How much bandwidth does a holiday park need? A practical guide
Guests stream, work and game at the same time. Use this calculation method to determine how much bandwidth and what infrastructure your holiday park or campsite really needs.
How much bandwidth does a holiday park need? It is one of the most common questions from park owners — and the answer is almost always higher than expected. This article gives a practical calculation method, including the pitfalls around peak hours and seasonal pressure.
Why a holiday park is different from an office
In an office, usage is predictable: email, video calls and business software between nine and five. In a holiday park, consumption peaks in the evening, when everyone streams, games and video-calls at the same time. Moreover, each unit now has multiple devices per guest: phones, tablets, a smart TV and increasingly a laptop for remote workers.
A good rule of thumb: count on 3 to 5 active devices per unit during peak hours.
The calculation per unit
| Usage per unit | Bandwidth required |
|---|---|
| Basic (email, social media, music) | 10-15 Mbit/s |
| HD streaming and video calls | 25-40 Mbit/s |
| 4K streaming, gaming and remote working | 50-75 Mbit/s |
Multiply this by the number of units using the network intensively at the same time. In practice, that is 50 to 70 percent of the park during evening hours in high season. A park with 120 units and modern guests therefore quickly needs 2 to 3 Gbit/s of capacity on site.
Note: this is the capacity *inside* the park. The upstream connection can be lower because not everything peaks simultaneously, but it must sit well above the practical peak — count on at least 1 Gbit/s for a medium-sized park, with room to scale up.
Seasonal pressure and peak hours
The difference between a weekday in April and a Saturday in July is huge. A network that works fine in low season can grind to a halt in July. That is why you dimension for the peak, not the average. Bad weather amplifies the effect: streaming traffic rises by tens of percent when it rains.
Fibre as the foundation: why GPON fits so well
For distribution across the park, GPON fibre is the standard for new and renovated sites. One fibre ring serves dozens of units via passive splitters, with no active equipment in the field. That means low maintenance, a long lifespan and easy expansion of TV and Wi-Fi over the same network.
In our case study of Holiday Park Zevenbergen you can read how such a GPON network is phased in outside the high season, without inconvenience to guests.
Wi-Fi coverage is half the story
Bandwidth to the park is one thing; getting it to the guest is another. Pay attention to:
- One access point per unit or an outdoor network with professional radio planning — no consumer repeaters.
- Network separation: guest Wi-Fi separated from park management, tills and CCTV.
- Band steering: automatically pushing devices to the quieter 5 GHz band.
- Central management: seeing which access point is busy or faulty without driving around the site.
Worked example: park with 120 units
- 1Choose the desired profile: 4K streaming and remote working, so 50 Mbit/s per unit.
- 2Calculate with 60 percent simultaneous use at peak: 120 x 0.6 x 50 = 3.6 Gbit/s internal capacity.
- 3Choose a main connection of at least 1 Gbit/s with scaling to 2 Gbit/s, plus a 5G failover.
- 4Distribute with GPON fibre across the park and lay a dedicated connection point per unit.
- 5Install access points per unit or per group, centrally managed.
In summary
A holiday park's bandwidth should be sized for the peak evening in high season, not a quiet Tuesday. Allow 50 Mbit/s per unit and 50 to 70 percent simultaneous use, and choose an infrastructure — such as GPON fibre — that can grow with you. On our recreation sector page you can find out how we help parks from first survey to ongoing management.