Donna Genie describes how a campground's refusal to apply a Good Sam discount cost them an $85-night booking. The staff wouldn't bend the policy, so the customer went elsewhere. Rigid rules and undertrained employees lose more money than small discounts ever would.
$85 per night
$8.50 (10% of $85)
So a friend of mine is traveling across the country and they're having to make some reservations for short stays along the way because they weren't exactly sure when they were going to be able to leave. So they don't have a reservation. So yesterday she calls a campground to make a reservation because they wouldn't take it online. She calls, she talks to a lady who has a difficult time understanding her and they're having a difficult time communicating due to her accent. But overall, she says, oh, okay, here is the amount you owe. She scrambled through a bunch of rules, took a lot of information, said, you owe X number of dollars. We'll collect that today for your reservation. My friend says, oh, I have Good Sam. So she says, okay, give me your Good Sam number and I'll add that in and apply the discount. So the lady taking the reservation says, well, I can't give you the discount because you don't have the Good Sam. My friend said, well, I'll renew it before I get to your park. Right after we get off the phone, I'll go figure out what's going on and renew that. The lady says, nope, sor you'll need to pay the full amount right now without the Good Sam discount if you want to make this reservation. So what did my friend say? She said, I'll stay somewhere else. So this was a reservation that was going to be $85 a night. With the Good Sam discount, they would have had an $8.50 discount. So instead of making a one time exception or saying, yes, we'll double check that Good Sam number when you get here to make sure that it's activ. Now, this campground lost the reservation. So they lost not only one night stay for $85, but they lost all the potential stays in the future that this person may have had if they had an enjoyable time at their campground and they lost my business and anybody else who I tell or she tells about this. People talk in the campground world. Still talking about places that don't refund money, have horrible cancellation polic. People think about that and they talk a lot. So please don't make this mistake. Do you know how much it costs to get a customer for your campground? Everywhere is different depending on your marketing efforts, but I can tell you it is way more than $8.50. And if another person had called to make that same reservation and said they had Good Sam, they would have gladly accepted the same amount of revenue. So it wasn't even about the revenue. It was about a policy that is not well thought. Out and doesn't make good sense. So think about how you handle issues like this, where people may fall outside the bounds of your rules and it may not even be you as the owner, it may be how you tell your staff to handle it. Your staff doesn't always have the true big picture of an owner mentality, so make sure that you train your staff to do the right thing for your customers too. Customer service is a key. Keep it going, folks. Take good care of your customers, treat them like family, and make sure they want to come back and they talk well about your park.
