MC Fireside Chats – December 10th, 2025

[00:00:00] Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Excited to welcome you here to our last episode of the year. It’s crazy how fast 2025 has gone by, right guys?

[00:00:10] Brian Searl: I feel like it just started a few months ago. And then you get to this new point in January where you’re like, I have this whole new year and then boom, it’s November again and it’s conference season and everything else.

[00:00:21] Brian Searl: But all good things hopefully for everybody. We’ll chat about some of that stuff today, but our last episode of the year for Guest Experience topics. And then I think next week we have a wrap-up show of the whole year and then we take two weeks off for the holidays. Exciting stuff going on.

[00:00:33] Brian Searl: Welcome Jeremy Johnson, who’s going to be one of our recurring guests. I’ll let you introduce yourself in a second, Jeremy. Tyler Duffy from CampLife, who’s our special guest. Greg Rose, who I can’t see his picture but is the president of something. And introduce him—

[00:00:46] Greg Rose: Camp Nauvoo.

[00:00:46] Brian Searl: It’s who where?

[00:00:47] Greg Rose: Camp Nauvoo in Placerville, California.

[00:00:50] Brian Searl: Camp Nauvoo in Placerville, California. Do you have a video, Greg, or?

[00:00:53] Greg Rose: No, I do not.

[00:00:55] Brian Searl: Okay. And then we have Joe Duemig from App My Community. Welcome back, Joe.

[00:01:00] Brian Searl: So you guys want to go briefly around and just introduce yourselves for the audience who does not know all of you gentlemen? Whoever wants to start.

[00:01:10] Joe Duemig: So I’m Joe Duemig from App My Community. We make mobile apps for RV parks. Been on here for a couple of years. Not, I don’t get in as much as I should, but been getting busier and busier every month, 

[00:01:21] Brian Searl: that’s a good problem to have Joe?

[00:01:22] Joe Duemig: That’s right.

[00:01:23] Brian Searl: So we appreciate you having you here. Tyler?

[00:01:26] Tyler Duffy: Yeah, Tyler Duffy, CampLife. We have reservation and property management software across the US and Canada.

[00:01:33] Brian Searl: Is that it? You’re not like big tout of we’re the longest, oldest, most premium, come join us, CampLife thing?

[00:01:42] Tyler Duffy: I think it sounds better when you say it. No. Yeah, we’ve been next year, we’ll be celebrating 20 years. It’s for a tech company, I feel like I should have more gray hair. That’s old.

[00:01:58] Brian Searl: You should, man. Maybe you’re not working hard enough.

[00:02:00] Tyler Duffy: That’s a lot of that’s a lot, that’s a long time for a tech company.

[00:02:02] Joe Duemig: Or you could have no hair. It took, it only took us seven years before I had no hair. 

[00:02:08] Tyler Duffy: Yeah.

[00:02:09] Brian Searl: Jeremy?

[00:02:11] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. I’m Jeremy. I own Kona Hills Campground in Marquette, Michigan. Just had our first year in 2025 and closed up for the winter. But getting ready for next year, building a couple cabins and also planning for future winter recreation opportunities going forward.

[00:02:29] Brian Searl: Awesome. Excited to have you here, Jeremy, this week and as a recurring guest in 2026 to talk about guest experience. And then last but not least, Mr. Greg Rose. I’m sorry we can’t see you, Greg.

[00:02:37] Greg Rose: Yeah, I’m sorry you can’t see me too, but maybe that’s okay cause I don’t have any hair either, so it’s we’re all good.

[00:02:43] Greg Rose: Yeah, we operate a, an 86-acre campground in Placerville, California. Halfway situated between Sacramento and beautiful Lake Tahoe. We we don’t do RV camping, but we do everything else camping wise. We don’t have cabins, but we have glamping tents down to dirt camping. And we also operate a wedding venue, which is probably half of our business. So we do weddings, some family reunions, corporate retreats.

[00:03:12] Greg Rose: We we actually have been there 10 years. We bought it from the Boy Scouts and had to do major upgrades after they neglected it for 10 years.

[00:03:21] Brian Searl: What was the worst thing the Boy Scouts did to it?

[00:03:25] Greg Rose: When we bought it, it was to buy it as is. And, some of that stuff is true to word. They were very honest. They tried to sell it to me without a well, but the well was working when I looked at the property, so they had to fix that. But they had a beautiful meadow where we do our weddings and it was pretty much a dirt meadow when we bought the property. That was probably the hardest thing to come back from.

[00:03:50] Brian Searl: Awesome. I’m glad you did. Looking forward to talking more about your property in a few minutes.

[00:03:54] Brian Searl: So to our recurring guests here, they’re typically how we kick this off. Joe knows, Jeremy, you’re new, but we just ask in the last month since we’ve been together, is there anything that’s come across your guys’s desk that you specifically think we should be chatting about this week?

[00:04:10] Brian Searl: No? Nothing important?

[00:04:12] Jeremy Johnson: In terms of guest experiences, I got to say like I where I’m going at least and where my mind has been at lately, especially seeing people like Travis Chambers or Ben Wolf is the immersive side. And for me, I think they’re focused on two different things. Travis is really focused on that fantasy world. Where Ben is really focused on health and wellness.

[00:04:34] Jeremy Johnson: And in and for me and where I’m at in my property, I’m thinking about how to integrate, we live in a place where we get 300 inches of snow every year in the Midwest. You can’t get that experience anywhere else unless you’re on the West Coast or in the mountains. And so that’s what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and just seeing what other people are doing with that immersion and how can I incorporate that into my guest experience.

[00:04:59] Brian Searl: What are some early ways that you’re tossing around in your head? Because that’s one of the things that we’ve talked to many owners here who, some of which are like, “I’m out, it’s the end of the season, I want to go to Florida,” rightfully “i’ve dealt with the kids all year or the families or the screaming people or whatever.”

[00:05:12] Brian Searl: But there are also many other people who are like, “I want to extend my season a little bit,” push maybe into the winter. I’m seeing reports from Scott Bahr and KOA about how winter camping is of interest to people. There’s obviously tons of activities like snowshoeing and hiking and things that I enjoy in Calgary that is the same for you in the UP probably. So what are some of the things that you’re thinking about?

[00:05:31] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah, I had a chance to run into Zach Sultenberg while we were in Kentucky, a lot of us together. And Zach was telling me about a project that he just finished about, I think 45 minutes north of the Twin Cities. And none of what he told me was surprising, but I know he was surprised by it, and I think the rest of the country is.

[00:05:49] Jeremy Johnson: But, they their summer season is basically, call it May 15th through October 15th. Same as mine. We got five, six months. That’s really it. And four of them are good, right? And he, they were going through the due diligence with these this couple in just outside of the Twin Cities, almost Northern Minnesota, not quite.

[00:06:07] Jeremy Johnson: And he was like, “I just don’t think the numbers are going to work.” But to his surprise, not to the couple’s surprise they killed it during the winter. People were people from the Twin Cities were going up and booking these domes all year round.

[00:06:20] Jeremy Johnson: And I think at a very basic level, it’s just the novelty of it. If you could see if my window wasn’t washed out here right now, I’m in a snow globe. You can’t get that in the city. And it and it’s just a cool experience. I think people crave novelty.

[00:06:35] Jeremy Johnson: And then beyond that like simple fact of being in a novel experience, like we’re thinking about winter recreation at a pretty high level. And I’m lucky that we have a local economic development group that’s focused on that. We have one of the largest sled dog races in Marquette, Michigan next to the Iditarod. It’s a qualify qualifying event actually. We have a massive fat tire biking community up here.

[00:07:02] Jeremy Johnson: And then skiing as well, snowshoeing, skiing. People that are doing things like tele-skiing and backcountry skis. Actually just saw today that the Marquette Backcountry skis are being relaunched after a five-year copyright infringement issue with backcountry.com. So there’s all these niche sports that I think we can embrace and share that culture with other people.

[00:07:25] Jeremy Johnson: And then the last one, which is like off the wall but ice climbing. Michigan is or Munising, Michigan, 40 minutes down the road for me, is actually home to the largest ice festival in Michigan and I maybe North America at this point. It’s been running for 25, 26 years. And people from all over the world, Europe, Asia, come to climb ice at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It’s becoming a bigger and bigger sport.

[00:07:54] Jeremy Johnson: And that’s something that, we see as a as something that we can continue, especially when I look at places like again in Northern Minnesota, Sandstone, Minnesota or Winona, Minnesota that have repurposed old quarry walls to artificially farm ice and have people climb on it. So they’re like these weird things that are kind of niche, but I think people find very novel and that’s what people are craving these days. They want that new experience. So that’s what we’re leaning into. And that’s a massive way we plan to extend our season throughout the whole year when we live in a place that is, below zero below freezing, sometimes below zero and gets 300 inches of snow every year.

[00:08:37] Brian Searl: I’m curious your thoughts on this because there’s a lot of good nuggets in what you just said. But one that I’m curious about from your perspective is the difference between, if there is one, novelty and guest experience. Because novelty brings people in, but does novelty make people come back?

[00:08:52] Jeremy Johnson: I that’s a great question. I don’t know if I have the answer 100% to it. But I think, and I was actually just listening to a podcast with Vince Kadlubek, who is the founder of Meow Wolf. And I did like a six-month stint with them in Santa Fe way back in 2015. But he was talking about this ability to understand, he’s like Travis Chambers where he’s coming at it from a more of a fantasy perspective.

[00:09:17] Jeremy Johnson: But he was just talking about the ability to understand your guest at a deeper level and react based on that information. So like his thing was he was talking about, I think it was Star Wars, right? And he’s “Sure, I’m going on a Star Wars ride at Universal or whatever or Disney, whatever theme park it is. But does that ride know that I’ve watched every single Star Wars movie 15 times? And I’ve spent, 500 hours in the Star Wars universe compared to maybe the person sitting next to me who’s only, casually watched those.”

[00:09:52] Jeremy Johnson: And so I think that’s where, to your point, Brian, in getting people back, like that experience has to continue to evolve. If you come back for a second visit and you’re getting the same exact experience that you saw, that novelty wears off. But if I know as an operator that this person is on their second, third, or fourth visit I can adapt that experience on my end as a host and as a hospitality provider.

[00:10:16] Brian Searl: That’s— I would love to see Disney building in 20 years where I can go through a ride and it would know all that stuff. And then the next time I go through the ride, it’s different. I feel like AI and robots might make that happen in 20 years. That would be super cool.

[00:10:30] Jeremy Johnson: Meow Wolf is going to do it before Disney. Quote me on that.

[00:10:35] Tyler Duffy: One thing your question there about creating repeat customers. We’ve and looking at the data from our system, we’ve got in 2024 we were at a 87% repeat customers. So a lot of customers were repeat customers. We’ve seen that percentage drop in 2025 into the high 70s. But that those repeat customers are a good portion of stays at least for an average across all of our campgrounds.

[00:11:07] Tyler Duffy: The, what are you doing to attract your repeat customers and do you track that at all, Jeremy?

[00:11:14] Jeremy Johnson: So we just had our first year, so I haven’t had any quite that’s not true. So we had a quite a few repeat customers throughout the year actually. And I do track it in our booking software and CRM. And we didn’t do anything necessarily to attract it. I think right now our key value prop for those people is our location and the convenience of it.

[00:11:36] Jeremy Johnson: I know for example, one of our best customers this year, and when I say best, I mean like recurring, right? And Andy’s a great guy too, him and his wife. They’re outdoor adventure guides and they live about 40 minutes away, but a lot of their guiding experiences take place in Marquette because we’re such a central location. And then they might go up to 550 on Superior or they might head west into like the McCormick Wilderness or something.

[00:12:01] Jeremy Johnson: But they stayed with us because of the convenience. And I think that’s a factor you can’t overlook as well. And then going forward, our focus is really on year over year improvements. We started with just 30 rustic camping sites, nothing more than that. And so our one of our goals in terms of development is every year when people come back, there’s something new for them.

[00:12:26] Jeremy Johnson: We opened with porta-potties. I’m not necessarily proud of that fact, but we did.

[00:12:30] Joe Duemig: Hey, you opened the doors, right? That was a huge feat.

[00:12:33] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. Yep. And next year we’ll have permanent vault toilets. And in year three, I’ll have flushing toilets, that’s the goal for us.

[00:12:42] Joe Duemig: Going back to Brian’s question about niche versus novelty. I think one of the things with that would be size would matter as well. When if you’re a smaller campground and you’re catering to a niche audience sure it’s a novelty, but you can only have so many people there in a year.

[00:12:59] Joe Duemig: And so it allows for you to, not necessarily rely on the repeat customers, especially if you’re going off of something that has staying power. Some sort of fantasy experience that has staying power versus jumping on something that’s brand new. Not that it would be easy to do a Star Wars themed thing cause you have so much IP that you have to deal with.

[00:13:18] Joe Duemig: But if you had something that was Star Wars themed, like it’s got staying power for the past, 50 years. And so you’re going to have even if it was a novelty, you’re going to have a few repeat customers, but you’re going to have enough new people in the doors that it doesn’t matter unless you’re, a couple hundred sites. And then you have to worry a lot more on your repeat customers, I would think.

[00:13:40] Tyler Duffy: Yeah, but your customer acquisition cost on a new customer is higher than a repeat customer.

[00:13:47] Joe Duemig: Possibly, possibly not for a type of novelty item like this, right? Because you’re going to end up, I would imagine they would end up having a lot of virality and things like that would go with it.

[00:13:57] Brian Searl: Yeah, it depends on the level of novelty, right? Is it like cause to cause years ago when we first started really glamping in the US six, seven years ago, right? And there was glamping before that, but you understand what I’m saying before it became really popular. Then like having a bell tent was a novelty. Having a yurt was a novelty. And like it still is, but not really. Now you have to level up your experience a little bit more to create a novelty. At least within the specter of people who have always gone glamping.

[00:14:21] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. I don’t know I don’t know what Travis’s acquisition cost is for Outpost X, but it I bet it’s pretty low and it’s mostly production costs because of that virality of his videos. He puts that out and people come from all over to the middle of nowhere Utah to stay in his building.

[00:14:38] Jeremy Johnson: And I think similarly, when you look at glamping, I’ve got a friend down in Crystal Mountain, just side of outside of Traverse City, who he’s putting one of the, he’s putting the first glass house unit in Michigan. And he happens to be a videographer and he’s amazing at production. So he puts out a video and guess what? On Instagram, on Facebook, there’s a hundred thousand views in 24 hours. That lowers his cost of acquisition quite a bit, I’m sure.

[00:15:10] Brian Searl: Greg, how do you think about this?

[00:15:13] Greg Rose: And we started with the glamping and the dirt camping because that was my background. And when you go way back to talk about your repeat customers I’m a solid 75% of my guests are repeat customers. And probably at least half of the rest of the customers are all word of mouth by the people who are already staying with us.

[00:15:33] Greg Rose: And I experience the same thing where I get repeats the same year. I there’s one gal that comes in every year and her daughter’s adopted me, but she’s it was three times this past year her husband and the little girl. And you see them grow every year. And a lot of times we are used as a base camp as well because we’re so close to Lake Tahoe and a wilderness area and that type of thing.

[00:15:54] Greg Rose: And then we have a place called Apple Hill, which draws in all kinds of people commercially for our area. So so we get that repeat stuff. We’ve added stuff every year as well. Actually we went to a tree fort idea this past year to give people another option.

[00:16:11] Greg Rose: We don’t use a lot of money in adver in marketing. And so there’s word of mouth goes a long ways for us.

[00:16:19] Brian Searl: That and that lowers your cost per acquisition too, right?

[00:16:22] Greg Rose: Yeah. For exactly.

[00:16:24] Tyler Duffy: Another another statistic from our system, over the last year we did a data on how far people are traveling to get to the to get to your park or your resort. I don’t know if I can share my screen here. Let’s see.

[00:16:40] Brian Searl: Yeah, you can. You should be able to in the bottom and then Jessica will just have to add it to the screen. But while you do that, yeah, that was I and I’d be curious too, Tyler, if you have a sense of how that repeat number went from 84 to 70. Because you have a lot of good data you collect. I remember being super impressed by, I didn’t make it to the Canadian show this year because I was in France at their show, but last year I remember being impressed in Ontario about how you had all that really interesting data that you shared.

[00:17:04] Tyler Duffy: Can you guys see this? I’m sharing a—

[00:17:06] Brian Searl: Yes.

[00:17:08] Tyler Duffy: Over the last year, so average distance people had traveled was 305 miles, but if you look at like a bell chart, almost 60% of travelers are coming from less than 100 miles away. And then you’re hovering around 5% for all the other distances up until you get 7-800 miles, you have a little bit of a bump. A good full day’s travel that’s a you’re you’ve got a little bit of a bump, but a vast majority of people are coming from less than 100 miles away.

[00:17:39] Brian Searl: Which is what we expect to see. Is that a big change over 2024 do you think? 2023?

[00:17:43] Tyler Duffy: No, it’s it isn’t really much of a change. We’re just, we’ve looked at averages and distances and different things, but we hadn’t put it into a chart that was just showing the percentages of where they’re coming from.

[00:17:57] Brian Searl: Because I think that’s what Scott Bahr has seen quite a bit in his data and his research for KOA and some other organizations is that as the economy and other external factors happen, like people are obviously shortening the amount that they’re willing to travel to go to their parks. Like you’ve seen that, right Joe, too? At some of the places you deal with?

[00:18:15] Joe Duemig: Some somewhat. A lot of the place a lot of the places that we deal with are going to be long-term stays. So we deal with a lot of long-term stays and a lot of destinations. And I think that they have a little less of the they’re at an end where people are going there because they go there.

[00:18:32] Joe Duemig: As opposed to, no one’s going to go to winter Floridaring because they live in winter or live in Florida. They’re still going to be traveling. And then, when you look at the big mega parks that are a thousand sites I doubt that their I haven’t ran data on it, but I doubt that their travel has changed quite a bit over the years. And I—

[00:18:52] Brian Searl: That’s fair. Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah I’m and I’m speaking mostly of transient parks when I say the data yeah.

[00:18:57] Joe Duemig: Yeah. And the transient, the large transient parks, the ones that are you know have the huge water parks and stuff like that. They’re getting the same they’re getting the repeat customers like we were talking about. Whether those repeat customers are from, 200, 300 miles away or 100 miles away, it’s that is their summer vacation. I would imagine the parks that are more, the 1 to 200 sites and offer a few amenities, you might be able to find something a very similar park closer to home sort of thing.

[00:19:23] Brian Searl: That’s fair. Like especially in the like Myrtle Beach areas and things like that, right? That’s your destination, that’s your summer vacation.

[00:19:30] Joe Duemig: Exactly.

[00:19:30] Brian Searl: It would be interesting to do a study on though like the Yogis for just picking out Yogis because you’re talking about water parks for example. Like how much does the actual water park versus location matter? That would be an interesting study. Like I don’t know which way it would lean, but because there are so many Yogis now and with those big water parks, does the water park draw as many people from so many hours away as it used to? That would be interesting.

[00:19:52] Joe Duemig: Yeah, if they have one that’s closer to them and they go to that one that’s closer instead of the one that’s further. And I think that makes a lot of sense because of the brand. The brand a lot of them over the past eight years have upgraded tremendously. When we started eight years ago a lot of the parks were really nice and some were hit or miss. Now they’re all they all have pretty heavy amenities it seems. And they’re a little more on par with each other. You definitely still have standouts, but I think now that’s the case and there’s more there you know there’s more of them. When we when we started our business, there was one two of them that were within a couple hours of us. Now there’s four. It’s doubled in terms of our size.

[00:20:32] Brian Searl: But that goes back to what we’re talking about with guest experience, what Jeremy is bringing up too and things like that is that like it’s not always the multi-million dollar water park. It’s that’s the difference maker. You could put that in and then one could come like you’re saying two to four in the years that you’ve been there or more. And then that’s no longer the difference maker from a guest experience standpoint. But it could be something as small as the organic soap in the bathroom or the curation of the ice climbing or the right?

[00:20:56] Brian Searl: And I think it’s important for you not you, but like all the people who are watching the show who are trying to figure all this stuff out, to understand that you need to figure out who your audience is, who your people are, why they’re coming to you, and then go after those small individual things that are going to make their stay really special and memorable, right? Is that fair, Jeremy?

[00:21:14] Jeremy Johnson: I think that’s fair. I maybe I told you this when we were in Kentucky, but I mean we had a, people come to us I would say primarily for two reasons right now. And one is because of the convenience of our location, but then two because of the on-site experience. We you know we’re 80 acres, but we only have, we ended the year with 35 sites, we’ll be up to 40 next year.

[00:21:37] Jeremy Johnson: So across our 80 acres, even at max capacity where 40 sites, that’s like you know pretty significant spacing. And I mean we had people that would come and stay at another park maybe a mile or two away on Friday night, but then on Saturday night they would book with us and say, “Hey, we heard about you from a neighbor or some or a restaurant in town and we had to get, we were a tent sandwich between two RVs and we had to switch over here, and there was even a moment where like this was like a kind of odd moment in reservation, but early in our season, we had a someone book who ended up emailing at one in the morning saying, “Hey, I just want you to know like I left because I didn’t see anybody else around. I you know, I was a little scared. It felt like I was the only person out here in the woods.” And like we felt really bad for that person and we emailed them and had a great conversation.

[00:22:29] Jeremy Johnson: But that’s the point of our park. To feel like you’re in the woods by yourself. Like we set it up that way on purpose. So it was like a and then if you read our reviews now like you know you go on Google and you check out our reviews, so many of them mention like you know we’re also self-service too. We don’t have a lodge or a check-in facility. So so many people mentioned like “I didn’t have to talk to anybody. I was actually in the woods. I didn’t see an RV with a generator nearby.” And those are the things that I think, the small things, but that’s what makes somebody choose our park over the park that’s two miles away with a mini golf course and a hot tub and all these other amenities and a pizza bar, 

[00:23:11] Brian Searl: so let me ask you this question, Jeremy. And I’m not, believe this, I’m just playing devil’s advocate because I want to get your take on this. We’ve long heard this and maybe Joe you’ll agree with me on this, like we’ve heard this argument, maybe not an argument, a debate, a difference of opinion, a whatever in the industry that there’s really two types of parks, 20 40,000 foot 60,000 foot view, right? The private parks, the RV parks, the you know with the hot tubs and water slides and or the swimming pools and the miniature golf courses, the KOAs, the whatever, and the state parks that love to hate each other, right? Sometimes in our industry.

[00:23:45] Brian Searl: So I’m curious like what you’re talking about to me stereotypically, and I know it’s different because I know your park, like not as well as you but better than most people who are listening to the show. Stereotypically sounds more like a state park. So are you a competitor to a state park? And if you are, how do you set your guest experience apart from theirs?

[00:24:04] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah, that’s a good question. And honestly something I hadn’t thought too much about. I would say that when we went set out to build ours, we just wanted to build an experience that we would have liked. And I would even say at least in Michigan state parks are changing dramatically. If you look at Traverse City State Park, which is the most highest volume state park in the state of Michigan, it is like a private park. There’s not a you know there’s not a pool, there’s not a water park in it, but people are jam-packed in there. You’re one after another. You got kids ripping around on e-bikes and people that set up for long-term at this state park too.

[00:24:44] Jeremy Johnson: And so I would almost say like from my perspective and again it’s very Michigan and Midwest-centric, state parks are becoming more like private parks and that leaves a gap and an opportunity in that rustic experience. That’s what I see here in Michigan.

[00:25:00] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think I for sure Traverse City maybe is I don’t know. I guess I’d choose I would like to believe that Traverse City is the exception to the rule, but then I’ve been to Kentucky State Parks and they’re the same and that was 10, 15 years ago, right? And I’ve been to Florida State Parks and they’re the same. So yeah.

[00:25:17] Joe Duemig: I also don’t think that a lot of the state parks, the guest experience is not the number one thing always. Obviously depends on the state park whether or not they’re going for that. I mean they might have that in their non-camping portion of it. But also Jeremy’s sites are they’re not it’s not RV, right? It’s tent?

[00:25:36] Jeremy Johnson: Tent and then we do cater to like car truck tent or truck van camping. But no hookups at all. So no electric, no sewer, yeah.

[00:25:45] Joe Duemig: And so I don’t know that they that there’s too many state parks that are catering to the glamping experience. So that’s something that I think would be I’m sure they exist. I’m sure there’s plenty of them that exist. But it’s I think that would be way outside the norm.

[00:25:59] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. We I know we have a not a state park but a a county park in Marquette County that’s added a couple yurts over the last few years and those are like very popular but it’s a very remote park so it doesn’t see too much volume.

[00:26:13] Brian Searl: Yeah Parks Canada does a little bit of that up here. Like it depends on what you consider glamping, right? Like the Florida State Parks we visited 10 years ago had huge houses at some of them you could rent inside the state parks. And then Carter Caves State Park in some of the places in Kentucky had big huge nice cabins that I remember staying in. Like maybe not luxury, but so it depends on what you consider glamping. But yeah, I generally agree with you. That’s not the rule, it’s the exception.

[00:26:40] Tyler Duffy: I think it highlights the point though to lean into your niche. If you have that niche with the you know out in the wild and no nobody around you, lean into that with your marketing and everything because you’re going to attract those the customers that are looking for that and they’ll become those repeat customers that you’re going after. Or if you’ve got the pool and the hot tub and the miniature golf, lean into it.

[00:27:07] Brian Searl: Yeah, you’ve got to tell your story, right? You got to figure out who your guest is and then you have to figure out how to tell your story that’s a truthful story, but tell your story in a way that enhances your offerings and showcases your guest experience and explains how you’re different and says what your why is and why the why is that’s a lot of whys, why the why is to come to see you or whatever that is.

[00:27:25] Brian Searl: But you understand what I’m saying, right? Like I mean there’s so many people who like I’ve said this so many times, like people come to me, come to us for marketing in Insider Perks. Who do you want to attract? RVers. What do you mean? That’s a that’s a lot of people. You got to narrow that down. So I think just this taking time to step back and consider that and you can do a lot of that with AI now. Like even if you didn’t know how to do it before. You can go in and use a tool like a ChatGPT and you can say, “Hey, go look at my park and browse my website and come back and give me all the details on it and tell me what you know about it. Who do you think the ideal customer is who comes here? What are the types of buyer personas that typically would come here? How do I reach those people in marketing? What do I say in my website? What do I say in my email marketing?” If you know how to talk to it, you can get a lot of nuggets that would cost you like tens of thousands of dollars before to hire a pro agency to do this stuff.

[00:28:14] Tyler Duffy: And then once also once you have that re repeat customer base keeping track of them with your CRM like you mentioned Jeremy is then you’ve then you can go back out and remarket to them and you know send them emails, reach out to them, give them updates on what’s going on to the park. And your cu cost to acquisition is a lot less than you know trying to find that new person that’s you know browsing Google and looking for “I’m looking for a remote campground in Upper Peninsula Michigan maybe with some ice rock climb,” you know that you’re going to spend money on those keywords to find that person. But once you do get those repeat customers, remarketing to them and is important.

[00:28:58] Brian Searl: Do you have any kind of CRM built into your CampLife, Tyler?

[00:29:01] Tyler Duffy: Yeah. We got a—

[00:29:02] Brian Searl: Okay. I was just curious because like I bet you could ask the question in a room at OHI or KOA, “How many people use a CRM?” And they would just look at you and stare and there’d be like two people in the room.

[00:29:12] Tyler Duffy: What is a CRM would be the next question.

[00:29:15] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Tyler Duffy: For those listening, CRM is Customer Relationship Management and just like a tool to m to help keep that customer life cycle going. Keeping track of those customers. How many times have they been to your park? How much money, your top customers, how many times do they come a year? How many how much are they spending? Do you want to offer promotions? We’ve got several parks that’ll do promotions for, if you’ve stayed over X number of nights a year, you get to book early for the next year. You get early access or different things like that.

[00:29:53] Brian Searl: Do you have that stuff set up to automat like I’m throwing you a softball here Tyler so you take it and run with it. Do you have that stuff set up within CampLife? Because I think that is important. I don’t think every reservation system has that kind of CRM functionality.

[00:30:05] Tyler Duffy: It’s wonderful for you to ask Brian. Yes we do. Yeah. Yeah we do. We our one of our secret sauces is our business rules engine where we can set up different rules for you know I want to give all my customers that stayed 10 nights over the last year, I want to get them give them early access to next year’s reservations or I want to give them a promo or I want to yeah you can slice and carve up the data and set up all kinds of different ways that you can interact with those customers and offer benefits and stuff.

[00:30:44] Brian Searl: How about you, Joe? Anything in your app that helps people do this?

[00:30:48] Joe Duemig: Not directly. I mean what we’re doing the whole time is trying to give your guest a better experience. But we’re not really managing the customer. We actually leave that mostly to Tyler or whatever the you know their PMS software they’re using and CRM software that they’re using because we you know we’re not out sending emails and offering stuff like that. We do ha we do give the ability for the properties to target certain groups. But not near as we don’t keep a lot of data on their users. 

[00:31:20] Brian Searl: Greg, do you do any of this at your park? I don’t mean to keep forgetting about you, but you’re just like you’re a blank screen and I forget you there you’re there sometimes.

[00:31:25] Greg Rose: I’m a black hole, I know. Actually my wife is my CRM person and she does a good job. We really, you talk about what Jeremy was doing and a lot of focus is on our regular guests, that’s what I would call them because they have become family and we communicate with them. All of our return guests get extra communications so they’re advised of all the changes we’ve done throughout the year. They come in with suggestions and we do changes and we send them updates on the changes that they suggested have been inputted into the camp. But it’s a whole lot more manual process at our end because we’re just small. It’s the two of us and we hire a couple seasonal workers and that’s how we maintain our facility. We do try to keep somebody on site, but we’re as remote as Jeremy is as far as, they’re coming in and they’re we want to give them the traditional camping experience is our goal.

[00:32:19] Greg Rose: And so the same way we don’t have the generator stuff but we do communicate with our past guests and update them about anything that comes up. End of season specials, we do that as well to our regular customers.

[00:32:37] Brian Searl: Is there any data and maybe from Joe or Tyler or Jeremy if you’ve heard it or Greg anecdotally talking to other park owners, is there any data about is there a growing trend for more of the disconnection experience in camping? It’s always been there to be clear, it was the original form of camping. But is there a like at least in the sentiment of many park owners like at least in our circles that we run in OHI and KOA is that this was like a you know going back to a state park private park, there were always people who did it but maybe not a big enough audience that was in a growing demographic for me to take advantage of it in a way that Jeremy has.

[00:33:12] Brian Searl: Is there a sense that there’s going to be or is been has been more of a demand of this for the last few years and it’s continuing to grow? Because some of that stuff surprises me. Like we were doing Scott and I were doing some research into Gen Z and there’s this kind of ongoing narrative in the industry that Gen Z wants to stay connected and they want more Wi-Fi and this is what it needs it takes to get them out to your campground. And when you actually study this stuff and look at psychologically, that’s really not what Gen Z wants. They want to be disconnected. They want to not talk to the people at Jeremy’s campground. Like they want to you know they have this nervousness like Earl from Black Folks Camp Too which is now the Unity folks, his expanded his brand into other verticals probably includes some form of Gen Z too. Like these people don’t know how to camp. They were not taught that, they weren’t taken by their parents when they were children. So they’re nervous and they like a big thing with Gen Z is they don’t want to be embarrassed. And so I just think—

[00:34:07] Brian Searl: Go ahead, please. Yeah.

[00:34:09] Jeremy Johnson: I’ve seen a couple of things that like I guess I don’t know that anybody’s really dove into this, but like one, I think Brian to your point like Gen Z, right? Like they do want to always be connected but then they crave those disconnections as well and it’s like a little bit of a di dichotomy and like how can you mesh that. Like I actually don’t see a problem like and our park is unique because we’re so close to town yet we’re in the woods. And so like you have full 5G service at our park no matter where you are. You are in the woods, you are not in town, but you still have service.

[00:34:43] Jeremy Johnson: So there’s a some uniqueness there and I think people like that because they want to know, “Hey, I can turn my phone off, but I can also turn it back on and have service if I need to call for help.” But like I don’t see a problem with somebody using their phone to augment an IRL in real life experience.

[00:35:05] Jeremy Johnson: And I think Joe, I didn’t talk to you about this in Kentucky, but I think I was talking to somebody on your team about this like I’m totally happy that if somebody’s walking through my campground on my trails using a bird call identifier app to be like, “Oh, there’s the Kirtland Warbler and holy crap, you can only find that in Northern Michigan during these two months out of the year.” Or “Oh, here’s this other bird.” I that the Kirtland Warbler is the only one I actually know the name of because I call it the Costco Warbler.

[00:35:39] Jeremy Johnson: But you know like that those things I’m like totally okay with and I think it augments the experience and I’m excited about that stuff and I think that’s like fun. Even with the geology at my space, we have really cool rocks like if you got to use your phone to Google Lens it. That’s cool to me. And I think that’s cool to Gen Z too. I don’t know because I’m a Millennial, but we’ll find out I guess.

[00:36:00] Jeremy Johnson: And then the second thing is is that demand there? I don’t know that anybody’s measured it, but I can tell you this, I combed through both the Newbook and the Campspot data that got released at the end of the year and I really just focused on Midwest and Michigan. But one thing that I noticed that stood out heavily to me was the average daily rate for rus rustic sites versus full hookup sites. It was like a $10 difference. I rent rustic tent sites for $45 a night in Michigan and the average daily rate for full hookup sites in the state of Michigan is was like 60 bucks. So it’s like why am I going to spend the money on infrastructure at every site for water, sewer, electric when I can—

[00:36:49] Brian Searl: Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:50] Jeremy Johnson: And like I think that speaks to the demand too, right? It’s like people are you know no longer are people just paying like 10 or 15 bucks a night for a camping experience like if they can get a rustic camping experience close to the city and pop in town for dinner, they’re going to pay for that convenience, 

[00:37:08] Joe Duemig: a lot we’ve been talking about this a lot recently and I don’t know you know data I haven’t seen data on it but people say people want to disconnect all the time. But the real question is what are they disconnecting from? So people will use that word all the time to mean a lot of different things. Maybe disconnecting for them means not being behind their laptop working. Maybe it means disconnecting from the for us it would be the hustle of life right now. Like right now we have six children, three of them are in club volleyball and we—

[00:37:36] Brian Searl: Wait, right now you have six children or you always have six children?

[00:37:39] Joe Duemig: Hopefully always.

[00:37:40] Brian Searl: Okay sorry.

[00:37:42] Joe Duemig: But but our job like we’re driving at all times. And so when if I would say we want to disconnect, it’s disconnect from our vehicles. So you know Brian you talked about us going to Spain for a year, we’re not going to have a car. That’s actually the big one of the big draws is not having a vehicle for a year because we spend way too much time inside of it.

[00:38:02] Joe Duemig: And so while people are disconnecting might still mean they want to watch their Netflix show at night. It just means they don’t want to be tethered to their phone for work or tethered for a another reason.

[00:38:14] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah I think one real world example here in Marquette County where I’m at is with our airport. We have a you know an issue with access getting to Marquette County. The you know closest metro is Green Bay and that’s still four hours away from us. And you know there’s this thing like you can fly into Sawyer, re it wasn’t international airport but they renamed it to regional so they could get funding and subsidize the flights. But there’s this problem there when you land, flights are cheaper now, but there’s no Wi-Fi at the airport and we don’t have Uber, we don’t have Lyft. And so like when we did when our economic development did their study, you know their last one, they were like, you need Wi-Fi you need reliable Wi-Fi at the airport.” You know they’re like, “Oh there is Wi-Fi but you can’t connect to it.” But you need reliable Wi-Fi and then you need rideshare services. And if you don’t have those, people are going to be upset. They’re coming here, Joe just like you’re saying, to disconnect. They’re coming here to go spend a weekend biking around the woods or hiking around the woods, but like they still want the modern day convenience. They want to be able to pick up their phone and call a Lyft or an Uber. They want to call their grandma or their mom or whatever when they’re on vacation. And similarly like man, we’re fighting our health department right now just to allow us to have water under pressure so we can have flushing toilets and showers because while people want those you know that rustic experience, after they’ve been in the woods all day, they want to take a shower man. They’re they might be here for a bike race and they might be dirty, sweaty, muddy. They want to shower off. They don’t want to go to bed covered in that, like it’s not always like 100% disconnect. It’s to your exact point, it’s what specific thing are they trying to disconnect from.

[00:40:30] Greg Rose: Yeah. They want to make a reservation for the hot restara restaurant in town and then take a shower before they go. And then come back to sleep in the woods. And we do get the Uber so we’ve had people that they’ll Uber their food out here from town. And it’s only 13 minute drive but if they can connect and they’ll get an Uber driver to bring them out, they you know whatever food they want they got delivered in 15 minutes.

[00:40:57] Brian Searl: Yeah I think it’s I think it’s yeah just putting that thought into to your guest. All right let’s do something for the last couple minutes here. We tried this at the conferences, OHI and KOA, we did it last week pretty successfully too. I want to just have everybody go around the room and ask one other person a question. And so the way we do this is we’ll start with, we’ll pick Greg cause he just got on camera last minute. Hi Greg. Nice to see you.

[00:43:34] Greg Rose: Hello.

[00:43:35] Brian Searl: And we’ll pick Greg we’ll start with him. So Greg you’re going to ask anybody here a question, really just Jeremy, Tyler, or Joe. Ask them a question, anything you want. You pick who you want to ask a question to. And then we’ll go process of elimination. So if Greg asks Jeremy a question, nobody else can ask Jeremy a question.

[00:43:51] Greg Rose: Why can’t I ask you?

[00:43:51] Brian Searl: You can ask me if you want to.

[00:43:51] Greg Rose: I’m going to I’m going to go to Tyler cause I think you’re working with more reservation system? Is that correct?

[00:43:59] Tyler Duffy: I own CampLife reservation system.

[00:44:02] Greg Rose: Okay so it’s a reservation system.

[00:44:05] Tyler Duffy: Yep.

[00:44:05] Greg Rose: So we’re always looking at ways to enhance our booking opportunity because we don’t maintain our own booking system at this point. So we’ve used people like Hipcamp and we use Airbnb one year, different things like that. So I just be interested to know how your system integrates with other systems.

[00:44:27] Tyler Duffy: We have a integration with Airbnb. Hipcamp we haven’t seen too many requests for that. It’s really driven by our customers what where they want us to focus on but we’ve we see about over 50% of our traffic actually just coming from our marketplace camplife.com to people making reservations at the different properties.

[00:44:53] Brian Searl: All right, Tyler, your turn. You get to ask a question for either Joe, Greg, or Jeremy.

[00:44:58] Tyler Duffy: I’ll ask Joe a question. Joe, I understand that you guys just recently expanded to Australia?

[00:45:06] Joe Duemig: Yep.

[00:45:06] Tyler Duffy: Is that correct? Can you tell me a little bit, what do you think the similarity similarities and differences are between the US market and the Australian market when it comes to camping?

[00:45:18] Joe Duemig: Yeah I think I think they’re quite similar. The look is a little different. So less pads. So you might be a little more on grass. You your camping will be on grass as opposed to on pads a lot of times. They I mean just like here they have a mix of long-term and short-term stays. They definitely have some interesting things that we never see here that a campground owner here would most of them would say never. Annexes. They’re like tents that come off the side of your rig. And so it makes you a little like sunroom area. We’ve never seen that here and every a ton of people had it at those campgrounds.

[00:45:57] Joe Duemig: But I might say a little less amenity crazy as we do here but some campgrounds are definitely close. We have a customer in Sandstone Point. You know they have a huge water park. And there we’ve seen quite a few of those that exist. So I think it’s not that much off.

[00:46:13] Joe Duemig: Now New Zealand, that was that’s a little more a little less amenity rich. Actually a decent amount less amenity rich than what is offered in Australia or here. You definitely have things that have those amenities but it’s just that was what I noticed at least.

[00:46:30] Brian Searl: You’re going over there again Joe in May?

[00:46:33] Joe Duemig: Will yes, we’ll be going to Australia again in May. The show down there was great for us. It’s a lot of fun. The people are very enjoyable. Long flight for being in a for being in a trade show for a full week. But but it was good for us. So we’ll definitely go back.

[00:46:47] Brian Searl: I think I’ll I think I’ve finally convinced my girlfriend to let me go there in May so I’ve been trying to go for four or five years. It always it coincides with her birthday is on May 9th so it’s always like right before overlapping the conferences. So I’ve always prioritized her birthday but I think I’ve convinced her like I will give you a great Australian vacation if you just let me go here for a week.

[00:47:06] Joe Duemig: Luckily my wife is part of the business so for the four years in a row that I missed our anniversary for Carvic, she was okay with it. So 

[00:47:16] Brian Searl: I don’t know if I’m that brave but good for you. Okay.

[00:47:18] Joe Duemig: She was fine with it cause it was part of her business as well. So now now we have other people that can go to that. 

[00:47:23] Brian Searl: All right, Joe. Greg or Jeremy?

[00:47:26] Joe Duemig: So Jeremy I think I have a this actually was what I was going to use for Brian asked what’s new, what are you seeing more of. And so one of the things that I’m seeing a lot more of is smaller parks or glamping parks that are offering you know they don’t have a ton of amenities but they’re offering a lot of catered like high quality food catered amenities. And even larger parks now are doing this where they have a limited supply of charcuterie boards or a limited supply of this special dinner that they’re going to offer from their chef. And so I mean you’re a little more rustic I think than would a lot of these would be, but for the glamping type is that something you’ve thought about? Is that something you’ve seen? And what do you think?

[00:48:09] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah foo food is a big focus for us. We’re we are a rural community. We do have a lot of farmers but it’s very seasonal farming. We’re seeing more farm-to-table restaurants popping up. A good friend of mine actually just opened his a farm. He’s a pretty renowned chef on the West Coast but moved back ho moved back home to the Midwest but he’s living in Two Harbors, Minnesota now. And he just opened a farm so that he can build you know he’s starting with the farm but then he plans to build the cafe and then he plans to build the hospitality component as well you know. And so he’s starting at step one literally ground zero, the ground. But he plans to add all that in and you know I think we even have Michelin-starred chefs, Jame James Rigato from Detroit. I always forget her name but she ran Alinea down in Chicago, now has a property just right over by Korney actually, Tyler. Amazing spot that like you can’t even get into. You gotta book a year out and it costs like $1500 a night. And it that $1500 a night comes with meals, so it’s like that full experience.

[00:49:16] Jeremy Johnson: I don’t think we’ll ever be at that level. I don’t have a Michelin star. I can’t command those prices. But at the same time, that’s something we think about and something that we think as we grow maybe year five, six, seven, I would love to add that in. You know we’re lucky that across our 80 acres we have about three acres that are adjacent to our campground that are on the main highway, US 41, which runs from the Upper Peninsula all the way down to the Florida Keys. Longest continuous highway in the United States. But we’ve got this commercial frontage on 41 that like I want to build a full hospitality concept from health and wellness and spa to that food aspect. So it’s like how do you blend that? How do you keep that rustic experience rustic, unique in the woods but then bring those modern amenity in? And I don’t have the answer but I do think about it and I want to figure it out, 

[00:50:11] Joe Duemig: cool.

[00:50:12] Brian Searl: All right Jeremy, you are left by process of elimination with Greg 

[00:50:15] Jeremy Johnson: yeah. Greg, I’m curious. You mentioned you are utilizing the main marketplaces. You said Hipcamp and Airbnb. One, two-part question. One, do you prefer Hipcamp or Airbnb? And then two, do you plan to move to direct bookings on your own website anytime soon?

[00:50:33] Greg Rose: Our goal is to do that. We don’t plan to do it soon. Actually we added Staylist to our venue and traded off Airbnb cause it was useless. And Hipcamp although they started us and really have helped us, but their fees have gone just through the roof this year. So they’re up in fees to us as a host and to customers. And that’s making me think about looking at other stuff. Maybe we move into the direct booking right away. It just requires more hands-on timing and with the fact that it’s you know just the wife and I as far as the booking goes, it would be more hands-on time sitting at that computer dealing with the booking until we master that avenue I guess.

[00:51:18] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. What was the name of the park again?

[00:51:20] Greg Rose: We’re Camp Nauvoo. N-A-U-V-O-O. And it’s not the one in Illinois. It’s Camp Nauvoo in California.

[00:51:29] Jeremy Johnson: Okay. I’ll check it out. And I would say man like I’m all about getting as much awareness as possible, but I mean at this even after year one, we’re like 99% direct bookings and once you do get that system in place, it’s worth it.

[00:51:43] Greg Rose: Yeah. Thank you for that. Now you guys it sounds like you’re you know you started you had to build your whole infrastructure because you’re still working the toilet channel. We came with flush toilets when we got there 

[00:51:55] Jeremy Johnson: yeah. I’ll see you in three years with the flush toilets.

[00:51:58] Greg Rose: Good luck on that one man. It helps a lot.

[00:52:02] Brian Searl: All right. Final thoughts, Tyler, and then where can they find out more about CampLife?

[00:52:07] Tyler Duffy: Yeah Greg you should check out using direct bookings with somebody. Your the cost is way down and your the ease of just taking online reservations is great. Out of all the PMS systems Tyler who would you recommend? Recommend CampLife. I will admit I am partial. If you want to learn more about CampLife software.camplife.com.

[00:52:28] Brian Searl: Thank you so much for being here, Tyler. I appreciate it. Joe, where can any final thoughts and then where can they learn more about App My Community?

[00:52:33] Joe Duemig: Yeah I’m I’m impartial on the POS book or PMS booking systems. I try to be at least. I tell everybody to talk to them all, figure out which one works for you and which one doesn’t. I I do try to relay information I’ve heard. Like one of the things I’ll say what I always hear about CampLife is their support’s amazing. So that’s what I that’s what I typically tell people when they’re asking different questions about the different PMS systems. But anyway yeah you can find more about App My Community at appmycommunity.com.

[00:53:02] Brian Searl: Thanks Joe for being here. Jeremy where can they find out Kona Hills? Any final thoughts?

[00:53:06] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. CampKonaHills.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Jeremy Johnson. Cannabis and Campgrounds. That’s the tagline.

[00:53:15] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Jeremy. Looking forward to 2026 talking to you some more. And then Greg, last but not least, where can they find out more about your park in Lake Tahoe, not Illinois?

[00:53:24] Greg Rose: CampNauvooPlacerville.com.

[00:53:27] Brian Searl: Thank you for being here, Greg. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me, I will be on Outwired in 58 minutes or so with Scott Bahr and our first guest that we’ve ever had on Outwired, Ari Smith who runs a luxury glamping resort I think in Vermont. 

[00:53:44] Brian Searl: I probably should know that before I have an hour before the show starts so I can research that. But he’s he’s a really good guy who spoke at the Glamping Show, went to MIT I think and is really big in robotics and has is doing some really cool stuff at his property with custom things that he’s building. So excited to talk to him on Outwired as our first guest ever. 

[00:54:03] Brian Searl: If not we will see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Really appreciate you guys. Have a wonderful 2026 if we don’t talk again.

[00:54:09] Joe Duemig: Thank you! 

[00:54:09] Tyler Duffy: Thanks everyone.

[00:54:10] Joe Duemig: Bye-bye.

[00:54:10] Jeremy Johnson: Thanks Brian.