When you walk through the reception door, there is no doubt, you already feel welcomed into someone's home. Warmth in the smile and supportive gaze, we have arrived safely at the Campsite Ur Onea run by Pantxika Goya & his brother Roger.
In a few decades, the campsite on the farm of Marie & Joseph, their parents, has become a real quality outdoor hotel establishment while retaining the essentials: warmth and proximity as a guideline..
Meeting with Pantxika Goya, owner and director of Camping Ur Onea 3*.
In the Goya family, welcoming home is part of the DNA, Pantxika, the young sister of the trio, embodies it perfectly. She grew up on the farm of her parents Marie & Joseph. Like many bidartars of the time, they had set up a small apartment to accommodate “the summer visitors” as they were called in the past. They often came from the other end of France, these people passing through who took up residence there for almost a month, to enjoy the benefits of the Basque coastline. It was the beginning of the boom in tourism in the Basque Country.
Then the farm was reduced to make way for a beautiful area of tent canvas, and little by little the Ur Onea farm became a fertile land of another wealth: that of meetings during the holidays.
Pantxika, the least we can say is that you have come a long way with your team for almost 30 years? Tell us a little.
I joined the family business after my studies, I was hesitating at that time between different professional fields and then I very quickly returned to my first love: welcoming vacationers to our home in Ur Onea.
At first I thought of combining the two, it was still another profession at that time and then... I quickly realized that if you wanted to do things well, it wasn't feasible.
So my brother and I chose to take a big step and really get started: in 96, after 10 years of creating the campsite, we decided to double its capacity and increase it to 285 pitches. Tourism was booming and we really wanted to go further.
And when we see the establishment as it is today with its mobile homes, its aquatic area, its quality equipment, we can say that the objective has been achieved!
It’s obvious that when we look in the rearview mirror, we see that we’ve come a long way! It's a shame, we didn't take enough photos to illustrate the evolution but we really followed trends in tourism and customer expectations over time. We have an exciting job, a contact job that evolves a lot and which allows us and often forces us to question ourselves.
We are far from the campsite that I looked at at the bottom of my parents' garden with my teenage eyes. Today they are the ones who look at us with a lot of kindness and support because they know that despite the establishment's infrastructure, we have preserved the essentials: human relationships and the family camping spirit.
"We want to focus on our core business, namely: welcoming customers and guaranteeing a successful stay in our establishment"
![Pantxika Goya]()
And how do we increase the reception capacity of an establishment and its clientele while maintaining these values?
We choose our priorities and we work with our hearts. It may seem presumptuous to say it like that, but we have always made choices to stay this course and maintain the niche we have chosen. It's not the easiest niche, we wanted a campsite on a human scale, we remained independent, we resisted a few sirens that could have led us to more simplified management but we hold far too closely to our values. 'family business. We had to make concessions. For example, we no longer manage the campsite restaurant, it was becoming too complicated, we have enough to do with general management, catering is not our job so we delegated this part.
We want to focus on our core business, namely: welcoming customers and guaranteeing a successful stay in our establishment. We rely on our team to move forward, without it we are not much, we attach great importance to being a united team, in good times and in more difficult times, it is important.
Speaking of your team, it must be starting to attract people!
Yes, it too must have expanded over time! Between the permanent staff, the seasonal workers and then the partners with whom we have worked faithfully for decades. The tourism professions are evolving, we see like many that it is not always easy to recruit new employees, especially since we are really looking for personalities, souls who can bring the campsite's life to life and pass it on. We build very strong bonds with our customers, we see families, we meet them again every year, the children grow up, the anecdotes of holidays with us are sometimes anecdotes which will remain engraved for life, it is an enormous wealth to contribute somewhere in all of this.
That's really nice! We attach importance to customers and quality. I have been loyal to the Camping Qualité label since the beginning, I like this notion of network which allows us to professionalize the teams, gain in efficiency and guarantee optimal quality of services for our customers. In recent years there has been real repositioning work on the part of the label and it is taking on a very interesting dimension in customer relationship management which really appeals to me.
« I like to say that with us customers are families, stories and not reservation numbers. And we do not hesitate to emphasize it… »
![Pantxika Goya]()
Yes and then there is the ecological and environmental aspect which is also one of the items observed by this label.
Indeed, it is an important part of our activity but also of our daily life in general. Customers are careful about this aspect, that's normal, but we also all have common sense and an ecological conscience. When we observe the environment in which we evolved, between ocean and mountains, a stone's throw from a river and an agricultural environment, it is still logical that we put in place good practices to respect it and preserve our resources.
We also emphasize transmission, for example, we ask the lifeguards who monitor our aquatic area to talk about their passions for the Ocean, coastal rescue, sometimes surfing in order to show that there is much more than “the beach” in the Basque Country, there is a real local culture around the sea, its preservation and its unpredictable side.
Before we finish, can you tell us what the best time of year is when camping?
There are several but if we have to remember one: it's during the evenings. When you see everyone mixing, having a good time, laughing and relaxing with friends and family, it's truly pure joy. We're there and we tell ourselves that we're really participating in something powerful, and that what we've done, well, it's not so bad.
I have a thousand anecdotes from all these years camping, from the funniest to the cutest, some hilarious, some touching.
There are families whose parents we knew when they were teenagers and who now come with their children, it's very satisfying.
When we sum it up, it's really the simplest things that make up the best moments at home: shared happiness, reunions, encounters.
We hope so much to be able to continue on this line of conduct for a long time...Working with humility, sharing and kindness...
In any case, we're committed to it!
