Gruppo Vacanze col Cuore stands out in the Italian glamping scene, a sector with an increasingly structured, competitive market, with capital coming in, new players multiplying and an increasingly demanding and informed consumer.
The Dutch-Italian brand headed by its founder Loek van de Loo, which to date has nine resorts in Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria and the Netherlands, is banking everything on service quality as a competitive advantage.
“The Group’s identity element has always been the choice of boutique resorts and glamping with intimate dimensions, dedicated to a limited number of accommodations and extreme care for the guest, who has ample surrounding space available. With dedicated services always easily accessible with carefully designed proposals: starting from the food and wine offer, to the sports, leisure, and edutainment areas for the little ones. It is no coincidence that we have called our approach “horizontal hotellerie” summarizes Loek van de Loo, founder of the Group.
The 2026 season will cut the ribbon for the new season on March 26 with the two historic addresses on Lake Garda – Weekend Glamping Resort and Gabbiano Residence Park, in San Felice del Benaco and Moniga del Garda (BS) – and progressively build up to April 23, when Vallicella Glamping Resort in Scarlino (GR) will also reopen.
Following are the numbers from the previous season and the focus of the upcoming one reported in the latest Holiday with a Heart press release.
The numbers of the 2025 season
The season just ended consolidates the growth path started with the opening of the Trasimeno Glamping Resort, the Group’s ninth facility, opening in 2024 and fully operational in 2025, after two years of project development.
- Turnover: +7% over 2024
- Reservations: 38000 on the entire Group
- Overnight stays: 590,000
- Guests from over 30 different nations
- Main markets: Germany, Netherlands, Italy
The role of the Group on Lake Trasimeno
The year opened with the announcement of a major investment on the Trasimeno Glamping Resort in Magione (PG) . The Group is ready to add new spaces for sports from tennis, soccer, padel and volleyball with a new food & beverage area, facilities and installations that can be accessed by outsiders as well, to spend leisure time in search of relaxation.
This operation brings with it, in coordination with the Administration of Sant’Arcangelo di Magione (PG), also direct interventions on the surrounding areas, by way of urban planning burden: new playground and parking area, modernization and furnishing of the wharf area, new safe pedestrian and bicycle paths. Leonardo van de Loo, Group Chief Operating Officer, says on the sidelines of the project presentation, “Our presence in an area cannot disregard constant and active dialogue with the Administration and never excludes cooperation to improve the stay of guests but also the lives of citizens. We are a ‘neighbor’ that opens its doors and while taking care of its own business, dialogues and takes action to improve the environment of those who live there.”
VCC Academy: the training the industry doesn’t have
The second investment is in internal culture. VCC Academy, a continuing education program dedicated to all Group personnel-from management figures to operators-was born, built around a simple evidence: there is no specific educational path in Italy for high-level open-air tourism.
So the Group decided to create it for itself, with outside professionals in the areas of food & beverage, hospitality, communications and marketing, finance, human resources and operations management. It is not corporate welfare. It is a strategic response to an industry problem: the difficulty of finding and retaining trained staff, beyond seasonal terms, capable of ensuring a standard consistent with a premium positioning across nine geographically distributed facilities.
AI serving the guest, not replacing staff
An additional asset involves technology. Since December 2025, in the testing phase at Lago Idro Glamping Boutique, and from January 2026 at all resorts, a new customer care system based on artificial intelligence, designed in-house to respond to the Group’s specificities, has been active. The stated goal is to make guest relationship management more efficient without replacing human contact, which remains the heart of the glamping experience offered by Vacanze col Cuore.
© Riproduzione Riservata
