Interview with CampgroundViews com at CARVC

We're here at the Carolina association event and I'm doing some of these Facebook Live videos. So first off, I want to know if they're valuable. So comment below if you're liking these videos and we'll try to do more of them when we go to these events. And second, I have Donna here. She is one of the earliest members of this group, probably joining. There's only about 20 members. So I'm really been involved with helping grow this Facebook group and providing some great information. So the reason I grabbed her is she has literally been sitting on panels for the last two days talking about stuff. So if you're, you know, remember we were talking about going to an association event. Well, I'm bringing an association event to you here on Facebook. So, Donna, I appreciate the time and go ahead and share with them what you do and your expertise in the market.

Thanks, Mark, for inviting us. I'm with campgroundaccounting.com and we work with campground owners all across the country to help them grow their businesses and to minimize the impact of taxes.

So grow their business. You provide accounting services that helps them operate the park, Right? So do they. Should they be experts in QuickBooks when they work with you?

No, we don't even use QuickBooks. There's no need to even learn what that is.

You don't use QuickBooks. Okay, so that's going to be question one.

Right.

What accounting software should I have for my RV park?

Well, I want you to think about the tools that are used to earn me money. Okay. And I don't really care what kind of tools you use, but in our world, we use Xero accounting software.

Xero accounting software? Yes.

X, E, R, O and Xero helps because it is a software that was built in the cloud and it works in the cloud, and it allows us to connect direct to your bank account and really get those transactions pulling in automatically. Because I don't want to spend my time recording transactions. I want to help business owners really get to the bottom line, how to take that data and use it to grow their businesses and minimize taxes.

Okay? So when you're doing. I'll be honest with you, I'm a dummy on finance, all right? So I'm probably a good person to interview because I know nothing about this stuff. So it's kind of like I have an mba, so I've read some stuff, but I'm not an expert. So when you're interacting with the part in your role you're handling, like when they have somebody change, check in, right? At the park. How do you know that and how do you account for it and how does that work?

Well, of course I know, because cash is their bank account, hopefully.

Okay.

Okay. And secondly, I know we put into the point of sale system to get reports as well, to help them analyze how things are going to look at things like how they're pricing, what their occupancy levels are. We do a lot more than just the debits and credits that traditional accountants account handled for them.

Interesting.

We're looking at trying to make their whole operation work towards the bottom line of earning more profit and growing the business.

So you're actually. So you're not just assembling it and giving them. So you're actually saying, hey, you know, we're noticing that your occupancy is a bit low.

Right. Because we work with campgrounds across the country, we know a lot about their industry standards and about key performance indicators. They should do the patching. So when I see one of those pull out of whack, I'm the first one to say, hey, what's going on with this? Or if they did something great, let's figure out what it is so we can keep doing it or replicate that.

So what would be key performance indicators park operator should consider? Like if you had a list of the top five or whatever those are, what, what should they, what numbers should they have and how often should they be looking at that?

Well, the biggest one they all need to look at, note intimately, is profit. Net profit is the driver of everything else. If you don't have that, you've got a lot of issues.

What, how should they break that net profit down on like a, like an annual scale? Or should they be breaking it down to some incremental level like for, for guest or per site or. I mean, how should they look at that?

All of the above? Yeah, we want to look at it on the annual level because that gives us a capacity of what that business is doing. And then we can look at what the improvements could be and decide how much more that could affect the bottom line. But by looking at the more detailed things like the average per guest or the occupancy ratings, that tells us what capacity we have to grow even more.

And you can help do that. So let's assume somebody, they're like, nah, I don't need her help. I can do this on my own. How can they do it on their own? What should they do to be able to try to do this on their own?

Well, you've got to have A lot of knowledge. Okay. It's very difficult for somebody to be the jack of all trades. We all have our specialties in different areas. But it's kind of like saying, should I do without a lawyer? In a lot of cases you can. Doesn't mean you should.

What's that old saying? Only a fool represents himself or something like that. Is that what it is? Yeah. Okay, so key performance indicators. You've given us those software. You recommend this 0 spelled with an X. So I call it Hexo or like Xerox. It's like Xerox. I'm surprised Xerox hasn't sued any of this because all they did is remove an X from the name. But anyways, so Xero is the software over QuickBooks.

Why would you.

Is the reason you're using that because it's cloud based? Is that why you, you recommend it? Or is there other advantages that they could consider? They want to try to do this on, you know, they're doing it on their own. If they're doing it on their own, would you still recommend that software over quick?

Yeah, I do. I was a QuickBooks ProAdvisor for many, many years. And one of the problems that I saw was this is a software that was developed as a desktop version and then they tried to convert it to be a cloud based software. It's tough to convert things. And the advantage for Xero is that it was always built in the cloud for the cloud. And I think it streamlines a lot of things that confuse people. But I honestly get a lot of good feedback from people who see zero. And they say, wow, this is really clean and awesome. It's easy to find things. So we believe it's a better tool. It's a better tool for me because it allows me to connect to a lot more applications to get detailed analysis that we need to help our park owners. And we believe it provides a little cleaner benefit to our customers. They can even use their app on their phone, iPads, anywhere they're at. They access all the data and the tools that they.

Okay, so that's, that's a good answer. So then the next question, I want to go into some of the questions that, that you all have had on, on the group. So we'll break it up into two parts. So the first part we'll do the, the cost side. One of the questions you get asked a lot and you see the conversations go is what are some of the costs that I need to be aware of if I'm running an RV park? Like, what is, what is everybody's like, cost? Like, what do you see? See as like, these are the main costs you have operating the car.

What will it be in continuing operations? It's a lot of utility costs. I always hear issues about cable and wi fi, the ever changing costs, and it becomes more and more expensive to meet the customer's expectations.

Okay.

Amenities are another really big cost. If you've got a pool, insurance costs that go along with that. I, I look at costs in a lot of ways and even merchant fees. I hear a lot of people say, oh my, merchant fees are so expensive. But in reality, at worst, they're probably 3% of your revenue. It's not that big of a deal. Yes, we want to cut costs, but most people lose the big picture idea how much effort they put into saving costs. If they would take that effort and put it into growing revenue instead, it'd probably be a lot more beneficial.

We were having this conversation before this and you were talking about the merchant cost, and there was actually that conversation going on in the group like two days ago about, I only take cash and check. And your opinion on that subject is.

You take my money anyway, I'll give it to you.

So anyway, are you a fan of bitcoin?

I don't think that comes into play on the average population of the campground world yet. But someday I'll tell you this. Take that.

When it becomes as long as the value of form of payment, you say, take it, right?

I, I've run into a lot of cases. Parks and retailers in general, sometimes they don't take American Express. It costs a little more. Yes, it does. But raise your rates, accommodate that additional cost and roll it into your rate. Take people's money any way they want to give it to you. Make it as easy as possible for them to give you money.

You know, raising rates is, it's, it's probably the most delicate thing that, at least in my role, because, you know, at Campground views, we serve two audiences, right? We serve the campers and RVs, and we're campers and RVers ourselves, right? And then we also want to see parks succeed. And in that role, even, even though I don't like it because it's going to cost me more, I see the advantage of having parks starting to raise the rates because, and I think you'll agree with, with this, if they're raising their rates, unless they're just pocketing all the cash, they're likely putting some of that money back into the park improvements. Many. Is that what you're seeing too. Yeah, I do.

I, I think that the campgrounds, especially ones have been around a long time, underestimate the value that the consumer sees in their park.

Well, that's a good point. So they're underestimating the actual value of what they're providing.

Times. Have you seen a $300,000 coach pull in and they just paid $40 to spend the night?

Yeah, well, one of the arguments that some of our operators will say is, well, if I'm, if I go to $45 a night, then I'm going to go stay at the Walmart.

Maybe they don't value the park enough and maybe they should so that you can make way for somebody else who is willing to pay that.

That's a good point.

I always tell people to watch because the lower you price you may be kind of scraping the bottom and you're, you're missing the boat on the people who are willing to pay you a lot more for a nicer park and a better experience. I honestly see sometimes where parks are, you know, sitting in the 25, $30 range. I sometimes say, man, that must be kind of run down. Doesn't feel like they might be up to my expectations. I'm not a camping snob, but when I get there I want the electors to work and want to have a nice hooked up.

Yeah.

I want to have a decently level stop. I don't want to be in a mud puddle somewhere in the back.

That's a good point. So, and I guess that goes to, you know, the type of guests that they want. I mean, on the flip side, there's an argument to be made and I don't know if you have clients or you work with seasonal parks and parks that have seasonal guests. I mean the advantage with a seasonal guest is you're charging a flat rate for six months and it's guaranteed income. Right, right. You know, and if you have a season seasonal park, there's a waiting list a mile long of people trying to get into that because of that flat rate, the low cost.

Right.

So would you agree that there is an advantage for a seasonal park or, I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

There's an advantage in that you get that guaranteed revenue, but you really have to be careful that you're not locking out people who would have paid by a nightly site because they're going to pay a lot higher in a month than that monthly site with a pretty big discount interest. So I've run into part two, had a lot of seasonal who are Starting to shy away from that and saying, look, those people are taking my capacity that I could sell to nightly folks or people who are going to stay three or four days with us who will pay a lot more. And maybe that site is empty on a Wednesday and Thursday, but did they collect more revenue from the site? And if the site was empty, they probably didn't have any. Any utility costs either. So maybe even cheaper to operate that site and the profit is much higher than possible.

That's a very good point. Okay.

And especially with the. The number of RVs on the market now, you know, we've seen this tremendous expansion in RVs, and they're. We're now having a lot more capacity issues in places there didn't used to be that.

Well, you know, there's this battle going on between. I call them the old school campers. They're used to paying $30 a night. Right. You know, those guys. Guys and gals that, you know, they've been camping for 25 years, and a campsite should never be more than $30 a night. And we're seeing this shift like we got. I call them the second wave baby boomers who are coming out now, and they're the ones buying rigs now. But I think many of you would agree, those folks that are just buying their first RV now, they have no expectations, expectation on price because they're grounded in the price of a hotel. Right.

I was gonna say they're used to paying 150 bucks for $150 a night for a hotel. And now you're giving them the opportunity to have this great new experience with their family.

Yeah.

And be outdoors. They're not as price conscious as those folks that you're used to dealing with. And the biggest mistake that I see parks make is when they do hear that person who wants the 25 a.

Night and they listen to them, they.

Say, oh, I can't raise it.

I can't raise it. Well, that's. That's the number one objection. And you can comment below. But I. We see that objection over and over again where if I raise my rates, my existing customers will complain, and I don't want to deal with that complaint. Right.

Yeah.

What would your feedback be for folks who are concerned about that?

Usually I'm seeing that they take the one complaint they had even though check. Other people didn't complain, and they're focused on that one negative result. Look at your capacity. Look at the experience that your guests are having. If you have a Halloween weekend that's Just tremendously booked out. It's booking out a year in advance. You can raise the prices. We look more to a dynamic pricing model for that and that helps you accommodate. You do have places where you have a cheaper.

You just said a four letter word dynamic pricing model. That was a three word. But anyways, point being a lot of folks will be like, dynamic pricing, that's not good. And I was actually having a conversation with somebody yesterday about dynamic pricing. They were saying, yeah, our problem isn't occupancy on weekends. We're busy on weekends. Our problem is during the week. And I said we should have some dynamic pricing. They were like, oh my God, I'm not going to raise my rates. And I'm like, no. Dynamic pricing goes both ways.

Right.

You know, drop your prices during the weekend. Yeah. Okay, so that brought up another question. You're saying that what is the ideal occupancy for a campground or RV park? Because if you're running 100%, clearly you're, clearly you're not charging. Okay, so, so give us a number that they should be targeting as like an ideal occupancy or how should they do that?

It depends on seasons first off. But I would say if I just had to lay one number on the table, probably about 75 to 80%.

And that would be like your annual occupancy 75, 80.

Because if you go much above that, that tells you you need to expand or raise prices because you're not going to have enough to fulfill the capacity when you are going to be busy. You won't be able to take those last minute reservations because you won't have any room. And those last minute reservations should be the highest price reservation you take.

Really.

So an airplane two days before you got to go someplace, you know you're going to pay me.

So that's a good point. Okay, so say somebody's running at 80% occupancy and this weekend they have five extra sites and their rates, $45 a night. Are you saying that the with dynamic pricing, those rate should be $50 a night?

Yeah, yeah. If you have somebody calls today and says I got to get there tonight.

How much is it? And you say 55.

Yeah. If you use a good point of sale system and online reservation system, it's going to guide you through those so you don't have to make a judgment call or depend on your employees to make those calls because they'll go soft on it. Yeah, let that help you.

You know, that's a good point. And this Is if, if I can throw anything in here because we see it on the marketing side. One of the craziest things I ever see is all you call into a park to make a reservation and you say, hey, I want to be there for a week. For example, what's the weekly rate? Well, the weekly rate is $250 for the week. But do you have Good Sam now? I didn't, I didn't say I had Good Sam. The person on the phone offered me a discount.

Can I give you a discount?

Yeah.

Can I give you money? Can I give you money?

It's insane. So it sounds like what you're talking about is, is there systems you can put in place to kind of help automate this? And that's actually a good point because I haven't thought about that, that if you kind of maybe remove your emotions out of it a little bit. Is that, is that kind of. Absolutely.

The emotions that people feel, they feel rejected if somebody says their price is too high. And in reality they should learn that when they hear those words from somebody that your price is too high. If you're not hearing that at all, you're way too low. You should have people who will not pay your price. That's okay. And people need to understand that is okay. As much as we don't want to hear it. Camping is a luxury. It is not a necessity of life. People are worried about the prices of necessities and they feel like people should be deserving to have food and things like that that are a necessity. Camping is not a necessity as much as you love it.

But then on the flip side, and I can hear the argument coming from the phone right now on that as well, but I have a lot of people who live here, you know, and so there's parks out there that people live at. That's a different market though, right?

That is, that's a very different component. And when we start crossing the line into more of a long term guest in a park, you run into different considerations. And most of the time those lock in a little bit more where you can do a little less or be a little less creative, but nevertheless they should always have a price increase anyway.

Always have a pricing.

If you don't, you've got a lot of ground to make up. And then it becomes a really hard thing to make up. The pricing difference. If you were going to raise it 5% a year for three years, you didn't raise it. You said, that's too scary, I can't use that. Well now, three years from now, you got to raise your rates 15% to be competitive. That is a hard pill to sweat.

Well, and say in that model, so you didn't raise your rates three years from now, you go to sell the park.

Oh, you devalued it.

You devalued it because you know that. That'll be another question. There's some people on there thinking about, you know, what do I do long term, part of, part of the value. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, part of the value of your park is the land. But more important is the fact that you're running a business on it and it's based upon that financial cash flow. And so that goes two ways. Right. There's some. Not a lot, as many, not as many as in the past. There's some people, they get paid cash and check and that never hits the business bank account. So the bank, you know, the business isn't making.

Cheating themselves in the long run.

Right. Okay, that's a very good point. Okay, so I got you on the, on the cost, we had utilities and operations and all those type of costs. What main line items should they have or would you see a successful park having on the income side?

Well, I like to see that they take advantage of every opportunity they can for guests. A lot of people bypass some really easy things they can do with revenue.

Wait, easy money here.

Easy money. Easy money.

Okay.

One thing that we're seeing a big trend of is site lock fees.

Yeah.

So to be able to choose which site. Site you want to be in a park, people are willing to pay for that. I've just recently heard from a reservation system that when offered a site lock fee, 40% of the people are accepted.

Whoa.

They're paying 10 to $15 a night more to pick which particular site they're going to be at.

They're really seeing that high of a number.

That's. That was their comment. Yeah.

So if they're seeing that high of it, so would that. If I'm just, I'm thinking from your finance side. Marketing, usually marketing and finance don't get along very well. So this is a good conversation. But like, so when I hear that, I'm thinking that if somebody's willing to pay 10 or 15 bucks more a night, that means you're underpriced, doesn't it? Isn't that what that would say?

These, these fears of overpricing in a lot of cases are made up fees in the owner's mind. They don't want to hear a negative response. But in reality, they should be happy to hear a negative response. Sometimes that means you're getting closer to the sweet spot of pricing. And I look at pricing like supply and demand. There's always that teeter totter you gotta ride. If you price too high, you'll have a lot of supply because people won't buy. But as you lower the price and as you start to meet demand and make that teeter totter really into balance, you will see it in that some people will say, no, it's too high. The best response you want to get is, ooh, it's kind of hot. But they take out their credit card and hand it to you anyhow. That's when you hit the sweet spot of pricing. You got to make sure if you don't hear any complaints, you're way too low. And the market is telling you that they are willing to pay more with these sight license. They're a voluntary price increase and people want to pay you.

People are willing to pay for it. You know, that's a really good point because the other. On the flip side of that, we see a lot of. And we've been getting. Getting a lot of people recently that not. And they're not people, they're large investment groups that are buying up parks like, and. And they're coming in, they're buying up these parks because they can buy them, do some minor improvements. We got a great interview that's coming out here in a little bit that you'll see from. From one of the biggest owners, owners of mobile home parks in the nation. So that'll be a good interview. And he talks a bit about this. But the amount of money that they put into the park once they buy it is so negligible. It's just maybe it's one of those things where if you've been running the park for 10 years, you've been going there every day. You don't notice that the banister hasn't been painted right. You don't notice the little things where somebody with a fresh set of eyes comes in and says, you know, I'm gonna put a coat of paint on that and fix it. And that would be the way to overcome that. Ooh, it's a little bit high, wouldn't it? Free ice cream cone at check in.

Yeah. We talked a lot today about loyalty programs, and everybody looked at me with a mad scare when I said loyalty programs because they thought I meant a discount. That's the only thing they related to a loyalty program. Okay. I would never give A discount to make people ask for it or have.

Some reason or reason for discounts.

Yeah, the loyalty program is to let them have something more than they thought they were going to get. And usually it's a very negligible cost. If you gave them a free ice cream cone, what's that cost you? The parking? Hardly anything. But the value to the consumer is very high in comparison to your cost. They're figuring they would have had to pay $3 for that. And look at the smile on their kids face.

Yeah, we know there's a park in Montana, the Seventh Calvary. It's over by where Custard's last stand was. There's an RV park there right off the interstate. You have to get off the interstate, drive down a dirt paved road and then a half mile up this really dusty dirt road to get to it. So by the time you get there, you're like, my rig is dirty, my truck is dirty, I'm pissed off. And you walk into the office and they greet you with a hello, here's an ice cream. That's literally how they greet you. And I remember to the this day, you know, and I visited 5,000 parks and I remember that place because they, I walked in and they gave me an ice cream cone as a welcome.

Completed all of your rides to the day.

It was an expensive part. I didn't care.

Like, yeah, I didn't.

That's a very good point. Okay, so we've just made everybody a bunch of money. We expect dividends on this by the way, you can deposit them too. So if they want to. So now they're thinking, okay, we talked about the income side and you were talking about loyalty programs and other ways to capture potential revenue from deaths. Yes. And it's not. Let's talk about. Because we're again this whole conversation, I think it gets a lot of people nervous because we're talking about money. Right. That's a fear, right? Oh my God. It's going to cost money. Because a lot of folks view it from the current cost, from the consumer side. Right. They're like, well if I was that person, I wouldn't buy that or I wouldn't take it. Right. So let's flip it around a little bit. What are some of the things you've seen on the income side that drives a ton of value into the guest experience? What are your secrets and loves?

A lot of times it's really simple things. You mentioned earlier, taking a look at things that you see every day, you don't even see them Anymore. Have some outsiders come in, have some people you know come in who are willing to give you some critical comments.

Interesting.

And look at what's going on. I was in a park, had a beautiful mountain range behind the pool. Did an old truck that wasn't running anymore. It was parked by the fence. All I did, every picture I took of that mountain range, I saw that stinking truck, Volt panel truck. How much would it have taken for them to move that truck out of the way? They hide that thing somewhere else or take it to the dump even. But that is a memory that somebody formed. And a lot of these things are not high value or high dollar amount things. They are the experience of your guest. And because they live in that park and see it every day, sometimes they miss the obvious things that could increase an experience for a guest.

Interesting.

Yeah. We've even seen one of the parks we were at, had photo stations. You go out and take pictures with little things throughout the park or you do a scavenger hunt for the kids. So many of those things, they just don't cost much. They take a little bit of time to put them together. But especially, I'll tell you, if you got kids in your car, do some things to get those kids happy. If the kids are happy, mom and dad are happy. And those things really add a lot of value. And the kids will remember it, talk about it, and that makes mom and dad remember it too.

Amazing. So if they want it, obviously Donna's been a member of this group. She engages regularly. You see her commenting many times below and in the different comments that we've had on here. How else can they engage with you and kind of have a conversation with you?

Sure. My email is pretty easy. Donnaampgroundaccounting.com our website. I routinely do some blogs there as well that can be some helpful topics.

It's campgroundaccounting.com campgroundaccounting.com when you do those blogs, feel free to post them. Like a link to them on the group. Yeah. So because if you're not, it's not a sales letter, it's helping people, right?

Yeah. We try to look at a little tip or tidbit that might help any campground owner to take advantage of something or to make sure they're doing the. Doing the little things that can really flip them over the ice.

Very cool. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Let us know. We tried this out here at the show and if you like it, we'll do a lot more of these. If you have any questions. Leave them in the comment before. Don will be on there. I'll be on there in a little bit and happy to respond to them. We pleasure to have you as part of this group. This group is actually making a lot of waves. People know about it because of you. I mean, you're having such amazing conversations and helping one another. So thanks. I'll talk to you later.

Thank you.