MC Fireside Chats – August 2nd, 2023

Announcer: This is [00:01:00] MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searl, the founder and c e o of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry.

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside, Chad. Hopefully that intro kind of came across good. I don’t know, I threw it together in 30 minutes. We’ll see if we can edit it maybe and clean it up a little bit, but looked all right? It’s fine. Looked good to touched it up a little bit. [00:02:00] We had to get rid of Kara unfortunately, even though we didn’t want to, but just busy doing 10,000 other things.

So appreciate all you guys being here for our first monthly episode. As always, we are focused on our recurring guest here. We’ve got Casey Cochran here from Camp Spot, Mike Harrison from Sierra Hospitality. Christine Taylor from the Town Law firm, and Sandy is gonna join us. Sandy Ingston in a few minutes too.

Maybe Mark, I don’t know he’s supposed to be here, but we’ll see if he decides to show up this week. He’s a busy guy too. So what do we have what’s going on here guys? I heard we wanna lead some insights and discussion talk today is accurate or 

Casey Cochran: sure. Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Gonna nod or we, take it away. Feel free if you 

Mike Harrison: want.

I’m sure Casey doesn’t necessarily want to promote his own product, but I’ll do it for him. My camera’s all. Wonky there. Sorry about that. But yeah, camps spot, you guys rolled out those new signal reports this week. I think they’re excellent, and for those who aren’t familiar with them and the hospitality industry, hotels have what’s called a STAR report, which is a competitive index report that ranks you, against your competitors so you understand [00:03:00] how you performed in the market and occupancy and a d r and revenue per available site.

If you think you’re doing really well, it’ll tell you, maybe you aren’t. If you think you’re doing really lousy, it’ll tell you if you really are, if you really aren’t ish. It depends on who in your market has Camp Spot and how big the market is, et cetera.

But I don’t, Casey if you wanna expound upon that I think it’s amazing. Yeah, 

Casey Cochran: no, I appreciate that. No, we are super excited for this. It’s something we’ve been testing for quite a while, running it against red Revenue Management, other tools and people in terms of that sort as far as where.

Kind of the numbers that they were getting running manually and seeing if we could create an algorithm that got, fairly or, really close to those numbers and we think we’re there. So obviously it takes getting to some sort of mass scale to have enough data, enough accuracy within that.

But it’s something that we’re super excited about. Again, hopefully just to keep the industry progressing and moving forward. So it’s anonymized data but it’s provided for our customers to, again Mike [00:04:00] explained it extremely well. It’s to give insights on where they are compared to other similar parks.

Not necessarily just in location, but with parks with similar amenities and similar size and similar climates. And so we took, I don’t know, I think 13 to 15 different factors with a minimum I think of five to seven that need to come into. Into play. So we have a really good sample size of some good comparisons.

And like I said it’s data where you’re not gonna understand which park or specifics of there, but more so generalized data that the hotel space has been fortunate to use for some time because there’s your big main players in that space, right? And so the few of the players agree to do that.

You have 80% of the industry, agreeing to anonymizing that data and allowing you to use it for insights and trends and things of that sort. Camping space obviously is the complete opposite, right? You have, maybe 10 to 15 and maybe 20% of the industry and the parks owned by maybe [00:05:00] enterprise.

And it’s such a segregated market that we’re just, we’re fortunate to work with what we think is enough parks to hopefully bring some insights to the space and. Selfishly give our parks what we think is a competitive advantage of some insights and some data. But, 

so let’s back up for a second and talk about this.

Brian Searl: For those of you who don’t know what a STAR report is, why it benefits hotels, start with why. 

Casey Cochran: Yeah. I’m gonna let 

Mike, that’s his space. This is his world, so I this is his. 

Mike Harrison: Yep. And Brian, I think I, I mentioned to this, to you when we first started talking several years ago, and, to anybody who would listen, when I came from the hospitality industry, I’m like, there’s no metrics, there’s no analytics, competitively to understand, how your property is performing.

And, I have always said, whoever comes up with this first, I think Will, will be an industry leading company. Because from what, Michael and Casey and the team over there are doing at Camps Spot and how it’ll evolve from here I think it will be truly industry changing. And so Star Report, in essence, What it is in the hospitality industry is [00:06:00] different than what Casey’s describing today.

It’s a subscription base to choose to participate, but if you don’t, then you don’t have all the information that every single one of your other competitors do. Basically 95% of hotels don’t participate in the Star report, and it takes your performance on a daily, weekly, and monthly and annual basis.

And it compares, if you look at a pie and you have four properties, everybody should have 25% of your pie. And your index would be a hundred percent of, if you’re getting 25% of that pie, then your index is one or a hundred index. If you’re getting 26% of your pie, then your index is 101.

Ooh, you’re doing better. You’re getting more of your fair share than your competitors are. And and then it compares it to last year. So you understand, am I, maybe I’m ranked four of six in occupancy, I’m one of six in change, meaning I’ve grown the most compared to my comp set.

Or maybe I’m one of six in occupancy, but I’m six of six and change, which means people are catching up to me. And really it helps to understand, is your park full enough? Are you charging enough, are you charging [00:07:00] too much? And, from a segmentation standpoint, seasonal, is it transient?

What’s your mix? How much revenue, are you generating, et cetera. So what the camps spot team has done is and Casey, I don’t wanna speak for you guys, since it isn’t subscription based yet all of your data is anonymous. So I don’t know who my comp set is because we all haven’t opted in, so to speak.

But, cams, Spott has 1500 properties or so that are, have data that they can, amalgamate and basically. Properties of similar size, similar distance, similar market. I’ll be able to understand how my property is performing, right? For example, I saw a post on one of the Facebook Campground owners forums this morning in Texas and saying, oh, is everybody’s occupancy down?

Because some of these other, southern markets like Florida and Texas, they haven’t seen some of the occupancy declines that secondary markets have seen. And so this is the first glimmer they’re getting of. And there’s a long discussion, about that on the thread. And what this does, it helps you understand, am I seeing what everybody else is seeing?

Or is it anomaly? [00:08:00] And for example, we have a property that just opened that’s ramping and we are not happy with our ramp. As we’re driving excellence towards goals. But as we look at the market, ironically, even though we’re not achieving our ramp goals, we’re second of six in terms of revenue per available site.

Which tells us, boy, we’re doing the right things, especially in marketing. Exactly. We have an amazing marketing partner who, you know, our two to one r o i in one particular market. It’s incredible. It, it gives us an indication, okay, yeah, maybe we think we suck, but maybe we don’t suck as much.

So to speak. You’re doing the right things. Or if you’re sitting proud and you think you’re doing great and you can see people are creeping up in you from an a d r standpoint. So anyhow, camps spot now has five or six different types of analytics reports that helps you make revenue decisions to drive and understand, your revenue.

And it breaks it down into RV sites and launching. For example, we were also having a long discuss, and if I’m [00:09:00] blathering here, just stop me and 

interrupt. No, go ahead. I can go on forever on this stuff

Brian Searl: but there’s a couple things I wanna talk about in deep dive, but 

continue for now. Yeah.

Mike Harrison: So we were talking about cabins or park models and understanding. What’s our demand factor for park malls? And every market is different and every time of year is different and every special event is different. And what we have clearly seen already at one of our opening properties is that we didn’t buy enough.

We didn’t think we bought enough to begin with. We thought there was gonna be good demand, when we bought them, of course the MH industry was on fire and the prices were out of the world for the park models. Eh, we’ll cut down a few of them, but our reports are now showing us that clearly not only are we underpriced, in the lodging, which, I believe we’ve been and this says we are but there’s clearly OC and I now have a business case that I can go to our partners and say, Hey, there’s more demand in the market.

We’re already tapped out in occupancy and we’ve got revenue and rate and occupancy opportunity. It’s a no brainer from an I R standpoint to buy another, four to six park model cabins. Here’s our business [00:10:00] case. So those are some of the things that these reports can help you determine. And I think it’s, again, I think it’s a game changer for the industry.

Brian Searl: All right, so let’s, first I wanna unpack the local aspect of it, right? Because obviously it’s, I’m, I’ve never been inside a STAR report, to be fair, right? I’ve never we do work for a couple hotels, but not, it’s not a huge part of what I do. So talking about the local aspect, I understand the benefit of, basically what you’re saying is that all the hair Harriets, Marriotts, Hiltons, et cetera, IHGs in an area would opt in, but anonymously.

So you’d be able to see your ranking against 20 or 30 hotels within a given metro area, if it was a large metro area, and see how you’re performing against them in various metrics. But you wouldn’t know that it was necessarily the hotel next door to you or the one down the street, or the one across the city.

Mike Harrison: That’s where it’s different with the Star report. You do choose, you say, Hey, I compete with this hotel for group business. I compete with this hotel for transient. This one’s for weddings, so I might, you can select your comp set. They have parameters and criteria so that you can’t single out [00:11:00] one property’s performance over another, and you have to have a minimum size of comp set.

But no, with the Star report, you can absolutely independently select who you wanna measure yourself against so you know how you’re doing against your friend down the street. That’s the one thing with Camps Spot is you have to understand your market data isn’t complete. It’s only with camps spot, properties.

So somebody who’s on new book and maybe your number one competitor, that information not, might not isn’t going to be in this report and you just have to take what it says with a grain of salt as it’s in baby phase right now while it, evolves, into something else, a year from now or so.

Casey Cochran: Yeah. For us, we started and we, we had to get to an idea of, what do we think is enough data? We’re, right now we’re at about maybe 2,400 or so parks that, that are live and active and able to pull information from and. The number of parks that are in, north America I feel is like this magical number, right?

If it’s, is it 10,000 and is it 28,000? Just depending on where you’re at. But in terms of like private [00:12:00] campgrounds that are mostly, a lot of ’em are RV focused. Some of them are lodging focused. We feel from like a data set that there’s enough enough information there.

Again, Mike said it perfectly, right? Like it doesn’t necessarily have to be the end all, be all truth, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. 

Brian Searl: One more piece of the puzzle. 

Casey Cochran: What’s that? 

Brian Searl: One more piece of the puzzle? One more piece? 

Casey Cochran: Yeah. And that’s the goal, right? The goal is to we want parks to be able to make educated decisions on their growth and what they do and.

Where they spend their funds and where they’re at. And this is one of those things that you gotta have a certain amount of scale in order to do and we felt we were in a good enough spot to, to be able to launch this with enough accuracy to, to provide some good insights.

Brian Searl: So how do I think Go ahead, Mike. 

Mike Harrison: Go ahead Brian. I think go ahead. 

You first. 

Brian Searl: How do people opt into this? Or are they opted in by default and do they opt out? 

Casey Cochran: Yeah, so as it sits, the data’s completely anonymized, right? So [00:13:00] there’s no park information whatsoever. So it’s simply there. They wouldn’t, there’s not necessarily, we haven’t had any parks that say, I don’t, I don’t want be, because like I said, it’s not tied to a park name.

And it’s tied to a minimum, I think of six different factors. None of them, which are a specific park information. And we’re doing that intentionally, right? It’s not supposed to be me versus them. ’cause really. Anyone can go and search a parks website and they can get, get some of this information.

They can see on a map what’s available. They can see pricing, but it’s just manual, right? It just takes a lot of time. So in this case, it’s just anonymizing that putting parks that are similar in size and amenity availability, seasonal versus or transient versus long term. And putting enough of those factors, like I said, a minimum I think of six and up to, 15 different factors that we can pull in.

And provide insights for the approximately sim. 

Brian Searl: So how tight can you get geographically? 

Casey Cochran: It’s gonna be comparative [00:14:00] to your park, right? So this isn’t a thing where you’re picking and choosing anywhere in the company or in the country. 

Brian Searl: It’s not by state. It’s not like by Arizona.

Casey Cochran: Yeah, it’s gonna be wherever your park is located and it’s gonna pull those factors, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be the three closest parks to you because there there’s differences in those parks. The 

Brian Searl: parks that it’s closest, similar parks to you based on Mike’s 

Casey Cochran: property at Verde.

I’m not saying what I mean. There, there are some parks like his, but there wasn’t any parks like his right there. So it’s not necessarily, it wouldn’t be the best exact comparison there necessarily to the ones, if it’s one’s completely seasonal, one’s all transient, or one has a beautiful pool and hot tubs and, private bathroom showers and things of that’s gonna be different than a rustic Campground.

It’s just not the same comparison. To two parks like that. As we continue to grow, the data will just get more and more I think, I wouldn’t say relevant ’cause it’s re it’s, we’re to a point now where we’ve tested this extensively to make sure that the data that we’re providing was in line with what was being created manually.[00:15:00] 

It is, again, we add, I don’t know, anywhere from 40 to maybe a hundred parks a month or so. And so as those, continue to add in there, it’ll just be more and more information. 

Mike Harrison: And where I hope it goes and, I certainly don’t direct camp spot but where I hope it goes is that eventually this evolves to a subscription.

So service, so clearly, camps wants to keep it proprietary, so move on to our platform in order to get it right. But that’s, they don’t have all market share. So maybe it’s a subscription based service a year or two down the road from now. You can maybe submit your metrics so that you can get more of a truer market.

There’s gonna be value in the data and camps. Spott will be an industry, leader in that regard. So that’s where I hope it goes, so that you can have contribution from total market value. ’cause that’s when your information is really, truly valuable. I like, as Casey mentioned, I look at it with a grain of salt.

It’s an indicator it isn’t the answer. 

Brian Searl: So when comp sets are always important, from a, from even for me, from a marketing analysis standpoint, we run some of these competitive analysis [00:16:00] for you, Mike, but just figuring out who your competitors are in the area, who they really are. Not necessarily just, again, like Casey said, the Campground next door, but who they are, what they’re doing, what their website looks like, what their marketing efforts are.

Are they advertising? We just ran run for a park in Texas earlier today. Who was thinking about acquiring a park in Texas? For a second one. It’s in the same market. And what are they doing for advertising? What is their upside? Those kinds of things. So that all that data is valuable and fits into the puzzle, I think for sure.

I don’t know I don’t know. That seems like a really steep, uphill climb for the individual property owners to buy in at scale to a subscription service where they’re sharing all that stuff. I have hope and I feel like the bigger players might, 

Mike Harrison: Copy and paste what you just said for AI and Camping, right?

It seems like a bigger ask. So it’s the same concept. It’s exactly the same concept, right? It’s no different than trying to sell a chat bot or AI is do you wanna evolve your business and understand your business and offer something [00:17:00] that’s different than everybody else’s, or that’s something that gives you a competitive edge and competitive advantage.

There’s a business case for Campy, clearly, right? We’ve seen it in r o I and to me there’s a business case like for sure. Arc model. So I don’t think it’s going to be hard for the buy-in. I think people are gonna want it, it needs to be more publicized so that people, even within camps spot, I think 90% of the users probably don’t understand what it means right now.

It’s a new tool for the industry. So education has to happen. For the hotel business, and I see it for the RV industry, especially as the buyers become more institutional, this will be, when you go to market, the first thing everybody always sells in a hotel, what’s your star report?

The first thing, right? They ask to see your N O I, of course, but they say, what’s your market performance? And this will be something like that where every park owner, whether it’s a small guy who wants to find out the right cap, rate, they could say, Hey, I’m one of six in my market, right?

I’m gonna continue to lead. We’ve got [00:18:00] opportunity in the right. It is a tool that helps you both deliver, revenue in the top, but it will drive N O I. For sure. And so I’m not 

Brian Searl: saying it’s, I’m not saying it’s an impossible sell, I’m just saying I, my, my point was is it’s a steeper climb to give away all your financial data than it is to implement an AI chat bot in your example that you used.

Sandy Ellingson: I don’t, oh 

Mike Harrison: yeah, go ahead sandy. 

Sandy Ellingson: I was gonna say, I don’t think it’s that steeper climb and I think we’re at a place with technology where we can finally do this for the first time for a reasonable amount of money. 

Brian Searl: All of you can gang up on me. I’ll just go away. 

The issue, 

Sandy Ellingson: I think the issue becomes that again, we’ve got multiple property management softwares and each of those property management softwares really have key features that work for specific type parts.

All of this stuff and all these reportings, they’re not new to the hospitality industry. The hotels have been doing ’em for years. And so big companies like some properties and K O A, they’ve been looking at these reports for years. Maybe not as efficiently as what Casey’s providing [00:19:00] now, but they’ve been looking at them.

It’s the single mom and pops that have not been doing that. And now because so many of those are being bought up by people who are in the hotel industry or have had more exposure to technology, it’s an expectation and it’s pushing this. But that’s why I’ve been such a proponent of somebody who is a an O T A in the industry that is aggregating this stuff that’s already integrating to all the different property management software because then it is everything, everybody is there that all that data is in one place where it can be analyzed regardless of whether it’s camp spot or new book or whoever it happens to be.

Where that data’s coming from. So why I’m constantly telling Casey, please join the o t A movement outside of your ecosystem. Yeah. Because again, that data is so important and it’s not just important to campgrounds, it’s also important to the rest of the industry because within that data is so many other [00:20:00] jewels that can be used in other ways to help us improve the industry as a whole.

So I think it’s a really, it’s not if there’s no effort on the parks part, if you are able to give them the assurance that this is agnostic, that their data is never, nobody can figure out who they are. All it’s going to give them is benefits. And then you’ve got the economy of scale so that no one person has the corner on this data.

There’s a big economy of scale. Then you can actually, it can make it affordable. And I think the way to make it affordable is really to make this data available to people other than campgrounds as well. Again, agnostically. 

Casey Cochran: Yeah, just to your point there on the OTA aspect of things, we are connected to the major, lodging, OTAs we haven’t 

Sandy Ellingson: yeah.

Casey Cochran: Made a decision to not, I think the other Campground specific ones, we’re also open to integrating with other PMSs. It’s been their desire to not integrate with our marketplace. Yeah. And we certainly would say, Hey, if you have if you’re [00:21:00] using a different software that works for your business, but you wanna take advantage of the marketplace and see some of those results we’re on 100% open to that.

It’s the other way around that we’re they aren’t really open. 

Brian Searl: I think the more interesting question for me is let’s, and we could dive down the rabbit hole of OTAs, right? But I feel like that’s probably not where we wanna steer the discussion. If we wanna keep it on data.

Although it is a good point, Sandy. I’m not saying it’s not, 

Mike Harrison: but I think that No, wait, Sandy and I can gang up on Casey if you felt that you were ganged up on, we can gang up on SPO and open up their api and I only 

Brian Searl: I’ll let you do that. I’ll let you do that if you want. But hear me out first for a second.

’cause I think data is like Sandy explained, data is important, but I think that there’s also that, I’m going through a third party now. What is that third party doing with all the data they’re aggregating, whether that’s spot or book outdoors or whoever. I’m not picking on anybody.

Sandy Ellingson: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the thing, you’ve gotta be careful who you partner with because just like any other industry, there are people who are reputable and there are people who not, who are not, it’s very key to [00:22:00] find the right people. But I’ve already done a similar thing like this in the pharmaceutical industry back in my consulting days, where all the different pharmaceutical competitors wanted to know the results and the information about different.

Drugs that were being, pushed out by the doctors and everybody said they’ll never share the data. We’ll never get the right information. And guess what, yes we did. There is a way of doing it with a third party person that controls the data center, who is the one that has the keys to the kingdom.

And so nobody’s data can be compromised. Yeah. So yes, there are ways of doing it. 

Casey Cochran: Just for us internally, while we’re talking about data, something that Camps Botts had to overcome, I think for for at least since I’ve been there for five years, is this idea around data.

Who gets our data? You sharing it everyone gets the data. And obviously since day one with every legal agreement we’ve ever had gone out says that each park’s data is 100% theirs and theirs loan. And we went to the point of, and we release this, I think the timing is very relevant here of us getting, our soc two [00:23:00] type two compliance done and passed first.

So that there’s. Legal ramifications to every park that is on our system, that their data is secured to the highest level of a SaaS company can go through. And that auditing process was, it was awful. It is awful. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s rigorous. It’s, it was it extremely expensive.

It was extremely time consuming. We had a team of people basically going through this, but it’s to progress. It’s to progress to something like signals. Everyone has to understand that their data is 100% theirs and theirs alone, and it is secure. And that’s the right stepping stone to do that part first and then release something like this as opposed to the other way around and saying, oh no, it’ll get secure.

It’ll get there. Everyone can know 100% certainty that, that data is secure. And it was, it was planned that way, obviously. But it’s a, it’s not a fun process to go through that soc two compliancy. It’s brutal. I used 

Sandy Ellingson: to be the one doing those audits. [00:24:00] I’m SOC certified to do an audit from years ago, not now.

Brian Searl: Are you trying to, 

Sandy Ellingson: you’re right. 

It was fun 

Brian Searl: coming after Casey Sandy or? 

Sandy Ellingson: Do what? 

Brian Searl: Are you trying to hint at something like you’re coming after Casey or .

Oh no. 

Sandy Ellingson: Hey, listen, I pick on Casey only because I love Casey. 

Brian Searl: So I wanna ask Christine here for a second, and Christine, I’ll put you on the spot. So if you don’t know the answer to this question, I don’t wanna talk about it, right?

Because I know it’s not your normal area of practice where I don’t think it is anyway. But specifically with data and stuff like that, how does a park approach this when they’re dealing with any software system? Whether it’s a reservation system or a marketing provider like me or whatever. How do you approach that from a, I want an agreement in place.

I wanna be able to read it, understand it, to know that my data is safe. 

Christine Taylor: Yeah, I mean I think that’s especially if you’re using something that is collecting your customer data, I think that’s when you have to care a little more, right? Obviously I want my own personal data safe, but my liability extends mostly to my customers.

So I want to be able to say [00:25:00] that, Hey, I took your credit card information or something like that, and the program that I put it in is safe because we’ve heard of all of that. I’m gonna be honest, two weeks ago I had to cancel a credit card and start again. I was one of those people call and another, hack.

People want, your customers want that kind of information. So if it’s software or a company that you’re using that’s going to have your customer’s data, I think you have a responsibility to your customers to make sure that data is protected regarding their own data. I think it’s a good conversation to have.

It’s different kinds of data. Obviously people like to safeguard their client lists and stuff like that. Sure. But if my client list got leaked, I’d feel a lot different than if, my financials got leaked or things like that. So depending on the vendor you’re working with, the standard that you might want them to be held to could be a little bit different.

But as I said way back feels like forever ago in 2019, even about the a d a website lawsuits, it’s a conversation to have. And [00:26:00] if your vendor looks at you like a deer caught in the headlights and like they have no idea what you’re talking about, that’s a big red flag. And if they have any kind of answer, that’s better because it happens all the time.

I tell that even with people, with website developers, they ask me about this. I was like, we’ll have a conversation. And if they have no idea what you’re talking about, that’s probably not the vendor for you because you can assured that they haven’t done anything ’cause they don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Mike Harrison: Have, or if it’s not written into the contract, Christine, it should be in the contract. 

Christine Taylor: Oh, I absolutely agree. These things should a hundred percent be in a contract. I have had some people, I’ve had the reverse to, you should look, just because it’s in the contract doesn’t mean it’s pro you. I’ve had some contracts where the people, the vendor, disclaims all liability from anything.

You might be signing a contract 

Brian Searl: mean honestly. We do that. Like we do that for Aada in our agreements because there’s just like previous no way to know, right? There’s way to know, but there’s also no specific law that says, here’s a checklist of the [00:27:00] six things you must do to be aada a compliant on your website.

So if I don’t disclaim liability, that’s pretty crazy. They 

Christine Taylor: absolutely come after you. The other thing that’s very amusing to me about all of that kind of stuff is, it’s very clear in a lot of laws state in federal is different that just because I Hire somebody to do something. Doesn’t mean I get to shirk liability, I get to share it maybe, but I don’t get to shirk it.

So just because I said, oh, Brian built me this website doesn’t mean it’s Brian’s responsibility alone. Or just because I said, can’t spot told me they protected my clients custom credit cards and stuff. When I use the software for that, I don’t get to say, will for ignorance. I’d still be brought into that lawsuit.

I don’t get to pass all that fuck onto somebody else. 

Brian Searl: For sure. And so it’s balance, right? It’s nuance. Like I put that into my contract, not because I wanna avoid blame, but because I need to legally protect myself. And so then again, if anybody asks me that question, yes, I’ve thought about a d a and here it’s written into my contract and this is what we do and how we treat your website and how are we gonna try to protect you?

And we, the bare minimum, [00:28:00] this is the minimum, right? 

Christine Taylor: So people need to know what they’re signing, I guess is what I would say is you want to know what’s in there. It, maybe somewhat, there are people who don’t even address that stuff in their contract and. Poo-pooed both of them.

That doesn’t form a really good or trusting relationship. But be honest I don’t like to read 60 pages of contracts for things that I’m doing. I forgot what I signed. Oh, my child’s starting a new daycare and I had a 40 page handbook I had to read and sign for a daycare, and I was like, I do this for a living and I still hate this.

I completely understand why people might want to scoot over, but I think that it’s a good first step to have those conversations. And frankly, when you’re shopping things, to have that assurance that the person you are thinking of going with knows what you’re talking about. There’s a lot better to hear Casey talk about all the things they did to safeguard things than to hear some other people, might not have any idea what he’s even talking about.

So I think that’s a good thing to start with, is to know [00:29:00] that the people you’re relying on actually know what they’re talking about. 

Sandy Ellingson: So Casey and Mike, I have a question for you guys ’cause I am still a little bit skeptical. A lot of these reports and things that we’re talking about that are coming out now and being embraced for the RV industry really come out of the hotel industry.

And I think sometimes they make sense for, the cabins and things like that. But there’s a lot of times where I feel like there’s a nuance for the RV sites where some of the metrics that are being used by the hotel industry don’t really translate over into the RV side of what we’re doing. So has there been instances in some of what you guys are doing where you found that to be true?

Or do you think it’s just an easy transition? 

Casey Cochran: I’ll let Mike go. He, and I’ll give you my opinion afterwards. 

Mike Harrison: Yeah. I went through all, I think there’s six, is there six signal reports? Casey? Yeah, right now. Yeah. I went through all six of them. And, they all tell you something a little bit different, and I’m not gonna look at them [00:30:00] all the time.

One I have traced out for every 90 days, et cetera, et cetera. And with Marriott, they have a data warehouse, right? They probably have a hundred reports. I’m not exaggerating. And you’ve gotta figure out what, what works for you. So I don’t think it has anything to do with what will translate and what won’t.

I think it will be what you’re gonna pull out, so for example, one of the helpful reports that I really liked is the revenue per available site. Because that’s, we measure our labor on our revenue per occupied site. We measure some of our revenue in-house and a revenue per available site.

And so the language that we’re already speaking now, we can get translated. And, I hate to compare it to the hotel industry, but you also, especially for full service hotels, you, there was a component to STAR report where you could understand your food and beverage contribution. So what is your meeting?

Was your meeting house. Were you in line with the market, your pricing and your maximization of your space, and I think this is no different. It just helps you understand, are you doing an effective job at driving revenue, filling your spots [00:31:00] right rate at the right time. They’re all revenue management tools, regardless if it’s hospitality or not.

So you’re gonna pick what resonates with you or what’s important to your business. I just like that it was like a, an information vomit. I’m a nerd, I’m gonna clean it all up. I love it. And not everybody does, but, smaller parks or ones that aren’t quite as focused, there’s helpful information in all of those for you to understand.

I do think there needs to a very concerted effort on camp spots part to educate. I saw, the original rollout email was great. I didn’t even get it, it came from Matt. I. I think that needs to go out. I think there should be a whole bunch of webinars. I think.

Brian Searl: Can we address why you didn’t get the email for a second? I think we should spend the next 10 minutes on that. 

Mike Harrison: Clearly. I have no status. 

Casey Cochran: Mike, mike@mikeataol.net. We had some reason it didn’t go through. I don’t know why, but I don’t know what happened there. 

Mike Harrison: Do you know, I was one of the first a o l addresses ever and it was like nikey@aol.com.

Casey Cochran: So somehow I didn’t know that, but somehow that came to [00:32:00] my brain. So I don’t know. Somehow we’re align in there. Now to your question, Sandy, Mike comes from that space. I don’t come from the hotel space at all, and I’ve been, if anything, speaking, exhaustively for five years on telling people why Campground specific software is so much more relevant than a hotel based software.

Like to the point where that’s, that was my main mission is separating to, because there’s so many differences. Yeah, because there’s so many nuances. And things that are quite relevant in the Camping space that aren’t relevant and vice versa. So I 100% agree with you that they’re, it’s not just this exact parallel and things aren’t all the same.

And you do see a lot of the revenue managers coming into this space. A lot of the people at the larger corporations, they’re coming from the hotel space and there’s a lot of expectations. But, and I think Mike has embraced this maybe as well as anybody, there is also a small learning curve, right?

There is some differences within there. And those are significant. And the sooner you [00:33:00] recognize or accept that there’s clear differences and know what those are, then you can be as educated, like Mike is speaking of and know the things to pull out that are super relevant for the Camping space.

They may align a little bit with the hotel space, but there’s clear differences. Yes. And understanding those is absolutely relevant. And that’s, like I said, I think for us, this is. This is focused. So many people talk about, lodging units and things of that sort with, and even when we’re talking with OTAs and we’re sitting there going, Hey guys, 84% of the in, of the inventory on these 200,000 sites is RV sites, right?

And so there’s this huge uproar of how do you get your things on Airbnb? And we’re going, yeah we’re getting there, but we’re also wanting to take care of, 91% of your revenue, right? And so where’s that? What are we doing to embrace that? As opposed to the one new cabin that you just got and you want all, and all your attention’s on this one cabin, and you’re going, wait a minute.

You have 182 RV sites and 60% of them aren’t full at certain times of the week. Let’s address that. But yeah, no, I agree with you. Mike’s spot on with all of this. [00:34:00] So there’s parallels, but there’s definitely differences as well. Yeah. So 

Brian Searl: here’s what, go ahead, Sandy. Go ahead.

Sandy Ellingson: No, I was just gonna say it was kinda interesting ’cause this past week on the innovator call the conversation came up with so many parts looking for different revenue avenues, ancillary income, whether it’s food and beverage or point of sale or all, different things like that. The conversation came up, was it easier to take a hotel software and then adapt it for the RV industry?

Or was it easier to take an RV software from a property management standpoint and just bolt on the reporting? Because that’s what everybody seemed to want, was the reporting piece of it. And I think I was the only one that was saying, I think we have to start with the RV software and then bolt on the reporting because so many of the people were more familiar with the hotel industry, but didn’t really understand the intricacies of the RV industry.

And I, so I just feel like we have to start with that. That’s my opinion. So I, that’s why this, all these different reports that I [00:35:00] see coming out and the use of ’em, I’m, it, I’m really passionate about making sure that they come out, that they’re relevant to the RV industry, that we educate people on how to use ’em because we can make data, say anything we want it to.

But if you, if that person doesn’t understand what the report’s supposed to produce, they don’t know how to see the anomalies. So yeah, I’m all about the STAR reports. I’m excited about it. I love what you’re doing, but like I said, I’m still trying to be cautious just from that education side of it.

Casey Cochran: Yeah, it’s, you make a good point. And Mike brought it up earlier. The adoption aspect of it’s something that we, we talk about weekly, right? You roll out something, even like our analytics tool, which is you can customize any report, put it in a dashboard, and you have it like this.

Should be music to every Park’s ear because they’ve always been saying, Hey, I just want it a little bit different. I want this report. I just wanna see just this. I don’t care about this, and this. I wanna only see this. They’re like, okay, let’s allow every park to [00:36:00] customize any report they want and create it.

And then they can look at in a visual dashboard or they can print it off. I’m speaking, maybe a little bit too transparent, I would say outta the 2,400 parks, I bet you less than 800 of ’em are actually using any of the analytics. 

Mike Harrison: And I think the challenge is going to be, there’s gonna be a bridge.

You, I remember when the analytics first rolled out and they’re like, how many master seats do you want? And we’re like, we don’t have enough time to be cr and we’re pretty sophisticated. We don’t have enough time to be creating all our own reports and modifying, et cetera, et cetera.

So imagine mom and Pop Park of 75 sites who are, already, there’s no way they’re customizing, they’re not even looking at this. They’re not looking at, 

Brian Searl: so there’s not looking at Google Analytics 

Mike Harrison: either. Yeah there’s gotta be some better way to push the reports, standard reports, so there’re so out of camps, spot analytics so that, it doesn’t have to be the I go get ’em aspect, or the modifiable aspect.

And same thing with these signal reports and how, what are the right ones and how many and that will help with the education ’cause no, the majority of those parks aren’t [00:37:00] gonna go in and play with it. It’s it’s scary, right? It is overwhelming, et cetera. 

Brian Searl: And I don’t think this is a camp spot problem to be clear.

And it. Given that they’re launching a product, right? It indirectly is, but I don’t think it’s unique to them, is what I’m trying to say. So coming from an outsider perspective, not having in, I don’t look at these star reports. I don’t know Campground, I don’t look at this kind of metric, right?

What I’m hearing, like I’ve been based on my knowledge of the industry and the hotel industry in a limited fashion, is that one, you’ve got people who are coming from the hotel industry who are coming into the Campground industry and wanna see all this data, but don’t understand how it translates.

If it translates, whether it’s important, whether it’s not important, and how important. And then you’ve got the people who are the mom and pop people who don’t have the time to analyze it. And then you’ve got the people who are maybe the bigger properties, or some mom and pops who don’t have the tools before signals, and even in other instances to analyze it.

So then it becomes a question of there’s the, there’s so much different things we can unpack here. You’re never gonna get anybody to agree on two parks, want the exact same report at the exact same time. 

Casey Cochran: And a lot of stuff, [00:38:00] we, you recognize over time there are some, so we put some canned stuff in analytics and our goal is just that they look at it, right?

’cause it’s just their park. It’s just information and you put it and things that they should be, every park in some capacity should be looking at, right? You should be looking at you, I’m just pulling this up here, like your Parker Review not reservations book by source or by category or your year.

Brian Searl: We know that, right? Like we know that, but they need convinced of that in a format they can digest. It’s the same problem we have with marketing reports, right? We can send you any data you want. What data do you want? I don’t know. Send me whatever you think is important. Maybe you won’t understand that or like it that way.

Like we have Google Ads clients for example, who will look at, I only wanna see conversions from actual dollars that were booked to reservations period. But that’s not a holistic picture of everybody who’s getting driving directions to your park and clicking through to your website and calling from an ad.

And so we presented how we think it should be, but that’s not always the same way that. Resonates with that individual person, so then we adjust. Yep. So yeah,[00:39:00] 

Mike Harrison: Hotel business, the hotel business went through the same, I started in the hotel business in the early nineties and when did you say, 

Brian Searl: I’m sorry, you say, did you say seventies?

Is that what you said? 

Mike Harrison: It wasn’t quite the seventies, but early nineties and it was just when, technology was starting to come in and I remember we were using Lotus 1, 2 3, and we used to have to send in our weekly paperwork and you sent it in a mail package. Then it evolved to the fax machine.

And you faxed your weekly in. And I remember in 1996, I guess it would’ve been the first time we pushed a button to transmit a report, via the internet. And, there was a lot of the same. Angst, if you will of getting comfortable with something new. And that’s what all this is.

And Brian, you and I have talked about this a hundred times about the law of diffusion of innovation. And this is the same thing, there’s gonna be some early adopters and understand, and then there’s gonna be, yeah. The last person who doesn’t use a rotary phone anymore because it don’t make it anymore.

And, [00:40:00] so I think there will have to be, this isn’t gonna stop the evolution of technology and integration in the RV industry, so it’s just gotta be how everybody comes along and what sticks. And in five years from now, we’re gonna be sitting here talking about how Marriott has number one or two, RV segment or something like that because it’s coming.

You just gotta get on board, you to the technology and figure out what works for your part. This is the thing, right? 

Brian Searl: I think that this is where, and I’m gonna just do it right. I think this is where AI. Is going to help a lot of people understand these things.

Casey Cochran: What’s ai?

Mike Harrison: Never. I’ve never heard of ai. It’s, 

Brian Searl: I’ll explain it in another show. 

Sandy Ellingson: We’ll just ask the vice president and she’ll tell you what, it’s so de plenty of time 

Brian Searl: if you can build, and and this is another larger conversation, right before we get into AI for a second and how it can analyze data, we need to, I think there’s also needs to be a conversation briefly about how there’s a difference between private and public data.

And I don’t think that there’s a level of knowledge on a private small [00:41:00] mom and pop or even some of the big business, bigger businesses, right? Of how much data is on their website and on Google and on Book outdoors and Camp Spot Marketplace and everywhere else that can be used to analyze your business without you disclosing your financial records either.

And so I think there needs to be also a conversation briefly about what is already public that tools can scrape and analyze and competitive analysis without you even disclosing anything to a star report or a camps spot or whatever else. Yes. Oh, 

Sandy Ellingson: there is so much coming up with AI in the legal world.

I was asked to comment on a conversation with some intellectual property attorneys out of Atlanta where it used to be we would screen scrape information, right? And and then that became a no-no. You can’t really do that now with ai. They’re trying to define if an AI bot is going out and gathering information, but they’re not attributing it to who they got it from.

Is that illegal if an AI bot is going out, gathering information and then pulling in or using data from other [00:42:00] websites to recreate a new website? Is that illegal? One of the big park brands right now, all of their data is being pulled into a website. Their logo is all over the place, and they’re not, they weren’t even aware they were being used now, but it’s just a bot doing it.

It’s not a person. So it’s illegal.

Brian Searl: No, and I don’t think, obviously, I don’t think we’re gonna solve it on this call, right? But I think that’s a legal minefield. Did we lose your audio, Sandy, or is it me? 

Mike Harrison: She muted 

Sandy Ellingson: because vehicles going by myself. I’m sorry. 

Mike Harrison: She’s being rescued. 

Brian Searl: So I think that’s a very interesting conversation, but I don’t think, again, we’re gonna solve that.

Or to be honest, Congress is gonna solve that in 10 years. Yeah. Haven’t solved Facebook. But I think the larger question is the, it’s going back to the analysis, right? There needs to be a way that people, regular normal people who don’t have a team of revenue [00:43:00] management people or financial data analysis or people like that to dig into these numbers, to create reports, as it always has traditionally been done.

The way you get adoption is to make it easy for people to make it them, be able to ask the question they think is relevant, and then maybe have an AI or a chat bot tell you maybe you should consider this, or maybe this isn’t relevant, or maybe you’re asking the wrong question, or Here’s some data that you may not have uncovered.

Yeah. And so this is where we wanna take it from a public, like we don’t wanna ever, we’re not intending on ever competing with a star report or a camps spot, right? But from a public standpoint, we can build a bot today that, and we just need the time and bandwidth, right? That incorporates, for example, your data.

Let’s start with your own in internal data on your analytics and data that you could theoretically export from your own camps spot and from everywhere else you have data metrics from. And we could put that all into a custom privately trained chat bot that you can ask questions for and say, compare my year over year Google Analytics.

It’ll give you an answer. Oh yeah. So that stuff is super powerful. But then look at it from a, now I want to take all a separate bot and [00:44:00] I want to take all my competitors’ data that’s publicly available, so I wanna scrape their website. Scraping is not illegal, right? Not the unethical, but it’s not illegal.

So if you wanna scrape their pricing information and their amenities and all that, and train your top five competitors into a chat bot and then be able to ask questions about your competition. Their reviews and their social media and what they posted last week and what their strategy is and whether to follow account, that’s super valuable too.

And so I think it’s just a question of people need to be able to ask where their comfort level is right now and have something be able to answer in language that they understand without taking through a hundred reports. Yeah, that’s really, and 

Sandy Ellingson: I think you finally made me a believer, Brian, ’cause I’ve been bucking you on the whole AI thing for a while, but having done a deep dive on a particular project now I think I’m on the bandwagon and my new focus is I want the RV industry to be the first to capitalize on all this instead of the last.

So why do you think I’m here cooking everything I’m, how do we of 

everybody [00:45:00] else? 

Brian Searl: Yeah, we are. Like I, I’m stunned and I don’t know why Marriott and Hilton and have I don’t understand other than bureaucracy, why these hotel chains do not have chatbots for every single hotel area. It makes sense. That’s exactly why like it, yeah.

But I expected them to be fast movers, but that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m trying to push it, because we should be first. And we can do it right, 

Sandy Ellingson: but it’s gonna take entrepreneurs outside of the big guys to do it right, and then work with those to get them to embrace it because they’re never gonna put themselves online because of liability and many other reasons.

Again, because they’re inside a big bureaucracy and be able to accomplish this. 

Mike Harrison: Now, Brian, if you’re able to figure out an AI revenue management system that works with, camps, SPA in our reports, and it meant that I didn’t have to be the one to go look at seven reports and ask the questions, and [00:46:00] instead the AI could prompt me and say, oh, hey Mike, did you see that?

You’re not accepting revenue from September to December next year. Did you close out or not open your inventory? And or, Hey Mike, did you notice that you’re, you’ve sold six of your eight cabins and they’ve sold in the last week. It’s a hot day. Take a look at your rates.

If you could get something like that from me where I didn’t have to hire an analyst, somebody could prompt me with an ai that’s significant. So that’s coming. 

Sandy Ellingson: So there’s already a project like that, Mike, we’ll take it offline.

Brian Searl: But that’s, so we are going to do that. The answer is right now, the difference is it can be used for data analysts analysis.

If you can ask the question right now, it’s not quite to the point where it can prompt you with that. Not full ai, not the way you’re talking about yes, you can use like some automations and do something similar to that, but not the way AI will truly be able to do it in maybe a year. 

Sandy Ellingson: That’s where the blend of AI and then the existing business intelligence [00:47:00] tools that’s pulling that AI and then looking and clamping on bi.

Works so well. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. It’s just an alert system. So anyway, but yeah, that’s, I, that’s, these are all things that are coming and they just as more and more people get familiar with ’em and they can understand them that’s the key. Like the technology is gonna go so fast, but if you can understand it by just talking to it, which is why chat g b t was so popular and is because there’s no learning curve.

Everybody knows had a text already. Everybody know how to go to Facebook Messenger already. They’re all on WhatsApp. There’s no learning curve. Now you can make it better by learning it certainly right? Way better. But there’s still no learning curve for, so whatever your level’s at it works for you.

And that’s how it work. Has to work with reports. So you can send out a chat bot to every stakeholder in your business, and then the guy who understands all the data, like Mike can ask a more robust question. And the person at the top who’s just the investor who knows enough about finances, but maybe not about Google Analytics.

Can ask [00:48:00] what data is relevant to me this month and it will tell him. 

Mike Harrison: So we just solved all the world’s problems. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah, and I do think that is why, in the interim and why we still do have some small mom and pop type parks. The role of a good management company is so important because most of these small mom and pops, their job is focused on managing that park and running their park and they don’t have the time or energy to really do the kind of analytics that the larger companies do.

But if they can depend on the right kind of a management company who’s got, who’s gonna come back and give ’em this information and run those run that AI forum and look for that data, that’s where I think the real value can come in.

Brian Searl: Thoughts Management Company, Mike. 

Sandy Ellingson: And when I say management company, I’m talking about a data analytics management, not like a sending a man park manager in. 

Brian Searl: Oh fine, Sandy. Then I’ll take it back. I won’t ask Mike, [00:49:00] but No, you’re right. There’s all and all that again is whether it’s a management company for your whole RV park like Mike does with CR hospitality.

Yeah. Or whether it’s somebody doing data analysis. Thank you, Christine. I’m sorry I didn’t get you more involved this week. No worries. 

Christine Taylor: Last week, I, last month I talked a lot, so.

Casey Cochran: I know normally we go down the liability hole. 

Brian Searl: I’ll you guys next. See you. Thanks. 

Sandy Ellingson: Bye Christine. 

Brian Searl: So yeah, I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought.

But whether it’s where were we going? What was I talking about? 

Mike Harrison: Park management or revenue analytics or, oh, park management. Important to hire a professional person to help, 

Brian Searl: whether that’s analysis from a management company or a marketing company, or a accounting company or a law firm, or they all have to eventually prove that.

Worth to you? Is it worth what I’m paying the lawyer, the accountant, the marketing company, the RV park management company, whatever, for the service they provide. And so it’s still going to be an uphill climb until you can figure out how to explain to that person who obviously clearly doesn’t know enough to do their own marketing or do their own accounting or do their own right.[00:50:00] 

How do you explain it in language? They’re able to understand and see the r o i of and that again, is way made way easier with ai. 

Sandy Ellingson: And all of those things are really different skill sets and most parts don’t need somebody full-time doing that one skill. So the economy of scale that the people that really specialize in those things can deliver up to the parks, to me most of the time, does have value.

That’s why, the parks I work with, I tell ’em all the time, you’re not a marketing guru. Why are you trying to be one? 

Brian Searl: I agree with you. But that you have to convince them. You don’t have to convince me or Mike or Sandy, you have to convince the work owner that yes, it’s good, but why?

Help me understand why giving away x percentage of my revenue is a good thing. Yeah. Because you’re getting double that back maybe, but how 

Sandy Ellingson: I think it’s happening, but I’m one person out there working on grants to help ’em, to tell ’em this is what you need to do. So I do think I’m making [00:51:00] a small dent, but I’m definitely not overtaking the industry yet.

Brian Searl: We don’t need to. 

Sandy Ellingson: But with ai I might, 

Brian Searl: we need a bunch of people who are making the small dents though, right? Sierra Hospitality pushing people forward. Insider, Perks, Sandy Ellison’s company, whatever that is. You need a fancy name, Sandy. It’s hampering my efforts to, 

Mike Harrison: but let’s ask the magic eight ball, will Sandy take over the world tomorrow?

Definitely. Yes. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yay. 

Brian Searl: People talks how much extra you 

pay for that. 

Mike Harrison: Oh, I got the original one. Now we can do the shake or it’s much easier without having to wait for the stupid triangle. Is Sandy the most amazing person we’ve ever met? Me later? 

Brian Searl: Actually, is there bad answers in there or is it a fixed 

eight?

Mike Harrison: Oh no, there, there are. Does Brian ever stop talking about ai? I have no idea. 

There’s other one 

Brian Searl: Shoulda have been. No. So I don’t know how prophetic it is. I might return it if I were [00:52:00] you.

Alright, what else we gotta talk about to wrap up this conversation about data?

Mike Harrison: I think we’re good. 

That’s, that sounds a healthy conversation. Yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: I think I was excited to hear your review of some of the, it’s one thing to get the marketing email right about what people are doing, but to hear somebody else’s opinion about having tested it and. And all that is very valuable.

So thanks for your input 

Mike Harrison: today, Mike. Yeah, ironically, I had a partner meeting on the same day these reports came out. So I was like lemme go look and see what they, see, what they say. Yeah, no my, I geek out on this stuff as much as Brian geeks out on ai. I love data and so I’m happy to help.

And anybody out in the audience, if you wanna ask questions, shoot me an email or, reach out. I’m happy to help of anybody who wants to 

Brian Searl: learn. I think that’s same for everybody here, right? And certainly for Casey and everybody else. Absolutely. But yeah, let’s, I’m interested in building that bot, Mike.

Mike, if you wanna [00:53:00] see if data analysis works, we’ll build it for you. Book a call with me. 

Mike Harrison: Eh, we’ll try it out. We’ll try it out. 

Brian Searl: I think it’d be interesting to see how much it can really discern and how much level of can it tan five years worth of data type thing. From all different kinds of sorts.

Mike Harrison: Yeah. And not only that, it’s like the intricacies of looking at the data and seeing the trigger points and seeing what the anomalies are and what doesn’t look right. And it’ll be interesting to use that human now, the hotel industries they’ve rolled out numerous revenue management systems that have that intelligence.

It isn’t necessarily ai. Yeah. But, Hilton and Marriott both have their own systems that will, make predictive and, they’ll automatically make changes for you based on history, same time last year, predict holidays, et cetera, et cetera. But this might be a little bit different than that.

So we’ll see. 

Brian Searl: We’ll see what comes with it. Worst case scenario, we have fun looking at data. That’s right. That’s right. All right, 

Mike Harrison: sweet. 

Brian Searl: That’s all I got today. I think it was, again, a really healthy discussion. I’m excited to see where these startup boards go. I think it would be interesting, again, like you said, if we could figure it out a way to subscribe [00:54:00] it and open it up to everybody else besides.

Just Camp Spot. I don’t know that if I was in charge of Camps spot, I would make that decision. I feel like I would be against that probably, but I don’t know. Just from a business perspective. I don’t know. I’m sure it’s a 50 50 split and I’m not saying I know anything ’cause I definitely don’t.

But it’s an interesting dynamic and a push and pull as to far as like we wanna help the industry, which is obviously why we’re doing it. We wanna help our park owners, which is obviously why we’re doing it. Where’s that split? I don’t know. 

Mike Harrison: Casey left the call, when we were, we did a full evaluation of all the different revenue management system or p m s as I should say.

Excuse me. A few years ago, and, Casey’s sales pitch to me was you have to go with Camps spot because we’re gonna make you more revenue. And Brian, you’ve worked with me long enough to know, what do you think my answer was back? PR prove it. How and we had several discussions around that.

And I think, this is another way to make properties revenue. And so to your point, they’ll have to come to an understanding of is it a, [00:55:00] a market industry where they, people can choose to get it. The only way to get it is if you’re camps spot or what I think will end up happening is there’ll be enough of a market, demand where they might be able to pioneer something where they can still have something proprietary, but maybe a subscription based, it’s revenue generation, but it’s also industry leading and might be become separate.

You never know. 

Sandy Ellingson: I think some of this business intelligence stuff is something that all many of them are working on because of something that happened earlier this year. It pushed them into it. So at all the shows this season, we’ll see all of them having their own flavor, of the business analysis tools.

Yeah. Which is great for everybody. Again I know I sound like a broken record, but I still believe there has to be one unifying company that can pull all that together, right? So that we get the full picture, not the partial picture. Because even though we get to see Koko a’s reports every year, and they’re gracious to, to share all that data with us, it’s their list.

Same thing [00:56:00] with Casey. It’s his list. If we can add, there’s 

Brian Searl: no organization right now that function, 

Sandy Ellingson: that would be really the best option. 

Brian Searl: There’s no organization now that functions in that role in our industry, though there really 

Mike Harrison: isn’t. 

Sandy Ellingson: Not yet. But there are opportunities for that. And there are people that are agnostic who want to do that.

And it, and we’re close, we’re 85% there to where we have, we will have the data, including all the federal state. We’re 85% there to be able to do this kind of deep dive on the data. 

Brian Searl: All right. Let’s hope we get there Anyway. We all have to go, I think. Yep. Everybody has something important to do, I’m sure, except for me yep.

Take care guys. Another episode of MC Fireside Chats. We’ll see you next week for our glamping focused episode, and I guess that’s it. Take care. 

Mike Harrison: Bye. Have a great day. 

Announcer: For joining us for this episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searl. Have a suggestion for a show [00:57:00] idea. Want your Campground or Company new future episode?

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