MC Fireside Chats – January 8th, 2025

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searle, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the.

Brian Searl

00:00:58.390 – 00:02:15.042

Welcome everybody to the first episode of MC Fireside Chats in 2025. I am Brian Searle, the CEO of Insider Perks and Modern Campground as well.

Super excited to be here with you in my kind of hacked together podcast studio background thing that I’m putting together here. Just kind of a new look. We were commenting before the show further away from me so you don’t see my face as close.

But you know, super excited here to be here with you with a new kind of format. We’re going to change up the format of the show a little bit this year so we’ve got a couple new guests on the show.

But this like is technically week two because we missed week one of the new year. But this theme of this show is going to be enhancing guest experiences.

And so we’re going to talk about things like technology and customer service and innovative amenities and all that. And so we’ve got a recurring guest for the show, Joe D. Is on here.

We’re going to let them introduce themselves in a second from Y Community, Casey Cochran from Camp Spot, Kevin Thusen from KCN Campground, Scott Foods from Horizon Outdoor Hospitality. And then we’ve got Britney and Leila who are our special guests for this week from their individual campground.

So I’ll let them introduce themselves as well. Let’s go ahead and just start with our recurring guest. Since this is an all new show, let’s bring back Scott Foose first.

Hasn’t been on the show for a long time, left us got too important. Finally it made time for us again. So how you doing Scott?

Scott Foos

00:02:15.186 – 00:02:48.050

Hey. Yeah, good. Good to see you guys. Good to be back. Brian. Thanks for.

Thanks for inviting me back after a, what, a year off or so from the show and yeah, great. Grateful to be here and to share and to learn. As Brian mentioned, I’m CEO and owner of Horizon Outdoor Hospitality.

We manage 27 properties in 15 different states and provide in addition to third party management, professional services and consulting solutions. So looking forward to padding in and being a part of the conversation.

Brian Searl

00:02:48.210 – 00:03:21.220

And you know, this is interesting, Scott, I don’t think you realize this until I’m about to bring this up, but you’re actually the sponsor of this show for Horizon Outdoor Hospitality, which I think wasn’t intended because you weren’t originally on the second episode, so maybe you’ll want to shuffle that to a different week. But, but thank you for sponsoring the show from Rising Outdoor Hospitality. You know, great campground management, RV park management company.

If you’re looking for third party management, we gotta get a commercial for you up here. So that like way more justice than my ugly face talking about you. Right? Because. But thanks for being a sponsor. I appreciate it.

Let’s go with Kevin Thueson from KCN next.

Kevin Thueson

00:03:21.340 – 00:04:26.390

Yeah, thanks Brian. You’ve asked me to be on this before and never been able to make it happen.

So I’m excited to have a chance to be on here and meet everybody else and try and contribute in some way. So my background really quick.

I started as a campground owner seven years ago, bought a KOA franchise and over the past seven years have, have grown that into now an investment company where we’re, we’re about to close on our ninth park.

We, we operate all of our own properties, we’ve built out a management team and we’re raising investor capital and, and looking forward to the next five to 10 years as we continue to, to acquire properties and scale and grow into a large portfolio enterprise. So it’s been, been quite a, a roller coaster over the last seven years.

Starting as a small park operator and then learning how to, to build that into a real business and bring on partners and build out a management team and, and learn how to do it right. So hopefully I can bring some of that experience and knowledge and value to the discussion. So thanks for having me.

Brian Searl

00:04:26.510 – 00:04:43.080

Well, yeah, you for sure will.

And, and I know that I think maybe we’ll spend a little bit of this episode, maybe diving in a little bit into the backstories of all four of you since it’s a brand new kind of show and then we’ll go, you know, forward from there. But like, yeah, your story is, is a really great story, so definitely want to dive into that. Joe. AppMyCommunity.

Joe Duemig

00:04:43.580 – 00:05:01.360

Yeah, I’m Joe Duemig, I’m the CEO and owner of, at my community we make individual mobile apps for campgrounds.

So each of our customers have their own app in the app Store. We do about 180 campgrounds now. And yeah, it’s all about customer engagement and experience.

Brian Searl

00:05:01.840 – 00:05:07.400

Joe, I remember when we first met each other and you were starting off, I guess 2017. Is that right?

Joe Duemig

00:05:07.440 – 00:05:11.144

Does that sound right or beginning of 18.

Brian Searl

00:05:11.312 – 00:05:23.240

Okay. Yeah, I remember when you were super small company. You’re like I’m never gonna have employees. And now You’ve got like your wife is a C. Coo right?

And then you got Bobby Sword now as CMO and you’re like this massive conglomerate.

Joe Duemig

00:05:23.400 – 00:05:31.010

I wouldn’t go that far. I would not go that far. But our, our team meetings now have 10 people on them. So it’s, it’s nice.

Brian Searl

00:05:31.510 – 00:05:39.230

Yeah, I’m really happy for you. Like all the success that you’ve enjoyed. You have a great product. So thank you. Now we’ll move on to somebody smaller. Casey from Camp Spot.

Casey Cochran

00:05:39.390 – 00:07:07.822

Certainly smaller in title man, all these, these sea level and owners, man, but Casey Cochran, VP of our partners in business development and some sales here and there, but really just kind of overseeing our supply and our multi part groups and our key partners and trying to keep them, keep them happy is. Is my focus these days. So Camp spot, we’re a PMS campground specific PMS and Marketplace. We’re about to cross over our 3,000th park here.

Hopefully the next few days, but we’ll see.

And so we work with a wide variety of campgrounds across North America and we’re you know, trying to build the best product that serves the campground space from, from a technology standpoint along with providing some additional exposure and reservations and eyeballs from our, from our marketplace as a supplement to try to help parks, our parks with some occupancy. So yeah, we’ve. I started in, in 2018 beginning. We had about 32 parks I think on the system at the time.

So it’s been, it’s been a good run here over the last six or seven years. But yeah, I mean I love the space, I love the company and this is just as excited as I was day one as I am now.

So it’s, it’s been fun and it’s funny to say the 2018 because that’s when I started. That’s when I met you. I think it’s when I met Scott. I think it’s when I met Joe. Was.

Was that, that, that, that magical year and here we all are still. So it’s pretty cool.

Brian Searl

00:07:07.966 – 00:07:16.798

It’s fascinating.

Like I don’t want to date myself but I feel like is it, is it fair to say the first time I came across Camp spot was like 2013, 14 somewhere around there. Is that too old?

Casey Cochran

00:07:16.854 – 00:07:22.228

Been 16. If you would have done it, it would have been in 2016 because that’s when the code was being initially written.

Brian Searl

00:07:22.324 – 00:07:29.204

Okay. So I remember like the first time I came across Camp Spot was like. And I don’t think I’ve ever told you this was at a Jellystone conference.

Casey Cochran

00:07:29.332 – 00:07:29.684

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:07:29.732 – 00:07:49.540

I think where you guys started. And I can’t remember who ran the booth back then, but I remember, like, there was a couple.

Stephen, Willa, you probably know these guys, Scott from Legacy, who were complaining to me about how, like, Camp Spot didn’t have a good POS system, and it was completely terrible when scan barcodes and they were not going to use it. Like, obviously, you come a long way since then.

Casey Cochran

00:07:49.660 – 00:08:00.148

Yeah, no, I appreciate you bringing that up, but, yeah, no, it’s. It certainly. Certainly has been. You know, I mean, in 2016, if that was the case, it. It was probably more of a concept than it was an actual.

Brian Searl

00:08:00.244 – 00:08:04.340

Oh, it was for sure. Like, you were just, like. You were brand new. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Casey Cochran

00:08:04.420 – 00:08:34.320

Yeah. And then, to be honest, I mean, we’re. You know, we’re a team of, you know, Joe, I love seeing that you have 10 employees.

I know many of them dear to my heart. But, you know, we’re. We’re a team of about 120 people at this point. We’ve been pretty consistent there for the last year and a half.

And, you know, it’s. It’s still a work in progress right there. So, I mean, it’s. It’s still, like. It’s like.

And that’s one of the things that’s exciting is it’s something that’s.

You know, we have a lot of work to do, a lot of things to accomplish, but, you know, do you think we got the right people and the right mindset and right partners to figure it out? So.

Brian Searl

00:08:35.100 – 00:08:40.788

Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. Let’s introduce our special guests. So we have. Brittany, you want to go first?

Brittany Mathis

00:08:40.924 – 00:09:10.490

Oh, yeah. So my name is Brittany Mathis. I’m the owner of the Cory Campground. We are in Tallinn, Connecticut, a really lovely little spot in the northeast.

We’re moving into our fourth season being open, so we’re fairly young. But we really love the camping industry and the memories we’ve made so far and are, like, eager to advance in our community and across the board.

Brian Searl

00:09:11.270 – 00:09:23.962

Awesome. Thanks for being here, Brittany. I want to dive into the Quarry campground and learn more about you in a few seconds here. Layla.

We’ve known each other for how long now? On and off, at least.

I think we feel like we see each other at a conference, and then, like, two and a half years later, we’re like, oh, hey, how have you been?

Lelah Campo

00:09:24.066 – 00:10:53.276

Yes. Yeah. Very much so. So it’s funny that your two guests.

We have a lot in common, and one of it is that we’re from Connecticut, so we now have two parks in Connecticut. Brian, I don’t know if you know that. We bought Cozy Hills Campground that was originally established in 1963 in the Northwest corner.

So we’re the closest to New York and Massachusetts. We’re on the other side from the core, and we bought that in 2014. It was originally established in 1963, and we grew it as big as we could.

We were landlocked, and I have a low threshold for boredom. So 365 acres, and we’ve just started developing that. We opened it for Memorial Day weekend.

2024, 93 sites for the second property, so they’re only about 8 miles apart as the crow flies.

So it’s really interesting that we kind of compete with ourselves, and yet there’s close enough together that there’s a lot of fun synergy that we can do between the two properties. So I’m especially excited to be part of this podcast today. I think the customer experience is something that is always in the forefront of our mind.

And then I’m a big as Casey knows, although Casey might not be so thrilled to see me on this call. I’m a big technology fan, but it has to serve the guest experience.

That’s what it always comes back to. It either should make the guest experience better or your staff’s experience better so that they can then deliver that for the guest.

And it’s a big passion of mine. Glad to be part of the dialogue.

Brian Searl

00:10:53.468 – 00:11:11.366

I think what’s fascinating to me and I want to talk. We’ll just talk to you first here about Cozy Hills Campgrounds or Cozy Hill Campgrounds and your other park. Sorry, it’s really small for me.

Like, I’m sitting far away from the screen and I am old and probably macular degeneration, all kinds of problems. I haven’t I’m not quite at the age where the pot is legal for me to smoke, I think, for my eyes.

Lelah Campo

00:11:11.478 – 00:11:21.062

But you may be reaching the age where new glasses are in order, Brian, maybe there was a harsh realization about six years ago that glasses went from a convenience to a necessity.

Brian Searl

00:11:21.126 – 00:12:24.126

So, yeah, so we’ll just, maybe I’ll just get a bigger monitor, bring it closer to me first. Hang on to my young age as long as I can. Interesting to me what you bring up.

And I want to, I want you to briefly tell us about your parks in a second before we dive into this, just because you’re a special guest and we want to hear a little bit of the background there, but weaving it in with the guest experience is the, is the focus of the show.

It’s really interesting when you say, like, it has to serve the guest experience, because I think the one thing that I’ve learned over a number of years doing marketing and advertising for so many different properties is that the guest experience is very much based on the perception of the individual guest.

And so what the owner thinks is a good experience is obviously a good guide baseline because you talk to way more of the guests than the individual person does. But everybody has a different use case for that, right?

And we just talk about the reservation systems, Camp Spot, new books, Daylist, ResNexis, all those places, right? They all have different interfaces. I think they probably all have a good guest experience.

The question is, is which one is the best one for your park and your type of guests?

Lelah Campo

00:12:24.158 – 00:14:00.344

I think, oh, I see that there’s a campground for everybody, and there’s absolutely the same could be said. Or there is a reservation or property management software for everybody.

I’ll see a relatively small park, post on Facebook and say, I, you know, I’m looking for a reservation system. I have 40 sites and most of them stay with me at least a month. Well, they don’t need to spend the kind of money that we invest in technology, right?

They, they need a very probably straightforward, a little bit more simple program.

And then they go all the way up to the programs like Camp Spot, like New Book, that do a lot more, and, you know, the price tag associated with that as well. And you have to decide what’s the best fit.

And yes, I mean, at the end of the day, I cannot judge if the guest is going to like what our software presents them. But again, if my staff is happy with it, it gives us these great tools that will hopefully get that feedback from the guest.

You know, one simple thing is right after a guest checks in, about three hours later, they get a text from us saying, and this is pretty basic in the hotel industry, right? This isn’t rocket science. But they get a guest, they get a text, hey, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are we doing so far? That is so key.

I swear that one single text saves us a lot of pain and suffering.

Because when we get a three back, that’s me out at the campsite or my manager out at the campsite saying, whoa, where did the, where did it go off the rails? What can we do to help?

That is the type of thing where, you know that that technology can give you some quick and easy tools, tools to, to start writing the ship if it hasn’t gotten off on the right foot.

Brian Searl

00:14:00.512 – 00:14:09.160

And we don’t want to go too far deep into reservations. But you would think there would be somebody, sorry, Casey. That came up with a perfect reservation system. Like, look at Joe.

Like, there’s only one big app company.

Casey Cochran

00:14:09.280 – 00:14:09.688

I know.

Brian Searl

00:14:09.744 – 00:14:11.000

Like, he’s perfected it.

Casey Cochran

00:14:11.120 – 00:14:17.240

He’s cornered, he’s perfected it. Just like there’s only one management company that’s got it. Perfected it. He’s on this call as well.

Brian Searl

00:14:17.280 – 00:14:29.660

It’s like, it’s crazy what I’m saying. Like, pick up the slack here, man. You gotta, you need a. Yeah, but what do you think about this, Casey?

Just real quick before we move on to reservation system, because it is an important part of the guest experience, right?

Casey Cochran

00:14:30.520 – 00:17:07.250

It is, yeah. I mean, for sure.

I mean we, when, you know, our concept from really the beginning with the guest experience was, you know, letting the park control what they want to control and allowing automation with what they wanted to be automated from, from the guest side of things.

So I mean, to start, you know, typically most parks or most guests are going to start at a park’s website or they’re going to start with a phone call potentially, right? And that guest experience start, starts then, right? That’s the start of the journey to some extent.

And then from there it’s getting them to what they’re looking for as quickly as possible, as easy as possible with everything that that park has to offer as easily as possible and, and really setting the, experiencing the tone for what they can expect when they show up.

And it’s interesting because some parks, you know, are truly focused on automation and labor is the biggest factor that they are focused on, you know, not eliminating, but streamlining as much as they can. So they want online check in, they want, you know, that golf cart booked at the time of booking. They want the firewood sold already.

They want express check in, they want terms of conditions signed already. They want to know what site they’re going to be on and they want to just get in and go to the park and unpack and do their thing.

And there’s a lot of parks that say wait, no.

Part of our experience experience is when they do check in is, is meeting us and, and, and me explaining where the good places are to eat and what there is to do at the park and showing them to their site. And so guest experience, again, I think you touched on it and, and Leila did as well. Like it’s, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

And it’s also in the eye of the park owner. Right. And what they want to focus on as far as on the experience they have for their guests. I mean, look at KOA with, with Kevin there.

I mean, like, they have a, a pretty good set of rules and guidance and parameters around what that experience will look with a KOA is going to look like. Same thing with the yogis and things of that sort.

And so from our end, from a technology standpoint, you know, our goal is to embrace as much of the automation as possible, while also embracing as much of the, the user experience that the parks want to provide and trying to find the balance in between. Because again, you roll out something like, you know, online, online check in. You roll out things like, you know, automating terms and conditions.

You. You do those things, but then you go, hey, only the 40, 50 of campgrounds are adopting this. Why is, how is that possible?

Why wouldn’t they all be doing that? But there’s all unique reasons as to why they may or may not adopt some of the technology within there.

And you just have to respect and appreciate it because again, at the end of the day, it’s their park and it’s. You’re creating this little, this space for those guests and no one’s going to know what space works better than those park operators or owners.

Brian Searl

00:17:07.879 – 00:18:04.120

Yeah. And I think it’s like the one thing that we talk about is kind of a. Is different, is the guest perception. But then you look at.

And many park owners don’t do this. I think I know Scott does at his company. I’m sure Kevin does at his.

And I just, I don’t mean to leave Layla and Brittany out, you know, from a park owner perspective, but it’s hard when you’re a single park owner, right? Like, trying to look at all the data and analytics, but there is data to tell you this.

It’s the, the conversion percentage of the people that are booking. And yes, that’s not going to say like, well, they liked my modern font or my.

Whatever, but indirectly it does because they checked out and spent their money with you. It’s a portion of that. Like, sure, the park is a bigger piece of that. What amenities you have, where’s your location?

Was my staff friendly on the phone? But that definitely is a way to measure, I think, that guest happiness with that piece of the experience.

And I don’t know if I’ve said this to this group before, but please jump in. And if you have questions for whoever we’re talking about, the less I talk the better the show is. So feel free.

Joe Duemig

00:18:04.160 – 00:19:01.960

I was going to jump in. I was going to jump in from the kind of the camper point of view. So we, my family, we do quite a bit of camping.

We’ve spent four months out, three months out, two months out, different years, and travel to all different types of resorts. So also being kind of a veteran in this industry now, I know most of the reservation providers, so when I go and I book something and I kind of.

It’s kind of a little glitchy running through their system, I go and tell them directly.

But to the campground owner, what I would suggest is grab somebody green, like with the chamber of commerce that you work with or somebody that you work with, ask them to go through the booking process that you’re using right now, Sit there with them, don’t help them, but sit right behind them and watch them go through that booking process because you’re going to see if they run into an issue. You know, there’s one system that I went through and I would book.

I had to keep going back and forth between pages because of the order in which you pick dates and site types.

Brian Searl

00:19:02.120 – 00:19:04.600

Do you want to tell us who that reservation system was?

Joe Duemig

00:19:04.720 – 00:19:09.384

No, I would not like. Okay, all right, I’ll tell you. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not camp spot. I can tell you that.

Brian Searl

00:19:09.472 – 00:19:14.264

All right, go ahead. Sorry.

Scott Foos

00:19:14.392 – 00:20:59.994

No, I’m sorry. I was just, just, just to kind of layer on to what Joe was, was sharing. I think it’s so important to do that.

We just did that as a team this morning for one of our properties that we, we went through the booking process and it was. Stemmed from. We pulled some occupancy data and we said these two cabin types are outperforming for the last four months on a preoccupied night basis.

They’re outperforming all the other cabins, which are probably even nicer than the one that was. That was being booked up. And we started to ask why. Well, it’s because Waterfront.

There was a description of the waterfront in front of the cabin name. Really, we realized, well, you know, I think we were trying to be too cute before with some of these other names. I think that could be a part of it.

You know, there’s other things like rate and how it’s being described, but how it’s being listed on your booking, on your booking engine is really important.

But outside of just names, looking at your pictures, having great imagery, really selling to that potential guest what it is that they can experience when they’re on site, even directly in the booking engine and click through your pictures and understand maybe which picture is the best picture to start with because they’re only looking at those options for like 10 seconds. They’re going to scroll through really quick if you don’t have something that catches them or you think it looks good.

So to Joe’s point, get somebody that’s maybe a trusted source that knows your area. I think the Chamber of Commerce, Joe, is a great idea, but you should be doing this regularly.

We do it regularly and we find a lot of stuff each time that it’s always an iterative process to improve.

Brian Searl

00:21:00.162 – 00:21:17.466

Because everything’s a key part of that journey.

It’s not just Waterfront is a big piece of that, but it’s also the pictures, it’s also the description, it’s the text, it’s the way it’s presented, it’s everything. Right. Otherwise you could just flood your campground and everything could be waterfront and you’d be fine. Yeah, it’s not a good strategy.

Joe Duemig

00:21:17.578 – 00:21:18.682

And one of the reasons, change the.

Kevin Thueson

00:21:18.706 – 00:21:23.002

Description to houseboats instead of cabins and you’re good to go.

Brian Searl

00:21:23.106 – 00:21:26.458

But waterfront works better. We tested this, Kevin. It’s waterfront.

Kevin Thueson

00:21:26.554 – 00:23:17.772

All right, well, I, you know, I. You guys have touched on this already. Every touch point is a potential pain point or it’s something that’s going to be, you know, a promoter for you.

Right.

If you apply the net promoter score approach, whether that’s the website, whether it’s how many times they have to pay for something or additional fees, whether it’s how many texts they’re getting throughout. And I think the challenge as, as operators is we’ll spend time on it and we’ll think that we have it figured out.

And then how often are, like Scott said, how often are you revisiting that? There’s no, like, set it and forget. You can’t solve the problem and then move on.

The experience is a, it’s a never ending process and you have to continually revisit that. And what’s working today or what was working two years ago might not work tomorrow.

And so you have to be able to identify those things and be creative. And, you know, the concept of being, you know, a secret shopper is, is fantastic. Whether it’s someone from your team or you bring someone outside.

You know, one of the things that we try and do is as much as we can, as we go out and we experience what other people’s campgrounds are doing, you know, like, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled up reservations to book something online that is using Camp Spot.

And the first thing I’m doing is comparing that to what that looks like for my koas and how that reservation process goes for me as a guest versus for me as. As the business owner, the operator. Right. And taking those learnings from those things. But again, it’s, you know, it is important.

And whatever that cadence is, is going to vary depending on, you know, the operator, the park, how much availability and bandwidth you have. But what’s important is, is that you, You. You have to revisit it well, and.

Brian Searl

00:23:17.796 – 00:23:55.090

That’S the elephant in the room. Right.

I think it’s worthy of a discussion because we have a lot of people who are watching this show, like a Layla or like a Brittany, who own 1, 2, 3 campgrounds, who don’t have the staff of a KCN or a Horizon Outdoor Hospitality. And so obviously, there are strategies where, like, this isn’t something that you have to do a ton of work on yourself.

I don’t think, Kevin, because you have the whole KOA corporate team behind you doing all that study and about their booking engine specifically. Right. The user experience is what I mean. But how do you balance that, Kevin, coming from that I owned one park to now, I’m going to maybe close on.

Well, you are going to close on. Hopefully we won’t jinx it. Right. We’ll say we’re confident in that. Nine parks.

Kevin Thueson

00:23:55.250 – 00:25:52.860

Yeah. It’s, you know, every level or every stage you’re at is it’s a different set of problems or different set of puzzles to solve.

And, you know, I used to think when I had one park and, you know, maybe a team of four or five people and I was there, you know, most of the time, I would look forward to the day where we had grown and scaled and had an operations team that handled this and how much easier it was going to be and how much different.

And it really doesn’t take that long once you get to that next level where you are, you are kind of pulled away from that day to day, and you’re not the one that’s interfacing with the guests all the time and experiencing that.

And now, like, there are a lot of times where I’ll sit back and say, man, oh, it would be great to just be a single park operator and have a chance to be behind the desk and talk to people and be a part of that experience. Experience and have that, you know, first person, you know, view of what’s actually happening. Right.

And so it doesn’t matter where you are on that journey or, you know, if you’re trying to get from one to the other. It’s the, the, the process you have to go through is very similar and it’s just a different approach to it.

And I think that’s what’s important is, is recognizing that, you know, you, you do have to change the way you do things based off of the situation you’re in. And you might have to go about it from a totally different creative way.

If you do have a team and you’re not the one who’s doing it, you know, and learning to kind of transition your viewpoint or how your vision is for how the park should operate to the teams that are going to be doing that, it could be two, three levels removed from you. But then also recognizing, hey, you know, these people are lifelong campers, they have their own point of view.

Let me rely on what their experience is because it might be very different from mine and they might connect better with the experience of our, of our guests than I would.

Brian Searl

00:25:53.240 – 00:26:28.508

And that push and pull is always something that you’re working on, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Like, I work on that at my company.

Like, I still remember, like, I loved getting on the phone with the smaller operators, talking back like 2012, 13, when we just did review responses and we just did social and talking strategy with them. And now I still would love to do that, but it’s just not possible for me at the scope and scale that we’ve grown to.

And so I have to trust those team members, but also have to still make sure that I’m hearing all sides of the story so that we’re, we’re providing the best client experience in our case, but same thing, guest experience, right?

Kevin Thueson

00:26:28.644 – 00:27:32.940

Yeah.

And you know, one of the things that we’re doing over the last couple years, we started doing, you know, a KCN book club during this lower part of the year.

And last year we read Unreasonable Hospitality and we spent a week and kind of everyone took turns from our managers to some of our corporate team and presenting and sharing ideas.

This year we’re doing fans first about the Savannah Bananas and all with that idea of how do we better prepare ourselves for understanding the guest experience, what the touch points are, what the pain points are.

But really what I’ve taken away, you know, you asked this question, Brian, is as someone who’s kind of removed from the day to day operations of the parks, I have to now view it from how do I provide that experience to my team, not necessarily my guests, but the people that work for my company, those are my customers, those are my guests.

And if I can create that culture and that experience for them, they will then turn around and do that for our guests and for their team members and for the work campers at each of our individual parks. So it really filters down.

Brian Searl

00:27:33.720 – 00:27:36.544

Yeah, that’s an excellent point, Scott.

Casey Cochran

00:27:36.592 – 00:29:38.590

Scott touched on this briefly about you know, images and that was something that we’ve always been pretty adamant about to the point where I think for a couple years we, we would hire photographers and go out to campgrounds and take pictures for them. I remember that we were so adamant about you, you have to display the property well online and then that’s going to convert online.

And you touched on that.

Brian, as far as on a conversation conversion, I can’t speak to how valuable that is to track that and understand even at the site type level what, what online conversion percentage that that is.

And you’re getting it in the averages of the 60s and 70s and you have many parks now getting into the 80s and 90s of their percentages of their reservations taken online.

But you know, he’s touched on the, the idea of an image and one thing that, you know, we do kind of within our season reviews is as often as we can with parks and groups is encourage them to look at and refresh their, their images and, and even to the point where you’re looking at conversion of whatever that first image is of that site as you’re scrolling through those again, like Scott said, sometimes you might only see one image, maybe they see two. But there’s images that are going to grab people’s attentions better than others and it’s so important for parks to know which ones those are.

So a simple post, you know, a post day survey that said, you know, hey, what, what did you like most about your site?

And if they keep mentioning things of like a view or they keep mentioning things like oh, it was great that we had, you know, two beds or the kitchenette or you know, whatever the case is, it was great.

Like you’ll get some of that feedback and then use that feedback 100% as those stock images that you’re using to, to display those properties and, and to understand what it is that’s catching those people’s attention because at the end of the day, yeah, you want them to convert online.

You don’t want them to feel the need to call and ask these questions because even asking questions over the phone isn’t going to Give you the representation of the site, of the site type. So yeah, I love what Scott said there.

And getting as granular as you can as far as on what images work, it’s incredible at how much that helps convert because you’ll see a 20, 30% conversion sometimes with the difference of some images.

Scott Foos

00:29:39.410 – 00:30:49.166

And just to add really quick to what Casey said, because I think it’s really important hospitality is in. I mean, it’s many things, but really it’s meeting people where they are. And so understand from your guest.

And what I mean by that is understand from your guest what it is that resonates with them and pursue that naming convention. Don’t try to fit them into a box of what like, I mean, I’ll take ownership of that. I thought it was a really cool name, but you know, what is it?

And it’s not really resonating as much as what I think the guest may actually be looking for.

And so looking into that, having that post, say, survey, talking face to face with your guests when they’re there, if you, if you stop by after they’ve checked in, you know, really just understand what it is that drew them there. I think that’s a really good point, Casey. Just meeting people where they are, don’t try to be cute, don’t try to fit it into a box.

Just really understand what’s going to relate to the guest.

Brian Searl

00:30:49.358 – 00:31:54.150

Well, and that serves another purpose too, right? The other purpose that serves is that stops the people potentially from airing their grievances publicly where other people can see it.

And I remember years ago, we used to give away a book at convention. We were just doing review responses called hug your haters and we used to order dozens of copies of these.

And we give people away at trade show booths, you know, for, for talking about like how to treat your guests and how to let. But, but big portion of that book was you’ve got to give. Like most of the complaints that come online are because they couldn’t get ahold of you.

They emailed you, they didn’t get an answer, they tried to call you, they didn’t get an answer, they went to your office and it was closed when they were checking out. And, and then the last resort, usually, and certainly there are exceptions to this, they’re the crazy people, right, who will go do it anyway.

But most people, if you answer and give them sincere consideration and show them that you’re listening, you understand their perspective, even if you don’t agree with it and you’re willing to listen and try to Correct and improve where you can. That serves that other purpose too of guarding your campground against potential negative press or opinion.

Lelah Campo

00:31:54.490 – 00:33:46.778

Yeah. I will say though, Brian, one thing I’ve noticed, I feel like Covid just lit it on fire. Was the guest who is intent on that refund or a credit.

And you can kind of, if you’re on the front lines and I know some of you guys have worked your way off of it and it’s probably one of the things you miss on the touch point. But there’s just a percentage of guests that are really aggressive about it. And I’m sort of one. I read that book.

He gave that book to me and I read it and I, I still think that, you know, I, I kind of blame Nordstrom’s.

The Nordstrom’s was, was the originator, I believe, of the customer is always right and they’re not, to be clear, who’s cruel to your team, who is a bad guest. And we just give them that slice of pizza. Right. I think one of the examples in the book, if I’m remembering right, was from a pizza restaurant.

Just give them a free pizza. Give them a free pizza. Well, we’ve told. Taught our American consumers that they just.

If they’re mean enough, really, let’s just call it what it is that they’re going to get a free pizza. I think it’s a, I think it’s. If your facility didn’t let them down, if they’re just mean, unrealistic. I’m happy because it rained. Right.

Did not bother to research or make sure that this campground, even the most basic things were right for them. I am reluctant to buy into that mentality. And I think we’re, we’re just perpetuating that over entitled.

And I will say it, you know, often it’s that American consumer. So I have a thing. You’re mean to my team. You know, we’re going to break up and that’s it. You don’t get to be mean to my team.

And this is to the point that we were just talking about. My job is to take care of my team. My team is wonderful, hospitality minded. Bend over backwards.

I know British has had some great conversations with my guys at the RV shows.

Brittany Mathis

00:33:46.874 – 00:33:47.146

Yeah.

Lelah Campo

00:33:47.178 – 00:33:53.370

If they can’t make you happy and you’re mean to them, we’re done. And I’m not giving them the pizza. Brian. Just so you know.

Brian Searl

00:33:53.490 – 00:34:32.068

So I’m not necessarily advocating for that. Right.

And I think I want to hear from some of the operators here instead of just me in a Second, about this topic, but I’m not advocating for giving away free stuff. Like, if they’re an. Let’s just call it what it is, right? Because we’re not censored by the fcc. I think we can say if they’re then for sure, right?

But no, you can still have that initial conversation with them.

You can still say, you know, try to solve their problem, because at the very least, in the worst case scenario, they leave you a one star review and scream at you. You can respond and say, hey, Peter, we tried to talk to you. We had a conversation in the office. We.

And then that diffuses it for everybody else who reads it.

Lelah Campo

00:34:32.204 – 00:36:04.840

100 agree with that, Brian. You have to be accessible. You have to be willing to hear them out. And so does your team.

Because when we’re tired and beat up after a long weekend with maybe 900 guests on site, sometimes the last thing you want to hear are those words. You know, I just think you should know. But sometimes you got a brace.

But sometimes you really do need to know, and sometimes you really don’t and you want to slit your wrists. No, I just need to build a hospital. Somebody told me I should have a hospital closer to my campgrounds. I thought I was really letting the guests.

I was like, are you really suggesting it’s my responsibility to build and maintain medical facilities? Interesting perspective. So some people are just crazy, right? But yes, no, Brian, differentiating between the two.

And I think, you know, the bigger operators that are here on the call with us down to Britain, I are still on the front lines and maybe we’ll always choose to have that role. Knowing the difference between the two is tough and probably the biggest risk of burnout for our team and ourselves.

I talked to a lot of campground owners like myself that have only made it seven or eight years in the industry and have sold. And some of it is because of the fact that campgrounds are so valuable these days.

And there’s people like Kevin and other investors that are happy to reach out to us when we’re tired. But it’s also that putting yourself out there and giving 100% can sometimes really be heartbreaking.

And I think we neglect that conversation in this industry a little. I don’t know somebody else feel that with their team members or with themselves.

Kevin Thueson

00:36:05.500 – 00:37:58.878

If I can jump in real quick. Yeah, go ahead, Brian.

One thing that, that really just kind of popped into mind, in my mind as you’re talking, Leela, is those conversations are hard, right? I’ve been there, right? I’ve had the people that come in and scream at you. And we kind of have this.

The zero tolerance policy of we’re not going to let our guests abuse our. Our team. Right. Like I said before, my main responsibility is to take care of my team. If I do that, my team will take care of the guests.

But also, you know, I. I think there’s a couple things. Is one, each situation is different.

We have to provide some kind of a system or tool or training to whoever is on the front lines of, you know, this is how you triage these situations. Knowing that you can’t just take one playbook and, you know, it’s not like a call center script if they answer this. Flip to page 12 and do this.

Right. That’s. That’s a little bit too prescriptive.

But think about the impact of what your example was, Leela, on the other guests and on your team, where if someone comes in and they are unfairly, verbally abusive to you or your team members and you say, you know what, we’re sorry that we couldn’t make your stay enjoyable, but I think it’s time for us to part ways. We’d like to ask you to leave.

If that person really is a jerk and is causing problems, what message does that send to the guests that are in the site next to them that have been dealing with that person who’s yelling at their kids and yelling at everybody and, you know, making a mess?

You’ve now just won over all of those other guests who are going to want to come back because they recognize that that’s the experience they’re going to get and to the same level with your team. If they recognize that you have their back and you’re not going to put up with that, they’re going to want to come back and work for you.

And, you know, losing. Losing a bad guest is a lot better than losing a good guess and losing multiple and so.

Casey Cochran

00:37:58.934 – 00:38:00.302

Or a good employee. Right?

Kevin Thueson

00:38:00.406 – 00:38:26.938

Yeah, exactly. You know, and I’m not suggesting in any way that those conversations are easy. Like I said, I’ve been there. I’ve done it.

It’s hard, hard, and it is draining emotionally, and it’s really difficult to work with. But it is important to. To, you know, feel comfortable that you can do that. You can say no. Right.

You know, because you can’t let one bad apple ruin the experience for everybody else.

Brian Searl

00:38:27.114 – 00:38:57.370

And it is like, no matter what business you’re running, it’s training, like, it’s draining emotionally for me in two different ways. Right. With our clients, it’s The.

There’s the flip side of, like, I’ve let somebody down because I didn’t do my job or a team member didn’t do their job correctly. And so that’s the case where, like, we’re not giving you the free pizza because you’re angry.

Like, we actually did something wrong, we need to fix it and all that kind of stuff. And that’s draining.

But then there’s the draining from the perspective of, like, you know, maybe we didn’t do anything wrong and you’re just that problem client or guest. But both of them are draining in different ways.

Lelah Campo

00:38:58.350 – 00:39:44.150

I would just say that it’s. The guest has gotten to be very demanding.

One example I will give and then please, like, Brian saved me and direct us somewhere else to positive would be lovely. Is cancellation policies. I have yet to. I mean, I think I had one guest last year is like, I’m canceling.

I know I’m outside of the cancellation policy. I understand that I will not be getting a refund. I think I had one person, every other person.

Despite us giving some tools to our front desk staff, some technology solutions has tried to escalate it all the way up to me. And it is getting. I don’t know if this is accurate.

I think Ojai put out a statistic that 20% of reservations are now canceling because they’re booking in whatever their circumstances have changed.

Brian Searl

00:39:44.230 – 00:39:47.510

I want to hear some data on that in a second. But finish. Scott or Kevin, if you have anything.

Lelah Campo

00:39:47.590 – 00:40:02.800

That’s one that’s really exhausting for us. And I would really. I know it’s out there because I see it on the campground owner forms. The frustration level. And it’s. I joke around with.

The only way to make the guests happy is to put an honor box at our exit date and say, just pay us after your stay what you think we were worth.

Brian Searl

00:40:08.900 – 00:40:10.092

Go ahead, finish, please.

Lelah Campo

00:40:10.196 – 00:40:37.030

Seeing and experiencing with that.

Because if we’re talking about enhancing guest experience, what I’m seeing is the guest wants to be able to cancel even after, like, say they were supposed to come in on Friday the 12th. On Monday the 15th, if I’m doing my math right, they call you and say, sorry, I couldn’t make it. Can I have a refund? And they are expecting it.

And it’s a very difficult position to be in, especially if it’s a relatively good guest. And I’d love to know what everyone is seeing with that.

Casey Cochran

00:40:37.730 – 00:40:47.290

Do you guys offer Aliyah. Do you guys offer like a. Like a camp credit versus a user Credit. Is that something that you have like looked at in terms of saying, last.

Lelah Campo

00:40:47.330 – 00:40:51.596

Year we launched a product that we’re calling. We just made it up ourselves. We call travel.

Brian Searl

00:40:51.628 – 00:40:52.200

Sure.

Lelah Campo

00:40:52.500 – 00:41:35.970

So the guests can book and pay a non refundable travel shirt. We looked at different insurance programs and I was very discouraged by the number of loopholes that the insurance companies had provided themselves.

And I knew that if we sold somebody else’s insurance product and the guest didn’t get a refund, they were still going to view me as the bad guy. And what I wanted was.

So we’re offering a program where if you paid a little bit premium, which it didn’t add on because that card is not refundable, you can cancel with 24 hours notice and we give you a full refund or credit if you choose a credit. And yes, we do credits a lot. Casey, if. Sorry, that was a long winded answer.

And we’ll hold your credit indefinitely if you want to let me have your money interest free.

Casey Cochran

00:41:36.270 – 00:41:37.478

Right, right.

Lelah Campo

00:41:37.614 – 00:41:38.086

So yeah.

Casey Cochran

00:41:38.118 – 00:41:38.614

Just curious.

Brian Searl

00:41:38.662 – 00:41:38.838

Yeah.

Kevin Thueson

00:41:38.854 – 00:41:39.622

Because I don’t know if a lot.

Casey Cochran

00:41:39.646 – 00:41:59.968

Of parks utilize that and it’s, it seems like such a, it’s not an easy win to some extent, but it can, at least it seems like it can calm the, the nerves of saying, look, no, we don’t have a refund because XYZ policy that you signed and agreed to. However, you know, we’d love to see you, we’d love to have you at the park and enjoy your experience when, when the time it makes more sense.

Lelah Campo

00:42:00.144 – 00:42:25.280

I would say about half of them are not happy with the credit. Even if you are making an exception like they were not doing credit or a refund based on our policy. You’re like, we’re going to give you a credit.

And hey, normally it’s only good for this camping season, but we’re going to make it good for five years. I would say about 50% are still not happy. They want. And, and like I said, the, the, the request. I don’t know, maybe. Brit, are you seeing that?

What are you.

Brian Searl

00:42:25.320 – 00:42:28.464

Britney, you’ve been to get you in here yet.

Lelah Campo

00:42:28.552 – 00:42:33.978

Is it because of our proximity to New York City and Boston? Brit? We just have these intense people that come in.

Brian Searl

00:42:34.034 – 00:42:39.786

I mean, I don’t know that let’s not do the whole like big city slant. I don’t know if that’s actually accurate.

Brittany Mathis

00:42:39.818 – 00:42:50.554

But especially last summer was pretty dry. The summer before that was so wet. So the cancellations were a lot because of the weather. Last season was dry.

Lelah Campo

00:42:50.602 – 00:42:54.554

We did see A lot of cancellations and people who would escalate.

Brittany Mathis

00:42:54.602 – 00:43:21.948

Like, okay, I want to talk to the manager. I want to get to the point that the first, Once I get them, the first thing I do is try and give them a credit. It’s really. Yeah.

That I think we’ve gotten a lot of disgruntled people. I think one thing I tell a lot of the girls and guys in the staff is like, try doing. Hey, I just talked to Brit.

She was so busy, but I really pushed for you. I really wanted to help you out. I understand.

Brian Searl

00:43:22.084 – 00:43:23.516

Like the car salesman.

Brittany Mathis

00:43:23.628 – 00:43:45.560

Yeah, but like, but like more so, like, oh man, this sucks. And like, she’s usually kind of mean, but she was okay with it this time. Like kind of like shift lifted off of them a lot.

And that sometimes like seems to work because then they’ll like take down their tone. Like, okay, you’re. I was gonna be a jerk to you, but like, you’re also having to go through something. Not always, but sometimes.

Brian Searl

00:43:45.720 – 00:44:01.092

Do we wanna, like, I feel like we want to encourage empowering of employees versus bullshitting of employees though. And not that I’m not criticizing you at all, Brittany, I’m just speaking that into existence. Is that fair from operators on this call?

Scott Foos

00:44:01.276 – 00:44:05.492

Totally. Yeah, I think. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Leva.

Lelah Campo

00:44:05.556 – 00:44:57.696

Oh, no, I’m sorry. I just said that when it comes to. I always want my front desk to be the hero as much as possible and I want to be the bad guy as much as possible. So.

Because I don’t want my staff to dread picking up the phone. So I always want them to be able to be happy and upbeat. So I do have two managers other than myself. We take the. No calls. We take the calls.

Or the communications where. I’m sorry, no, we’re not going to be able to meet your needs.

And we free the front desk from that because, you know, one, the front desk is often visible to the public and we don’t really want our next guest hearing that one sided conversation, you know, so if that makes sense, we take it on the chin. And maybe it’s not the right way to go. It’s just what we’ve been doing because other. And we keep our front desk.

What we were finding is the front desk staff was getting so discouraged that we felt it was having an impact on them coming back to us year after year.

Brian Searl

00:44:57.848 – 00:45:22.188

Well, and I want to be clear, Brittany, I don’t want to say. I’m not saying that you’re doing it wrong. I don’t have the right to Say that or.

And I didn’t mean to imply that if that’s the way it came across, but I do want to say, like, I mean, I think part of that is the staff that works for you. Right.

Can I find that really good staff members who I can trust enough to put the faith in, to do the right thing and make the right call, which is very hard. So I apologize if it came across the wrong way.

Brittany Mathis

00:45:22.244 – 00:45:56.290

Oh, yeah, no, and I think so. Our, like, a lot of the times, like, the staff will know they are empowered in a way.

They know when they can and they know when, like, okay, this is going to. Like what? Like, you can just tell by the guest. The guest is so angry or they’re not taking anything for an answer.

Allowing them like, kind of that protection to be able to step back and be like. And shift it to somebody else, I think is super duper helpful. And them knowing too, like, okay, I’m always going to have your back no matter what.

And I’ll take that from you so that, like, you’re just not inundated with, like, angry people.

Brian Searl

00:45:57.070 – 00:46:01.930

I want to circle back to this 20% number. Is there any data that shows that this is true?

Casey Cochran

00:46:02.430 – 00:46:09.090

I’m putting it. I threw something out to our Insights Channel. See if my data team can get us, get us some information here in the next.

Brian Searl

00:46:09.580 – 00:46:34.132

Because I’m just curious, like, I feel like, I mean, I understand. I don’t understand that’s. That’s wrong. That’s a lie. Because I don’t own a campground. Right.

I feel like I understand the perception that there’s a lot of these people out here who are angry and irrational and. But I don’t, I don’t know. I want to not believe that they’re as many as people think they are in the Facebook groups. Does that make sense?

Kevin Thueson

00:46:34.276 – 00:48:59.758

They are the loudest. Yeah. So that creates an exaggeration of the size of that group of people. And, you know, it’s. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Right.

You’re always going to fight the biggest fire.

And, you know, I, I think for, for us at least, and I’m not telling anybody else how to do this, I think there’s kind of this level setting expectation of what’s realistic. Is a, you know, 0% cancellations a realistic goal?

If it’s not, you know, do we want to set, you know, is it 5%, is it 10%, is it 20, whatever that number is, I think it’s important to monitor that and understand to me the trend is more important than what that specific number is, because a lot of that’s outside of our control.

And we can choose to focus on the minority percentage of our guests that are the loudest, that are, you know, the most, you know, detrimental in the way they talk about us and reviews.

And Brian, you talked about ways that you can dress, that there’s address, that there’s mitigation that you can do with reviews and how you handle that, or do.

Do you spend time, effort, resources focusing on how do you improve the experience for everybody else who’s going to be there, who’s going to come back, who’s going to tell their friends, and who’s going to talk about you online in a way that’s going. Going to draw more people. And I’m not suggesting that cancellation isn’t an important thing.

That is a very polarizing topic, something that, at least within the KOA world, we’ve been talking about a lot lately, revisiting those policies and guidelines and how we’re going to implement that. And, you know, how do you have opportunity to be flexible and empower your team, like you were saying, Brian, to make exceptions?

Does that make sense? From our portfolio, I don’t have the number. It’s definitely well below 20%, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not changing.

And I think that’s what’s important is if we’ve been at, you know, 1 to 5 to 10% for five years and then all of a sudden it jumps to 20%. To me, that says there’s something going on within the park with the way that we’re operating, with all the touch points, with the guest experience.

That’s what we need to focus on fixing. If we can, if we can deliver on that, then, you know, it’s.

It’s hyper focusing on the actions and the habits and not the result or the outcome, because that will come depending on where you focus your time and your resources.

Brian Searl

00:48:59.934 – 00:49:41.154

And those polarizing discussions I think need to be had once in a while, right? Like, I’d rather have people be mad at me for having a polarized discussion than be mad at your guest. But we need to figure out those things.

And I think part of that is setting your goal. I think that’s a good metric, right? Like, define what you’re and make it realistic. You know, it can’t be 0%, but 5, 10, whatever that number is.

I’m not an operator, so I can’t make up something. But then try to hit that goal and recognize that, like you said, Kevin, there’s all kinds of things that go into the cancellation factors.

Some you can’t control, like the weather, like, Casey, can we put a message that says, hey, are you sure you want to come? It’s pretty shitty here this weekend. Are you positive you want to click the book button and then the cancellation numbers go down? Right.

Casey Cochran

00:49:41.322 – 00:49:46.130

We did put a sensible weather option there that you can pay to if it does.

Brian Searl

00:49:46.170 – 00:50:05.538

Yeah, but like, if you understand what I’m saying. Right. Like maybe we’re just not communicating the different things to the guest well enough.

Not just on the booking engine, of course, but on our websites and setting proper expectations. And maybe that only shaves 2% off or 5% or half a percentage, but it helps.

Casey Cochran

00:50:05.714 – 00:50:10.620

Yeah, I think I hit the nail on the head. I think there’s, there’s bad customers.

Brian Searl

00:50:11.520 – 00:50:14.856

For sure there is. I just don’t think there are as many as we think there are.

Casey Cochran

00:50:14.928 – 00:50:15.580

Yeah.

Scott Foos

00:50:16.080 – 00:51:07.824

And I think we, we also need to remember too, the industry is, is different than it was in terms of demand than a couple of years ago. And I’m just speaking from my experience.

I’m seeing many operators that also, I think, haven’t realized that we do need to bake in more flexibility into policies today than where we were, you know, just a couple of years ago. And I think that, you know, I’m, I’m involved, I was a full time RVer and I’m involved in camping camper groups as well.

And the sentiment is that the RV park owner is out to charge the highest rate and have the most restrictive policy. And I think we have to remember that there’s some of that that, you know, was probably true. Right. Like we’re in this to make profit.

Brian Searl

00:51:07.872 – 00:51:13.552

To make some of it still is with some owners that are at the same probably small percentage as the problem guests.

Scott Foos

00:51:13.696 – 00:52:19.878

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, we, we just, we went through, for, you know, we went through a portfolio review and, and good number of the properties.

We loosened our cancellation policies like maybe mid summer last year just in response to that. So to Kevin’s point, understanding the trend and how, you know, how things are actually looking in the grand scheme of things.

But then I think zooming back out a little bit and understanding what the, the market is, what the, I think also understanding our guests are not just campers, they’re, they’re hotel guests, they’re their airline passengers. And what are, what are some of the other experiences that they’re having in other sectors of hospitality?

And how can we either save and create a Better experience to save the experience. Create a better experience, a respite from what they’re used to having to deal with? Or are there things that, you know, will.

That will looking at their perspective, shape your perspective in terms of where they’re potentially coming from as well.

Brian Searl

00:52:20.014 – 00:52:25.446

So embrace how you can be better. Like our exit doors don’t fall off the cabins like that.

Scott Foos

00:52:25.598 – 00:52:27.574

Yeah, yeah. One, one way.

Brittany Mathis

00:52:27.662 – 00:53:29.022

One thing that was kind of said and I think it is really great and it’s really positive to like, turn around to be positive.

It’s not necessarily to do with cancellations, but that notion of like, going to check on the neighboring campers to someone who was like, potentially a problem.

I think making like kind of bringing some humanity back and, and making people feel special for being decent campers has gone such a far away with our campground and with like getting like, really loyal campers to come back. And it’s like something as like, small as celebrating, like, hey, you’re coming back for another time. Like, here’s a sticker.

We’re like, so happy to see you again. Or if there was a problem and going over, hey, somebody was making a lot of noise.

You didn’t call or anything, but like, here’s like a free thing of wood. We’re like, you know, we like, recognize that you had to deal with that without you ever having, like, without you becoming a squeaky wheel.

And we get like so much feedback. All of a sudden you’re like, oh my God, you guys are amazing. And you guys really take care of people.

And it’s something that took like maybe five minutes.

Brian Searl

00:53:29.166 – 00:54:11.860

This is a fascinating topic that we don’t have time to dive into today.

But I like, I think there’s an era five to ten years from now where we look back on this, this time period where we’re sending out mass email marketing and mass text messaging and the same message on everybody’s website where every communication is personalized down to every guest of what we know in the database. And we like, we look at this era, like, were we thinking sending the same message to everybody? I think that. I think that’s very.

I think that’s going to come. I think AI is going to be a part of that. But I think that’s going to be a guest experience that like you talked about.

You’re going to know their birthday, you’re going to know last time time they visited. Everything’s going to be personalized and maybe it’ll be. Maybe that will make it less special when it gets to that point.

But it’s still going to be a better guest experience.

Scott Foos

00:54:12.160 – 00:56:09.548

I think that’s right.

Luxury today is luxuries in the eye of the beholder, but luxury is recognition and it’s personalization and everybody wants that at, you know, no matter what type of luxury they seek out. So I think, you know, to your point, Brian, maybe when it, when everybody’s receiving that’s a little less of a special service today.

But you know, ensuring that you’re moving in that direction of understanding how you can collect that data and how you can, you know, truly be a brand of hospitality for your park beyond just the one time stay, but how you can really resonate and be an important part of your guest’s life in their, over the course of their year. And I’m not trying to be dramatic, but you know, those special call out moments really do make a huge difference.

And just that kind of reminds me of, I had heard just recently that interaction is not the same as interface.

And I think, you know, when you have that traditional like front desk experience where you’re dealing with the guests and like that’s your one moment, that’s not an interaction. Like there’s a transaction, but it’s not really an interaction.

But what Britt just said about going to the campsite and like meeting that guest and saying, I understand that, hey, this was a difficult situation or even it doesn’t have to be a bad situation.

It could also just be, you know, your courtesy patrol guy is out patrolling and he sees, you know, maybe the dad or the mom that’s having a hard time getting the campfire started, maybe they just stop and, and say, hey, can, you know, can I lend a hand with that? That’s an interaction. So the more that we can continue to personalize, recognize and interact, I think that’s what people want today.

Brian Searl

00:56:09.684 – 00:56:20.670

Let them know you care about them. Give them a touch point like on Joe’s app. Joe, can we track their location forever? Can we just say like, hey, I saw you just went to Papa John’s.

Did you know we have a pizza restaurant?

Joe Duemig

00:56:20.740 – 00:56:23.130

I know it’s privacy concerns with that.

Brian Searl

00:56:23.170 – 00:56:28.074

Brian, but they know you’re thinking about them then, right? It’s the care that Scott was talking about.

Joe Duemig

00:56:28.242 – 00:57:24.870

Well, actually I did want to jump in.

We’ve, we’ve camped at multiple properties that while a lot of places don’t have the staffing to do this, they right around quiet hours, drive around the sites and whoever’s outside, they come and talk to them and say, hey, you’re watching the Movie. Oh, after that movie’s over, would you mind turning it off Quiet hours soon or just asking about your day?

So one campground is a smaller 100 site and the owner walked, went by, he lived on site in that particular case, but he would drive by on his golf cart at night right around quiet hours and just talk to everybody. And it’s a personal touch and it’s really hard to complain. It’s really hard to ask for a refund when you know the owner.

You know, it’s going to be a lot harder when you’ve met them and you, you recognize them as a person as opposed to just, oh, this huge campground that we’re, that we’re dealing with. You know, it’s, it’s a, it’s just a different level of a relationship.

Brian Searl

00:57:25.210 – 00:58:01.150

Yeah, I mean I, I still remember when we were in, I think it was Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. There’s a Christmas themed hotel there all year round. And this is years ago, but I went there and filmed a video of their property.

I think it was a Christmas tree in or something like that. But they still like they came and they knocked on your door and did the turndown service and delivered little warm cookies to you. Right.

Like that stuff that sticks.

I’ve traveled a lot and that stuff for that to stick in a mind of me that’s half senile and old and can’t remember what they had for breakfast is pretty impressive 10, 15 years later. So that stuff does like people remember that for a long time.

Kevin Thueson

00:58:01.850 – 00:59:46.154

It’s understanding expectations. Right.

Our guests, they have an expectation that, you know, someone will answer the phone, someone will be there, that the site will be level, that they’ll have, you know, functioning electricity, bathrooms will be clean. Right. There’s, there’s a level of expectation. It’s the opportunities where we can deliver above that. That’s what they’re going to remember. Right.

You know, it’s, it’s exceeding that. It’s the special moment, you know, and it does take a lot of effort. That’s where the challenge is.

You have to actually go out and try and find those moments and you can do all the planning Kevinyou want of, hey, we’re going to give some budget to the team that if they identify something, they can give something from the store to a kid who’s crying or whatever that situation may be. You can create that structure.

But it’s still going to take effort and motivation for, for the people on the ground and the front lines who are not just talking like you were saying, Joe and, and Scott and it’s not just like having that discussion with them. It’s how do you connect with them? And it. The challenge is it.

It requires effort, it requires time, it requires emotion, but it’s whatever you can do to go a little bit above and beyond what the base expectation is. Like you’re saying, Brian, you’ll remember that for. For years to come. And that may be how you get someone to come back.

That may be your differentiator from the park down the street.

That’s bigger, newer, bigger budget, nicer amenities, but maybe they don’t provide that touch, or maybe they don’t have that relationship with their guests that a small campground operator can have.

Brian Searl

00:59:46.322 – 01:00:25.632

100% agree with you. The only thing I’ll play devil’s advocate on, briefly is the effort, because I don’t think, like, sometimes it’s going to require effort, right?

But, like, I still remember Traverse City KOA when we went there in 20, maybe 11 or 12 or something like that, had little tiny local organic soaps in their cabin. And this is back when I was just starting to eat organic. And so I paid attention to that stuff, but that I still remember.

And so that, like, sure, I guess it took effort to plan it a little bit, but once it’s done, that’s not as much effort as some of the other things.

And so I’m not saying that that’s going to work for everybody or that should be the strategy, but it doesn’t have to require a lot of effort all the time.

Kevin Thueson

01:00:25.736 – 01:01:21.500

No, it does. It doesn’t. And I think what. What’s important to recognize is there’s.

There’s an opportunity for us to build that into our culture, who we are, how we operate to where it’s not actually extra effort effort, it’s just what we do versus having that expectation for our teams of, like, this is. This is what we do, and this is all we do, and this is all we have time for. Like, we want to.

Like you were saying this earlier, Brian, how do we empower ourselves, our teams, to.

To feel that that is their job, that that is what they need to do, that it’s just a part of running the campground versus we, you know, this is what we do. We provide a place for people to stay. We answer the phone, we answer questions. There’s a different. It’s a mentality thing.

And how you overcome that is really how. It’s the indicator of how successful you’ll be in delivering those special moments.

Brian Searl

01:01:21.660 – 01:01:35.740

I will just briefly say, like, anybody who needs to drop off is More than welcome to drop off, but if you want to stay for a couple minutes, we can stay for a few minutes and continue our conversation. So does anybody else want to add anything?

Joe Duemig

01:01:35.820 – 01:02:25.994

Well, I was, I was gonna just speak to Kevin’s comment there and yours, Brian. We stopped at Aspen Grove in Utah and they had cookies for everybody when we stepped in. And they had little dog cookies for dogs as well.

And it’s just something if you’re a dog owner, you’re gonna remember when they ask you, oh, do you have a dog? Here’s a cookie for them also. And there’s a lot of parks that do that. But as we said, it’s that little personal touch that they get you.

Another park we stayed at after, after you get set up and checked in, they brought over champagne to us to my wife and I And then at 4 o’clock every day they drive around on a golf cart and give margaritas out to everybody. We have six children. Before they came over they went and filled up six strawberry lemonades for the, for the kids.

Brian Searl

01:02:26.122 – 01:02:26.954

See that’s.

Casey Cochran

01:02:27.002 – 01:02:29.210

Yeah, you needed those marks, Joe.

Kevin Thueson

01:02:29.290 – 01:02:30.458

You needed those mars.

Joe Duemig

01:02:30.554 – 01:02:52.190

No, that’s right. That’s right. But I like.

So I posted, I posted about that in an upscale RV resort page and ev, like that’s probably about as much engagement I’ve ever had on a post for anything. It wasn’t business related at all.

It was just my, my personal experience of this one park and that one experience got a few hundred people interested in going to this small park in Oklahoma.

Scott Foos

01:02:54.210 – 01:05:36.122

There’s just. Yeah. Boils down to the care and really showing that you are thinking. It’s the thought, it’s the effort that you’re making.

The guest sees that it doesn’t have to be a lot.

And what’s sad is just stopping by to interact with someone is not the number that alone will set your park apart, at least in terms of the hospitality that they’ve had. And that is exciting. Right, because that shows all of the upside and potential that we have as an industry.

But I think for the independent operators that are, that are still listening, you know, I think all of this can sound really great, but also maybe all of it theoretical too. And you know, I, you know, I know as, as does you know, all the other panelists. We know what you’re going through on a day to day basis.

And you know, I would just say for you how you can, you know, maybe look at how to attack this is beginning to prioritize what it is you need to be spending time on as a business owner and you know, recognizing that, you know, there’s, there’s a season for you that you’re likely going to be very off, very busy in the office, maybe running the front desk, running around and then there’s a period of time, hopefully you have a bit of a respite where you can work on the business itself and you know, understanding if you can, if you can carve out 30 minutes a week, you know, just start small with creative time. You know, creativity is a process and you need to make sure that you have that time that you can practice that process.

And that creative component is important to think through that guest experience and how you can be maybe a bit more creative with that process itself and then find other people to do the other things that you don’t want to have time that you don’t want to have to do or that you feel like might not be the best return for your time spent.

And ask your guests, you know, through those post day surveys, ask your front desk team and your maintenance team what they’re hearing from guests as those pain points.

But just really, I think it’s about carving out the time and prioritizing this in your off season as much as you can and then finding people to do other things that, that aren’t related to the guest experience component itself and building your team because that’s how, excuse me, I think you’ll build sustainability in your business is taking care of your team and then taking care of your.

Brian Searl

01:05:36.146 – 01:06:15.640

Guests or automate them. Yeah, touch points. Right. Like, I mean let’s, let’s be, let’s be honest.

Like you’re, you’re hitting on a really big nail or I don’t know if that’s the right phrase. Right.

You’re hitting on a really important point here is that there are probably a lot of people watching this show who are saying like this is all well and good, but then how many people are actually going to leave here and do something about it? And you probably all on this show who know me amazed that I’ve been an hour and a half without saying this.

But like go to chat GPT, this is not a thing anymore. Like go to chat GPT, sign up for a free account and say I’m a busy park owner and I want to improve my guest experience.

I only have 15 minutes a week. Where do I start total?

Lelah Campo

01:06:16.740 – 01:08:51.449

One thing that I would say that ties into a little bit of both of these and one is so we do a lot of automation, we love our technology here and the Thing is, you can kind of get killed by your own technology if you don’t step back and look at it. So I just said to my team today, every single one of us is going to make a fake booking, a real booking.

Our reservation software will think and we’re going to get every single touch point that the desk would get because over time you can end up with do not and don’t you dare. And like. And sometimes the communication pieces are.

I said we’re going to be looking at tone, we’re going to be looking at accuracy because over time policies get tweaked a little. And did we make sure to check every single template? And we’re going to be looking at brevity. Are we sending too much stuff to people or.

I doubt it’s not going to be not enough. But that’s one thing that doesn’t really take that long.

We shouldn’t get that many emails and we’ll just be reading them as if we’re the guest experiencing the pre check in process.

So it’s a combination of automation and the technology and making sure that to Kevin’s point, that we look at our stuff not just the first time we set it up, but on an ongoing basis. You know, it’s funny, I used to walk the campground every single Sunday morning and I would say largely it was a checkout day, right.

So I’d be checking in with people and saying goodbye to them. I don’t think they’ll do it ever again. Not it offered a lot to me as a new owner, but it was. And I.

It was one of those things that actually was very exhausting. I was already like at the end of my emotional reserves because I would work, I don’t know, I think I don’t even want to know the hours, right.

Because I was still very much at the front line. Didn’t have the kind of support staff I did now. But at some point, if you’re doing your job right, you’re starting to get a very repetitive message.

I offer opportunities for people to meet me throughout the work day. I don’t know if that makes sense. It was a very helpful tool in the beginning. It might be great if you just bought your park.

But as a sustainable practice, I didn’t find it sustainable. And I’d be curious about how you guys feel about something like that.

Is that something where you wish managers, if you have multiple parks or owners were doing or do you kind of see how I would reach that fatigue point and also sort of diminishing returns Because I had heard what the guests collectively needed to say to me, excluding a one off bad encounter, I had learned what they were looking for for our facility for the different types of guests that we have. Does that make sense?

Scott Foos

01:08:52.669 – 01:10:33.766

Yeah, yeah.

I think, Lela, what you’ve, what you’ve incorporated with that post arrival text message is great to help obtain some level of real time feedback to help reduce that burden. And you know, I know that Brian will have solutions for us to consider as well.

But the more that you can, I think, utilize technology for the benefit of capturing that feedback while reducing the amount of time that you’re having to spend collecting the feedback, but most importantly is provide utilizing that as a hospitality tool.

And so as an example, maybe you can inquire with your, within that first text message, inquire with your guest if they would like to like for you to check in with them throughout their stay.

The ones that want that interaction will say yes, and then you can have triggered text messages beyond that that would maybe check in at whatever frequency it is for the length of stay. We’ve had some level of success with that. But then they also have the option to say no. And again, preference, preference, preference.

So finding those technology solutions to help save your time, people, because I can imagine that that would be really hard after, especially once late August comes in.

But yes, I think finding the technology solution and then really understanding the hospitality tool that it’s serving and how it’s a win and not a burden for you to set up or your guests.

Brian Searl

01:10:33.798 – 01:10:42.530

To receive personalization and thoughtfulness. Like, you can’t just automate for the sake of automating. No one’s arguing for that. Well, somebody is, but nobody on the show. Right.

Kevin Thueson

01:10:43.080 – 01:10:45.792

So panelists, maybe the host?

Brian Searl

01:10:45.976 – 01:10:51.424

Well, no, I’m not like, I like you should. There’s lots of things you can automate, but you can automate to make it better, right?

Kevin Thueson

01:10:51.512 – 01:10:52.180

Yeah.

Brian Searl

01:10:52.600 – 01:11:01.020

And so I think that’s the key is putting thought into like, does this actually make the guest experience better or does it just make my life easier? It has to do both.

Kevin Thueson

01:11:01.320 – 01:12:31.790

Yeah. Well, I mean, Lila, think about it like our guests are evolving. They’re very different today than they were five, ten years ago. Right.

The world is evolving, expectations are evolving.

And I think that it’s important that we step back and say, well, what are we achieving by doing this and what’s the impact and is there a different way that I could get that same result? And it’s absolutely something we should be doing on a regular basis of trying new things. Doing it different, right?

You got to take swings and you’re not going to hit on every one of them. But if we just do the same thing that we’ve always done, we’re going to get the same results.

So I think it is important to reevaluate on a regular basis. What are the things that we’re doing? What’s having a big impact? Is that the right way to do it? Do we continue it? Do we expand on it?

What are the things that we are doing? Because we’ve always done them and maybe they’re not actually driving value for us as owners, as operators, it’s not driving value for our guests.

And then rethink it and do it differently because I think, you know, I think part of your question and what you said made me believe that the reason you’ve lasted and you’re in the position you’re in now over some of the other operators and owners that you know that have burnt out is you have made that change, right? You realize that that was going to have an impact on you.

So you’ve changed the way that you’ve done it and you found different ways that are maybe more scalable or more repeatable. And, you know, that’s a. That’s a never ending process.

Lelah Campo

01:12:32.090 – 01:12:53.792

Well, what’s funny too is when we bought our first campground, we had never camped a day in our lives. So I had a lot to learn. And walking the property and talking to real campers and eventually turning into a big camper myself was important.

But those walks were really needed because they were educating me every step of the way. Anybody that’s gotten into this business had a camp their whole lives, had a big leg up.

Brian Searl

01:12:53.826 – 01:12:54.600

Funny.

Lelah Campo

01:12:55.100 – 01:13:40.450

You know, my first week at a teachy, this is a fifth wheel. This is a travel trailer. Little scary there, but I don’t ever mind a new adventure, so. But yeah, no.

And then technology as we know it now just didn’t exist then. I didn’t have the ability to text the guests and say, hey, how are we doing? And we knew we needed to make a lot of changes.

Cozy was a turnaround operation. So letting people know, yeah, we know.

Not that we know what to do, but we are listening to you so we will know what changes need to happen and address those changes. Those were.

That was very preemptive to Brian’s point to get those bad reviews straight to my ears and not on the Internet because the sites and the facility needed some tlc.

Brian Searl

01:13:41.270 – 01:14:37.760

All right, I’ve got to be the bad guy here because I would love to continue this conversation, but at least just told me somebody booked an appointment with me in a minute and a half and I have to go to another meeting. So thank you guys all for joining us. It’s a great discussion.

Obviously, if you’re interested in the guest experience and the things that we’ve been talking about in the show, we’ll have different individual campground owners like Brittany and Lelah on here every week, but we’ll have our panel of recurring guests here.

Joe from At My Community, Casey from Camp Spot, Kevin from KCN Campgrounds, Scott Foos from Horizon Outdoor Hospitality, and maybe Zach Stoltenberg. He’s supposed to be here too, but it’s the holidays. Does architecture for Clockwork as well. But thank you guys for joining us.

Another episode of MC Fireside Chats, our first one of 2025.

Really looking forward to talking to you guys as a group and seeing if we can dive more into this guest experience and have some of these conversations that will truly help people in all facets, from reservations to talking to their guests on their park. So thank you guys, I appreciate it and we’ll see you next week for another episode.

Scott Foos

01:14:38.180 – 01:14:38.924

Thank you.

Speaker A

01:14:39.012 – 01:15:01.600

Thanks for joining us for this episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searle. Have a suggestion for a show idea want your campground accompany in a future episode?

Email [email protected] get your daily dose of news from ModernCampground.com and be sure to join us next week for more insights into the fascinating world of outdoor hospitality.