MC Fireside Chats – July 2nd, 2025

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Excited to be here with you all for not our first kind of week of this, but an industry trends, data insight show. And we’ve got a couple new people on here. One is Phil Ingrassia from the RVDA.

Welcome Phil from week four. We will be joined in the future by Eleonore Hamm too, who’s Phil’s counterpart in Canada. She just had a meeting this week come up so we’re excited to dive into some of those RV industry trends, facts, figures, Phil and his organization and Eleonore’s too, collect a bunch of really useful data we think that will be helpful and blend seamlessly into this show in the future.

So excited to have you here, Phil, you wanna introduce yourself and then we’ll go around the room and introduce everybody else real quick. 

Phil Ingrassia: Sure. I’m Phil Ingrassia, president of the RV Dealers Association of the US. We represent the nation’s travel trailer and motor home dealers all across the country.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here. Phil. Rafael, you wanna go? 

Rafael Correa: Yep. Rafael Correa, president and CFO of Blue Water Hospitality. And we are an owner operator and manager developer of RV resorts across the country. Currently oversee a portfolio of about 60 properties. 

Brian Searl: Thanks for being here. Rafael, Simon. 

Simon Neal: Yeah. I’m Simon Neal, the founder and CEO of Camp Map. We are a digital platform that helps outdoor hospitality improve marketing and guest experience with professional digital maps. 

Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Simon. You’re back home now? 

Simon Neal: Yeah. I am, finally. 

Brian Searl: Scott, 

Scott Bahr: Scott Bahr, Carin Consulting Group. We’re a market research organization that gathers, compiles reports data from the outdoor hospitality industry across nearly all sectors.

Brian Searl: Welcome. Thanks for being here, Scott. And last but not least, our special guest, Susan Brenton, from Executive Director of the Arizona Outdoor Hospitality Association. Susan? 

Susan Brenton: Hi, Susan Brenton. I’ve been here at the Arizona Outdoor Hospitality Association about three and a half years now, and it’s great to be on board. Thank you. 

Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Susan. Excited to dive into a little bit more about your, make sure we give you some special time to talk about your organization and things like that. So I think, Rafael, we were talking about something you wanted to bring up. Before we get to that, is there anything else that anybody else has come across their desk? Scott, Simon Phil, who you think we should bring up and talk about this week?

Simon Neal: I have some small news topics from the European side of things to discuss at any point. A bit about external investments, environmental stuff, and also the trends, the booking so far. 

Brian Searl: Okay. I think, we’d probably spend a little bit longer conversation on that because we could dive into some of that, Scott, from the US side and compare and contrast numbers.

Scott Bahr: Yep.

Brian Searl: Phil, did you have anything, or 

Phil Ingrassia: Go RVing put out a study this past week about people that are intending to buy RVs and I’ve got some high level results that might be interesting to the folks. 

Brian Searl: Please share. Let’s start there. That sounds like a good idea. 

Phil Ingrassia: Go RVing does some research into the industry and there were especially interested coming out of COVID and, we basically pumped almost 2 million RVs into the North American infrastructure. The installed base of RVs during COVID. And then certainly there was a lot of interest about would that be sticky? Would those RVers continue to RV once COVID protocols were lifted or would they go back to doing whatever they did, going to resorts or cruises or buying boats or whatever they might have done prior to the pandemic.

And one of the things that came out of those Go RVing studies is that between 60% and 70% of the COVID buyers are interested in purchasing RVs again. Which, frankly, I thought it was gonna be closer to 40%. I thought people would buy their RV, use it during the lockdown periods and whatever was going on, and then sell it and go on to something else.

But what we found is those folks, the vast majority of ’em, enjoy the experience and want to continue to RV. And the good thing for the RV business is that, now our install base is higher of users after this growth and the purchase timeframe for a lot of people with RVs is they keep ’em four to five to six years. So now we’re starting to enter that repurchase cycle which should vote well for the industry.

Now, certainly there’s a lot of macroeconomic issues, interest rate, sentiment, things like that. But I think that as we look to the future as far as the intended repurchase at least what they’re telling the researchers is that there’s a good possibility we’ll be able to keep those COVID era buyers, if you will, and build on top of that, unprecedented really, sales that we had between 2020 and 2023.

Brian Searl: Do we have a sense of, and I know Scott will wanna weigh in on this in a sec I hope he will anyway. Do we have a sense of what the difference between I want to and I end up doing is though, because there’s because if it happens on the Camping side too, the I want to go Camping doesn’t always translate into the I did go Camping.

Phil Ingrassia: Yeah, certainly, the follow through. Okay. What they wanna do it, but, I want to do a lot of things too that I don’t, may not end up doing. But what I’m saying is, at least that I want to, is there, and there was a lot of skepticism. I was taking calls and I think, Scott, you probably were too during the pandemic from Wall Street people, private equity people that were looking to invest in the industry. Maybe they were looking to invest in campgrounds, maybe they were looking to invest in some of the public companies in the RV space. And they were very skeptical if these people would stay in the market or at least even want to.

And at least this research is showing that between, depending on the product type, between 60 and 70% of those people are interested in staying in the RV lifestyle, if you will. And whether that’s however they’re using their RV. And Scott, you have some thoughts on that?

Scott Bahr: Absolutely. You’re absolutely right, Phil, about the whole idea is that if people are at least expressing interest, that’s opportunity. That’s opportunity that’s sitting out there because they ain’t saying no. As anyone in sales knows, until they say no, still a chance.

And that bodes well. I think the biggest issue is finding that sweet spot. Like you talked about the timeframe of them buying again and the folks that were out there and maybe sold their RV even early on in the pandemic. There’s a decent number of those folks who are also interested.

So the interest is still sitting out there. As an industry, it’s figuring out how do we actually get them to buy. Because we’ve seen, in all of our research, we’ve seen the high interest. We do one of the quarterly polls for RVIA and Go RVing as well. And interest is up over last year. It’s not always, as we all know, not as translating into sales yet, but I’d be more worried if interest that was down, that people were soured on it. Because I feel like there’s a lot of external factors and we’ve measured that too, probably 25 to 30% of the people who have some interest are holding off because they wanna see what’s gonna happen with the economy.

They wanna see where prices are gonna go. And that’s a big chunk, that’s a lot of people. If you could add half of those, the 12% to 15% even, and get them, the industry would see a nice little bump, I think in sales. Yeah, again, it’s why, in the consumer index, consumer confidence is always such a key in indicator is if people have a good attitude, it will translate at some point into them participating in outdoor hospitality at some level at least, and hopefully they’re buying RVs. 

Brian Searl: Well, so let’s briefly dive into this, right? And I think this will lead us to the Wall Street Journal article too, Rafael. But let’s briefly dive into the pros and cons here in the mind of the consumer, because we’ve got a lot of Campground owners who are watching us.

We got a lot of people in the outdoor hospitality industry, generally dealers, manufacturers, watching us. What are the reasons that they’re currently holding off and what are the reasons that would make them buy again? And there’s the different angles here we can take from everybody’s perspective, right?

Scott, you’ve got data. Phil, you’ve got data. Simon, is it showing the experience at the Campground more clearly and communicating that to all the fun that they can have if they purchase an RV? Is it the same thing with you, Rafael? Is it the experience at the Blue Water properties? And is that gonna make them pull the trigger because they can do all these kinds of things. Susan, to you is it communicating that Arizona has more places than just the Grand Canyon in Sedona, which you already do, right? But I’m just saying so what are the pros and cons here, guys? What do we think?

Rafael Correa: I can definitely share from the, now that we’ve this is our first episode, I think since we’ve really entered the true prime Camping season, right? That two weeks into June, and now we’re seeing the kids are all outta school and this is like prime time booking season for us.

And so I could tell you from our perspective, we’re sitting at about 104% of same time last year. So we’re up slightly a lot of work went into doing a lot more long-term and seasonal sales is built into that number where people are buying, for either an entire Camping season long, or even like a short summer seasonal, what we offer as well in our portfolio.

So that’s helping to drive it, but also seeing significant uptake in vacation rentals, and most recently, what’s really starting to light up is transient RVing, which was dragging and lagging for the most part across the portfolio. Starting to see that gap close, which has been very encouraging.

At a lot of properties, I’ll tell you that some of the outliers from that is still national park driven parks are still have a bigger gap to cover. I think the driver for that is more of the uncertainty component. I think it is to do with people wanting to camp closer to home and maybe be more cost efficient with the miles that they travel.

The national parks obviously are, huge demand drivers typically, but they also are usually much longer trip than they would take on their RV than they otherwise would in camp more of their like local campgrounds within that two hour time window. I apologize for my voice in advance. I’m getting over a bit of a head cold, but the infamous summer cold.

But I can tell you that what we are seeing is a nice little surge in bookings now that we are in the peak season, and I’m super excited to see it confirmed a theory of mine that, or is beginning to confirm a theory of mine that the booking window is just getting a lot shorter, a lot tighter to the actual stay they know inventory is available.

The systems are much more user friendly. People are much more accustomed to using the booking systems that are out there today. So for all those reasons, I think people were just waiting and now they’re really starting to lock in their plans for the summer now that the kids are outta school. 

Brian Searl: So that 104% is that revenue or camper nights or 

Rafael Correa: Sorry, that’s revenue.

Brian Searl: Okay. Have you. And you talked a little bit about your long term and your pivoting. Have you done any of that you feel has made a difference or? 

Rafael Correa: Absolutely. There’s been a large push with the kind of uncertainty from the perspective of the owner side, like the Campground owner side. Like people want to have that more, have a little bit more of a stable income base in their portfolio. And that’s come as a mandate from several of our ownership groups. It’s stuff that we’ve done in certain assets of our own. Again, just to create a nice little base of business that we can rely on.

And and there’s been demand for it, right? And there’s certainly an element of cannibalization in that effort because that person that parks their RV is less likely to roam in that RV. It’s not to say they don’t, they still will potentially. And that’s the beauty of an RV. It has wheels. It can go where you want to go with it.

Even if you have a seasonal site that’s home base, you could travel, but more often than not, they set up for the season. But generally the RV, transient RV was the scary part for us. And we’re starting to see that gap close a little bit. And as it sits today, transient RV by itself, like just isolated, that group is only at 80% of same time last year. Just to give you an idea where it sits for us today. But when you combine that with the seasonal, together, sorry, the numbers refresh on my sheet here, we’re at 102% of same time last year when you combine those two categories. 

Brian Searl: Nice. So let me ask, lemme play devil’s advocate for a second with you, and then I want to go around the room and get everybody’s different opinion and take on, both RV purchasing and Campground reservations in general, whatever clarity you guys have, and we’ll touch on Europe, Simon, with you and everything else.

But lemme play the devil’s advocate for a second. If you’re at 104% occupancy, if you have. Let’s pretend whether you’re Blue Water or any Campground out there, right? If you have the ability to either pivot to long-term or monthly, which not everybody does, right? But if you do, or you’re doing really good marketing, which you guys have a great team at Blue Water, like there are lots of other campgrounds who are doing decent marketing, great marketing, most probably aren’t.

But if you have the ability to do those two things, do we need RV sales to jump back quickly or are we okay with the amount of RVs that are on the road if we’re doing strong marketing and we’re able to be flexible in who we’re attracting? 

Rafael Correa: I would tell you from my perspective, is we absolutely need to make a concerted effort in a post COVID world as an industry to encourage the most people possible to get into the RVing lifestyle and vacation lifestyle.

And I think that it’s more important now than ever. Quite frankly, for our industry to maintain a growth trajectory, to show people the appeal and the attraction of this type of travel. Getting more people and more RVs on the road, I think is a priority for both the manufacturers, the dealers, and the Campground owners needs to be a concerted effort that we collaborate on to promote the RV vacation lifestyle as a whole.

Brian Searl: I agree with you, and I’m just still playing devil’s advocate here, right? So the follow up to that is, is there a lot of campgrounds who have alternative accommodations beyond just RVs, tents, glamping cabin rentals? 

Rafael Correa: Absolutely. I’ll tell you that, and we specialize in transient RV resorts, right? That’s Blue Waters bread and butter, this transient, destination market, RV resorts. But one of the things that, and we’re also happen to be in the hotel industry, we own eight hotels ourselves as well. So we love that industry as well. But we like the RV world and Campground world much more.

And one of the most unique and special things about this particular asset class is how dynamic the inventory is, right? That inventory can be an RV site, it can be a park model, it can be a safari tent, and that can evolve from one season to the next, right? It can be a standard RV site, it can be a patio RV site.

And one of the greatest assets that we have as an industry is the ability to have this dynamic in inventory that we can shift it to where the consumer demand is. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to fully commit yourself to one site type or one style in a large scale resort like we manage, if you’re 250 sites and up, the best option you have is the diversity and optimizing that diversity is what it’s gonna get you the highest and best result year after year.

And I think, it may be if you went all in on transient RV and COVID, you probably made more money. But if you alienated all your long terms after COVID disappeared, you’re going long terms back. And I think anytime somebody wants to go all in on one site type it’s not necessarily healthy for the long-term survivability of that asset.

Brian Searl: Scott, what do you think from your data? And then we’ll compare yours to Simon’s and then we’ll eventually swing back to the RVs. 

Scott Bahr: Yeah, I think, overall the whole idea of getting more people in our RVs is, I agree on that. It’s healthy for the industry and that and like I said earlier, I think there’s enough information to suggest that it’s there for the taking. The softness of the market right now, which means that, essentially there’s a lot of people out there who are really undecided and who are doing other things.

We’re in the era of the more casual participant, the people who aren’t hardcore. It’s a harder sell, as Phil knows, probably all do well, is that if the person is not taking a bunch of trips a year, it’s a lot more difficult to get them into an RV. So that person, that takes the, maybe just a couple trips a year, maybe a few weekends or whatever, a couple weekends they’re doing the calculus in their head that, eh, this isn’t a good use of my money. Especially now again, where there’s a lot of economic uncertainty, but 

Brian Searl: Right. And that’s not unique to the RV industry either. That’s unique to I’m only gonna buy a really expensive pair of hiking shoes I just did because I’m gonna go hiking 15 times a year.

Scott Bahr: It’s any big ticket item, we actually did measure, the carryover and big ticket items, and it carries over to everything. Even buying a new TV, that’s not really a big ticket item, but it’s the people spending on some of these other items in their life.

Right now, they’re hesitating and it’s a large part of the market more than a third of the market right now is kinda sitting on their hands. There’s probably about 20% of people who are not impacted. Everybody makes some kind of adjustment. About 80% of the market makes some kind of adjustment based on where we’re at right now and to me, when you see this and I think, I talked about this at the RVIA meeting too, is that like Phil, you talked about people in the user caused problems with repairs and so on. What we know from our research is that the ability to use the RV is a huge barrier.

It’s like they don’t how to park it. They don’t know how to operate it, and it’s intimidating. And I remember someone that asked me if that was really an issue. And it is, it’s a huge issue. It’s a huge issue and if you look at some of those people feel that you talk about who bought during COVID there’s 40% of them have issues operating their RV.

That group in particular, they got in quick, they didn’t, learn how to use it properly or whatever. And that’s one of those barriers. The other thing that we know is if we get people to stay in an RV, and I’m going to say that staying in an RV besides just staying at one that’s static on site at the Campground, like actually using an RV to get on the road and be mobile has a much bigger impact.

Staying in a Airstream at a Campground does not equate to buying. That percentage is much lower. It’s like in the teens that people are interested or likely to purchase, but that person actually say they rent one, that rent, renting and using it translates at a much higher level.

We’re talking in the thirties, forties that people are much more interested in doing it. So what that tells us is that when people are exposed to the usage and the kind of the style that the Camping style of being in an RV that it takes. It takes. And I always say they got some skin in the game at that point.

They’ve done something, they’ve actively done something. So that to me is really, part of what, where we’re at. It’s we just need to get people on the road a little bit more. We need to get them in these and using them, actively using them. 

Brian Searl: Is there a easy path to do that though, given the macro factors that we all know are existing right now?

Scott Bahr: Again, rentals are a good way, but not to, speak badly of anyone and I won’t talk, call anyone out in particular, but honestly, renting an RV is not that cheap. I did it and the cost per night was fairly substantial I thought, and when you’re looking at that person who isn’t an RV and they can stay in another short term rental for half the price of a nightly rental in an RV. Depending on what kind of trip they’re gonna do they’re probably gonna do a short term rental. 

Brian Searl: What was the price? So you don’t have to tell us the company. What was the price? 

Scott Bahr: For a small towable, it was about $275 a night. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s rough. That’s a luxury hotel in

Scott Bahr: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Chicago, not Chicago, probably Philadelphia.

Rafael Correa: The campsite fee on top of that.

Scott Bahr: Exactly. Exactly, so now you’re talking over $300 a night. It’s a little prohibitive. So, anyway, I guess Brian, to answer your question, I’m not really answering that because what I’m saying is that’s not a great way to get a lot of people out using RVs.

I don’t have a good answer on that. Someone at the table may have a better answer for that, but if we can get ’em out there on the road, get ’em using them. Maybe there’s some sort of creative idea someone can come up with.

Brian Searl: Is the RV rental, is that price? And I don’t have any data on this. I don’t know that everybody charges the same thing. Is that a reflection of the same thing we had in campgrounds where every, not everybody, but a lot of people just got money hungry and greedy over COVID and jacked up their prices. Is there a margin for that to lower and still be profitable for a rental company?

Phil Ingrassia: We look at rental across the board, from rental agencies that are professional, rental agencies that have backup units if something goes wrong to the peer to peer platforms and Scott’s exactly right, that’s the price points you’re looking at for rentals, especially during high usage seasons.

Now, if you get into the shoulder seasons, you might be able to do a little bit better than what Scott did, but that is the cost. And then when you look at, especially in the entry level RV space, you can get an entry level trailer very affordably.

And if you’re gonna use it, it can turn out to be a very good deal for family travel. But it depends. If you’re not gonna use it enough, then people have to make that decision. But I will also say that look at the competition price of cruise, price going to Disneyland or Disney World or any kind of all-inclusive resort.

It’s expensive to recreate these days and it, people have to weigh, where they are as far as their family budget for vacations and make the decision based on that. But nothing, nothing other than maybe pitching a tent in your backyard is all that affordable these days.

Brian Searl: Yeah, and I guess I am a little bit disconnected from that, right? I remember traveling around the US and we were starting our company like bootstrapped and anything. For me, even today, still like anything really that’s above maybe I would say two 50. And that’s my personal line, right?

I’m saying I wanna look at those amenities and make sure that’s something I’m willing to pay it, but you need to justify the cost to me, right? So like when you get up to the $275 a night plus the campsite fee, like that feels like a big barrier to cross for people, especially when we’re trying to bring new people into the industry who don’t understand the value of it. Is that fair? 

Rafael Correa: No, it’s a good point. I would argue that, it’s all, like you said, it’s all getting more expensive. A $300 a night, depending on where you are, might be a steal. I don’t know where Scott was traveling to, but in many cases, he would be hard pressed to get, and if you’re traveling with a family, especially you’re also talking about sleeping maybe four or five people in this RV. And in a hotel room, that might mean two hotel rooms or attached to rooms.

Brian Searl: That’s fair. Okay.

Rafael Correa: And so that, that could easily outpace that. Not to mention the fact that, there are many more aspects, as we all know, to Camping in a Campground, especially with kids, that they have this place to roam around.

I always remind people that when a traveling baseball team shows up in a hotel, they’re a nuisance. If they’re at a Campground, it’s just another day at the Campground. That’s the beauty of it. And so we see a lot of traveling, athletics, moving into our space, and we really are catering to them because the kids can roam around and have a blast.

I have campgrounds where we’ve actually put up batting cages to just cater to them, right? Because it’s actually been something that has been a growing part of our industry. 

Brian Searl: Before we get to Europe, US or Europe, North america, I guess is really more fair. Susan, what have you seen in Arizona as far as what we’re talking about in trends and. 

Susan Brenton: Arizona market has always been a little higher price, especially in the greater Phoenix, the Scottsdale area, and that area.

And I put on quite a few different conferences and things like that every year. So I’m looking at hotel rates and comparing them, and I’ve seen hotel rates even when I’ve got a group of, a hundred people coming in, the best rates I’m getting are, $200-$225 a night for just a hotel.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Susan Brenton: We’d much rather be someplace fun like an RV park. 

Brian Searl: What have you seen from your members so far this year as far as interest in Camping? Some of the numbers we were talking about, occupancy or revenue, if do you have any of that? Do you collect any of that? Does Arizona’s, 

Susan Brenton: I’m sorry. We’re not collecting any of that sort of information yet. It’s just hearsay. I know that there’s been, particularly in the RV parks, those year round park model parks. So the Canadian travelers, because we normally do get a large influx of Canadians here in Arizona during the winter.

Brian Searl: Is that impacting those types of parks yet, or will it be more widely felt if it continues into October, November? 

Susan Brenton: For those parks, people are paying year round rent on their park model space.

Brian Searl: Okay.

Susan Brenton: Regardless of whether they’re here or not. But, people are trying to sell them. We don’t know what’s going to be happening in the future.

Brian Searl: Do you have a sense, then, of how transients are doing in Arizona? 

Susan Brenton: Yes, I think that we’re still getting pretty much, it’s probably stayed about the same as far as transits coming. We always have a lot of visitors here in Arizona, and luckily we’re one of those few states, I know everyone thinks of us as being a great big desert, we’re not Southern Arizona is desert.

So like today’s a cool day. It’s 104 degrees outside. But I can go up north. In the wintertime I can drive an hour and a half up north and be in snow. I can be in 60 degrees here and in snow. So we also have a large influx of people up in Northern Arizona during the winter or during the summer months.

Brian Searl: Okay. Before we go to more data, I’m just for the clarity for our audience sake, tell us a little bit about the Arizona Outdoor Hospitality Association. What do you guys, like I know what you do, but just in case most people don’t. I think I know what you do anyway.

Susan Brenton: You might surprise me. We represent like the owners and managers of Camping and RV resorts and glamping resorts. We started back in 1988 and we’ve got a new website and marketing campaign that we’re putting together now to influence people, more people to come to Arizona. So watch gocampinginarizona.com in about a month or two, hopefully.

I get involved as the executive director in quite a few issues here in Arizona. For example, I am a lobbyist. This year we had quite a bit of legislation regarding us. We’re seeing, I think it’s probably more like 30% there’s a tenants association that represents people who live in RV parks, stay in RV parks in Arizona. They’re saying it’s 50% of people are now living like year round in their RV here in Arizona. I really don’t think it’s that high, but because of that, we’re seeing more and more legislative issues here.

Brian Searl: Do you think that, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but just for clarity on that piece of it, assuming that was true or there’s a middle ground between what you think and what they think, is there a sense of why that’s happening? Is RV just more appealing? Is it economic? Is it.

Susan Brenton: A lot of it’s economic, people can no longer, people are retiring now with their social security and possibly a little bit more. A lot of people are retiring that way now. And so that’s what we’re finding. And we’re different than a lot of the other associations, a lot of the other state associations, because we do have quite a few RV parks with full-time park models, we’re getting into issues on the legislative side, such as, there was a bill this year that passed saying that if you’re in an RV park and your air conditioner goes out, the landlord has to allow you to replace your air conditioning or your cooling system somehow including like a window unit in a park model or something. Which many of the parks have not allowed in the past. It was a hard one to fight, of course, because, do you want these people to die while they’re in the heat? But so we’re seeing more issues like that coming up. 

Brian Searl: So what’s the balance there? I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but what’s the balance of we obviously don’t want people to die, but we also don’t wanna, I don’t know, what’s the counter argument to that?

Susan Brenton: Our counter arguments were, first of all just the electricity that’s coming into the homes, the electricity allowed per home could actually, an air conditioning unit could throw the whole power out for the whole park. And then the noise factor, if it is making too much noise for neighbors, you can, kick them out.

They can be thrown out of a park. So it’s been a tough situation in Arizona. In about, I guess it was about 1998-1999, we actually have a long term RV Space Act. It’s like our, a landlord tenant act. For those people that stay for more than 180 days or have a park model in a park.

And that, we’ve worked for years. They’ve tried and tried to throw park models in with the manufactured homes and the manufactured home laws here in Arizona. And Arizona has some of the most strict Mobile Home Landlord-Tenant Act laws. And so we’ve tried for years to keep away from them mixing RVs and manufactured homes, but we’re still fighting it.

Brian Searl: Some of that depends on who owns the park too and what they want to do with the land and how they want to pivot and.

Susan Brenton: Exactly. Exactly. And, and there are still some parks that are only open, six months out of the year, but quite a few of them here in Arizona are open 12 months out of the year.

Brian Searl: Thank you Susan. I wanna get back and talk about your priorities a little bit later for your association and the future and 2025 and to 2026 where you see that going. But I wanna get to Simon. What data do you have for us Simon, for Europe, or anything else you wanna chat about? 

Simon Neal: Yeah, so I have just a summary of an article that came out last week on France, which is a pretty good metric for the rest of Europe. Big tourist destination, big country. And it’s pretty, pretty promising outlook. So in general international tourism, so this is everybody else coming into France to visit for Q1, Q2 has a sharp rise this year. Most of that has been driven by surrounding companies and countries, neighboring ones, France, Germany, Netherlands, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, which is up 10 or 20%.

But also interesting, there’s been a growth in international markets outside of Europe, particularly Canada and China. So there’s a nice little trend going on there. And that’s just tourism in general. And if we zoom in a bit on bookings and holidays summer bookings for June, August across the whole sector in tourism is up 16% from last year. So really good growth.

Outdoor hospitality specifically is a bit less quite a bit less, 1.7% growth in overnight stays. But some interesting trends they picked up on as well is 39% of people who are making bookings now, price is the most important factor when they’re booking, and actually 60% want to spend less than about a thousand dollars per person on their summer holiday and about 30%, $500 or less.

So it’s pretty specific numbers and costs coming down. So they are traveling, they are going out, but really wanting to spend less money. 

Brian Searl: I’m sorry, a thousand euros or a thousand dollars just to.

Simon Neal: Yeah, I converted to dollars. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Thank you.

Simon Neal: Yeah. Just another fact, the average site rate per night in Europe, standard site for tent pitching and RV if it’s small, is around $60 a night across all different countries.

Brian Searl: Do you know by chance what it costs to rent an RV in Europe? 

Simon Neal: I don’t actually, I’ve never tried to look. I can maybe quickly do a search for it. 

Brian Searl: It would just be interesting to see the comparison. But Scott, while he’s looking that up, what do you compare that to in the US and Canada 

Scott Bahr: In terms of. 

Brian Searl: Do you have any numbers that kind of mirror that show that the consumer behavior is the same, different, similar the French Canadians you’re missing from Maine. They clearly have gone home to France. We know that, so.

Scott Bahr: Yes we are missing our French Canadians here in Maine big time. Yeah, from what I’ve heard, is that interest again, that word interest is pretty high. I saw, I think it was LinkedIn, a LinkedIn post or something recently from the folks that Harvest Host said that a number of reservations on their system was the highest it’s ever been, I think is what they said.

I always say this, I know my sister’s a Harvest Host and she can reflect on that. She said she’s never had that many people booking. And she said there’s also been a decent number of cancellations and anyway, so it would be interesting to see if, I think, rafael was talking about the shortened booking window.

I feel like there’s some of that, the usage of the trip stackings going on a little bit. ‘Cause people are waiting till the last minute. They’re gonna book several different places. I feel like the outlook for the rest of the year is fairly favorable right now. If we don’t get any bad weather here in the Northeast, we’ve had some really hot weather.

But I do know that in this area, tourism is up. Overall and anecdotally, that’s anecdotal, but overall nationwide, I think bookings are a little bit better now than we thought they would be about six weeks ago, I think six, about six weeks ago we were a little concerned that it was gonna be maybe a down year, but.

We seem to be slowly rebound. And again, going back to that shortened booking window, the shorter the booking window, the harder it is. It’s gonna be to predict, to call this, further out. But I’m trying to stay optimistic about it. I think people want to get out. I really do. And that feels the sentiment that we’ve been measuring. And we’ll have some more data come out here and hopefully soon through our friends at KOA that’s gonna show, that there’s a fairly favorable sentiment right now. Again, as we talked earlier, it doesn’t always translate to behavior, but we want that, we wanna keep it positive because the more positive it is, the more people are actually likely to book that last minute trip.

And I think Campground owners as, thinking about this, that if you’re not full, go out there and get these short-term people these people that are booking last minute, use that to your advantage. 

Brian Searl: Do we have a sense of, or do you have any data on how price conscious they are? Are they pretty price conscious like they appear to be in Europe? 

Scott Bahr: It is always the top factor that people consider, but it’s less if you have someone who like, say an RVer, they’re willing to pay extra to get the amenities they want. So they will pony up that extra amount to stay at the Campground that they know is gonna not have, not just hookups, but good hookups, good sites. 

Brian Searl: Right, that matches, it’s like my $250 threshold, right? I’m willing to spend it, but you gotta prove to me that you’re worth that $250 or more or whatever. 

Scott Bahr: Exactly. They’re seeking the value, especially those experienced RVers out there who they know what you get. That sometimes, cheap is cheap and they’re definitely willing to pay that they complain. Oh my goodness. They love to complain, but they pay it. They’ll come back and pay it. It’s oh, they rumble the whole time. But, I don’t feel like the cost consciousness is as big a deal, especially for, again, at the resorts and so on. The people who are really cutting back again, that kind of that lower income tier, they’re staying at the state parks a lot more.

We’re seeing a little bit of, trending that way. The national park situation is keeping people away. I know you talked about that earlier, Rafael, but it seems that people are readjusting. That was a wild card I feel that got thrown out there this year, for a lot of people who make those big trip plans.

The national parks are big trips, go hit a few of ’em, take a couple weeks and that kinda got thrown off. But it kinda looks like people are now, they’re not gonna go to the national parks, but they’re gonna take a different kind of trip if they’re gonna take a bucket list trip.

They want it to be really nice. Again, I feel like that’s what we’re seeing. All these factors are, coming full circle again to that shortened booking window and people making more last minute plans. 

Brian Searl: And I know you touched on this briefly, Rafael, but do you have some data on how the booking window has impacted Blue Water properties that you’d be willing to share? Because we kind of watched this from our side. We were doing marketing for a large luxury review resort in Louisiana and we watched this happen in real time, where they were like 10% oh, vacancies for July 4th weekend. Then a couple days later it was 7% and a couple days later it was 4% and a couple, right?

Rafael Correa: Yeah.

Brian Searl: And so we watched this really happen in real time. It’s fascinating to see. 

Rafael Correa: I don’t think we’ll have anything really definitive. The trend’s telling me that’s what’s happening, but I don’t think we’ll have anything really definitive till the end of July and which is like that really peak season.

And I really wanna see how the booking window has really truly changed for transient RV in the month of July before I’ll really put my stake on the ground that this is really happening. Because that’ll be a real, population of data we’ll be working with. 

Brian Searl: Is your sentiment though, is it fair to say, and I’m gonna intentionally put words in your mouth so you can correct me. Is it fair to say that if you’re doing your marketing correctly, and you have a park that is worthy of people coming to visit, and you’re not outside of National Park that. You don’t have as much to worry about as perhaps you might’ve thought a couple months ago. 

Rafael Correa: A hundred percent. It is more important than ever to have the right mousetrap when it comes to marketing. And it’s such a multifaceted effort, right? Between your website, email marketing, your digital ad placement, your more traditional placements. The checklist is gigantic that we have for any single property. And we have what’s called a playbook. We refer to it as the playbook for every property, and that’s how we manage the marketing for any individual property.

And that playbook takes into account, all the digital marketing aspects, all the billboards that you have to have, the local listings, all the local events that are happening in that particular marketplace. It is basically a gigantic checklist. And if you’re not being comprehensive in that effort. You have the potential to lose out on business. And that’s, I think what we’ve done really well at Blue Water’s really perfect that mousetrap and we’re still perfecting it. It’s a never done process. It’s very iterative and we’re trying to find that next and we’re constantly experimenting, right?

I’ve thrown thousands of dollars on things that didn’t work as much as I’ve thrown thousands of dollars on things that did work. But everything we were learning from that effort, and so absolutely have to be dynamic. If we’re gonna cost cut to make bottom lines, it shouldn’t be on the marketing side today, because that’s where you’re going to get more market share than the competitors who aren’t doing that activity.

Brian Searl: Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit later in Outwired, Scott will be there with us, Greg Emmert will be joining us too. We’re gonna devote a portion of the show to how that marketing landscape, the funnel was completely collapsing. The whole thing’s getting rewritten around us and most people are standing still.

There was some really good data that came out from CloudFlare CEO that I posted about on LinkedIn where I think like 10 years ago, for every page Google scraped on your website, every two pages, Google scraped on your website, they sent you one visitor. Six months ago, I think the number was, I’m gonna butcher it now.

I should go look up my own LinkedIn post. I think it was every six scrapes they sent one visitor, and now I think it’s 18. Every 18 pages, they scrape, they send one visitor. Open AI is 250 to one or was 250 to 1. 250 pages they scrape for one visitor. And now I think it’s 1500 scrapes to one because behavior and the trust is shifting. The discovery is changing the landscape of how they do the research is changing and there’s so many people that are sitting still out there, so we’ll talk about that a little bit later on Outwired. 

Rafael Correa: But gotta be dynamic in that effort. It’s huge. 

Brian Searl: Simon, did you find a number for us in RV rentals?

Simon Neal: I did. So it’s a bit hard to get our comparison on size ’cause we generally have smaller r RVers than you guys, but sleeps for, so if you’re looking at shoulder seasons $140 per night, but as soon as you get in peak season, that goes to $270 or above easily up.

Brian Searl: Okay. So same really basically.

Simon Neal: Yeah, similar. 

Brian Searl: Maybe even a little bit more if it’s a smaller unit. 

Simon Neal: Yeah. I mean it’s tiny compared to what you guys used too. So sleeps slower to squeeze. 

Brian Searl: It’ll be interesting to see how the industry, if the industry, and I’m sure somebody will figure it out somewhere, multiple people will, how we pivot if we get to a situation where a macroeconomics continues to deteriorate.

Which I think it will, even though I don’t want it to. Is there a way that we can pivot the offering that we have through rentals or campgrounds or dealers or something else that will make it at least temporarily more affordable to people while still maintaining enough of a margin to make it a healthy business for the RV rental companies, for the dealers, for everybody else?

I don’t know the answer to that, but it would be interesting to see, how that ends up working if we continue down this path that we’re on right now. 

Rafael Correa: It’s gonna be interesting to watch too, how the boating world has done it with these boat clubs. And we have a couple marinas and the boat clubs rent a certain number of slips for us and their boat club members come in and out and make reservations for the boats.

But they’re more membership models, I think the nightly models that we usually use in the RV space. I’m not overly familiar with the RV rental space, just looking at the parallel there. 

Phil Ingrassia: Somebody asked me this week about fractional ownership of RVs. And over time there’s been several efforts to do that. And everything from a major manufacturer tried it to some startups that have came over the last 10 years, and nobody’s been able to figure out the secret sauce for fractional ownership or a membership club model for RVs yet. Not saying it won’t happen. But nobody’s been able to figure it out yet. And these boat clubs and things like that, are one thing, but they’re pretty much staying in the same area, same lake or whatever. They’re not moving around all over the place. And if a motor goes, you have an upward motor, you can replace it. It’s a little bit different in an RV, so we’ll see if somebody can figure it out. But it’s certainly interesting that you brought it up and somebody had just asked me about it this week. 

Rafael Correa: Sorry, go ahead. 

Brian Searl: No, please go ahead. 

Rafael Correa: I was just gonna say, I think part of the challenge to that too is, not that boats are famous for the reliability, what do they say that boat stands for? Break Out Another Thousand?

Brian Searl: Well, it’s Better than Ford. Ford found on Road Dead.

Phil Ingrassia: The day he buys it and the day he sells it.

Rafael Correa: Yeah. Which I’m an avid boater and.

Phil Ingrassia: Oh, I grew up with boat.

Rafael Correa: My thousand for my Boating time. I think the other issue in fractional ownership with RVs is relates to that Wall Street Journal article that popped up recently.

And, I think it’s worth mentioning on here because anytime our industry is noted in the Wall Street Journal and not in a positive light, I think it’s something that we all have to take note of and react to. And it’s the title of the article was Even Warren Buffet hasn’t fixed the RV industry’s Searl breakdowns.

And it’s really highlighting the quality that’s coming out of these RV manufacturers and some of the quality issues. And again, coming into a national major financial publication, it was really highly focused on the forest riverside, but it really gave some specific case studies of where people are having significant issues, wiring issues, fuse issues, electrical issues that led to some pretty catastrophic events.

Fortunately nothing with the loss of life, necessarily, but significant loss of property. And so this is something that keeps popping up on my radar. I mentioned it to Phil that, this was a comment that was made by a major dealer on a panel at the RVIA leadership conference is that the industry needed to slow down and really focus on building quality product.

And I think, quite frankly, it’s a huge factor, entirely down the supply chain, whether it’s dealers, manufacturers, obviously, but then the dealers who are selling them, and then us who are the ultimate, providing the end use experience. I can only go so far, but if they have a bad time with their RV or their RV isn’t working and they have a terrible time at my park unrelated to what I’m doing, it’s taking certain things out of control and not necessarily doing anything to help attract people to the space.

And so it’s like one of the areas where I think we all need to pitch in and find ways to be more helpful on making sure that people are having a good experience in their RV from the ownership perspective all the way through the buying perspective, through the use perspective.

Brian Searl: Yeah. I don’t wanna be completely negative because let’s be clear, Wall Street Journal, according to my phone, charges two seventy five a week to subscribe, and I am not paying that. So not everybody saw the article, so there’s at least a little bit of good news. But Phil, your response. 

Phil Ingrassia: And I work for the dealers, but I know the manufacturers. We work with RVIA in both our strategic plans, both the RV Dealers Association and RVIA is improvements in what we call repair event cycle time, or RECT as we’ve called it. And we have major initiatives underway. And I will tell you that the manufacturers have basically match production levels right now to what demand is.

And I think that a lot of us learned our lesson in COVID when we went from, 600,000 units produced in the top year there, 2022 to where we are now, where we’re gonna be about 330,000 units. So I think just by the numbers, quality will improve. And I know that the manufacturers are bringing in new ideas, new systems, and new people who are very focused on quality issues.

The Wall Street Journal focused on recalls and things like that. And then you can always fill in anecdotal stories of people that have had trouble on their trips or trouble with their units, but, from the inside, because believe me, as Rafael said, dealers are very focused on this as well.

Because the service capacity of the RV business is limited, and if we can get quality up, then the service capacity can be used for the units that are older or whatever. And we’re not fixing a unit that’s six months old. So I think everybody in the industry understands that certainly the CEOs of the major RV manufacturers understand that and are investing into systems, people, and processes to improve that.

Brian Searl: Do you believe it’s just a slow down and be more careful, or is it a deeper problem than that, that apparently Warren Buffett might not be able to solve? 

Phil Ingrassia: I think it was a product, it was a kind of a hair on fire production environment there for a while.

Brian Searl: Okay.

Phil Ingrassia: And when that happens, quality control becomes more difficult. And I believe, and I’ve talked to several manufacturers about this, as the industry has improved, they would like to see more of a stair step improvement in shipments and sales versus this, all of a sudden we’re gonna double production in a year and a half.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Rafael Correa: Yeah.

Phil Ingrassia: That’s very difficult. And especially with a unit, it is as complicated as RV, basically a house on wheels. 

Brian Searl: So you’re saying, Phil, if somebody came to you and said, I’ll give you another pandemic, but nobody has to die, you’d say No. 

Phil Ingrassia: If you knew, even if you knew manufacturers, and that was very stressful on the whole supply chain. From everybody to the the component parts suppliers, to the manufacturers, to the dealers. It was a lucrative time. We sold a lot, but it was also very stressful.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Phil Ingrassia: And in talking to the manufacturers and that everybody wants to sell more, but sure everybody would like a little bit more, what do they call it? Predictability? Business certainty?

But that’s not the RV business really. And it’s not life. But we can work towards that, smooth out the rough edges, certainly. 

Rafael Correa: And I think to reflect on pre COVID, growth in the Camping and outdoor hospitality world. I don’t remember the exact number, Scott, but the number of 12% rings a bell to me of camper households was like the growth trajectory we were on compounded annual growth rate.

And that’s in any industry, would love to see something like that. And I think that, and we felt it too on the end user side is that, we were pulling our hair out trying to accommodate an unbelievable amount of demand that we had never seen before. Really and for us, without necessarily the labor, then we needed to support it too.

You ask a lot of my GMs, if they want to go back to a COVID era, they’d be like, hell no. That really tested ’em, back in day with that surge demand. There’s an argument to be made that, what goes up comes down. And we might’ve been better off just staying on the growth trajectory that we were on to start with.

Scott Bahr: I’ve actually looked at that, Rafael, I have a graphic that shows had COVID never happened, the RV industry would be ahead of where we’re at right now based on that trend line. 

Rafael Correa: Yeah, that’s what I thought. That’s glad you were able to confirm that for me based on where we were pre COVID.

Scott Bahr: Nope. I had that graphic. If anybody wants to see it.

Brian Searl: I want to see it, but we don’t have time today. We’ll show it on Outwired. 

Scott Bahr: Alright. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s definitely interesting to me. It would be interesting to know the same stats about campgrounds too. Obviously we haven’t seen as much of a drop off there.

Simon Neal: Yeah.

Scott Bahr: No, but we’d be a little bit ahead. We’d still be a little bit ahead with campgrounds too.

Susan Brenton: Yes. 

Brian Searl: Interesting. And I think it’ll be interesting to see where, like the overall, the RV industry and the campaign industry goes as we had, I mean I think the answer you’re talking about factual ownership.

I think the answer, it might take 20 years for us to get there is the same thing that Elon’s doing with Robotaxis. Like I think when there’s enough of those on the road, when the RVs can self-drive themselves, maybe not the huge rigs but the middle-sized ones. Seriously, Rafael you wait 20 years, the world’s gonna change quite a bit again.

Rafael Correa: No, I just love your futurist. 

Brian Searl: But imagine when you could order an RV and it just comes up to your house. There’s no commitment, there’s no anything else and you just get in the RV with all your gear and it drives you to a Campground. I think that’s gonna allow a whole lot more people to be able to experiment with the RV lifestyle for the first, second, third time. 

Rafael Correa: Totally. 

Brian Searl: Than otherwise wouldn’t and it’s probably gonna be a whole lot cheaper than renting an RV at $300 a night too, because they’re just waiting there and because by that time we’re gonna have robots building them, so.

Rafael Correa: Well, and I think what you’re bringing up is really the issue that we’re hyper-focused here at Blue Water is removing friction, right?

We wanna remove any friction that we can possibly remove from people making a reservation. And we have been actively doing that. And I think as an industry, that’s what we need to focus on is promoting it and creating the least amount of friction possible to get somebody in an RV and Camping.

Brian Searl: For sure. All right final thoughts, everybody. Simon, I know you didn’t have too much of a chance to talk today. I’m sorry about that, but final thoughts and then share where they can learn more about Camp Map. 

Simon Neal: No, it’s all right. Gone on with my small stats, so that’s fine. Yeah, not much else to share really. We’re just pretty happy so far. Still pretty busy, but getting into that quiet spot when the campgrounds are getting super full and stop talking to us. But yeah, you can find more about what we do at campmap.com. You can find a contact information, everything there. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here as always, Simon. Phil, final thoughts? 

Phil Ingrassia: It was good talking everybody. I always learn something in this group. It’s fantastic. 

Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Phil, as always, and RVDA. If they wanna learn more about the organization, what you guys are doing. 

Phil Ingrassia: rvda.org. 

Brian Searl: Thank you, Phil. Rafael, Blue Water? 

Rafael Correa: No, just appreciate the time with everybody. Really great to get to meet Phil in person for the first time here and hear from his side of the story. I know that we’re all in this boat together. But appreciate everybody and if anybody wants to learn more about Blue Water, you can look us up at bwdc.com. That’s Bravo-Whiskey-Delta-Charlie.com.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks Rafael, for being here as always. Susan, I know we didn’t get to our future outlook for the Outdoor Hospitality Association in Arizona, but I feel like it’s bright, like everything’s gonna be great, right? 

Susan Brenton: Yeah, I believe so. But with all politics going on right now, it’s hard to say. But I also believe that younger RVers is definitely an emerging market in Arizona. A lot of our parks are age 55+. They only accept, if you have one person over. So I think that’s something that a lot of our parks are going to have to look at fairly quickly here. And thank you for having us today.

Brian Searl: Okay. I’d love to have you back so we’ll find time to get you back on the show. I would appreciate you being here. And if they’re in Arizona or they wanna learn more about your association, where do they go? 

Susan Brenton: gocampinginarizona.com. 

Brian Searl: Thank you Susan. I appreciate it. Scott, last but not least. 

Scott Bahr: Yeah, keep an eye on those booking windows . I’m hanging my head on it and you can hold me to it, but we have a resource library on our website, carinconsultinggroup.com. Go there, there’s tons of reports, there’s reports I’ve done with Brian.

There’s the KOA reports there, there’s other reports on articles. There’s a lot of information there. It’s all free. So please if anyone you know, has questions let me know. But go there. The information is available.

Rafael Correa: Send me that chart, Scott.

Scott Bahr: I will.

Rafael Correa: I appreciate it.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you guys for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing of me and Scott yet, we will be on Outwired in about 47, 57 minutes from now Ish. We’re gonna be talking, what are we talking about, Scott, besides the influencers and traffic?

Scott Bahr: The holiday this weekend.

Brian Searl: Ah, yes, the holidays and whether you’re putting too much emphasis on your season, on holidays throughout the year and how you diversify and attract people and don’t maybe hang your hat on those holidays. As well as SEO traffic, how the world’s changing, all kinds of good things.

So join us in Outwired. We’ll be there. Otherwise, thank you guys. Appreciate you joining us for another episode. We’ll see you next week for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. 

Everyone: Thank you