet hours where you usually just hear the sound of nature.
10. Family Time
Camping is a perfect way to get some quality time with the whole family. When camping, you don’t have nearly as many distractions and you can focus on the things that matter most.
Instead of scrolling through social media, you can play games with the family or have a nice evening chat around the campfire. Kids will surely love the camping experience as it will allow them to be kids without the distractions of the modern world getting in the way. It will teach kids to enjoy what nature has to offer and learn its importance.
Camping with your family can be among the best times of your kids’ lives and the times when they feel most connected to each and every family member. It will bring out the best in everyone and make for a wonderful experience.
11. Keeps you active
When camping, there are many activities available for you. For instance, there are often hiking trails close by, which is a great way to get in some activity, which you can’t do while sitting in a hotel watching TV or scrolling through your phone.
People who have an active lifestyle will appreciate camping because they know that there is always something they can do to remain active while on vacation. If you are a dog owner, you can enjoy long walks with your pet. And if you bring your bicycles, you can go on long bike rides around the area.
Being active is important and nowadays, society is not getting enough of it. Our modern-day life has somewhat turned us into couch potatoes and made us sit around more and consume entertainment. Camping will allow you to get out of the stationary routine and get moving by giving you lots of enjoyable and usually free activities to partake in.
If you choose to stay in a hotel, you will probably still do the same things as you would at home: lock yourself in your room, connect to the Wi-Fi and browse the internet, or watch TV and go to bed. You can get out of this routine and be more active by going camping.
12. You Get to Meet Other Campers
The camping community consists of a friendly group of people. When you are camping in RV parks or campgrounds, you may make a friend or two and enjoy the day around good company. This can make the experience more enjoyable and memorable as you meet people out on the road with the same interests and lifestyle.
In hotels, however, you rarely meet interesting people who you can enjoy the evening with as most people close their doors and stay inside their rooms.
13. Better Entertainment
You can’t go wrong with a night under the stars if you are looking for an entertaining night. On a nice clear night sky, nature is presented at its finest. You probably will not see a show like this back at the hotel, but when camping, you can have the finest entertainment on Earth. The bright lights of the city may occasionally be interesting, but nature will always draw your attention.
We were born wild but don’t live that way anymore, especially with the modern technology that makes life easier. We are now so used to our modern lives that we don’t even have time to stop to listen and enjoy what nature has to offer. If people learned how to slow down, listen, and notice how amazing our natural world is, you may never want to go back and live in the city.
14. Amazing Food
Food that is grilled or cooked over a fresh campfire is amazing. Even meals cooked in the wild on a camping stove are delicious. Camping will often let you work to get your campsite set up and arrange everything to your liking. And when it’s time for meals, you are more hungry than you would be in other situations, so cooking and eating can constitute one of the best experiences you can have when camping.
The experience will truly make you appreciate food and what goes into having to cook it. This will also let you appreciate what we have in our daily lives and how easy it is to make our own meals.
There is something about outdoor cooking that makes it taste much better than food cooked by other people in a kitchen. You probably already know this feeling from using a grill in your yard at home. The food coming off the grill is always more tempting than it would be otherwise.
15. Educational
Camping outdoors will teach you new things about yourself and will also let your kids learn about nature or the environment personally, not through their laptops and phones. Camping will let them experience nature in person and learn new activities that will help them build new skills that may become beneficial in their daily lives once they grow up.
Conclusion
Staying in a hotel can be a convenient way to get a good night’s sleep, but camping can do the same thing, in addition to offering the benefits we listed above. If you have never experienced camping before, you are missing out on a wonderful experience.
Seasoned campers surely know the benefits of doing this and what makes this lifestyle so popular. Traveling in your camper van will also allow you to experience many quiet nights in many different amazing locations, and it can be a fun and amazing experience for the whole family.
If you have been staying in a hotel whenever you go on a trip, it’s time to give camping a try. It might be an intimidating activity, but we assure you that it will change your life for the better.
