MC Fireside Chats – April 9th, 2025

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with you for another episode of our podcast. We have a couple recurring guests here. We’ve got Joe Duemig from App My Community who will introduce himself in a second, as well as Kevin Thueson from KCN Campgrounds.

Welcome back, gentlemen. Glad to have you here. We’re missing a couple people today just due to a couple other prior commitments, but we have a couple special guests here that we’re gonna talk to you too. So why don’t we go around the room, just Joe and Kevin, you wanna start introduce yourself briefly and then we can have Lucy and Jen do the same?

Joe Duemig: Yep. So I’m Joe Duemig. I am the owner and founder of App My Community we make mobile apps for campgrounds to engage with guests and increase communication. So that’s me. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks Joe for being here. I’m excited. We’re gonna talk about Australia, man. I wanna talk about Australia a little bit.

Kevin, go ahead. 

Kevin Thueson: Yeah. My name’s Kevin Thueson. I’m one of the partners of KCN Campgrounds. We are a real estate investment company that specializes in buying campgrounds and RV parks. We currently operate a portfolio of nine parks spread across the country. All of those are part of the KOA franchise system, and we’ve been working with investors in buying parks for seven years now.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here. By the way, is the belief sign actually backwards behind you or is it just like the reverse camera effect thing?

Kevin Thueson: It’s just the reverse camera. 

Brian Searl: Okay. I didn’t know if it was like a secret code, like where you could get people more more believing in KCN that way or ’cause they had to study it 

Kevin Thueson: It’s just to see if you’re paying attention, Brian.

Brian Searl: Okay. I’m very rarely paying attention. You just caught me in a moment. Lucy, go ahead. 

Lucy Comer: Hi, I’m Lucy. I am co-owner and founder of Hadspen Glamping based in Southwest England. 

Brian Searl: Welcome, Lucy. Thanks for being here. What time is it over there? 

Lucy Comer: Nearly 7:00 PM 

Brian Searl: Alright, thank you so much for giving a portion of your evening to us.

Lucy Comer: I don’t mind.

Brian Searl: To discuss everything you have going on there. Jen? 

Jen Rice: Hi, I’m Jen Rice. I’m the general manager at Empire Recreation Management and WhoaZone and Empire Recreation Management or ERM. We design and consult on really water-based family entertainment centers or water-based experiences and developing your waterfront specifically in campgrounds.

And the WhoaZone you can see behind me if you’re watching here. But the WhoaZone are, again, water based family entertainment centers really developing waterfronts in existing areas. We go in and activate that waterfront to provide amenities for guests staying on site and then day use as well.

Brian Searl: Awesome. I’m excited to dive in here into all the things we have to talk about. I wanna spend five minutes here and maybe a little bit longer, just depending on what you guys want to talk about, but primarily to the, I guess the four of you would all be able to weigh in on this, right? Certainly even in the UK.

I want to talk about we’ve got a lot of data that we’ve researched with Scott Bahr, who appears in the show, who will be later on our show on Outwired on our other podcast about how the current uncertainty, the economic climate, the rapid changes that are happening even today in the American administration.

Like not saying whether you’re for or against somewhere staying apolitical here but just the rapid changes, like how do we think that is going to impact camper behavior, if at all in this season? Because we’ve seen some early signs that like reservations are up in early 2025, over 2024. Is that kind of hold and true with what you guys are seeing or anything you wanna comment on that?

I don’t wanna spend the whole show on it. Just briefly.

Kevin Thueson: I’ll jump in. I actually. I’m seeing the opposite of what you just said, Brian. I think reservations are lagging right now over where they were a year ago. 

Brian Searl: Okay.

Kevin Thueson: Whe whether accurate or not, I think there was a sentiment going into the end of 2024 with the election and a lot of unknowns.

Once that settled, I think people were secretly hoping there would be some kind of short transition period and then we’d settle and people would feel more comfortable. And what we’re seeing now is, the uncertainty is obviously still there for a whole lot of different reasons. And my interpretation of that is I think that people are still hesitant or on pause right now in finalizing some of their travel plans because of those unknowns.

Brian Searl: Yeah. And that’s what kind of makes me like, I feel like I’m afraid that the data’s not gonna be there until June when the kids get outta school. And by that time, I’m afraid it’s gonna be too late to pivot for a lot of the parks. If something happens. And certainly lots of things can change as they did in the last last three months really.

Let’s be honest. But last day, yeah, last day. Like for our audiences, who don’t know the, all the tariffs apparently are paused for 90 days now, but they’re not paused. They’re just reduced to 10%. But not for all countries, just for China. They’re still going apparently. And they’re raised to 125%.

I don’t know how people keep it straight. 

Kevin Thueson: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: You know how it impacts Canada or Mexico yet, or the European Union, because he specifically cited in his post that for the people who didn’t retaliate, but Europe proved retaliation this morning and so did Canada. 

Joe Duemig: I’m for the normal person. I don’t think anyone is paying exact attention to what the do and how they work to the, to an importer exporter. Their world has to be on fire right now. But in terms of the campground industry it’s one of those things where it’s hard to tell. We’ve seen, recessions happen before and a lot of times what happens is your more expensive travel.

Now one of the things is campgrounds have been raising rates over the past how many years to get a little closer in line with roof accommodations. But it used to be where campgrounds, when there was a recession, would have a better year because they were cheaper and people were traveling closer.

They weren’t getting on flights, they were staying close. I think it’s really going to depend on the type of campground. And where you’re at. Obviously the snowbird season next year could end up being very rough. We haven’t seen what that’s gonna look like. We have no idea what’s gonna be happening in tomorrow, October. October is when those season’s starting, right?

There’s how many parks that cater to Canadians and, there’s still the same type of wishy washiness skepticism, between the two countries. I think that those parks can, might have a rough time. I think your summer parks, it can probably go either way. Until so far, I don’t think any of this has shown up in anyone’s pocketbooks. That’s not that takes a little bit of time to go down that downstream. And once it does, the question is do they stop traveling altogether or do they stop traveling to, on flights? And so I think that’s gonna be a kicker and it’s gonna be, I think it’s gonna be something that’s gonna be hard to predict what people decide to do.

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think what we’re consulting our clients on is just having a backup plan and planning for the worst case scenario of all the possible things that could happen. And then hopefully you don’t have to deploy any of it. But at least you’re prepared for that to happen. I’m interested to hear two perspectives here before we, and then we’ll just move on to a different discussion.

’cause I wanna make sure we have time to talk to Lucy about her glamping resort into Jen about WhoaZone. I wanna hear Kevin’s perspective first, because what you just said, Joe, is very important. It’s where your park is, where it’s located. Kevin owns a number of parks in different locations, right?

Some of them are on the way to somewhere else. I’m really worried about those parks. I’m not I’m not so worried about the other parks that are in destinations, but also then we’ve had the conversation about what happens if national parks aren’t the best experience that they were in previous years because of layoffs or closures or staff trims or whatever, right?

I’m interested to hear Kevin’s take on that, and then I’d love to just hear briefly, Lucy, if you wanna talk about it, what your perception is from this, from the outside, even though the UK is obviously being impacted by it. 

Lucy Comer: Yeah. More than happy to give you our perspective. 

Brian Searl: Go ahead, Kevin.

Kevin Thueson: So Brian I think it’s a really good point.

But before getting into it I think it’s important to take a step back.

Brian Searl: Okay.

Kevin Thueson: And look at what, like what has really happened over the last six to eight years versus what’s been happening over the last 12, 24, 36 months. Because it’s really easy to get caught up in reservations year over year are not doing what we want ’em to do.

And then last year could say the same, right? Like we’ve got, we’re coming off of two, three years of in general relatively flat, maybe down a little, maybe up in certain markets in certain type of parks, but no one’s been having, 20% year over year growth on these, on camper nights in reservations, unless there’s some extenuating circumstance, right?

Brian Searl: Yep.

Kevin Thueson: And so we’ve seen this, the booking window shrink over the last several years, and I think it’s really easy to get caught up in while it’s just like the is this a problem or is it not? If you go back to pre-COVID trends. The average booking window was like the majority of reservations were being made within a week or two of the stay.

And I think we got really comfortable very quickly with people booking six, eight months in advance. And yes, there are parks that are like that and will always be like that. And those are really, like you were saying, those destination parks, there’s a wait list, there’s people trying to get there, they have to book as soon as possible.

But on average, your typical campground in RV Park, we’re not really seeing those reservations until last minute and we’re just barely getting into April. A lot of seasonal parks are just opening, so it’s too early to tell whether or not this uncertainty and all these sociopolitical issues are going to, like Joe was saying, trickle down to, our guest’s wallets or our parks themselves. We have to see it play out to see if it’s just a reversion back to what the traditional booking window used to be. Which, if we’re being totally honest, has always been a big appeal for RVers is the flexibility and, not having to plan everything out and have this agenda.

They wanna wake up in the morning and decide today we’re gonna go here or we’re gonna go there. And for operators, I think we experienced a lot of guest frustration in 2021, early 2022 of people who couldn’t do that anymore, and they missed the good old days. And I think to some extent we’re just getting back to those traditional behaviors.

And if you don’t apply the lens of let’s pull the, all the COVID craziness and the pandemic travel impact out of it. Are we really in a bad situation or are we just back to what the normal behavior was? 

Brian Searl: I think that’s a very important perspective and I agree with everything you’re saying that we don’t know.

And I think I said that earlier in the show, just that we need, we’re not gonna know until June, right? When the kids get outta school for sure is when the most parks are not gonna know. But what I think worries and concerns me beyond the Canadian, like we have lots of Canadian data that the border crossings are down, right?

30% in Vancouver, 30% in Maine, right above some of your parks in Utah. Kevin? I get not saying that you get a lot of Canadian travelers. I don’t know. I’m just saying. So we have that, a lot of that data, we have 70% less trips booked to the United States by air from Canada. So that’s having an impact.

China just issued an advisory that said their people shouldn’t come over here and travel. They did that this morning. And so that’s a lot of people who will come to our national parks and stay at both public and private campgrounds. And tour the United States. And so those two things alone, combined with every piece of data that Scott Bahr and I study, and we obsessively look at this, I think we have no lives.

I have no life. I can’t speak for Scott. He’s probably got a life. Everything that we look at doesn’t clearly indicate that things are headed the wrong direction, but it doesn’t look positive. And so that’s what.

Kevin Thueson: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Kevin Thueson: I don’t disagree with that. One thing I’ll add to that, and this is just from our parks, and again, every park’s different, every market’s different. We lost a lot of the international travel and the international guests during the pandemic. At the time when you know, in, in March of 2020, at that point I had one park and I would say, anecdotally, probably 30% of our guests in revenue came from international travelers, a lot of cruise, Americas Europe, Asia and we could even narrow it down to specific countries where they were coming from.

When travel closed down, we lost that customer base almost entirely. And it doesn’t feel like, at least within our portfolio, we’ve come even close to recovering. It was replaced in the short term by new, US, North American guests that were new to camping and traveling and camping more. That’s died off a little bit for the people who came in and then left.

But we still have the, the real strong active camping household base, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near where 2019 International RV travel was. The Canadian thing, obviously, I think there’s some other extenuating factors there. That, that are driving that. But if, I think we’ll feel an impact from that, but I don’t think it’ll be as big as if this was happening back, five, six years ago when a much more substantial amount of business was coming from international markets.

Brian Searl: Yeah, you might be right obviously nobody, we’re all guessing here. I’m interested to see, like I did read, I did quickly read the KOA camping North American or whatever outdoor hospitality report they call it. I can’t remember that came out today and I didn’t see anything in international travel, but I didn’t look at every specific stat.

But that is a very interesting question to figure out. I’ll see if I can ask Scott Bahr later on our show whether that’s down over 2019 international travel as a whole to the United States. That would be interesting to find out. Do you wanna touch anything on your different types of RV parks, Kevin?

Or I know there’s I agree with you. There’s nothing really to be pulled yet. Because it’s early, but. 

Kevin Thueson: Yeah, I think to bifurcate the data a little bit, to your comment earlier, your overnight parks, your journey style parks that are on your way to somewhere else, those parks have always had slow reservations.

So it, when we look at it, say and these are just hypotheticals, but if our year over year reservations are down 25%, if we look at prior years, what that percentage of people booking six months in advance was compared to our annual revenues. It’s very small. So yeah, we might be down single double digits on future reservations during Q1, but those Q1 reservations typically only account for, 10- 15% of our annual revenue.

So it’s not, it’s just, it’s really, it’s not enough data to really

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Kevin Thueson: Forecast out what it’s gonna mean. But your comment was, I think, spot on it, it doesn’t necessarily confirm that there’s something bad happening, but it also doesn’t make us feel very good. I think if everybody ran their reports and saw that reservations were up year over year, that would be a fantastic feeling.

But at the same time, that revenue’s gonna be down for the year. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. I think it just worries me from a, like I have so many clients that depend on my advice and I feel like I hate not knowing things and being able to give them a solid answer. So we’re just scrambling for all this data, the best we can get it but. 

Kevin Thueson: Forecasting has become much more difficult the last few years. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, for sure. Lucy, your outside perspective? 

Lucy Comer: Would you like my outside perspective on America or would you like the outside perspective about the UK? 

Brian Searl: I would like your outside perspective in any direction you want to take it. 

Lucy Comer: Okay. We’ve been finding in the UK , there’s major cost of living crisis over here. So whatever’s happening in America, we are kind of keeping it at arms distance because of what’s happening in the UK. Having said that, we have got so last year people were booking very last minute.

They weren’t planning in advance. Whereas this year our bookings for, we’ve literally just opened last weekend. Our bookings for April are double what they were last April. We’re finding a lot of people are wanting to stay a lot more local. There’s a lot less international. travel and as a knock on a lot less international visitors.

So last year we had quite a few international visitors. We haven’t got any this year at all. So I think it’s very much a worldwide thing. It’s not just specific to either the UK or America or Europe. People are just staying closer to home. I think they don’t like the uncertainty so much. Yeah, I mean we’re busy.

We’ve got bookings right the way up through all the way through the summer which is massively different from last year. I think Covid really introduced this like gung-ho, I’m gonna go on holiday and go now. And people were, and that’s carried through for a couple of years and we’re seeing it starting to tail off and people are likely to plan a bit more now.

Brian Searl: Now are you saying, I’m just curious with your international travel, are you saying it’s down all over? Like even from, for example, France and Spain and Croatia and people who would come to the UK that are closer. 

Lucy Comer: From certainly from our perspective, yes. I can’t speak for the rest of the UK, but our site certainly where we had quite a large amount of international travelers last year, we haven’t got any.

And I don’t know what that is. The data that’s been released locally for my area is shown that tourism generally is up as a whole. So whether that’s just international visitors are being more diluted by local visitors, I don’t know. It’s quite hard to read the data if I’m perfectly honest, because it’s so varied from place to place in the UK ’cause we’re so small.

Brian Searl: Yeah, we did look at, last week we had Simon on from Camp Map and he gave us a really nice report that was from a big marketplace over there in Europe and he was basically mirroring the same data and trends that we’ve seen here. Like shorter night stays, staying closer to home, that kind of stuff.

I don’t wanna cite any data ’cause I’m old and don’t remember what happened yesterday, let alone last week. But similar trends, right?

Lucy Comer: Yep.

Brian Searl: But it’s interesting, we’re seeing the same thing in Canada. Like for all the economic concerns that we would share with other countries in the world in Canada because of the US thing.

Everybody is saying home in our campgrounds are like way up in reservations ’cause everybody’s exploring Canada from what I’ve heard. Anecdotally. But it’s interesting but points to the same trend that you’re seeing now. People are staying home and that’s benefiting the UK campgrounds.

Lucy Comer: Absolutely.

Brian Searl: Which is a great problem to have.

Lucy Comer: Yeah, it’s a good problem to have, but it’s a whole new problem. 

Brian Searl: All right, let’s, I want to get, I want to definitely get to talking about your actual glamping resort into woe zone. And so is there anything else, Joe, that you think is constructive that we should add to this conversation or from a camper perspective since you travel so much or anything like that?

Joe Duemig: No, I don’t know of anything in particular. I mean our stuff, like what we do and what people I know do that hasn’t seemed to change too much. And that’s completely anecdotal ’cause we’re talking about, five different people. But but yeah, I think we’ve covered pretty much everything else.

Like I said, the parks that I’m really concerned the most for, like the ones that their entire clientele is from Quebec. They speak French at their park.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Joe Duemig: They have Canadian flags. Those are the ones I’m really concerned with for next season. If things don’t sell down I have a lot of concern for them.

Brian Searl: Yeah, those two, I mean that piece and then I like, it really concerns me with the places near national parks too. And some of that is the staffing and doge cuts and some of it is the Canadian and international travel.

Joe Duemig: And that could go either direction though, and that could go either direction. If it could parks are taking services away from the campground, but still manning the park, then those could go up because they might, people might start staying more at the local private campground as opposed to the park the National Park Campground. 

Brian Searl: It could the only reason it concerns me is ’cause we ran this on Outwired a few weeks ago back in February, before like it really got bad with tariffs and sentiment.

And we had Scott Bahr on the show and he looked at the data we ran and we said basically we use the really powerful thinking model from open AI and ran some research in advance and said what happens if 10% of campers from international, just 10% from Canada, Europe and Asia, don’t come to the United States and don’t stay at private campgrounds within 30 to 60 minutes of RV parks or national parks, sorry.

And it said the potential loss revenue would be, I think $30 million. And then if it’s 50%, which is what the AI thought it was anticipating, if all the tariffs went into effect and all the things happened, then it’s $450 million in lost revenue just for private campgrounds in 30 to 60 minutes of a national park.

So that’s why that worries me. But you’re right, it could go the opposite direction too, and there could be Americans that fill in that gap, right? I don’t know any of that. But anyway, that’s enough negative potential talk. Let’s talk about happy things. So how’s been glamping, Lucy? Tell us what you got over there.

Lucy Comer: So we opened we’re now in our third season opening. We’re based in Somerset in Southwest, UK. We started it because I’ve always gone camping. I took my daughter when she was two weeks old. I took her camping. So we started has been glamping as a way to introduce camping to people who aren’t great at camping.

And there’s quite a lot of those in the UK. So we opened this is our first, second, fourth season. First season we didn’t have a full season. We are a completely off-grid site there. We’re not connected to main’s electricity, main’s water, main’s gas, everything’s solar powered. We’ve got LPG fridges, very sustainable site set in rural Somerset.

And people come from all over to visit. 

Brian Searl: So I’m curious, how long have you been open? I’m sorry if I missed that. 

Lucy Comer: The three, so this is our third year. But the first year we didn’t do a full season opening ’cause I ended up having spinal surgery halfway to season. So we had to delay opening. So this is our second full year.

Last year we were, it was our first full year and in that year we won UK Glamp Site of the Year Bronze Awards for New Tourism Business of the year. Glampsite of the year as well. So it was a really successful full first year. 

Brian Searl: So I hope you’re feeling better from your spinal surgery. First off.

Lucy Comer: Yeah, it, yeah, it was, I don’t go a speedboat. It’s long story, but yeah. Don’t go on speedboat. You end up with an accident. 

Brian Searl: That doesn’t, yeah, that doesn’t sound very pleasant. So tell me, I’m curious you’ve obviously won a lot of awards. What do you think made you stand out and separated yourself from some of your competition to allow you to win those awards?

’cause it’s not just one, right? It’s multiple. So you clearly have done something different. 

Lucy Comer: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s the quality we’re offering. We’re a very sustainable site. We’re very involved with local suppliers. We’ve used as many local suppliers as we can where possible. Sustainable tourism in the UK seems to be a really growing industry.

And it’s that escape from city life. You can come to our site, you’ve got all the modern amenities that you need, like a hotel style accommodation, but it’s set in the countryside around a camping theme. That’s the appeal of it, is that it’s a complete disconnect from this really busy, modern world that people are finding themselves in.

Brian Searl: How important is it, because we talk a lot about experiential hospitality over here in I’m in Canada, but in the United States too. Differentiating your experience. I think there’s a lot to be said by that normally, but also in. Potentially down economic times, just making yourself stand out and apart from your competition, how important do you think that story?

Lucy Comer: Yeah, I think it’s a really important story to get across. Your, with our glamp insight and certainly within the industry, we realize we are not just, we’re not selling accommodation, we’re selling an experience for people, is a chance for people to experience a type of life that they wouldn’t normally get in the city or even in the towns that you get around us.

We are incredibly rural. Our nearest neighbors are half a mile away, so it’s an experience rather than a holiday accommodation we offer. 

Brian Searl: What do you find the best way is to tell your story to consumers? Because it’s one thing to put up a website and say, Hey, we’re sustainable and we have eco-friendly composting and we have solar panels, or whatever. But it’s another thing to actually resonate with the guests and get that,

Lucy Comer: I think.

Brian Searl: Understand it. 

Lucy Comer: Yeah, I think for us, it’s our love of what we do that comes across I absolutely adore what we do. Is it, we do have a, another business on site. That, but that’s my husband’s business.

This is mine. And I think as long as you wear your heart on your sleeve and you show people why you love it, they fall in love with it too. 

Brian Searl: Kevin, what do you think about that? ’cause I know you emphasize service at your properties quite a bit. 

Kevin Thueson: Yeah, I think it’s spot on. It’s for us it’s hard to compete sometimes with some of the larger. Investment groups that can throw as much money as possible at problems. And our model is we’re buying existing campgrounds only, which means they’re built 40, 50 years ago. And they’re not the nicest always. And we’re, where we feel there’s an opportunity to stand out, has to be on the guest experience and the hospitality aspect.

And that is an arena where anybody can compete. It doesn’t matter what your budget is. It doesn’t matter how big your company is. If you can provide, like Lucy say, if you can provide that experience, that’s special that people are gonna remember, that they’re gonna wanna talk about that is different from anything that any of us have experienced at any hotel that we go to, right?

That’s why people look to these types of locations and experiences because we’ve all been at hotels, we know what it, we know what it is and we want something different. 

Brian Searl: I don’t want you to give away your secret sauce, but is there anything else besides service that you really feel levels up a KCN property?

And here’s why I’m asking, lemme set the precedent to that. I think that there’s obviously, like all of your parks are KOAs, right? I think there’s a lot of power behind the KOA brand. There’s a lot of good that it does. It brings a lot of business into people who are franchised with their brand and they have obviously a very well-known and highly regarded set of standards that they make everyone keep up with, that obviously helps you have a baseline and a foundation that’s probably ahead of a number of other typical RV parks that would not be doing that in across the United States, Canada. So like service is one way that you would set yourself apart from like just, I also have a miniature golf course, I also have a swing pool. I also have patio sites. I also have a dog run. Are there other things that KCN does or is thinking of doing, again, without giving away your secret sauce, but just that you think would set you apart in an era of that experience? 

Kevin Thueson: I don’t know that any of it’s really secret. A lot of it’s kinda standard playbook approach that a lot of people are doing.

For example it’s just understanding what guests are looking for, right? And then trying our best to listen to them and apply it. There’s no magic about increasing your wifi speeds and improving your distribution system so that people can get connected and work while they’re traveling, right?

There’s nothing special about it. You just have to do it. We try and take on the little things and if you can deliver consistently on small little things over time, that builds momentum.

Brian Searl: A 100% agree. I think my

Kevin Thueson: Outside of just making sure that you’re in the right markets and you understand that, you’re gonna be in a place that people are gonna want to go. You just have to not give them a reason not to come. 

Brian Searl: Which is a big part of it. I guess where I wanted my, and all of those are valid points and very important. I think where my more so question was is let’s say we are headed into. Joe used the R word recession. Didn’t say we were in one, but used the R word.

So let’s say we are headed into a little bit tougher economic times than we’ve had in the past, just to play it conservatively. Are there ways that you look at from an operator standpoint at your properties to say alright, I’ve got six campgrounds around me close to an, I’m just making something. I’m not saying just one of your parks. I’ve got six campgrounds around me that all have miniature golf courses and all have good wifi and all have good pools. How do I level up that service beyond that. Service is obviously the number one, the friendly human staff, right? But is there anything else that you would do as an operator to not be, but after you’ve taken care of the basics?

Kevin Thueson: I don’t think that we’re unique in this way, but we definitely see there’s two approaches to this business and ours has been, let’s lean in on the fact that this is a people based business. And how do we engage with our guests and yes, we may have the same amenities as somebody else, but are we actively trying to connect with them?

As an example, if you were to take mini golf, or we’re putting in pickleball courts at some of our parks, that’s a great amenity to have. But you can level it up by saying, okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna organize a tournament and we’re gonna have prizes and we’re gonna try and get guests involved.

And there’ll be a reason for them to participate and, we can do brackets and raise the stakes and those types of things. They’re not difficult to do, but it takes time, it takes energy, which is always a challenge with the people on our teams that are running these parks on a day-to-day basis.

It’s just hard. It’s a lot of work. So to ask them and to get them to want to do those things is a challenge where the other side of the business is, people come in some groups are coming in from, maybe more of a self storage background or apartment investing, and now they’re getting into RV because there’s a great financial return possibility within this asset class.

But they apply that mentality of let’s automate everything. Let’s streamline it. Fewer people, less interactions, less friction points. We’ve seen and you guys have probably seen this too. There are RV parks out there now that are basically, there’s nobody there. It’s all automated, electronic.

You get a QR code, you scan it, that turns on your power. They’re gonna be guests that are more than happy to not have to talk to anybody or see anybody. But the way that we approach it is we think that’s a small set of the people who really

Brian Searl: Agreed

Kevin Thueson: Want to camping. It’d be outside. And so let’s focus more on, how do we add some to your point, some like some special sauce or some flare to the amenities that we have and the activities that we do that would give somebody a reason to, Hey, my kids are gonna have more fun at this park ’cause they can do X, Y, and Z.

Versus if we go here, it may be more simple. We don’t have to deal with people. It’s new or it’s fresher, but once we get there there’s nothing for us to do unless we figure it out ourselves. 

Brian Searl: And that’s, I think what I was going after right? Is your example of the pickleball court and the tournaments is perfect.

It doesn’t require a huge lift from owners to do this stuff, but it does require some thought and understanding and looking at things outside of the box and what can I do? It’s even as simple as like I have a dog park or I have a dog park and I hand out little baggies with treats when you check in, right?

It’s something as small as that. So I’m curious, Joe, as you travel around the country with your family, how do you differentiate these places? Is it like, what kind of experiences have you seen or looked for? 

Joe Duemig: I don’t know. So we obviously we are not your average traveler. One we’re coupled with business.

For me it has to be a park that I think not has to be we definitely stay at parks that we don’t think would be a good business opportunity. But we also travel six children, so that obviously changes where we end up going a lot of times. So one of the things that turn us off is bad customer service.

When they don’t recognize you with the, not recognize like know who you are, but recognize your existence as you walk in to the camp store, something like that. Friendly staff is getting to be the thing that separates any place from anywhere else now because I think I’m sure Lucy would say that in the UK it’s probably the same.

I imagine it’s the same as it is here in that it’s been harder and harder to find people that, enjoy their job, want to,

Brian Searl: Why do you think that is? I don’t mean to interrupt you, but why do you think that is? Because you think, like we’ve been talking for so many years, KOA has given sessions and OHI has given sessions and say, associations have given sessions and you know that this is best practices, a smile at your guests and be friendly.

So why do you think after all these years, instead of it trickling up, it’s trickling down or at least it’s perceived to be trickling down? 

Joe Duemig: No idea. I don’t know. You can make a bunch of assumptions, but they’re just assumptions. 

Brian Searl: You’ve got to know. That’s who we have podcast about.

Joe Duemig: I know you enjoy ’em a lot. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Sorry. Continue your thought, please. I didn’t wanna cut you off. 

Joe Duemig: No, that that’s really it in terms of picking a place, we’re mostly picking where we’re going first and then finding a location around it that looks to be fun and can provide us the experience we want there.

So there’s certain places that we go that the experience that we want, there is just a campground. There’s certain ones where pictures on the website didn’t, we sit at Lake Siskiyou and near Mount Shasta California, and the pictures did it because they have a waterpark like you see on Jen’s background except instead of trees in the background, Mount Shasta with a bunch of snow on top of it was there in July.

And so that’s that’s just an experience that you’re not going to get many places. And that’s kinda what drives where we travel. 

Brian Searl: Okay. So I have one more question for you and then I’m gonna get to Jen and talk about WhoaZone. With all the clients that you have who use App My Community, your apps surely you’ve come across as you program, you and your team program, these apps with experiences and events and all the things that, that go into that.

Surely you’ve come across some things where you’re like, wow, I would totally stay there with my kids and do that. 

Joe Duemig: Oh yeah. There’s a ton. So actually one of our early customers, they have. Just as an amenity, which I very rarely see this is they have a bunch of different water equipment, paddle boards, paddle boats all of that stuff except it’s free to use.

And then what happens is they’re allowed to book it at hours. You go and book an hour at a time, and so you can book two paddle board boats for an hour and then you book it through their app. You go there, you show up and you get to use it and turn it back in right after it. It’s just, they have a, probably five different types and a total of 10 to 15 pieces of equipment that you can just rent out and use.

And it’s not, it doesn’t, it’s not an extra cost, it’s just included in the resort fee, which that’s nice, especially when you have six children. Because for us, those costs just keep going up, when you have incremental costs on a per person basis. So that is pretty awesome. I’m on the spot, so I can’t give you a few other ones.

Brian Searl: Mean it, blew your mind. That’s what I’m looking for, right? So you’re like, wow, I’ve never seen another park do that. 

Joe Duemig: One of the things, so we get all of our push notifications from all of our apps, and so what we typically do is we have a private Facebook group just for our customers. And anytime someone comes up with something novel we’ll take a few screenshots and send it out to our customer base saying, look, here’s what they’re doing or what they did.

That’s interesting. And I’m, kinda at a loss of exact things, cus customer service not necessarily wowing you over but just that little extra factor is one place they have cookies and treats for the dogs. And the children, they have both.

And so they covered both bases there, which normally people cater to one or the other versus both. I’ll think about it and we will see if I can remember something by.

Brian Searl: Alright. Think about it. Lemme know. I think the big takeaway here though is you could, like you, you can, obviously, we’re gonna talk about WoahZone in a second, do something amazing like that, that is gonna, enhance the experience at your park and that’s gonna bring a lot of guests, right?

But I think the other thing to communicate here, and I just wanna make sure I say, is that it doesn’t always require I don’t know how much your stuff costs Jen. I’m just gonna make something up, but a $100,000 or a couple million dollars for waterpark or whatever, right? Investment to actually change that guest experience.

And I think that’s the important thing that I want some of the owners to know in the show. You don’t have to make that investment to change this experience. You just have to think about, and Jen just left, she just left the show. She’s like that. He took too long to get to me. So hopefully she’ll come back.

But I think that’s the important piece is it’s just a little, it’s a little lift, right? We were talking a couple weeks ago on Outwired about grounding. In the, like taking your shoes off and like creating an area or actually, no, that was my AI post that on LinkedIn, nevermind. That’s what that was.

But we were never, were talking about it on Outwired. But just creating like a clean space in grass that obviously you have to manicure and you have to take care of and it can’t just be a gimmick, but like it doesn’t cost that much to do that. And then it saw it in KOA’s report again this morning.

They were talking about it’s an increase in desires to do that grounding, which is basically where you take your socks off and walk around in your bare feet and nature in the grass. And so just those kinds of little ideas I think are important to let owners know that this stuff can happen for them very quickly and very easily if they’re just willing to think outside the box a little bit.

Then she just left again. I was just gonna go to her.

Joe Duemig: I was gonna.

Brian Searl: It’s killing my whole flow. 

Joe Duemig: I was gonna pause, but now I remember, and I think I might have talked about this on the show before, but there’s a small nice, very nice campground in Grove, Oklahoma that as soon as you pull up, they wait until you get all set up, you get one.

They checked on us while we were set up and they need, they said, oh you’re set back a little further. Do you need an extension cord? And they brought out an extension cord for us. That was a nice, that they noticed that we were gonna need it before we even pulled in. They waited until we were set up and then brought us each a little glass of champagne and probably not, I’m sure it’s not an expensive champagne, but it makes you feel very welcomed. And then on top of that, they do, I don’t know if it’s only on the weekends, but they take their cart and they bring margaritas to each site. And then we had six children, so they brought strawberry lemonades for each of them.

Obviously for most parks that’s gonna be a cost center. That’s, it’s gonna be cost prohibitive and time primitive. There are 40 to 50 sites, but they have two restaurants on property. And so it’s getting people to feel that comfort with the place and bring them to the restaurant. We were much more inclined to go both nights.

We were there, we ate at the restaurants, they have two. And so we sat at the nice restaurant one night, we went and did trivia at the sports bar that’s above it the next night. And obviously bringing eight people in there. They made a good amount of money off of us. And it might’ve just been the, that, that user experience of getting, feeling like, feeling like they cared when they brought us margaritas after we, at five o’clock oh look what’s here. It’s, I think that’s a thing. It could be expensive, but it couldn’t do really well. 

Brian Searl: And that linking it together is interesting too, right? Just the psychology of, and I don’t know what they brought you, if that was from a restaurant. I also don’t know if they bring everybody champagne or just celebrities like you.

I’m not sure. But we’ll assume that they do. But linking that stuff together, right? Like in thoughtful ways. And obviously most campgrounds aren’t gonna have a restaurant on staff on site, but if you can even give them a little small good from good thing item from your store, right? That’s cheap or super expensive, it allows them to remember in their head and recall that, oh, you have a store with other things available, right? Just stuff like that I think is important to consider.

Jen, are you back with us? I’ve tried to toss it to you like 18 times. That’s maybe more an exaggeration. 

Jen Rice: I’m here. I don’t know. I look frozen. Can you hear me? 

Brian Searl: You are frozen. I can hear you though.

Jen Rice: It’s so horrible angle. I’m sorry.

Brian Searl: There’s no water park behind you either. You lost that.

Jen Rice: I know. I lost, I had to switch to my phone, you guys. It turned all robotic.

Brian Searl: That’s okay. We have listeners on the podcast too, so if we can hear you. Let’s let’s talk about WhoaZone real quick. 

Jen Rice: Okay, awesome. Yeah so like I mentioned, the WhoaZone. We are water-based family entertainment centers and we are really all about, camera’s not working. All about activating an existing body of water. Whether it’s inside of a campground, a city park, a state park. So our WhoaZone are actually located, we’ve got three locations currently. We’re in Texas, Indiana, and Michigan, and our WhoaZone locations currently we’ve got one in a state park and the others are in city parks.

And we’re a public private partnership and, our goal is to get families recreating back in nature. So similar to your visitors at the campgrounds very similar target audience where, it’s getting them away from that concrete and chlorine and experiencing, a really thrilling type of attraction or maybe a passive recreation out, out in nature, kinda at these bodies of waters.

So most of our WhoaZone are located on Lakefronts. But we have had some locations on kinda on the ocean front, on an inlet. So really kinda, we’ve got a lot of options when it comes to the low zone. But it’s really, about like you guys talked about providing that great guest experience.

I come from the theme park world my goal is when a guest comes to visit us, whether they’re staying on site, at the campground we partner with or they’re just visiting from down the road, is to really provide that immersive experience and a little bit of escape from reality.

Whether it’s for an hour or two that they’re gonna spend with us or if they’re gonna spend the day with us. 

Brian Searl: And I want you to know that camera is being off, is probably working in your favor. ’cause we’re all just imagining like these huge structures that are just wonderful and amazing, like it looked good behind you, right?

But now our imagination are just going crazy. So like you’re just gonna have to fulfill all these orders if people call. And want things that you don’t currently have. So just be aware of that. 

Jen Rice: That sounds good. 

Brian Searl: But I am curious, like we see, I wouldn’t say a lot, but there are a handful of vendors that we come across that offer a similar product to yours. So I’m curious what differentiates your product from the others in your mind? 

Jen Rice: So think what differentiates us is that not only can we provide the product or provide the site design and recommendations, but we are operators and my role as the general manager, that is my primary role is I operate the WhoaZone.

So we are in really in the trenches similar to our customers and clients. Where we’re hiring on the seasonal staff to launch for the summer we’re interacting with the guests. So I think we bring that next level to the table in that, we see it from all sides.

So it’s not just, Hey, we’re gonna sell you an inflatable waterpark, good luck, have fun. We can really come in and, help get it set up and whether that’s us coming in and actually operating it as a WhoaZone or something similar or providing consultative services to help, get our clients there.

Brian Searl: All right. I wanna put you on the spot like I did, Joe, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever built for somebody? 

Jen Rice: Ooh, that’s a good one.

Brian Searl: And if can’t think of that. If you can’t think of that, then I’ll give you an out. I’ll say, what’s the craziest thing you would build if somebody gave you the opportunity to.

Jen Rice: Oh goodness. We have some, I can’t spill the beans, I don’t think yet because we have some really cool things on the radar that are probably a summer 2026 initiative.

Brian Searl: You can tell us. Nobody really watches the show though. 

Jen Rice: But, think bigger and wilder than ever. Because I think, as we’ve seen as new products come out the guests, they just want more.

Again, I’m a, I’ll say I’m a, like I said, a theme park person. I love a great rollercoaster. And as they get bigger and badder, we just want more and more. And I think it’s very similar for our thrill seekers that visit us at woe zone or that are purchasing equipment to provide great experiences to their guests.

It’s kinda how can we get crazier? But, and I’ll say with a very big caveat, keeping guests safety at the forefront. Because of course, we are dealing with water. Some of these lakes are very deep. We’ve got dark water. So ensuring that it’s a safe experience and that our team is trained properly and adequately so that the guests can really have that cool experience that they’re looking for. 

Brian Searl: Which is why I can never own a business like yours. I don’t like dealing with all the regulations and concerns and thinking about, I just wanna build crazy stuff.

Lucy, I’m curious for you with your, with all the sustainability things you do, and I know you talked about solar panels and some other things, are there ways that you feel like in the coming years that you can really double down on that sustainability and set yourself apart from even the other glamping businesses in the UK that do sustainability?

Lucy Comer: It’s a hard one because sustainability is constantly evolving. And that there’s always new technologies that we can introduce and new ways to do things. And I think for us, as long as we are, we keep on top of things and are listening to our guests, to what they want and how we can enhance their stay, that’s what we can be guided by.

So I would like to make us more sustainable if we can. But at the moment, I don’t know how it will depend on what new technologies come around. 

Brian Searl: Okay. That’s fair. I know a little bit about it and but not anywhere close to what you do. So I was just curious if there was something that was maybe too expensive right now and maybe in year four or five that you could do or those kind.

Lucy Comer: Yeah, so one of the things is a lot of the guests we’ve got an awful lot of electric cars over in the UK now. And because. ’cause of where we are based in the UK our nearest EV charger is six miles away. So it’s working out how we could introduce that technology to an off grid site that has no electricity supply.

And it, there are technologies evolving with it. And I think as long as we’re keeping up to date with that and what’s going on in the industry I think that we can evolve that as it goes. 

Brian Searl: And what guides your, like when you’re looking to add either a sustainability feature or something else to your glamping resort to enhance it in some way, either the experience or the efficiency of the operations or, teams, staff what kind of guides your decision on where to go first with that? Because there’s so many things you could do.

Lucy Comer: Yeah, the problem is that the scope is so large as to where do you stop really. You could you could introduce so much that it then for example, with some technology, you could introduce so much sustainability with technology alone, you’re gonna bamboozle or your guest and then that’s not a guest enhancement.

Brian Searl: Be overwhelming.

Lucy Comer: Yeah, it can be. So for us it’s very much about testing it. So we tested all of our solar panels and that they were gonna give us the power that we needed and that they were simple to use and that nothing was gonna go wrong with them. So I think that’s our guiding principle of A, is it appropriate, and B, is it usable?

There’s no point in putting it in if it’s not gonna be usable for guests. 

Brian Searl: That’s fair. That’s a good point. Kevin, how do you guide this? Where do you stop at KCN. 

Kevin Thueson: There’s a balance and it’s hard because there’s a lot of things we’d like to do, but we always have to apply the lens of how is this gonna impact our returns to our investors and our financials.

And so there’s a lot of things that we would really like to do, but financially we can’t justify it. And so we have to take steps to maybe if we invest into these more specific revenue generating improvements, that will provide us a little bit more flexibility in investing in these other things that may be more guest focused, that will have a qualitative impact on the part versus a quantitative. And so that’s the challenge for us. And when we look at some of our peer groups that, maybe they don’t have outside capital and anyone who’s an operator who’s going through this thought process of do I bring in investors, do I bring in partners?

It does change the way that you approach this, where, if I was just a single park operator and it was all my money, the way that I invested would be very different. 

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Kevin Thueson: It’s this kind of fiduciary aspect to how we spend money that we have to be really careful about. 

Brian Searl: Is there a threshold and I know it’s obviously different depending on every use case and service and how much money it might potentially bring in or not. So I know it’s very nuanced and I’m being very broad intentionally, ’cause we only have six minutes left. But is there a threshold what you look at, let’s just use electric car pests as an example, right? Is there a threshold you look at the X percentage of my guests are now adopting this, or X percentage of people in the US are adopting this. So now it makes sense from a revenue generating standpoint for me to add this. 

Kevin Thueson: I think we tend to not wanna be the knee jerk reaction and go overboard. I remember there were a lot of discussions within our peer groups and at conferences and events that I was at a few years ago before the F-150 Lightning was released.

Yeah. And there was a disproportionate amount of panic of campground owners thinking well. Crap, what do I do when all of my guests show up with an electric truck and their trailer, and they need to plug both of them in. And I don’t think that means that people went out and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in retrofitting their parks for that, but they really thought, Hey, I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta get ahead of this.

And my experience has been, it’s important to know where the trends are going and pay attention to, how many electric vehicles do you actually have coming in? How many people come in and ask if they can charge? And if you can’t provide it, and they leave, a significant capital investment.

That is really only going to cater to say maybe 15 to 20 people a year might not make a whole lot of sense. You could take that money and put it into site upgrades or site expansions to your core guests, and that could have a much better return. So again it’s not a great answer to your question, Brian, but a lot of it just depends on where you are.

If we were buying in California, which we’re not, we’d probably be investing a little bit more into that. We’ve got, one of our parks is in Sheridan, which we look at the data for where our guests are coming from, and the vast majority are traveling over 800 miles to get there.

They’re not camping close to home. And how many of those guests are coming in? Electric vehicles on these long road trips is probably a lot fewer. So we wouldn’t invest that heavily in that park. But, for a place that’s a couple hours outside of Denver that might make a lot more sense.

So we, we have to be pretty strategic about it. But at the same time there’s only so much you can do because to completely adjust the way that you’ve set up your campgrounds to accommodate a small portion of your guest is just cost prohibitive. 

Brian Searl: Is there something you would say to campground owners? And I agree with everything you just said.

I don’t think electric cars are like, especially three years ago. Were anywhere and now everybody’s burned their Teslas to the ground apparently. There’s less of them even on the road now. But like I agree with you. That was an overreaction probably a few years ago, but like it is coming eventually.

And so what would you say to an owner who I agree with you, if you look out your window at your campground and there’s only 15-20, or let’s say it’s less than 5% of people who are coming into electric vehicles, but you can see these trends in the United States, and I’m not saying we’re there yet, right?

Or in the UK or wherever else where there are more of these going off of car. Lots and more people are driving them around. Is there a point where you look at that and say, that’s a marketing opportunity and maybe I could do 10 or 15 or 20% if I actually said I have charging stations? 

Kevin Thueson: Yeah, absolutely. If there’s enough demand for it to make sense, then yeah, I think you invest. We want to on that front probably be a little bit behind the curve instead of Overinvesting hoping, field the dreams approach that they’ll come.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Kevin Thueson: We wanted to have enough that we know it’ll get used. And I don’t wanna say that it’s a symbolic type of investment, but enough to show guests that yes, we’re aware of this, we’re investing into it. This is our first phase. Have a few chargers, we’ve put some in, and we have a park in Kansas where we put in the, into a super site.

We have an electric charging pedestal and we have the RV charge. So you could come in your F-150 lightning and plug in and hook up your trailer. So I do think it’s important to show that you are moving in that direction. I just would be really careful in overspending or making decisions on speculation because and I’m probably not the most.

In tune with this. But my thought has always been that’s great. We have these options. We now have pedestals that are specific for this. But if the major impact of this isn’t gonna hit for five to seven years, how much is that technology going to change between now and then?

And if I spend a lot of money today to be prepared for what’s gonna happen in five years, am I gonna have to invest more to then be, current or modern? Where maybe the park down the street was behind on investing and when they did it, they have the newer models, they have the newer equipment that becomes more appealing.

And that’s, it’s like trying to time the stock market. There’s, you never know, right? 

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Kevin Thueson: So I think it’s just being careful. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I agree with you. I think, all so you will always have good amenities. You’ll have good service. You won’t be the first to put in a landing pad for flying cars.

Kevin Thueson: Probably not. 

Brian Searl: China just approved their first flying cars from two companies. They’re in the air. It’s coming faster than you think. There’s five American that are producing them. 

Kevin Thueson: When you text me a picture of you on yours, then I will start to invest so that

Brian Searl: I don’t have enough money for that stuff, kevin, we’ve already, it’s not even an advertiser in this show, Joe. Joe don’t you have 80 people working for you now? Sponsor the show, Joe, me a bang, give you some coffee. 

Joe Duemig: Wine 80. Unfortunately we’re at the end. I had a couple questions from Jen. With her part, with her set up. 

Brian Searl: People can hop off. If you have a couple questions, you’re more than welcome to ask.

Joe Duemig: Great. Jen the way you’re set up and you operate, so if you operate in a park a WhoaZone at a park. Would it be open to public or is it only open to the park? 

Jen Rice: Yeah, so great question. So we are open to the public open for day use and that’s our primary model at WhoaZone.

So we do charge even for, the campers on site, but we do different promos again, depending on the location and kind of the amenities that, the campground owners or that site wants to offer to their campers. 

Joe Duemig: Okay. And then have you dealt much with power authorities? We have customers that they’ve wanted to put in this type of equipment, but the lake that they’re on is actually owned by a power company.

And so negotiating with them to actually be able to put that type of equipment on there is a little more work. 

Jen Rice: Great question. And so I will say personally, no I have not been involved with kind of with power companies and kinda getting the right approvals. We do work quite a bit on different lakes with the Army Corps of Engineers or the DNR but our company does have experience with that. Again, just not me personally. 

Joe Duemig: Okay. Cool. Alright. And those are the questions I had with you, with your model. Just seeing how to work with some of our customers. 

Jen Rice: Definitely. And if we, if we’d like to offline, I can provide some additional resources as well. 

Brian Searl: Okay.

Awesome. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. I think we’ll wrap up here. I know it’s really late for Lucy. She’s given us her evening, so I appreciate staying. Hopefully it was a not boring discussion for you, Lucy. 

Lucy Comer: No. I’d love to be here. Thank you. 

Brian Searl: Tell us where they can find out more about Hadspen Glamping.

Lucy Comer: So they can head to our website, which is hadspenglamping.co.uk All the information’s on there. Use the Contact us button and you’ll come directly through to me. I am head of everything in the company. 

Brian Searl: I just want you to know, if you do start getting international travel, it all came from my show, so remember because.

Lucy Comer: Absolutely.

Brian Searl: That’s where it’s gonna come from. Joe, where can they find out more about App My Community? 

Joe Duemig: You can find more information at appmycommunity.com and yeah, if you hit the contact button, contact us button. It comes to me even if Brian thinks we have 80 employees, 

Brian Searl: 79, sorry, Jen WhoaZone, where can they find more?

Jen Rice: Yep. gowhoazone.com and that’s W-H-O-A. So gowhoazone.com. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you guys for another good episode of MC Fireside Chats. I think it was a pretty good discussion. We’ll see you next week for another episode and then in two hours, if you’re not sick of me yet, we have our new podcast called Outwired.

We’re gonna be doing with Scott Bahr and Greg Emer. We’re gonna talk a lot about data, some of the different things that we think impact consumers’ decisions more than others. In other words, like hard data versus soft data. So like gas prices, does that impact it more versus soft data and things like that.

So we’re gonna get into a good discussion about that and break down some data details and statistics. So if you stick around, we’ll see you then. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week on another episode. Thanks guys. See you later. 

Joe Duemig: Thanks, Brian.

Jen Rice: Thank you.

Lucy Comer: Cheers, bye!