How Do Caravan and Holiday Parks Monetise Their Tennis and Pickleball Courts When Guests Don't Bring Racquets?

The Short Answer

Australian caravan and holiday parks are having their biggest year on record: 17.3 million caravan and camping trips in 2025 (up 14%), $12.6 billion in visitor spend, and a record $3.3 billion in caravan park revenue (source: Tourism Research Australia; Caravan Industry Association of Australia 2026 State of Industry). Families — the core holiday-park market — took 37% of those trips.

And yet the tennis and pickleball courts many parks now list among their amenities mostly sit idle. Not because guests don’t want to play, but because guests don’t pack racquets on a road trip, and the gear is only handed out “during office hours.”

The fix is an unmanned 24/7 racket rental kiosk — a “dark pro shop” that runs with no staff and no closing time. Guests tap, pay, and collect a racquet or paddle whenever the urge hits. It’s a one-off hardware purchase with no fixed monthly cost: you pay a small fee only per successful rental.

The “Office Hours” Bottleneck Is the Real Problem

Look at how holiday parks actually run their courts today. A growing number of parks are adding pickleball and tennis as a listed guest amenity — it’s cheap to pour a slab and paint lines, and it photographs well in the brochure. Two real examples from park websites:

• Kerang Holiday Park (VIC) lists a “Basketball & Pickleball Court” among its facilities.
• Keppel Sands Caravan Park (QLD) lists a Pickleball Court — and adds the catch: equipment is “available for guest use during office hours” and “we require a security deposit for equipment.”

That last line is the whole problem in one sentence. The court is open all day; the gear is not. The moment the office closes, the amenity silently switches off — exactly when families on holiday are most likely to play: early mornings, after dinner, and the long afternoons between check-in and check-out.

The kiosk removes the two things that kill the rental: the closing time and the human in the middle.

The Boom Is Real — And It Lands on the Courts

The caravan and camping sector has moved past a COVID-era blip into sustained, record-setting demand.

Families are the engine: 5.6 million trips were taken by parents with children living at home, and the family segment grew its share to 34% of all visitor nights. A family on holiday is exactly the group that wants to grab a racquet and hit the court together — and exactly the group least likely to have packed one.

A Multi-Sport Kiosk Covers Whatever Courts the Park Has

Holiday parks aren’t uniform: some have tennis courts, a fast-growing number are adding pickleball, and bigger parks carry badminton or squash facilities. One Dark Pro Shops kiosk covers all five — tennis, badminton, squash, padel and pickleball — so the park doesn’t have to pick a sport to bet on.

That matters because pickleball is the one amenity parks are adding fastest. It’s one of the fastest-growing racket sports globally, and Australian participation has already passed 96,000 regular players (source: Pickleball Australia). A court that’s cheap to build and increasingly demanded by guests is a natural candidate for self-serve gear.

The Economics of a Self-Serve Court

A holiday park’s court is a sunk cost — the slab is poured, the lines are painted. The kiosk just makes it earn. A conservative picture on a single kiosk:

Because there’s no fixed monthly fee, a seasonal park pays nothing for the months the kiosk sits quiet, then serves the December–January peak at full speed without rostering a single extra hour. The capital outlay is typically a fraction of a year’s part-time front-desk wages.

And the deposit friction that parks currently manage by hand — Keppel Sands’ “security deposit for equipment” — is automated end to end. The kiosk captures a deposit at checkout, refunds it when the gear is returned, and logs every open and close with a timestamp. The park gets a clean audit trail instead of a reconciliation headache.

Seasonal Peaks Are Exactly Where the Kiosk Earns

The caravan sector’s demand is sharply seasonal: national cabin occupancy hit a record 64% in December 2025, and the December quarter set a new Q4 benchmark across every accommodation category. That is the precise window where a park’s front desk is busiest with check-ins, bookings and questions — and least able to hand out racquets.

An unmanned kiosk inverts that. During the peak it serves guests at full capacity with zero staff; during the trough it costs nothing. The seasonal swing that makes staffed hire hard to justify is exactly what makes a pay-per-successful-rental kiosk viable.

Key Takeaways

• 17.3 million trips and a record $3.3 billion in park revenue are flowing through Australian caravan and holiday parks right now — families first.
• Courts are a listed amenity, but gear is “office hours only” — the moment the office closes, the revenue stops. An unmanned kiosk keeps it open 24/7.
• One kiosk covers tennis, badminton, squash, padel and pickleball, so a park serves whatever its courts are set up for.
• Deposits and returns are automated — captured at checkout, refunded on return, with a timestamped audit trail instead of manual reconciliation.
• Seasonal peaks are fully served and quiet months cost nothing — one-off hardware, a small fee only per successful rental, no fixed monthly cost.

The park already owns the court. The only missing piece is the racquet in the guest’s hand — and that’s now a self-serve problem.

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Data sources: Tourism Research Australia (caravan and camping data, year ending December 2025); Caravan Industry Association of Australia 2026 State of Industry Report and Accommodation Insights (December 2025); Pickleball Australia (Mar 2026); public park websites (Kerang Holiday Park, Keppel Sands Caravan Park) cited as illustrative examples; Dark Pro Shops product and pricing model.