MC Fireside Chats – February 12th, 2026

 [00:00:45] Joe Duemig: Hello and welcome to this edition of MC Fireside Chats. I’m obviously not your host Brian Searl. Brian contacted me today and said that he is not feeling well and asked me to host. I told him I would be more than happy to, as long as he was expecting this to be his last episode. So we will see how that goes.

Luckily we have Casey joining us here. I thought it might just be me and John, which, hey, you never know what conversations happen with only two people. But yeah, it looks like everybody else might have the sickness as well, that’s been going around.

We’ll go ahead and get started today. Our guest is John McMahon, the Operations Director at Camp Door County RV Resort and Campground. I’ll go ahead and let you introduce yourself, let Casey introduce himself, I’ll finish up and then we’ll get into it with John.

[00:01:33] John McMahon: Great. Thanks. So my name is John McMahon. I’m Director of Operations here at Camp Door County. We’re a very new campground. We just opened last season, so we’re heading into our second season. I have a background in hospitality. We owned a brewery and a couple of restaurants. But this is my first foray into the camping industry.

I actually fell into the business by an unfortunate incident where the original owner passed away before the campground opened and they needed someone to run the campground and they asked me to do it. So I’m lucky enough to be here despite the circumstances. So thanks for having me.

[00:02:15] Joe Duemig: Welcome. Casey?

[00:02:21] Casey Cochran: Yeah, I’m feeling a little under the weather here too. I think everyone in my family’s had something, but we’ll see how— get through this here. Yeah, Casey Cochran, VP of Partnerships and Business Development here at Campspot.

Yeah, we’re a campground reservation software, focused on North American campgrounds. And we have a marketplace as well that just helps get visibility to campgrounds, connecting campers with campgrounds. But yeah, happy to be here, happy to chat through whatever you got on the docket here today, Joe.

[00:02:45] Joe Duemig: All right, good seeing you, Casey. I’m Joe Duemig. I am the owner and founder of App My Community. We make mobile apps for RV parks, campgrounds, and resorts to enhance communication and the guest experience.

So yeah, good seeing you Casey. It’s been a while. For everybody that doesn’t know, Casey and I were on the trade show circuit for a long time and I think both of us have stepped back a little away from that so we don’t get to see each other and hang out as much as we used to. Same with Brian as well.

John, let’s go ahead and kind of— you got into how you got into this business. Can you tell us a little bit about your park? The number of sites, the— your camper, who your camper is? And everything about your park.

[00:03:28] John McMahon: Yeah, sure. So as I said, the original owner of the campground passed away prior to the opening. And so I was asked to take it over with no camp management background, but I was in high-tech for most of my career as a senior executive. And we moved to Door County 33 years ago. I live two minutes from the campground.

The campground has 77 RV sites. It has 19 modern cottages for glamping. And we have 25 primitive tent sites up on our hill in our conifer— in our forest basically. So our target market is really those that want to be outdoors, to learn outdoors, to participate in education, outdoor education. We have a sustainability clause in our mission statement.

So it’s really about that person that’s not just here to sit in their RV and spend the weekend in their RV. It’s about coming to Door County and experiencing the nature that we have to offer. Door County has more shoreline than any county in the United States. We’re surrounded by Lake Michigan on the east and the Bay of Green Bay on the west. We have five state parks in our county as well. We have the Peninsula State Park is the second largest state park in the state with the highest number of visitors every year.

And they have 498 campsites that they sell out before the season starts. They have everything from primitive to RV campsites as well. So there’s a big demand for camping in Door County, but we decided to not take just the traditional RV camping. We wanted to include glamping, we wanted to include the primitive, we wanted to offer nature programs, adventure programs. So it’s really an experiential camping here.

And we only have 20 seasonals. So we prefer the transient camper than the seasonal camper. And we’ve built our programs around that demographic. And we’re doing a lot this year that we learned from last year to upgrade the facility and the amenities that really focus on that type of camper experience. The other campgrounds around here are really just general campgrounds. A lot of them are 100% seasonal and not transient at all. So we just felt that there was a niche here, that people are looking for more than what they can get in a traditional campground in a beautiful area.

[00:06:04] Joe Duemig: So what— what kind of— you said you have your nature and your adventure courses. Can you describe those a little bit for us so we know exactly what you’re talking about? Because this show typically focuses on guest experience. And so sometimes it’s— we have a whole episode talking about food. But this sounds like what— one of the differences that you have is this guest— these courses. Do you want to go through those?

[00:06:25] John McMahon: Yeah. Sure. So one of the advantages of being in Door County is the type of people that— we get such a mixed, diverse amount of people here in the summer that spend time here. So we have a relationship with a mushroom expert. So three times this summer we’re going to have a weekend where she takes 24 guests to multiple state parks to forage for mushrooms. She does an education program first and then we shuttle them out to one of the parks and then we shuttle them to another park. They come back and they discuss the mushrooms they found and then they actually have a cooking demonstration on those mushrooms.

We also have a naturalist that also focuses on storytelling. So we have two programs, one for adults and one for children. So we’ll take the children out to parks and out to the beach and to different areas of nature areas in the county. And we try to work on their awareness of their surroundings and what they can learn by just paying attention to their surroundings.

Then they come back to the resort and in the evening, the whole— the entire campground is invited to a storytelling session that the kids actually tell the stories from the day. But they’re structured stories. So it’s not just Mary come up and tell about your day. It is about a specific subject that she chose and what she’s learned. So we walk them through that storytelling process.

So that’s a little bit— we also— we’re building a mountain bike trail here. So on our property. We also do— we host group rides, road biking and mountain trail and gravel rides. We also hold those.

We also have stargazing. So we have two sessions of stargazing. We— one of our state parks is an international stargazing dark sky facility. So we have access to astronomers that run that program that come to our facility and also run a stargazing event. And that’s really cool because we require all of our campers to turn out all their lights at nine o’clock on stargazing nights. And we also rent telescopes as well.

[00:08:36] Joe Duemig: So each of these activities that you’re discussing then, that’s the theme for that week or that weekend is these different events that you have going on.

[00:08:44] John McMahon: And so we promote the events through Campspot and through our website. And our goal is not to have campers who just need a campsite. So when we put it in the events and we try to block off those dates until we have all the events laid out. So that when you go to book on our property, we want you to book it with intention.

So if you’re into foraging for mushrooms, we want you to know what dates we’re going to forage for mushrooms. Right? If you are bringing kids, we want to show you the options of stargazing, the options of the storytelling. We don’t want you to be here and go, “Oh, you’re doing storytelling today.” We want intentional guests based on the activities that we offer our guests.

[00:09:35] Joe Duemig: That’s pretty neat. Is there, like— go ahead Zach.

[00:09:38] Zach Stoltenberg: Oh, I’ve got two questions for you. One, out of all the events that you do each year, is there one that’s like a real standout that, like, it goes live online and you’re booked solid in 48 hours, you know, that everybody just raves about? And then second would be, what— because it sounds like you’ve learned some things, you’ve done this over the last couple years, what is something new that you’re going to try in 2024? Something that you haven’t done before but you’re going to try it out this year.

[00:10:12] John McMahon: So, that’s an interesting question. I’ll address the second one first. We’ve only been open 11 months.

[00:10:20] Joe Duemig: Yeah, Zach missed the intro.

[00:10:22] Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah, sorry. I ran a little late.

[00:10:23] John McMahon: So, we’re brand new. So almost everything that we’re doing this upcoming year is new. Not all of it. But the biggest event that we did last year is we host what’s called Campgrass Music Festival. So it’s a two-day event where it’s all live music. And that sold out immediately. It’s also open to the public. And the tickets will be going on sale in March for this year. And the lineup that we have for this year just blows away the lineup from last year. So we’ve got some partners this year where we’re spending a lot of money to get top-notch bands to come in. So that one will sell out the day that we announce it. So that’s a big one.

We also have a festival downtown that we sell out by January 1st. It’s in late August called Fall Fest. Some people might know it as Fall Down Fest. So we get about 10,000 people in a community that only has 800 full-time residents. And we have parades and activities downtown. And so people need a place to stay. We’re about two minutes from downtown. And we shuttle people back and forth.

But we sell out— we’ll sell out of all of our events this year. The mushroom foray is an extra cost. But all the other, like the stargazing, storytelling, that’s all included in your experience here. So the majority of the experiences are free to the campers. And then your first question… I think I answered both. At the same time.

[00:12:00] Joe Duemig: Sounds like it. Sounds like it. Casey, do you have any questions?

[00:12:04] Casey Cochran: I was just gonna say, I think this is really interesting because I think overall the big topic that a lot of discussions has been is the booking window that’s shrinking across the platform. You see a lot of campgrounds moving more towards trying to find long-term campers as opposed to relying on the transient.

I just think this is a really interesting story, piece of property, operator coming into this space, carving out a piece and owning their identity with the land, with the dirt and soil that they have, and then also creating— creating a transient demand around it, right? Not sitting there and saying, “I hope people show up,” but saying, “I’m going to create events based around what I— what we know is our identity, what we have a passion for, also what our surroundings is— it already exists.” And then finding unique and creative ways to bring in the type of customer that they want.

And I think this is just a— it’s a very well-timed story. And I think it’s a very well-timed explanation of someone’s business because you have a lot of operators right now that aren’t thinking along these lines. They’re not creating their own identity. They’re not doing these things far in advance.

And for a new campground to set up shop and in 11 months have probably more ideas than you even maybe can execute on, but you’re doing them in order and you’re doing them in what makes the most amount of sense and seeing the success of it, I just think is a refreshing story for the industry in general that there’s a lot of people out there that want to go camping. There’s a lot of people that want to be outside. There’s a lot of people that want these experiences. You just may need to get creative with what brings them in there.

In a season I feel where you’re seeing booking window shrinking, you’re seeing this kind of nervousness in terms of what this year is going to hold based on previous years, especially with advanced reservations and things of that sort. I think coming back to this: What’s our identity? Who’s owning it? Who’s executing on it? And based on the dirt and soil that’s around us, what are we going to do to maximize it? And I don’t know, it’s a refreshing— it’s a refreshing take on a campground and RV resort that I think a lot of people should listen to and have some positive vibes coming out of.

[00:14:18] John McMahon: Thanks. Yeah, Door County is the busiest— is the number one travel destination in the Midwest basically. Especially in Wisconsin. And so at Peninsula Park last year, for the last two years, they built 15 miles of new mountain bike trails. And just so happened last year, we housed the company that was actually building those trails. So at the end of the season, we hired them to come back this year and build mountain bike trails on our property. Turns out the same company is building the mountain bike trails for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

We invested a nice amount of money. Now the reason we did that is because the trails are so popular at Peninsula that it’s almost getting overcrowded already. So we give people the chance to actually stay on property and just by staying here you get access to that mountain bike trail. And you have to pay if you’re an outsider to get on our trail. You don’t have to at State Park obviously. So we have the ability to manage how much use that trail gets. So that we don’t want people to not come here because the trail’s too overused. There’s too many people here.

And we’ve also built, we’ve got the cottages which is our glamping section. We have our traditional RV sites which you can also put a tent. We can go up to 60 feet in the RV campground. And then we have the primitive sites up on the hill, which are within walking distance to our lodge and our laundry and our showers and everything.

But we have— we range from $400 a night to $45 a night. So if you want to be on our property and participate in any of the activities, we’re not an exclusive resort where you’re going to pay $400 to enjoy it. You could even be paying 45 and enjoy the same amenities as a $400 customer. So we don’t want to turn people away at any price range. We have it to where anybody can come within their price range and enjoy what we have to offer. And we did that with intention as well.

[00:16:30] Joe Duemig: Yeah, love it. Yeah, it’s really nice the— same as Jeremy with Kona in that you built out a vision first of what the— what you want the campground to be and built it. And Casey said instead of saying “build it and they will come”, you create the experience, create the demand in what you’re wanting those campers to be rather than just keep adding the amenities, the same amenities that everyone has, and then expecting to get full. I think that’s a— that’s kind of a really nice way of doing things. Zach?

[00:17:05] Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah, another question I had… and to build on that or I guess lean into it. I think it’s great and we’re seeing that. It’s actually— it’s seems to be kind of a fun conversation that’s come up I think the last three months on this podcast that every operator that we’re talking to is telling us about all these things that they’re planning and how intentional it is. And they really are creating the experience that people are coming for.

But I think one of the challenges, and for all operators, is how do you get that out? And so I’m curious over the last year, what is from a marketing perspective? Like you can plan all these events, everything else. And obviously it sounds like some of these are piggybacked to other community events that are widely advertised and widely known. And I think that’s always great. Know your area, know what’s there. Stay in touch with what’s going on. If there is a concert or festival or something that’s going on in your area, you should know about it and you should be catering to that. For sure.

But for the things specifically that you guys are doing and creating, what has your approach been in just getting that message out and letting people know, “Hey, we’re doing this weekend. If you want to come out and book, this would be a great time to come.”

[00:18:18] John McMahon: Yeah, that’s a good question. We— we leverage a lot of the tourist organizations in the state. The Wisconsin Tourism Board and Destination Door County. So they both have large websites where they focus on regions of the state. So if you’re planning on taking a trip to Door County, you can go to either of those sites and it’ll list an event— there’ll be a list of the events taking place. So that’s one of the areas that we— that we focus on.

We have— we have a local newspaper that has subscribers… we have— there’s only 13,000 people live in the whole county. 9,000 of those live in a town that’s south of Northern Door. So from Northern Door, which is where we are, there’s— we’re one of those counties where people joke that if you live on the— if you are visiting the south side of the channel, you’re not even in Door County. So Northern Door is where people want to come. So this newspaper is free and then they send it out to 30,000 people around the United States that have asked for it.

And we also have a radio station that does for free local events and calendars. We focus on our website, our Instagram, and our Facebook. And we also, yeah, like we leverage it through Campspot. We leverage it through RV Living. All of our partners we leverage it with. We also, we partner with manufacturers, wholesalers that’s— that we sell some of the products.

For instance, Swift Industries is a bike packing company. They make bike packs for bicycles. And in June we have a mountain bike or a bike packing weekend that if you ride your bike into our campground, you get a $25 discount on your primitive site. And then we have their products in our facility as well. And that weekend they allow us to discount their products and so they help promote that weekend as well. We partner with a lot of outside companies as well.

When we do our Campgrass Music Festival, we have five local sponsors throughout the county. And so they help us as well in doing the promotion. We do press releases for all of our major events. And we send those out to every area in Wisconsin. As many names as we have, we put the press release out that these activities are going on. For instance in the Campgrass, all the musicians in the contract, they have to promote it as well. And they have to promote it for a certain amount of time. There has to be a certain amount of images and posts on their site to promote us to their followers. So that kind of leverage really helps us a lot.

[00:21:06] Zach Stoltenberg: Those are all great ideas. I really like the partner aspect because I know public entities, that’s maybe a little bit bigger presence, but even— even mom and pop small-time operators, you can still do that. Leveraging those relationships. Get to know when your guests stay, what do they want in the morning? They want a really nice coffee, a latte, a cappuccino. Find out where’s the two, three closest coffee shops and go talk to them. Say, “Hey, we want all of our guests coming to see you in the morning. Is there something we can do together?”

[00:21:39] John McMahon: That just happens to be my wife. She actually owns a coffee shop.

[00:21:46] Zach Stoltenberg: Now we know what the motivation is behind it! Happy wife, happy life.

[00:21:53] John McMahon: That’s exactly right. Yeah. And we do publish a list. When you arrive, we can hand out a list of our favorite places in Northern Door and it’s done by village. And we know everybody. They know we’re handing this out. So we’ve had them come in and say thank you. We had 10 guests come in this month from the campground said you sent them our way. So that really helps.

So then when we do posters of events— we do a lot of posters for events— then they’re willing to put them up and promote them. And that helps a lot. Because a lot of our events are open to the public even if you’re not staying here. But we also look at that as saying, I’m staying at Peninsula Park in their campground and I just saw three posters from Camp Door County which I didn’t even know existed and they’re doing stargazing, they’re doing mushroom foraging, they have a music festival. So next year that’s where we’re staying. And that really helps.

[00:22:50] Casey Cochran: How are— how are you dealing with, it sounds like obviously being new and you’re having this big influx of demand. I’m— are you guys— and I didn’t look into this ahead of time so I don’t know the answer to this. Are you guys leveraging different dynamic rates based on these events or are you setting those kind of rates ahead of time? How are you handling that right now?

[00:23:08] John McMahon: We set those special weekend rates ahead of time.

[00:23:12] Casey Cochran: Okay.

[00:23:12] John McMahon: We haven’t turned on dynamic pricing yet just because we haven’t felt the need for it. But we review it every six months. And my contact at Campspot, we talk about it all the time. I think eventually we will.

But what’s happened, what we saw in the first year is we have so many people that want to come back and stay in the same place they stayed last year.

[00:23:35] Casey Cochran: Yep.

[00:23:36] John McMahon: And sometimes dynamic pricing says that spot’s not available even though that spot is available.

[00:23:42] Casey Cochran: Yeah.

[00:23:42] John McMahon: Right now we’ve just decided to not use it.

[00:23:44] Casey Cochran: Yeah. No, and it makes total sense. I guess where I was getting at with that, if you’re not even using dynamic rates, is one of the things that we’ve been focused on the last three— really about six months is this concept of occupancy prediction. So basically using your park’s historical data to help predict where your occupancy is going to be in as far ahead as possible and then offer suggested rates based on that, whether it’s up or down.

And so it’s interesting when you look at different events and things of that sort. You’re assuming a certain amount— like it’s fun to— it’s fun and interesting to hear the concept already of saying, “Hey, we’re going to throw this event and we know it’s going to sell out.” We know it’s going to sell out. We’re basing on that. And your rates, how do— how do you start to dial in how to reflect that? And a lot of times you do that based on how quickly things start to sell out, how much more demand is there for the amount of spots that you have.

And that’s been something that we’ve been trying to be hyper-focused on is giving park operators as much time to understand where that data is taking them, right? Where those reservations are taking them. And help predict where that occupancy is going to be based on the historical trends, based on current pacing and based on future pacing, merging that all together in a very simple report that says, “Hey, we think you’re going to be at 80% occupancy on this weekend. Based on being at 80% occupancy your rates are typically higher when you are. This is a suggested rate.”

And it’s really interesting pairing that around events because you’re not always going to have events on necessarily the same dates. It might be the same holiday weekends, but it’s not going to be the same dates. And so that’s where we think some of these tools come into play whereas there’s parallels with these events not necessarily the exact date and paying attention to rates that way.

So I was just curious if you guys started to adopt that already or not with some of those events. What’s the— what would you say your variation in pricing is from like an event weekend versus say a standard RV site, whatever you have the most inventory of? What is your variation for an event night versus a standard, maybe let’s just say standard weekend night?

[00:25:57] John McMahon: Would depend on the event. But let’s say the Bluegrass Festival, we do add the cost of the ticket into your rate. So if you’re paying $80, you’re going to pay $105 that weekend for that ticket. And that’s just built into that rate. For the— for the weekend with the foraging, that is separate from your rate. So your rate’s going to stay the same. You have to buy separate access to that event.

But if you take July 4th for instance, Labor Day weekends, those, we go from $80 for a back-in to $100 for a back-in.

[00:26:37] Casey Cochran: Okay.

[00:26:38] John McMahon: On our— yeah, so like on our primitive camping we go from $55 to $70 on those weekends. And we add a minimum stay to those as well.

[00:26:49] Casey Cochran: Yep. That makes sense.

[00:26:53] Joe Duemig: Casey, sorry, side note. I was just curious. It’s something I never thought of. Do you— at Campspot— and you might not be able to tell me if you do. Do you keep track of dates searched that are not booked as well? So thinking about it, if you have a full weekend, you can’t get any more books. Right? I can’t book anymore than it already is. But if that one weekend is still— people are searching for it every single— all the time, I think that kind of goes into that equation of how much could you be asking for that site for that time period.

[00:27:23] Casey Cochran: Yeah. Yeah, we would— Campspot doesn’t per se track that with our booking API, which kind of opens up that ability to manage that entire booking flow on the site, and most of our kind of enterprise, a lot of enterprise parks are leveraging that. You would use— you would be able to track that very easily on your site just seeing kind of the demand for those sites and tracking those date searches then. We are adding very soon the cart abandonment aspect of it with also some additional tracking measures to be able to see that the volume of searches during those— during those peak times.

I would say that— those are the— I like hearing those stories as opposed to why aren’t we getting enough searches on these dates. Having the— the excess amount of searches and then adjusting pricing accordingly. But that is one of the things that we’re trying to get ahead of is data will tell you the pace of booking, many times well in advance. And by getting ahead of that and understanding how much further your pacing ahead on certain weekends versus others and where your end rate ended up being on the high and the low…

So even what John’s talking about here of having different rates on different weekends and even rates that include a ticket, right? I think that’s extremely relevant for something that we’re building because you want to have these extremes in pricing to be able to understand what the cap is in order— so if you have, you know, if it’s going to sell out, before getting to dynamic rates, right? Before getting to the point where occupancy gets to 50%, then you increase rates, if you’re pacing to get at 50% well in advance, six months in advance, three months in advance, it may be the trigger to do exactly what John’s doing now is saying our rate’s just going to be at 85 now. It’s just going to be at 100 because we know we’re going to be full.

But then there’s obviously the next step of that is saying is 110 reasonable? Is 105 on those ones? And on the flip side of that, if you’re at 80 and you’re not pacing the same way you were, this is a big discussion in the space right now is does moving your rates down to say $70, does it actually create more bookings? And I think that’s something for owner-operators to pay very close attention to this year. Because I think in price-sensitive markets or price-sensitive areas, does lowering your price actually drive net new reservations?

And that’s a critical thing I think for parks to understand because the same person that was going to book at $80 is now getting to book at 70 by trying to create additional demand, but is it bringing in net new reservations? And so having access to that data and having that really put together for you and easily laid out to say, okay, the pacing is the same or the pacing is different. You might not want to lower pricing to drive up demand because it might not be driving demand.

And understanding that is extremely relevant this year in what some people are seeing as a shrinking booking window or potentially at least early signs of a little bit less year-over-year demand. So yeah, the answer isn’t immediately just to drop prices because in some cases it will drive demand, right? Some communities does a thing every year with a Black Friday where they do a 50% off. It drives demand, right? They spend a lot of money to push that out and it does drive demand. But then the flip of that is, how much more demand did it drive based on people that were already going to be booking anyways?

And that’s the game you gotta play. It’s one worth playing. It’s one worth investigating in to understand because the last thing you want to see is just prices go down and you have the same amount of occupancy. Then you just sacrificed 10, 20, 30% of revenue because those people were going to book anyways.

[00:31:03] John McMahon: Yeah. And that’s a really— I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a really good idea. Because the other thing that we do at the end of the season, when you check out— I mean we have an automated system that sends a thank you, would you like to rebook? But in November we send out a personal note to everybody that camped with us and ask them to rebook for next year. And we offer them an incentive to rebook at this year’s rate.

[00:32:47] Joe Duemig: John, you had talked about the dynamic pricing and people rebooking for the next year. One of the things that you could obviously set up is so that you don’t allow bookings until one year out. And then when they go to rebook, you can still be dynamically priced, right? So as it gets late in the season. But what you could do as your discount is to wave any locking fee that you might have. If you decided to put a $50 lock fee on or something larger like that for your rebook, your discount would be waiving it. You get your site, you get it now and we lock it in. I’ve seen that as a pretty nice positive, especially for those rebookings for the next season.

[00:33:26] John McMahon: Sure.

[00:33:27] Zach Stoltenberg: Something else I know… I had this discussion in one of the professional development groups that I’m a part of that a lot of operators have had a lot of success with is asking for that rebook before they leave your property. Some of them it’s a discount or will waive the booking fee or something like that.

But if you’re leveraging the text message systems or even if it’s just a little printed placard that you put in a glamping unit or a cabin or when they come in to check out at the office before they leave, there’s a little thing on the register there that’s a QR code that they can scan that says, “Hey, if you book through this code while you’re on property, you can save 10% or 15% on your next stay.” And I… the folks I know who are doing it have had some pretty decent success with that. Folks I know who have never done that, that tried it, were shocked at the immediate response that they got from it. Or like I… they just stayed and we’re getting 20% of them to agree to a second stay before they leave us.

[00:34:33] John McMahon: Wait, that might be another strategy that you can look at. That for sure. I like that idea.

[00:34:39] Zach Stoltenberg: Especially for the parks— the type of parks that don’t open up their reservations the prior year. If there’s a way— and I have no idea, Casey can tell me if there’s a way— if there’s a way that they can allow for bookings only through that code or only through that link. So those can book for those discounts before you… How many parks are still doing it where January 1 they open the bookings? Whether or not that’s best practice is to be seen. But for the ones that don’t, if they can allow people to rebook before then, I think that would be a— just a good idea and it’s another form of goodwill because they can’t really come in early and book. And so they have to wait until January 1 to book for you for the same weekend that they’re there for right now.

[00:35:19] Joe Duemig: And they may forget about it by January 1.

[00:35:20] Zach Stoltenberg: That might actually be— that might be a really good strategy, Joe. To say hey, if you’re just coming to the website and booking, you gotta wait till the booking window opens. But if you’re on property and you scan this code we have in the office, we’ll give you access to… I don’t know if Campspot has the ability to do that or not.

[00:35:38] Casey Cochran: Well I think what you can do is you can put a “cannot book online” rule so it can’t be booked online, but if they want to make that reservation while they’re there, you can open it up obviously to the staff and they can still make that. Which a lot of parks do is they say, “Yeah, I’ll allow you to…” And that’s a window you give them.

Some parks will say, “Hey we’re going live to the public on January 1st,” right? And so that’s what’s communicated, that’s on the site. But then you can have like your network of people that you want to give first dibs to that and say so to the public we’re assuming the site’s opening up on this date. But realistically you could send them the booking link that’s not on the website that to certain people that you want to be able to book that. So yeah, there’s certainly some ways around there.

But I’m just— I John, I’m really intrigued with the idea of what these events and how they’ll continue to evolve and how many people you’ll start to see where the event is what to some extent intrigues to bring them back or there’s events that it is a one and done thing. Like it’s going to attract new people every single time, right? To me like a music festival is going to be I want to come back to that music festival every year because there’s new artists, it’s a great time, things of that sort.

The mushroom experience might be something that you do once and that’s good but it’s going to continue to draw new people and get new people on the campground. I think that that mindset or that thinking I think is brilliant because it’s again, you always do want to have new reasons for new people to come and they don’t necessarily need to come to that every single year because then you want that x amount of more people coming in anyways. But yeah, that’ll be interesting to see how that plays out over this next season as well and beyond.

[00:37:09] John McMahon: Yeah and you know, where we are in our life cycle too, the another point of that is that even if you came that weekend, it’s your first experience at our campground and you— it’s a one and done. We hope you’re going to come back again, not necessarily for that event. But what you saw here on top of the event, you liked so much you’re going to come back. Or you’re going to recommend it to somebody. So that’s a part of our marketing effort is those events, we look at it as saying just get them in the campground. I know they’re going to come back. I know they’re going to tell their friends to come back or they’re going to tell their friends about the event and next year maybe their event— their friends sign up for that event.

[00:37:51] Casey Cochran: I love that mindset. It’s funny you say that. There’s I draw a correlation to our early days and Joe and you probably have a very similar story here. Where, you know, the mindset when I first started the kind of the sales program here at Campspot was we just need to get people to see our product. If we just get it in front of them, if we can just show them the product, I’m very confident they’re going to like what they see and it’s going to check a lot of the boxes and they’re going to be fans.

And I really like that idea of taking like that idea from like a SaaS product to your park. If you get them in here, our staff, our team and what we created, they’re going to like what they see and they’re going to stay with us. And it might not be the perfect thing for everybody but for the vast majority of the people we created a product that that essentially I know is going to resonate well. And I think if owner— if owner-operators take that mindset, like all we need to do is get them here, then then trust me they’ll stay. They’re going to have a good time.

That’s a it’s a very good practice I think because that was our goal from a software company still is to some extent. Or if we just get in front of someone and show them it, I’m pretty confident it’ll be a— they’ll be happy with the results of it. But yeah, that’s really cool to hear from the park side as well.

[00:39:01] Joe Duemig: Yeah, that is— Casey is exactly right. That’s what we strive to do ourselves is once we get in front of somebody and they start using it, they stick with us pretty much forever. And so yeah, that’s that is kind of a neat thing going from the campground perspective. And it’s one of those things where if you start with that, that customer service aspect and the guest experience aspect comes first. And when that comes first, you are always going to get those repeat customers and you’re going to get the referrals.

[00:39:30] Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.

[00:39:33] Casey Cochran: Zach, you got a mega-loud keyboard. Is that one of those old big button ones where it’s—

[00:39:41] Zach Stoltenberg: It’s mechanical.

[00:39:41] Casey Cochran: I gotta knock out a couple things. I had one little issue that was urgent that I need to respond to.

[00:39:46] Zach Stoltenberg: No, it was always funny because I could always tell like a type of computer if you got a Mac or a PC based on the loudness of it.

[00:39:54] Casey Cochran: It’s the— big deal. Yeah. Almost mechanical. Yeah. Awesome. No I just— that’s just—

[00:40:01] Zach Stoltenberg: One thing I was thinking about, ’cause John, I know you said that a lot of— ’cause we’ve talked about the draw of the special activities. We’ve talked about all these different pricing strategies and things. And I know that you said a lot of these things they’re free, they’re open to the public, they’re yeah, we hope they camp with us, we hope they stay with us. But and I know some things like the mushrooms obviously there’s an additional charge for that.

But that’s another thing that we’re seeing amongst a lot of different operators is it’s okay to charge more for an experience and for some of these things. And people— if it’s a great experience, people are more than willing to pay for that. And I think there’s different approaches and there’s advantages and disadvantages to both. Nobody likes to be nickel and dimed. Nobody likes to— I call it like the mini bar model. All the hotel mini bars that god don’t touch anything in there because they’re like 10 bucks for one ounce. Nobody likes that.

So there there’s got to be that perception of value. And I whether it’s you raise your rate on that weekend because you’re doing this special activity and you need to cover that cost, somebody asks, “How come it’s $50 more expensive this weekend than it was last weekend?” “Because we’re doing this event this weekend and that’s to cover some…” So I think it’s okay to not really bury it, but to justify it, right? That hey, these on these special event weekends because we’re doing this other thing, yeah, we’re going to be a higher price than normal.

But I also think the counter is okay too. To say, hey, booking rate is still the same, but we’re doing this activity and so there is a cost per person for that as an add-on. And depending on how it’s facilitated, some of those things, mushroom hunt, it’s limited to I don’t know 20, 30 people, whatever you’re taking out. I think that’s fine, that’s easier to just do it as an add-on. Other things, if you’re doing a campground wide, maybe just bury it in the cost of whatever your bookings for that weekend are.

[00:41:53] John McMahon: Yeah. I agree.

[00:41:54] Zach Stoltenberg: The other thing I like about that is that’s a way to provide incentives to drive those bookings without having to discount your rate. You know, we’ll honor the standard pricing even though this is a special weekend, you booked in advance or you booked with us in person, so we’re not going to charge you the add-on because you’re already there. Everybody wants to drive bookings and increase 80 nights stay, but nobody likes to have to drop their price in order to do that.

[00:42:24] John McMahon: Yeah, and I believe in that mantra as well. Is if there’s not a charge, there’s not a value. But when it comes to the camping, again, I look at almost everything we do as a marketing effort. Right? So we can’t guarantee that everybody is going to show up the weekend of the children’s storytelling weekend have kids. So they could argue, “I don’t have kids. Why am I paying a premium price?”

So if I just— if I bury it somewhere, which I do, then those people who don’t have kids are going to go home and tell their neighbor who’s got kids, “Oh my gosh, we just went to this campground and the kids just had a great time. We saw what they were doing. Their stories were so cute.” It was just amazing. We’ve never had that kind of experience. So we look at that as that’s our investment in marketing is to keep people word of mouth talking about us. Saying positive things about us and talk about the uniqueness that we’re offering.

When we started, I went to our Waco event, which is our campground owners. And it always amazes me that it’s you’re trying to have the same amenities as that guy already? Or what the other 15 campgrounds have? You’re just trying to catch up to those 15? There’s no added value to that, in my opinion. You just are just like everybody else. And that’s not interesting. To me, it’s not interesting.

And I don’t I think there’s a customer base or a target market who also find that not interesting. They’re looking for an experience that’s different than your standard campground. And that’s what we’re focused on. That’s the intentions of what we’re trying to build. And that’s why we’ll never have a a jump pillow or a we don’t even have— we don’t have a swimming pool. Everybody asks us why we don’t have a swimming pool. As a kid I’d rather go to the beach. And the beach is two minutes away from us.

So we say no, because the beach is right down the street. You do have a swimming hole. And I don’t have the staff, I don’t want to have the staff, I don’t want to raise my liability insurance to have a swimming pool because campground A, B and C already they have a swimming pool. Why don’t you have one? Just doesn’t make sense to me. There’s no added value to us being just like everybody else.

[00:44:42] Casey Cochran: Yeah, it’s that identity thing. It really is. Like what’s the identity? Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish with the people coming in? And, you know, that the whole amenity thing is such an interesting thing because I think for a while campgrounds in general just would just continue to add wherever there’s room and space. “We’ll knock that down. We’ll put a jumping pillow. We’ll knock that down. We’ll add this. We’ll knock that down. We’ll add this.” Or “We got a pool. We need a bigger one. We got a pool. We need a slide.”

And I think depending on the market, obviously I think that that can work. But I think it’s really interesting. I think the especially the new wave of campers, it’s like what are we going to do when we’re there? What’s what’s the goal of going there? What’s the what’s the draw? And yeah, it should be different for each park to some extent.

When you guys first opened, did you guys do some sort of like general open house where like the public could come through and see the cabins or see the property? Did you guys just kind of open obviously you market it ahead of time. But did you guys do some sort of just generic open house where people can come check it out?

[00:45:35] John McMahon: Yeah, we had a free weekend.

[00:45:38] Casey Cochran: Okay.

[00:45:39] John McMahon: Yeah, we just announced this is the weekend… We opened we had a soft opening one weekend and then we had a formal opening two two weekends later so that we could learn from our soft weekend what tweaks we have to do. And that hard opening two weeks later was free. So obviously we sold it out. We still weren’t quite there. We’ve added so many things since then. But we got a full house. We had live music. We got to talk to people about what our vision is, what our intention is, what this is going to look like in five years. So we got to reach an audience that we wouldn’t have otherwise. We might have been if we’d opened that weekend up for sale, we might have been 5% occupied. Because people just didn’t know who we were.

[00:46:28] Casey Cochran: Yeah. So create a huge buzz and you got that many exponentially more people talking about it, posting pictures on social media, things of that sort. Yeah, that’s definitely a good way to to kick start.

[00:46:38] John McMahon: And we gave them a discount if they attended the free weekend and if they booked from that weekend, we gave them a discount for their next stay.

[00:46:48] Casey Cochran: Nice.

[00:46:48] John McMahon: Yeah. So that we had those people there. They saw the vision, they liked it. And we had a huge turnout for repeat customers. Kept coming in going, “Oh, your free weekend, we just loved it so we’re back.”

[00:47:00] Casey Cochran: That’s great. I got a prep for my next one so I’m going to jump but I do have to say Joe, well done and I think this meeting has to win best beard of all meetings ever.

[00:47:11] Zach Stoltenberg: That’s an awesome beard. You’re right man.

[00:47:14] Casey Cochran: It’s rare that I get out-bearded on a call but I… John got me. This for sure is the best beard award show. So when we I know the Campspot awards just came out but if Brian does his best beard award show, we’re going to even our low our low head count we’re going to win that win that one.

[00:47:34] Joe Duemig: John’s going to take the cake on that one. Casey, before you get going, you want to just tell people where they can find you?

[00:47:42] Casey Cochran: Yeah, go to campspot.com or you can yeah just reach out to us we’d love to connect if it’s if you’re interested in in in campground software or interested in listing on the marketplace. But yeah, we’re around and it’s a busy time of year right now. A lot of parks onboarding and getting set up in the rules and the stuff like that but we’re always happy to take time and let’s see what’s the next show we’re going to be at, Joe? Are you going to be at is Florida your next one?

[00:48:06] Joe Duemig: Oh no, I’m going actually I’m going to ACA, American Camp Association next Tuesday.

[00:48:13] Casey Cochran: Oh yeah, the one in Orlando?

[00:48:15] Joe Duemig: No, that’s in San Diego. It’s our first first foray into summer camps. We do we do an app for Lair of the Golden Bear which is Berkeley’s alumni camp. And they had great success last year and figured we’ll try entering that market as well. It’s complete overlap but different customer base. So it’ll be that’ll be good. But we did four as a company we did 42 last year. And so looks like we’ll be doing about the same this year. For me after camp, I think I think my next one oh I’m going to Michigan. I’ll be up by you. And then Australia.

[00:48:48] Casey Cochran: Okay.

[00:48:49] Joe Duemig: Yeah, we’re going to do one of the UK ones this year too. So that’ll be another interesting thing. So.

[00:48:55] Casey Cochran: Shoot me a text when you’re in Michigan. We’ll see how far I am. See if we can meet up.

[00:48:59] Joe Duemig: Sounds good. Sounds good. See you Casey.

[00:49:02] Casey Cochran: See you guys.

[00:49:03] Joe Duemig: Zach, you got anything anything different to chat about for the last five minutes here? And then I’ll let you introduce yourself as well. As you as we leave.

[00:49:11] Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah. If anybody needs to find me, LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, all the socials. I’m out there. I’m with LJA. We specialize in helping people design, build, permit and entitle campgrounds, RV parks, glamping resorts and really any kind of luxury experiential stays.

The in the last five minutes, so this has been one of my talking points on a bunch of the calls I’ve had over the last week or two. I’ve got a business partner says never believe in coincidences. And so when you start hearing the same thing come up over and over, maybe it’s a thing? And probably four times in the last two and a half weeks, I’ve had a discussion with somebody about red light therapy.

Everything from somebody in an airport to professional settings to non-professional settings. I know we’re all tuning into some of these health and wellness things because it pairs really well with the outdoor hospitality. And I don’t know if it’s still at that level of the hot tub cold plunge that, but it’s now on my radar because I keep hearing people talk about it.

[00:50:13] Joe Duemig: I haven’t even heard of it. Never heard of it. I don’t know what—

[00:50:15] Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah. It’s it’s and I guess it’s not even really new. Maybe it’s just new to me and I’m slow to on the uptick here but it seems to be going everywhere right now. It’s supposed to have a lot of health benefits. Good for your skin, good for your kind of circadian rhythm, a good reset all of that. And it usually gets paired into something else. It might be a dinner tent setting that has the red light therapy. It might be a sauna structure that has the red light therapy inside the sauna as an add-on. I don’t know how much of a a standalone experience it is. But—

[00:50:48] Joe Duemig: Is it for is it for eyes, for skin, for is it to combat blue light from screens?

[00:50:53] Zach Stoltenberg: I don’t know that— I don’t know that much about it. I need to do some more research myself. But that’s as a talking point for the week, that’s what I’ve been throwing out there ’cause I I keep hearing everybody talk about it. So maybe it is the next big thing. You’re hearing it here first.

[00:51:10] Joe Duemig: All right. I figured I’ll throw since Brian’s not here, we have not mentioned AI. And it hasn’t happened, which is a little bit unbelievable. So I assume and Brian would would now would say that’s just not enough. It’s not far enough because obviously I don’t think far enough like he does on that. But John, you need to record your story times and then you could have AI make them into books and sell the books to the families.

[00:51:34] John McMahon: There you go. Genius.

[00:51:36] Joe Duemig: That’s the Brian tip for you. And again, Brian would end up having you make robots or something like that. I’m just going to go with storybooks.

[00:51:44] John McMahon: Great idea.

[00:51:46] Joe Duemig: So. All right, well yeah, thank you thank you very much for joining us, John. Thanks Zach for coming on. John, where can anybody listening find you?

[00:51:55] John McMahon: Yeah you can find me at john@camp-door.com. We’re on Instagram, Facebook. Website is camp-door.com.

[00:52:06] Joe Duemig: Okay and then Zach just gave us his info. And then Joe Duemig. joe@appmycommunity.com. If you ever need an app for your property, you can reach out to us and we can build that for you to enhance communication and guest experience. So. Thank you all. Have a great day.

[00:52:22] John McMahon: Thank you. See you all soon.