MC Fireside Chats – March 18th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Excited to be here. Did the intro video stutter for you guys again? I’m just going to ask that live in front of everybody.

I don’t know why that’s happening. They changed their new studio and maybe I have to recut it in a new format. But anyway, I thought it was my computer.

Welcome, everybody. So we are in our—what week is it? The third week of March already? Second week of March? I don’t know. Something like that. So I heard Stacy doesn’t even know what time zone she was in as I was listening. So, I’m not going to ask Stacy for that.

But welcome everybody to another show. As usual, we’ll briefly go around and just introduce ourselves. We’ve got our recurring guests Robert, Mike, and Jeff on here. And then Stacy is our special guest. Who wants to start? You guys pick.

[00:01:23] Robert Preston: Ladies first.

[00:01:24] Stacy Dam: Yeah, and the outsider looking in. So I’m Stacy Dam, CEO and co-founder of Set Your Sites, camping technology company based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

[00:01:33] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Stacy. Appreciate it. Robert, you want to go?

[00:01:36] Robert Preston: Yep. Good afternoon everyone. Robert Preston, CEO of Unhitched RV.

[00:01:42] Brian Searl: Mr. Jeff Hoffman

[00:01:44] Jeff Hoffman: I’m Jeff Hoffman, founder of Camp Strategy. 

[00:01:48] Brian Searl: That’s it?

No catchy tagline or anything like that? All right.

[00:01:52] Jeff Hoffman: Not today.

[00:01:53] Brian Searl: You need a tagline for Camp Strategy. Mike Harrison.

[00:01:56] Mike Harrison: Mike Harrison, COO of CRR Hospitality.

[00:02:01] Brian Searl: All right, gentlemen. For all our recurring guests and lady, for our special guest. Typically we open up the show by saying to our recurring guests Robert, Mike, Jeff, is there anything that you guys have seen come across your desk in the last month as the world continues changing that you feel we should be talking about?

[00:02:17] Robert Preston: I knew you were going to ask that, Brian. So the one easy topic I’ve got queued up for us, I think it’s pretty simple. Fuel prices, right? Fuel prices and all the ramifications of what that means and what it doesn’t mean going in here.

I took took the family on an RV trip about two weeks ago. We went to Houston, visited a couple properties there. And I bought fuel on the way there for, I think, $3.30 and on the way home, it was $5.00 a gallon.

So, you know, a five-hundred-mile trip at six miles a gallon, that starts to really change the cost of a trip. I think it’s interesting. I haven’t actually seen any change in our bookings or reservations or revenue yet, but it’s always something to be thinking about that we’re…

[00:02:58] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think this needs to be on the table. It was on my list of things to talk about, just maybe briefly not to take over the whole show with it. But I saw also the Producer Price Index came out this morning in the stock market and it showed the price of vegetables was up 50% from what producers are charging grocery stores.

And I think that’s a lagging report. I think it’s going to impact a lot of pricing and I’m curious to think what you guys feel like will… I don’t want to talk about occupancy because nobody really knows and understands how that’s going to may or may not impact it. The war could be over by then, etc., etc.

But how are you guys adjusting, planning, preparing, creating a what-if scenario at your parks? If at all.

[00:03:38] Mike Harrison: I don’t know that fuel prices impact us that much. Meaning, I think what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard with all of the research, whether it’s Scott from Cairn or others, is that the trips have become shorter anyway, right?

Driving distance trips over the last few years, maybe the average trip was 800, now it’s 500. The outdoor hospitality industry is generally more insulated. And then when fuel prices change, people pivot from hotels to outdoor hospitality. It may not necessarily be a bane, it may be a boon. Hard to tell right now.

And same thing with some of the other CPI cost indexes, generally that’s what the research says and what our industry has seen is when times get tough, they cut up vacations and hotels and they try and be a little bit more economical, which benefits the outdoor hospitality industry.

And the studies have already shown that the research shows that there’s fewer trips in the past already. And so I don’t know that for us anyway, it doesn’t change the strategies that we’re already looking at, which is we know transient is down in general, we know that there’s a glut of new supply in general.

So, you know, we’re still hunting for transient but really pivoting more to insulate with additional long-term, which really this doesn’t affect whatsoever. I think in general it’s not a big “oh” moment for us. I think stay the course.

Some of the seasonal properties that are about to open up, maybe. But again, transient’s already been affected. So I don’t think it will really impact us too much.

[00:05:08] Brian Searl: Yeah, I’m with you on gas prices, which is why I threw out the vegetables and everything else that’s going to go up short-term too, right? Just what like the compounding thing is what worries me.

But you’re 100% right on long-term. I think most of us were expecting transient. I’m just curious more about strategy. Is there a backup plan? Is there a coupon, discount program? Is there anything that we could—that we should be preparing for in case?

[00:05:28] Jeff Hoffman: Well, my thing would be that how is it going to affect the campground’s ongoing expenses if we start having inflation again? Because electric obviously needs power, and that’s… they’re probably going to go in for increases on power.

If that happens, what kind of supplies do we use? Are they going to be raised up? Is it going to affect synthetics? Is it going to affect what all is it going to affect on our cost side? Not only our revenue side, but also where are we getting hit on our cost side? Because that we can control to a point, but we can’t control every expense that’s coming through.

[00:06:16] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s the underreported, is the aluminum prices also go through… aluminum goes through the roof, petrochemicals go through the roof, like lots of that stuff is being impacted. It’s not just oil.

[00:06:27] Jeff Hoffman: No. And it… the effects of oil have only added, I think, to the issues that we were facing of uncertainty. So we’ve added another layer on top of the uncertainty we had.

So as far as predicting the future right now…

[00:06:49] Brian Searl: Oh, nobody can predict the future. That’s why I’m asking more about strategy, right? What—do we have a what-if scenario? Because nobody’s going to be able to predict that. As Robert said, his bookings are flat. I imagine most people’s bookings have not changed at all as a result of this whatever is happening, right? We won’t know that until mid-May, June.

[00:07:05] Jeff Hoffman: Right. Yeah, I think the keeping pace with what we were doing, it hasn’t affected it that way. But it depends on how long it goes on.

[00:07:20] Brian Searl: Robert, you have anything to add?

[00:07:22] Robert Preston: No, I totally agree with what everyone is saying. It’s an interesting thing. Usually when unfortunate things happen in the world or the economy, like Mike said, it’s just generally beneficial to our industry.

So we’re certainly not rooting for anything like that, like another COVID or something like that to happen. But we’ve already made, like Mike, right, we’ve already made that strategy shift many years ago for the long-term guest instead of the short-term guest.

So the really… the pivot is the short-term guest, then you just market to people that are closer to your parks. And for us, that was already a fundamental decision to invest and buy in the locations we’re in because there’s a lot of people very close to our parks versus a—a amazing location in a national park somewhere that doesn’t have a population density around it.

Then that becomes challenging if that’s your entire reliance on someone traveling six, seven, eight hundred miles. It does become a factor, the fuel prices. But for the most part, all of our parks, there’s a large demographic of people that are less than 50 to 100 miles away.

And so the cost of travel is relatively inconsequential. And we know that in… surprisingly even your larger resort parks that are destinations, 80—I think it’s 80% of those guests still come from 150 miles or less to any given park. So people don’t actually travel that far that much in an RV.

[00:08:49] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think I’m not worried about the state parks, national parks, proximity. I’m not worried about the oceanfront. I’m not worried about Myrtle Beach. I’m not worried about Pigeon Forge.

But there are… I don’t know what the percentage is, and maybe you know this better than I do, Robert, with your acquisitions and all the things that you’re doing over there, but what percentage of parks is actually not within 150 miles of a major city to be able to pivot like that and pull in transient?

A lot of people have switched to long-term, but a lot more people probably haven’t yet.

[00:09:18] Robert Preston: There’s not for our region, I’ll just take the Southeast because that’s where the focus is. There’s not that many actually. There’s not that many places in the Southeast that if you draw a 200-mile circumference around, you’re not in a tertiary market.

There are places, but there’s not that many and that’s frankly why we love the Southeast. There’s a high population density per state, per region, etc.

We have amazing climate as compared to the like national averages. We have the most number of days with the largest region and we have a lot of population density. So I don’t know the exact number offhand, but there’s not very many places that fall into that category.

[00:09:55] Brian Searl: Does it lend itself though more to, if you’re targeting these cities, does it lend itself more towards success in cabins, glamping versus RV? For transients.

[00:10:07] Mike Harrison: They’re two completely separate markets.

Yeah, they’re really a different customer, so I don’t think comparing the two and understanding… Glamping continues—looking at just the glamping numbers and percentages and growth in the industry, it continues to grow inordinately, right?

For four years in a row, I think it had close to triple-digit growth. And that’s where and whenever we look at a—a park or resort, if they don’t have glamping, we always recommend glamping.

So I think glamping continues to also be the alternative to a hotel as people find it and discover it. But again, I think it’s a very different and insulated market.

And if you also look at CoStar released a report a month or so ago, the forecast for 2026 and their guidance in essence was RevPAR was flat. I think it was 0.5% up.

Now, that includes the lift from World Cup and then includes the lift from expected travel for Route 66 and America 250. So that in essence means guidance is down for the hotel world anyway.

But further bifurcating it, they continue to say that the luxury segment outperforms the economy segment. And we’re seeing the same exact thing in the outdoor hospitality industry. The outdoor hospitality industry will go through some of these same trials and tribulations over the next year, the same thing we’ve talked about inordinately.

But the glamping, I think, falls into that more luxury segment and in some cases is more cost-effective than a hotel, but you also get a better experience. And so I just think it’s a very different topic.

[00:11:41] Brian Searl: Yeah, I agree with you. It’s a different market. I was just asking if you draw the 200-mile circle around your property, right, and you’re a campground that also has some cabin rentals or glamping units, you’re obviously marketing those differently just like you’re marketing RVs differently.

Then you reach out to those cities and that’s a different guest, of course. Different ad campaign, different marketing, different strategy. But do you lean more into that? Do you maybe consider maybe I want to buy an extra cabin? Or something like that.

[00:12:06] Robert Preston: Personally, I don’t. I’m not going to make a structural CapEx decision based off of a couple months’ different trend in the world. Oh, for sure. Yeah, if it continues into next year.

[00:12:17] Mike Harrison: The only reason why you’d buy an extra cabin is if your particular property’s business case says so. I wouldn’t buy it for a market trend, a national number. I would only put the capital outlay if my individual property business case dictated that I had an ROI.

[00:12:35] Brian Searl: All right, so to the people who are listening here who are not as sophisticated with all the large teams like you are, Mike, and Robert, if you’re looking at a radius of 200 miles—let’s just pretend you’re positioned in the Southeast, just for sake of argument because we were already talking about that.

Is it just as simple as switching the language and wording on your marketing campaigns? Or is there something else these owners should be doing to prepare for the shift from long-term to transient? Or whatever we want to talk about for 2026 summer camping season.

[00:13:01] Robert Preston: I don’t… it’s not like a…

[00:13:03] Brian Searl: I know it’s not a one-size-fits-all

[00:13:07] Robert Preston: or one even a one-session question.

[00:13:09] Brian Searl: No.

Are there—are there three top things that you can imagine that someone should not—not necessarily do, but assess at their property or look at or study the market or some way to prepare? Give them a starting point because I don’t—I think so many people don’t have revenue managers, right?

[00:13:26] Mike Harrison: Yeah, number one is you call Jeff from Campground Strategy to consult with you. Number two and three is you hire Robert or me to manage your campground.

[00:13:34] Robert Preston: There you go.

[00:13:35] Mike Harrison: What when I teach revenue management, wherever it is at the OHI National Conference or these state conferences or with Campspot, everything always starts with the same thing, which is you have to start with a 30,000-foot view and look at your business, right?

And understand where am I down? What is my pace? What are my trends? If you’re not looking at your numbers, then you don’t know, right? I always use this terrible analogy with my team, I probably shouldn’t use it on this call.

But think about diet, right? Oh, am I fat? How fat am I? Do I want to lose 20 pounds? Do I want to be healthier? Do I want to exercise? But you first have to start with the acknowledgment of yes, I might be fat. And then understand the why, right? Is it calorie intake? Is it diet? Is it exercise?

And so, your campground, for those folks that are in the Southeast like you just asked, if you don’t have a revenue manager, you still have some version of reporting in your software that can tell you yes, I am up or down versus last year. Yes, it’s either long-term or transient. Yes, it’s either occupancy or rate. Yes, it’s whatever mix it might be.

And then you start the deep dive of understanding why, right? And are there trends that are different? And then once you understand your why and what, you can talk about the how, which is crafting a strategy to fix it. And sometimes it isn’t as simple as marketing, sometimes it’s sales and prospecting.

So, I think that’s the big picture holistic view of it. We have OHI Connect in two weeks, I think it’s two weeks. Are you going, Jeff?

[00:14:59] Jeff Hoffman: Yes.

[00:15:00] Mike Harrison: Yeah. So I’ll actually be facilitating a session on revenue generation, and Rob will also be doing a a script session on this exact topic, right, which is how to drive revenue. Is it ancillary? Is it site revenue? Is it all the above?

Those that don’t start with the why question are doomed to fail. So that’s what I would start with.

[00:15:23] Brian Searl: Yeah, and that’s what I was hoping you—you or someone would say is start with the data, dig into the spreadsheets, the financials because all these PMS software have it, some better than others, but they all have that.

[00:15:34] Robert Preston: Brian like Mike was saying, you have to look internal first or look in the mirror.

[00:15:40] Brian Searl: Recognize you have a problem. Yeah, you’re not wrong about that. We were at the Wisconsin conference and we had so many people who were talking about a product we haven’t released yet, and I’m not here to pitch myself, so I want to be intentionally vague.

But we had a product that would tell people more about the revenue that they were accidentally losing. And the amount of people that came up to our booth who just said, “I don’t need that, I don’t want to know,” was interesting to me. They haven’t admitted they’re fat yet, if that makes sense. I’m going to use Mike’s analogy.

[00:16:08] Robert Preston: We always want to look at marketing and revenue and the expenses and the P&L and find the easy, obvious answer, and a lot of times it’s not, right? And sometimes it’s the wrong person answering the phone, sometimes it’s a dirty park, right? Sometimes it’s just poor upkeep like that—it’s irrelevant to what the market’s doing.

Even if the market was phenomenal, you’re still going to be hurting because you’ve got some type of hurdle or choke point in the process or the people or the property that’s just negating any type of potential that’s coming in on the revenue side of it.

So I think the easy thing that we all want to do is look at what’s the marketing data, what’s the visits, etc. A lot of times it’s probably a little bit more closer to home, the problem that needs to be addressed than we want to admit.

[00:16:54] Mike Harrison: Your point, Robert, you just said it. Whether we’re downturn or upturn, you couple that with the question that Brian just said, which is a lot of people said, “I don’t need that.”

There’s so much low-hanging… like how many properties do a P&L review? It amazes me that you don’t do a monthly P&L review, which is the simplest thing to look at where are my expenses, where are my holes?

How many properties are doing the monthly revenue review? So to Brian’s point, regardless if you’re up or down, you know, the starting point—I like your looking in the mirror better than my “are you fat.” But the “are you fat” really cuts to the heart—the heart of the matter.

But, you know.

[00:17:28] Brian Searl: It’s already over, man, like every conference, what would Mike Harrison say? That’s what we’re going to… he’d ask you if you’re fat.

[00:17:35] Jeff Hoffman: So I had a question, Stacy, what does your company do and could it help people with this?

[00:17:43] Stacy Dam: Yeah, so I’m curious and what of course the data is really important to look at and also walking through as a camper I think is really important viewing properties in the eyes of what your guests are seeing.

And that’s one way that our company can help. Set Your Sites originally was founded with the idea of getting rid of the cash box. So cash box management for those parks that were still managing their occupancy with cash box, we’re helping with the mobile payment side of that.

We have real-time availability of walk-ups, so we can help with those sites. I’ve done a tour now from Nebraska, Oregon, California. I’m in Arizona right now headed into New Mexico and around this big loop around the Western side of the country and people want same day before sites.

And so that can help bring… I know we all want to secure our reservations six months to a year in advance and settle in, but that’s just not the way of the world. And I think it’s important to be able to accommodate campers that just need to get off the road and find your park.

One way to do that, as well as talking to LLMs, what does Claude, what does ChatGPT know about your park? Does it even know about your park? Because that’s where people are actually researching how to research their trips now on these visits.

So, are the LLMs trained to bring you up in search results to actually make sure you are part of it instead of just Google anymore? Because we know that Google Search count is down significantly because people are searching and finding in more impactful ways.

So just some suggestions I would have is how are we accommodating those campers who don’t want to plan six months in advance? They want to come in on a nice weekend. So let’s find those spots and pick your parks and also how are we using LLMs to help us with that.

[00:19:28] Brian Searl: So how does your company work with a property management system? Or is it one? Is I think what my first question is.

[00:19:35] Stacy Dam: Yeah, so presently we stand alone with our parks. We’re able to integrate with existing ones out there as well. We install QR code signs at campsites and help those payments so you don’t have to be open 24/7, you don’t have to do in the office.

So you don’t have to use staff to manage those pieces of it. You can put staff in other places for resource management as well. So we can stand alone or we can integrate. We can do both.

[00:20:04] Brian Searl: Anybody else have any questions for Stacy? I can keep asking, but.

[00:20:08] Robert Preston: You’re the tech guy. Go for it.

[00:20:10] Brian Searl: You want me to go for it? Oh, that wasn’t the answer. Nobody likes hearing me talk. I’m curious, Stacy.

All right, contact list, check-in at different sites, QR codes. How does the guest—is this mostly a pitch toward state park, provincial park, county park? Or is this something that you… like because I think, and I don’t operate Campspot or Newbook on a day-to-day basis because I don’t own my own campground or any—example RezNexus, any of that or reservation system.

How does this become necessary on top of a piece of software like that? I guess is what I’m asking.

[00:20:41] Stacy Dam: Yeah, I think there’s certain software that has blackout periods for reservations. I had that experience at a big name in California. They blacked out their reservation system for same day of, so I had to call.

Well, we know that campers don’t necessarily want to call a park to see if there’s occupancy and then pay over the phone. They want to be able to just get the site and so that’s where we can come in to help with that for those the software systems that require the blackout periods for reservations.

So that is generally for public parks, county parks, but we do also see private campgrounds that are—that are operating in that way as well and to call for availability. So if that’s a transition the parks are wanting to make, we can help out with that.

[00:21:28] Brian Searl: Yeah, so this is an interesting conversation. I don’t—I’m not going to ask you to say the name, but I’m going to say I think KOA still does that at a certain cutoff point in the day where they require you to stop taking reservations.

Do you do that, Mike or Robert, at your properties for—I understand housekeeping for cabins, that makes sense to me, but for RV sites?

[00:21:46] Robert Preston: We don’t. So just did the math a couple days ago with our portfolio at any given night with the current vacancy that we have unused sites, that’s about $50,000 a day of unused sites that sit there.

[00:22:03] Brian Searl: Per park or for your portfolio?

[00:22:04] Robert Preston: For the portfolio. Right. So $80,000 in revenue per night with the average occupancy that we’re at. And not that any of these parks are not performing, it’s just to say that in general, there’s usually a significant number of unused sites every night, right?

And the task to the team and the emphasis to the team is, “Hey guys, if we’re—we’re just basically letting $50,000 a night go, right, let’s start to dig into and tackle that.” So cutting off reservations seems not smart to me. If it’s an RV site, pull in, plug in, go.

We find the choke point is the phone call itself. People can book online, people—I—but we found still actually want to make a phone call and still enjoy that phone call process. They want to know who’s going to be at the desk to check them in.

So then moving your hours of operation or making sure there’s a human answering the phone as late as possible into the day is one of those steps that we’ve taken to make sure that we’re capitalizing on that choke point of reservation through phone.

[00:23:10] Mike Harrison: That’s interesting.

Yeah, it—what Robert says is true. And what I would also say is for a property like Verde Ranch, we look at the demographic mix and we are almost like perfectly 20% Baby Boomers, 20% Gen X, 20% Millennials, 20% Gen Z, 20% Gen Alpha, right? It’s crazy.

And so you have to be able to accommodate all of their needs. And the Millennial/Gen Z, they don’t want to talk to anyone, right? They just want to book. But the Baby Boomer, Gen X, sure they do.

And to Robert’s point then, your question you know, no we don’t shut—why would you shut down reservation and stop taking them? Why would you want to leave revenue on the table?

And in today’s day and age, if you don’t have digital check-in either for your lodging or for your RVs, you’re going to get left behind, right? You need someone at 10:00 at night’s pulling off the highway, they need to be able to look online, book your property, and then be able to pull into the site without having to talk to somebody or see anybody.

Whether that’s a cabin or whether that’s an RV spot. If you’re not, then they’re going to look somebody else up on an app. Almost all the PMSes really have that technology now, it’s just a question of if the campground wants to activate and utilize it. So that’s how I would answer that question.

Please don’t ever shut off your availability, you know, unless you’re oversold by three, right? Use the technology to really enhance the experience.

[00:24:31] Jeff Hoffman: So, Stacy, does what you’re using allow to ship out gate code and a key code for a cabin?

Because one of my partners in Camp Strategy is adamant about—he has hotel spaces where he doesn’t have anybody on property. Everything is done through key codes and email. So I think that’s your kind of thing.

[00:24:58] Stacy Dam: Yep, I think people expect that, especially I think with the advent of Airbnb being able to do that. Those folks are generally not on site, they expect to get a door code, a key code. It’s very common to have.

And so we have an integration with a lock company that allows us to do that as well. So it can be fully self-service at any time. It’s I think the days should be gone of having my name on a piece of paper taped to a front door is the check-in process.

It’s a little uncomfortable continually seeing that on the road as we’re out and just thinking about paying for systems and then either not using it or choosing not to use it and having vacancy on a piece of paper and going in and as soon as you print something, your availability is done for. That’s not real-time.

We want to make sure the campground sites are accessible at any time. Technology can solve the problem, as Mike mentioned.

[00:25:50] Brian Searl: What is the state of this in Campspot and Newbook? And I’m just picking these two because Robert used Newbook and Mike, you used Campspot.

What’s the state of the actual—because I don’t think I have a full grasp of what’s possible now for digital check-in. Do either—you know neither of you guys use it? Or Mike, do you use it? Or…

[00:26:08] Jeff Hoffman: Someone’s stuck in the answering. 

[00:26:10] Mike Harrison: Your question is what’s the state of digital check-in?

[00:26:12] Brian Searl: Yeah, what does Campspot have as a feature set for that? And then what does if Robert what does Newbook have?

[00:26:19] Mike Harrison: I don’t know what you mean by feature set. You can certainly check in online and get your gate code and your site number ahead of time.

[00:26:26] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Like without seeing a human being or can you go straight to your site?

[00:26:30] Mike Harrison: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:26:33] Brian Searl: Because I’d be willing to bet that the majority of Campspot users who use their software probably aren’t aware of that feature. It’s not one of the most highly touted features, I think, at a trade show. In my guess.

[00:26:43] Mike Harrison: Well, it’s not necessarily like a Marriott where you get your mobile key and check in online. It’s not the same thing.

And it—and it isn’t necessarily someone isn’t aware of Campspot or Newbook or RezNexus or Set Your Sites can do it or not. It’s—are they willing to—because there’s other—if you have a key, you certainly have to have a gate system that integrates with your PMS, right?

If you have a cabin, you got to have digital locks that integrate with your PMS. And so it’s really up to the owner or the property manager of how they’re going to handle it more than the PMS. All the PMSes basically have the same functionality at this point.

It’s more up to the operator. Go ahead, Robert.

[00:27:19] Robert Preston: Yeah, we’re—I—I think we’re getting back into a lot of the arguments we’ve had here that we keep equating a hotel guest to an RV guest. Okay. Just besides being humans, right, that’s the correlation.

But if we start saying, “Yeah, when I go to a hotel, I love the digital—I love to do that,” right? But when I show up to a campground, I’ve got a 45-foot rig and a another 25-foot trailer behind it, I’ve all this stuff.

I don’t just roll in there and just presume that I know what I’m doing and I can flow into the campground just simply because I’ve checked in online. I’m probably still going to stop at the office and stick my head around the corner and see what that site looks like and get a little bit of a better feel of the area before I just roll in there.

So I think we just—we’re always—I love automation, I love getting it cleaner, faster, or adapting to different guest preferences, generational preferences, that’s great. But when we start to say, “Hey, a hotel does this so we should do that,” we’re probably going to miss the mark in a big way somewhere.

[00:28:27] Jeff Hoffman: Yeah, Robert,

[00:28:28] Robert Preston: I think that’s just kind of part of the argument that.

[00:28:31] Brian Searl: Yeah, I—I’m with you. I guess maybe I should have framed my question set better. I was looking for more like the gap between the check-in and after the office is closed. How do we handle that? Sorry, I should have…

[00:28:41] Robert Preston: Yeah, no, I—I think your question’s good. It’s just that the tech’s all there. I’m just I just don’t think that people want it as much as we presume that they want it.

[00:28:53] Mike Harrison: Depends on the demographic.

[00:28:53] Jeff Hoffman: Yeah, we escort guests, that bypass after-hours guests, we still have security on premise and they escort.

What we’re looking at is to try to speed up the process and get them to their site or the unit as quickly as possible so that they can relax and then have one more step where they may have to come into the store.

Because hopefully by then they’re relaxed and they’ll come to the store and maybe shop more than they would have if they come in right off the road. So we want to try to get them back into the store in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Whether that’s going to work to increase store sales or food sales, I don’t know, but that’s how we’re looking at using the technology is just to get them to the site or the unit quicker.

[00:29:49] Mike Harrison: I think not all campers are created equal and not all campgrounds are created equal. And if you ask this question at a glamping conference, right, at an AGA conference, the adoption and the usage would be five times higher than a campground.

A property like Autocamp or Liveloak or any of those, it’s 100% digital adoption, right? Because they don’t have a front desk check-in system.

If you have a large resort that’s highly transient and not 55 plus, it’ll be far lower than a 55 plus campground, right? It just—it depends, right?

But I think the technology, especially as—I heard something the other day, right? Our kids that are now 20, 25, 30, whatever, they’ll never—they’ve never known a world without a digital phone. Their kids, the ones, twos, threes year olds, they’ll never going to know a world without AI.

The digital adoption, while right now I don’t have a statistic, but I have to imagine industry-wide it’s probably 5%, right? It’s low. If you look at it a year from now, it’ll be 8%. If you look at it two years from now, it’d be 15%.

It’ll be no different how—you go back 25 years. I remember when our mobile web was a first thing with Marriott. And mobile was 3% of their usage versus desktop. And then it slowly, just slowly pivoted where obviously mobile is now I think 60 or 70—close—depending on the property and the digital footprint.

And you’ve heard me say this all the time, right? AI or technology, it does not replace humans. It does not replace service, it enhances it. But you need to have the ability to evolve with the technology as our customer evolves and changes. So I think that’s something to just consider.

[00:31:32] Brian Searl: Don’t disagree with any of that. All right, what else we got to talk about, gentlemen? Anything else that’s in the world you’re looking forward to for summer 2026? Or anything in the industry you’ve heard that was insightful? Nothing?

What have you been doing the last month? Working on your properties?

[00:31:53] Robert Preston: A whirlwind. I—pretty encouraged. Our February numbers and looks like March are going to be, I would say we’re going to hit the highest revenue marks that we’ve hit since ’22, ’23, post-COVID.

I can’t—can’t pinpoint yet exactly what the difference is or the change is, but so that’s just a data point that we’re seeing right now and it’s exciting.

[00:32:19] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it’s—it’s to your point of or maybe it was your point or Mike’s point about the data. If you’re coming in as a sophisticated operator like Unhitched or CRR Hospitality or you’re using somebody like Jeff at Camp Strategy… not to leave you out, Stacy, but just talking about a specific point.

Opportunity to take a park that has been underperforming—did I lose myself there? Yep, you’re back. You’re back. To—to take a park that hasn’t done any of that revenue optimization or looked at data or paid attention to their P&Ls or done their marketing or even had a good website.

So then you can—and I’m not saying that’s the reason you are, Robert, but just as an example of you can sometimes two, three, four X a park year over year just by implementing what an Unhitched or CRR would call foundational fundamentals.

[00:33:02] Robert Preston: A lot of those foundation fundamentals are not tech, to be clear.

[00:33:08] Brian Searl: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m not arguing they are.

[00:33:11] Robert Preston: Yeah, no.

[00:33:11] Brian Searl: I—I’m a tech guy, but I’m not a—not blind to everything else.

[00:33:14] Robert Preston: No, but I think that’s the—it goes back to the looking in the mirror metaphor. If you haven’t looked in the mirror and dealt with your body composition, going out and buying the nicest clothes don’t necess—doesn’t necessarily change the end result.

And so, for that metaphor to—maybe I’m taking that metaphor a little too far. No, that’s great. No, but because I wear a hat because I’m bald and I have my little second brain up here.

But I—what—we took over a couple properties here recently, professionally managed. We didn’t change that much. We just changed the way that we answer the phone, we changed the personality feel, we changed the hospitality side of it, the—we didn’t do anything to the property.

We didn’t change the tech that much, and almost instantly immediate results in the revenue. And of course, expenses you can always expenses are easy to control, but the revenue is the variable that you’re always trying to figure out which knob to turn.

[00:34:22] Brian Searl: Did I lose both of you people or is that—I don’t know if you or Robert was disappearing. 

[00:34:26] Robert Preston: No, you guys all disappeared.

That’s a good—it’s a learning point for us all. There are constraints in any business or business is. And unless you fix that—that constraint, the most restrictive constraint, it doesn’t really matter what you do with the rest of the business because everything’s going to eventually have to flow through that constraint.

And so if your constraint can only produce at a 10% optimization—pick an arbitrary number—then your entire system operates at a 10% optimization even if you have components one, two, three, four, and five that are here killing it and nailing it and they’re perfectly optimized.

You’re always going to be producing at that lowest component. And it might be as simple as how you answer the phone. Or as Mike might be as complex as needing a different PMS system, an entire strategy.

That’s—I think that’s what I’m learning and developing, what I’m excited about. Just to start having—feels like starting to see behind the matrix here and see how these things all flow together that on the surface may be are not—don’t appear to be correlated with each other.

[00:35:38] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think I’m understanding what you’re saying. So like you have a luxury beautiful RV resort, you have great marketing, you have an awesome PMS, you have really good groundskeeping and landscaping and amenities and everything else, but your 10% constraint is the person who answers the phone grumpy.

[00:35:50] Robert Preston: Yep. Right. You spend $100 million on something and a—a $15 an hour work-camper blew it.

[00:35:58] Jeff Hoffman: And, Robert, I think your point with the mirror I like, but I think a lot of the people don’t know what they’re looking for in the mirror when they look.

And that’s what organizations like yours and Mike’s and other management companies can come in and show them. And that’s why you can operate their campground more efficiently and profitably than they can. And it’s also where consultants like us come in and can show them what—what to look for and what—what’s keeping them from generating revenue.

Just like you said, listen to your—we write scripts for people on the phone, they can vary, but you want to—you want to have something where if they’re a new customer, you ask them, “Have you ever been here before?”

And if they say no, you say, “Well, let me check and see if we have availability,” and then you go through the whole spiel on what you have and then come back and say, “Oh, yeah, we do have a site open and you get all of that for only $90” instead of coming back on the phone and say, “Yeah, I got availability, it’s 90 bucks.”

[00:37:18] Robert Preston: Huge difference in that. Right? It’s 20 or 30 different words in different orders, but the effect is so significant.

[00:37:23] Jeff Hoffman: Yes. And they’re small things, but if you don’t know them, you don’t know them.

[00:37:29] Brian Searl: Well, and to your point about the mirror, we’ll just keep running with that. What’s the difference between—you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror for 10 years, 20 years, whatever else, and you’re seeing the same person and the same thing.

And it’s hard to see what you’re not seeing. But if you have someone else stand next to you in the mirror, whether it’s a guest leaving you a review or a management company or a Camp Strategy or somebody else, they’re looking at you in the mirror for the first time. They’re going to see things you haven’t seen.

[00:37:51] Jeff Hoffman: It’s like when your grandchildren point out you’re old.

[00:37:58] Mike Harrison: Yeah, I know I’m fat. But I think it’s interesting what you say, Brian—excuse me. When I’m on a—an organization with someone who’s legendary and they own a campground, and their website I don’t think has been updated since they created it 20 years ago and they’re using like 98 DPI pictures.

And that’s not—and they have an AOL email address. Which I think maybe Jeff has too.

[00:38:20] Jeff Hoffman: I do, sir. But that’s not my working number, although I do have one.

[00:38:26] Mike Harrison: I think there’s some of those things Robert mentioned earlier about you go in and you teach hospitality. So, you know, what Jeff says is important, right? The script is important.

But what makes that difference is we’re still in outdoor hospitality business. And we were speaking—I was speaking with Jeff a little bit earlier about some things about Arizona State and I’m on the advisory board for the hospitality department now trying to really infuse outdoor hospitality into the hospitality world.

And they had asked us, “What are you looking for from your graduates, right?” And we so often get caught up in the tactical or functional skills. “Oh, math and science and we want to teach them the P&L and we want to teach them the—” Great.

I want the graduates coming with me with problem-solving skills. I want the graduates coming to me with emotional intelligence. I want the graduates coming to me with some strategic skills.

Because those things, not that they’re not important—right, yes, you need scripts and you need SOPs—but without heart and without a brain, they really don’t make a difference.

And Robert mentioned it and I don’t know that it’s highlighted enough, which is really that core character of either the company or the person is what makes the difference at the end of the day. That’s what changes it from a 3.8 on Google to a 4.8, right?

That’s what drives that extra revenue, that’s what drives the referral, is the human element, which is tough to replicate with AI. Really at the end of the day, is that human connection, that human touch, that relationship, that interaction.

Those are the things that—that I’ve seen that really make the difference in the training is—you can do all those things that Jeff just described, but make sure you also train them to smile.

Use Robert’s mirror again. We did training in a hotel, you put the mirror at the front desk so that they can see themselves smiling when they’re on the phone. And that sounds so silly, but that small intricacy really makes a difference in how their voice and tone come across on the phone if they smile when they talk.

Hospitality cannot be understated, which I know that sounds like a Captain Obvious statement, but so often forgotten about.

[00:40:27] Robert Preston: It is Captain Obvious, but everyone goes to some type of software. “Let me buy something, right? Let me do something.” Or the cheapest available work-camper they can find.

Yeah, it’s not going to fix the problem if you have crappy hospitality. It’s phenomenal. It will make your business amazing—the right tech and the right software and the right stuff—if you’ve fixed the constraint.

But if you haven’t fixed the original constraint, you’re just lipstick on a pig.

[00:40:55] Brian Searl: Yeah, I don’t disagree. But the human connection’s never going to disappear from, especially, outdoor hospitality.

[00:41:00] Robert Preston: No. But it’s—the way that we’re leaning into it as a company is we’re taking the opposite approach. Like we—that’s what I think we are selling. Part of our product is the antithesis and opposite of AI.

We use a ton of it as a business, but I am trying to keep as much of it out of the guest’s experience as possible.

[00:41:22] Brian Searl: I think that’s the appropriate step, and that’s coming from the AI guy, right? Yeah.

Like I think you can use technology to weave it into your property without putting it in the face of the guest, and that’s where I think the real winners are going to come out of this space.

[00:41:34] Robert Preston: Yeah, you taught me that.

[00:41:35] Brian Searl: All right, anything else? Let’s—let’s spend the last couple minutes here. We’ll go around and have everybody if they want to ask each other questions.

I don’t—I don’t know if we’ve done this on the show, I always explain it briefly. But so we’ll just start with Jeff. Jeff, ask anybody you want a question, Robert, Mike, or Stacy, and then we’ll do process of elimination, get everybody a question. So who would you like to ask a question to, Jeff?

[00:41:53] Jeff Hoffman: Since Stacy was kind enough to show up, I want to learn a little bit more about her company and how they interface and what other attributes they bring to my campground to make me stronger.

[00:42:09] Stacy Dam: Yeah, thanks for the questions. So, we’re coming from a camper’s perspective. So, we actually had an experience where we wanted to be at a campground about 30 minutes away from our house and so we showed up to get a walk-up campsite.

The site was available, but they said, “You can’t have that campsite, you have to come back tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM and we’re going to put your name on a list. And then you need to bring your rig back at 2:00 PM and we’re going to draw your name out of a hat to see if you get one of our walk-up sites.”

And so that was about five years ago and we—we said, “If we’re going to keep camping year-round…”

[00:42:51] Brian Searl: Oh, we have everybody back, I think. This is fun today. Everybody’s disappearing.

[00:42:56] Stacy Dam: Yeah. If we’re going to keep camping year-round, we just can’t keep up with this friction and the challenges of this style of camping.

And so we set out to create Set Your Sites. My husband’s an electrical engineer and my background is in sales and marketing and operations, and so we thought, “Let’s see what we can do to affect change for campers and just simplify how to access great places.”

And so we started with the cash box alternative, the walk-up QR code scan to pay, and then have since paired that with our reservation system. And so we’re showing live availability of walk-up and reservation status.

Sites are just sites. You can walk up to them, you can reserve them ahead of time, you can—you can just get sites and you can pay and move on with your day and get to camping faster.

And so that’s the heart of our company, is just getting to camping faster, making more of those memories so we don’t have to think that the memory of our son’s seventh birthday was that we got our name drawn out of a hat instead of like actually his birthday celebration at the campground.

That’s what we’re—that’s what we’re doing in general, we’re working towards: How can we—and I agree we don’t want technology in the forefront getting in people’s faces. We want it in the background, modernizing operations, bringing self-service where it needs to be so the humans can do that important human work.

Robert, like you’re talking about, absolutely. We want people around. From the customer discovery that we’ve done is that campers want to know that humans are around in case they need them.

They want to have that face, they want to know if they have a place to go if they have a question, but they don’t necessarily want the person popping out like wherever they are, checking on them to make sure that they’re following the millions of rules. And campground operators don’t want to be police.

So we’re just learning more about this interaction between campers and campgrounds and what’s that right mix of self-service. So that’s what we’re working with our parks to do. And so we—we serve over 1300 campsites in six states presently and so we’re continuing to expand as—as we grow year after year.

[00:45:02] Brian Searl: So the goal is to use enough tech to allow your team to have enough time to pop out and just “Surprise! Is there anything you need that would help your stay be better?”

[00:45:13] Stacy Dam: Yeah, the people work. Let’s let the people do the people work and let’s let the systems and the tech that has evolved significantly do that for us.

[00:45:22] Brian Searl: Yeah, somewhere along the way we got stuck behind computers and we stopped doing hospitality. And I think that’s where the back-end operations of tech is going to allow us to get back to hospitality. I hope.

Stacy, your turn. Ask a question to anybody you’d like, Mike, Jeff, or Robert.

[00:45:36] Stacy Dam: If anybody wants to take this from what I’ve heard from campground operators, it’s harder to find work-campers. Are work-campers a part of the parks that you operate and is that more of a challenge?

Like, how are you maybe working around or changing the business style if work-campers are a part of your organization?

[00:45:55] Brian Searl: You pick, Robert or Mike. I guess Jeff has a campground too, sorry.

[00:46:00] Jeff Hoffman: I do.

[00:46:02] Brian Searl: You got to pick, Stacy.

[00:46:04] Stacy Dam: Okay, I guess Robert, I’ll go with you.

[00:46:06] Robert Preston: Sure. Great question. Yep, we use work-campers quite a bit in all parks.

We believe it’s a—important part of the hospitality side of it because if you work where you live or you live where you work, you’re probably going to take better care of both. I think that was question number one of it.

So yes, we use them extensively throughout the system. We’ve had to figure out the legalities and make sure it’s done the right way. So our work-camper program is not quite as loose as an individual Mom and Pop work-camper where you’re simply treating the site rent and what-not.

They are actually on a payroll and reporting and all of the legality employment side of it we’ve had to overcome, which does pose a certain barrier to certain work-campers just adamant I don’t want to be part of that system, which is okay. But that is something that we do.

And then, yeah, finding them hasn’t been that big of a challenge for us lately. Finding property managers is a challenge. It’s not—I wouldn’t call it a choke point right now—that is a hurdle.

That’s probably the staffing challenge that we find most difficult. And it’s also an extremely important role that we have to vet very thoroughly and it’s a long interview process for us at the property manager or resort manager level, but that’s probably where we’re seeing the most difficult staffing.

[00:47:30] Brian Searl: All right, Robert. Jeff or Mike?

[00:47:33] Robert Preston: Let’s go with—let’s go with Mike. Sure. Mike, I don’t know if I’ve got a good question lined up for you.

Let’s go with if you’re brainstorming and thinking about—we’ll call it a disruption party—thinking about what could disrupt the industry the most. What comes at the top of your mind? Positive or negative disruption.

[00:48:06] Mike Harrison: I will have two answers to that. I think one is the evolution of not just AI, but the digital world. And it’s moving so fast that it reminds me of the internet boom and before the Wi-Fi boom and the early 2000s and “what do you do?” and “what do you install?” “What’s Cat5?” “You should install it now.”

And there’s so much information that changes every day. “Oh, AI’s going to start being able to book directly in the LLM.” No, it’s not. “Oh, now they’re going to partner with OTAs and the OTA will…” let’s see. “Google, they’re going to die.” “Are they?” And no one has all the answers and the right answers.

And it’s continuing to change and it changes every day. And this will be instrument—instrumentally impactful to our industry to see how it goes and who’s left behind and who evolves and what’s the right evolution. To me, that’s one.

The second is the—if you looked at all the surveys year over year from OHI and there’s a particular question on there about corporate-owned campgrounds and non-corporate-owned campgrounds. And every single year for the past five years, corporate-owned campgrounds continues to grow, right?

It’s a much higher percentage. I think—I don’t want to misspeak—but I think it was less than 10% like five years ago and now I think it’s close to 30. And I think that’s only going to change.

And again, it reminds me of the hotel industry 25, 30 years ago. 30 years ago, I remember when Residence Inn first came out and Promus bought the brand blah blah blah and how many motels do you see now? Or what happened with Home Depot and Lowe’s and the neighborhood hardware stores.

And so, I think what’s already occurring will continue to occur and there’s negative and positive sentiment on both sides, is the inculcation of more corporate-owned properties and what happens to the Mom and Pops.

And—but the evolution of our industry has to happen and unfortunately, some of the Mom and Pops aren’t evolving fast enough or won’t or don’t know or don’t have a mirror.

And I think that will be—you know, we’ll look back in 10 years from now and look at the data—where we are in 10 years and where we are now. Our industry will be completely different. If you think of five or six years ago, what the tools were, what the sophistication was, where it is now, I mean it’s inordinately different. And so I think that disruption will continue to happen.

[00:50:33] Brian Searl: All right, Mike. Last but not least, to Jeff.

[00:50:37] Mike Harrison: Jeffy, what are you working on?

[00:50:39] Jeff Hoffman: What am I working on? Right now just doing some performance.

[00:50:46] Mike Harrison: Like right now you’re doing performance, you’re not even paying attention?

[00:50:49] Jeff Hoffman: No, I always have a second screen up. I am reading through.

But one of the things I’m trying to do in my—my spare time and for fun is I’m gathering the—trying to gather information from RVIA, the manufacturers, the dealers, and the campground industry and trying to put together some kind of relative statistic that shows where we are on the demand scale for RV sites going forward.

Have we met the demand or are we overcooking the demand a little bit? If we do that, I can see the some of the older sites becoming like older hotels where no matter what you do, they may not survive. You’re going to have to rebuild them to get them back into the market.

[00:51:48] Mike Harrison: To me, the single biggest factor isn’t necessarily the demand, it’s the supply. As I—when I was working on a project three or four years ago, I reached out to—I think I reached out to you, I reached out to OHI, I reached out to Scott, I reached out to Campspot.

No one could answer me on “What’s the supply growth year over year?” Because there’s no data. And right, how do you know how many new campsites are…

[00:52:09] Jeff Hoffman: And that’s what I’m working on is trying to—and I’ll tell you finding good data is probably the tough—even with AI and everything available. Yeah, it’s not all out there.

[00:52:22] Mike Harrison: But to me, it isn’t necessarily down as much as now there’s more sites to fill. All those properties that were built, developed, pro-formed in 2021-23 have opened in 24, 25, and 26.

[00:52:36] Jeff Hoffman: Yes, but how many? And are we keeping up with sales of units to keep that—to fill up that new supply? And nobody tracks the used market, which those units—what I’m trying to do is figure out the life expectancy of a used unit and how long it stays in the market because you can’t base everything on the new.

[00:53:03] Brian Searl: Would be interesting data.

[00:53:05] Jeff Hoffman: But yeah, anyway you can help me there, Brian, would be awesome.

[00:53:09] Brian Searl: I don’t know anything about data. But the dealer networks are tougher because they obviously protect their information and they don’t want to let it out. So it’s been very tough to get the sales figures other than like public companies like Camping World and that report, but I mean they give you the basic, not the in-depth.

Yeah, we didn’t get to talk about it on this show, we’ll talk about it later with Scott on Outwired. And then we got to wrap up here real quick about the SSI retail numbers down 25% in Class A’s, 18% in fifth wheels, 15% overall. We’re interesting and know that’s what we want to talk about.

But all right, let’s wrap up the show. We will—Mike, before you jump off, say where they can find more information about CRR Hospitality.

[00:53:55] Mike Harrison: Sure, www.crrhospitality.com. Love to chat. Thank you.

[00:54:02] Brian Searl: Cool. Thanks for joining us, Mike. Robert, where can they learn more about Unhitched RV and everything you’re doing?

[00:54:06] Robert Preston: Yep. unhitchedrv.com or unhitchedmgmt—management—mgmt.com.

[00:54:15] Brian Searl: Stacy, where can they learn more about Set Your Sites?

[00:54:18] Stacy Dam: Yeah, we—you can find us at www.setyoursites.com or at Set Your Sites Inc on Instagram.

[00:54:25] Brian Searl: Thank you for joining us, Stacy. I appreciate it. And last but not least, Jeff, where can they find out more about Camp Strategy?

[00:54:30] Jeff Hoffman: Camp Strategy, you can go to our website, campstrategy.com or jeff@campstrategy.com. I do have one on there.

[00:54:41] Brian Searl: Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Hopefully everybody watching here has learned something new today. I know I have.

Whenever I email—my takeaway from the show is whenever I email Robert about tech, I’m going to sign up for a new aol.com email address and do it from there and then everything will be balanced and all will be right with the world.

So thank you guys for joining us for another episode. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me and Scott Bahr will be live on Outwired in about 45 minutes or so. Other than that, take care, we’ll see you next week.

[00:55:06] Robert Preston: Bye.

[00:55:07] Brian Searl: Bye.

[00:55:07] Jeff Hoffman: Bye.