MC Fireside Chats – March 19th, 2025

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with you for our, I think it’s, is it the second third week of March? I lose track with all these days. But today we’re talking about business operations and management.

So we have a couple of our recurring guests here. We have Mike Harrison, who’s driving down the road somewhat dangerously and won’t be on camera today. So 

Mike Harrison: No, that’s not proven. 

Brian Searl: Might be. I guess he could be in a Tesla, but that’s also controversial. So we’ll save that stuff for Outwired later.

Mike Harrison: Waymo 

Brian Searl: Oh, okay. That’s a Waymo. That’s pretty neutral. Yeah. And then we have Sandy Ellingson back with us for another week. And then we have Ali Rasmussen who hasn’t been here for a few weeks, but welcome back, Ali. Glad to have you here. 

Ali Rasmussen: Thank you. 

Brian Searl: And then we have a couple of special guests. So we have Katie McLeod.

Am I pronouncing that right? 

Katie McLeod: Yeah, Katie McLeod 

Brian Searl: General Manager of Quilly’s RV Parks. Do you want to briefly introduce yourself, Katie? 

Katie McLeod: Yeah, my name is Katie McLeod. I own three RV parks in Texas and in Mississippi. So I have Quilly’s Magnolia RV Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Then I have Quilly’s Big Fish RV Park in Rockport, Texas. And I have Quilly’s Cozy Traveler in Oyster Creek, Texas. 

Brian Searl: Nice. Rockport’s a fun area. There’s all kinds of RV parks down there. I used to work for one called Circle W RV Ranch, but I think it’s, they rebranded and changed it. Some big group all of them. But anyway, it’s a big RV town. 

Katie McLeod: It is. 

Brian Searl: And then Ali Kiefer, Ali, John, and beth. I think I interviewed you guys at the KOA convention, didn’t I? Is was my memory that good? 

John Kieffer: You did, yes. We sat in the lobby and had a great conversation. We are the Blue Ridge Dakota River KOA in Blue Ridge Georgia. We are a five year old franchise. We built our park from the ground up and we’re proud to announce we won the KOA Rising Star this past year at convention.

And we’re always looking and working and trying to figure out ways to improve our operations and our camper experience. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think that would be a good conversation to have with the group generally. Just tips and tricks and how you I don’t know if it’s scale fast is the right word, but just think about maybe outside the box of ways that you can differentiate yourself to win an award like that, right?

It’d be interesting to hear your take. And I know we talked about that briefly at the KOA convention. Maybe we can dive a little bit more deeper into it today. I think, normally I’ll say, normally I toss this to my recurring guests and I say, is there anything interesting that came across your desk today?

So I will do that in a second. But before that, I want to say there’s something interesting that came across my desk this week. Mike knows about this, but he doesn’t know what I’m going to say. And so I think this is a little bit controversial, but, and, but I know that it won’t create like a long discussion, so we won’t really get into the controversy of it.

And that’s how to choose an online reservation system and we were playing with the APIs of the different reservation systems. We have been for a long time for different use cases with AI and automation. And I just want to toss it out there. I think if you’re choosing a reservation system in 2025.

I think you need to take a good, solid look at their API, and many of you probably don’t even know what that is. It’s basically a way to access the software outside of the software. For example, FaceBook has an API. You can get to Facebook without going to Facebook.com. But it allows you to pull your data and interact with it and use it in all kinds of automations, and I think that is the future, and I think not enough people pay attention to that when they’re choosing their reservation system.

So feel free to weigh in on that if anybody wants to. Otherwise, that was just the interesting thing that I was thinking about this week. 

Sandy Ellingson: I totally agree. I think that is key to moving forward in the future. I think that we all have to be looking at open API’s and softwares that can link up the consumer wants one place to go to find all the things that they want to find.

They don’t want to have to pick and choose from 15 different tools. And I think the same happens inside the property management softwares. The more they can have an open API, the more they can integrate. And we don’t have to be everything to everybody. We can choose the best pieces and then integrate to those.

And then we all succeed. So I think you’re dead on Brian. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. That’s the piece that interests me is like you hear, and it doesn’t, I’m not going to name anybody here, but like you, you hear whether it’s any of the reservation systems that we all know the names of will all tell you we’re working on an integration.

That’s a good suggestion. 10 people want that. 100 people want that. That’s based on where we’re prioritizing it, and we’re working on it, but the benefit of having an API that can do all the things with your software is that I can just go build my integration, and you don’t have to be bothered with it.

You don’t have to hire another software dev. You don’t need to do anything, and that’s what interests me because in the future where we can pull that data and we can run it through AI and have it do an analysis of your revenue trends. That’s powerful stuff. We can send to owners and stakeholders as reports that maybe they don’t want to go through all that data and click 90 times inside the software, right?

Oh, kind of extensibility. Anybody else have anything that came across their desk this week?

Ali Rasmussen: I think that what is on a lot of folks is mind is the, the Canadian travel and international travel in general, which is, like a topic that shouldn’t be full of controversy. But it seems to be right. But I know that we are having to react to the demand patterns or what we’re seeing or we’re not seeing out of our typical Canadian traffic.

Yeah, we’re definitely changing where we’re directing like our advertising dollars and some of our messaging, but I don’t, I don’t know if anyone else is is seeing the same thing. But we are down pretty drastically. 

Brian Searl: From Canada. Do you mean? Okay. 

Katie McLeod: I think that maybe you are disproportionately affected because aren’t you up further like in the New England area primarily? 

Ali Rasmussen: We have, yeah, we, half of our our collection is in New England and but we span all the way down to Georgia. I, even our Savannah location and maybe, Mike, I know you have campground down there as well, but we are seeing a, like a 70% drop in the Canadian traffic, of our snowbirds.

Yeah. 

Katie McLeod: That’s interesting because my Canadian traffic from this winter season was actually up. 

Ali Rasmussen: Really? 

Katie McLeod: Yeah. And I’m in Texas, so I would think that Georgia and Texas are pretty. 

Ali Rasmussen: That’s so interesting. Yeah, we have multiple Georgia campground owners on the screen. I’d love to hear what other folks are seeing.

Beth Kieffer: I don’t know that we really have a Canadian following. We don’t have long term. We only open up extended stay during December, January and February when we’re lighting. So Canadian traffic isn’t something that we would typically see because we’re not a long term park. 

Ali Rasmussen: Yeah, sure. Yeah. 

Mike Harrison: And it doesn’t just have to be a, it doesn’t just have to be long term either. Canadians can also be here for a couple of week vacation or a quarter. 

Ali Rasmussen: Yeah. 

Mike Harrison: Brian’s heard me say this a lot. Yeah. And Brian’s heard me say this a lot of times before where, we usually we’ve got good indications of what’s going to happen to the industry before most people do, because every single one of our properties is in snowbird land, if you will, or in the south.

And we’ll know middle of the year for the following year, what we think is going to happen. So we saw some of the booking trends shortening as well as weakening, way back in July, August, September of last year. And so Q1 for us was good ish. Some of the properties were down a little bit, but, some of the other ones grew and so we already knew that there was Canadian issues based on the dollar in Q1 for sure, but it’s anecdotal like Katie said, where, some of the properties in California or even Texas, aren’t seeing these trends, some in the Northern states or in Arizona, are so it’s certainly something that, you got to continue to monitor and, as we’re looking into, especially 2026, and I know that sounds so silly, how could we be looking that far out?

But we are, right? What are those? What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to the nation? What’s going to happen to tariffs? What’s going to happen with the sentiment? And so to your point, Ali, you just have to pivot. And can you replace the business? Can you change your segment or strategy mix?

But it’s something we all have to think about because it’ll affect everybody. It’s just the degree. Is it 1%-3% or is it 15%, 20% or gosh Ali said 70%. That’s significant. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Go ahead, Sandy, please. 

Sandy Ellingson: I was just going to say, so some of the research we’re just finishing up kind of calls that observation into question because are we losing more Canadians and they’re just not coming back? Or are we losing a demographic, an age group? Because one of the things that this new data is telling us is that we are not replacing with new campers at the same rate, getting them into outdoor hospitality and camping as we are losing an older generation. 

Brian Searl: That’s true, but that’s a that’s an American thing to 

Sandy Ellingson: That. Yeah, American and Canadian. This is that’s what I’m saying this isn’t I think we’re seeing that across the board and we may be assuming this is, hey, the snowbirds aren’t coming from Canada, but really, how much did that opportunity or that group of people diminish because they actually stopped camping?

They’re not coming because of a tariff. Understanding how we’re reading the data in 2025 is super important, specifically because we’re seeing what we’re now coining the death of the camper and the rise of the traveler. 

Brian Searl: I’m going to make you explain a little bit more about your research in a second.

But I just want to close out the Canadian discussion because I don’t know if I want to devote the whole show to that just because we’ve we’ve had that long discussion on Outwired. As Ali noted, it can get somewhat controversial even though it shouldn’t be. And, speaking as somebody who’s, lives in Canada now and is an American.

I think it’s it’s multiple things, right? Like the Canadian dollar has been weak through the end, like the last six months, really, of the, of 2024, of the Biden administration, whatever you want to call it, right? Both are the same thing, both are true. And so I think that impacted snowbirds a little bit over this winter.

I think more recently it is for sure the, I don’t even think it’s it is some of the tariffs, but it’s more of the rhetoric of the 51st state thing that has Canadians like, screw you, we’re just going to stay home. And that’s not an opinion, that’s just what’s happening, right? And it’s not just related to campgrounds, like the day after the tariffs were announced and this rhetoric started, I think in February, early February, late January.

Air Canada are a major airlines and WestJet saw bookings drop 25% overnight like they canceled trips to the U.S. 25% overnight. Tour operators are down 70%, 80%. This is just everywhere. They just aren’t interested in partaking in what they view as the rhetoric. And what I agree with them is rhetoric.

So I’ll be the controversial one to say that. 

Sandy Ellingson: We can’t control the government, but what we can control is who we’re targeting. And that’s what I was trying to, is to make sure that we’re looking at, not just, hey, this happened, but how do we counteract that? And I think it’s by recognizing there’s a whole another target out there that we really have not targeted.

They’re naturally coming to us, but we’re not really asking them to come. And so how do we increase that to replace some of that loss? 

Brian Searl: Expand on your RV research for a second, and then let’s talk about. I think the majority of those people you can get into the industry, the easy lift is to get them to stay in your cabins and glamping because they don’t have to buy an RV.

But talk about your research. 

Sandy Ellingson: So it’s not public yet, so I can’t give a lot of details. 

Brian Searl: It’s about to be public. I want you to tell all the things and all the secrets. 

Sandy Ellingson: It is a, we’ve invested about, I say we, the collective of people who are interested in this have invested about $250,000 in research.

To try and see what are the things in 2025 that we are going to have to do to succeed in 2025 and beyond because we believe that we’re at a point where the landscape has changed so significantly from what is a camper that if we don’t begin embracing these things and understanding some of these changes, then we really are just going to see a slow decline for a lot of our parks and a lot of.

We believe a lot of this is not because parks don’t want to change. It don’t want to do new things. It’s because they don’t know. 

Brian Searl: They don’t know. 

Sandy Ellingson: Because nobody’s hearing this data. And so our hope is that when this data comes out it’s going to be, it’s going to be extremely beneficial to our parks and it is going to be provided to the parks free of charge through, first of all, the state associations. So we’re going to do a quiet pre launch at the Western States Conference. There’s going to be a fuller launch. There’ll be more data that’s going to be given out at the Florida, Alabama, Georgia Conference in May, and then we’ll roll it out from there because what we’re doing is taking some of these sample groups, one that’s been very underserved and one that’s been served very well when we’re thinking about as an association.

And when I say underserved, we’ve never had a Western States coalition. So this is the first conference and so we’re going to, we’re going to test these things out, get some feedback from our campgrounds. And then from there, we’re going to do final tweaks to this data and roll it out to the industry as a whole.

Brian Searl: I think that a couple of things here, right? I think that, and just going to your whole conversation, I think you’re right about. Generally speaking, we’re losing campers in an older demographic and I don’t have data to back that up. I just have my eyes, right? The baby boomers are retiring. The baby boomers are unfortunately dying as much as we like them.

But they’re just not, there’s not as many new people purchasing RVs. We had that uptick over COVID. Like I’ve said this many times. I don’t think the RV industry ever sells as many RVs again as they did in 2019. I just think that’s a thing that’s that’s gonna be there. And so we do need to reach out to new people to encourage them to join the industry I think the low hanging fruit as I said is glamping and cabin rentals and even renting Trailers is a thing to renting RVs You know We talked to a couple clients earlier this week about depending on where you are and how you’re impacted whether it’s by Canada or the economy domestically or whatever if you’re seeing flat or low. Maybe there’s an opportunity to just increase slightly who you allow into your park.

So instead of your hard and fast 10 year rule, maybe you make an 11 year rule or a 12 year rule. If it’s not to let a terrible looking RV into your park, but like just don’t be that strict and rigid because that’s extra revenue that you’re turning away that maybe you don’t need to. That has a nice RV or if you look at even tent sites. Like figuring out a way to set up luxury tent sites that are higher dollar, right? Where the tent is even there where they can they don’t have to do the setup.

They can just come. And stay on a nice pad that’s landscaped and things like that. So yeah, I think there’s to your point about like people not having the data. That’s a part of it I think it’s also they haven’t had to think about it for 15 years because the economy has been so good and correlating with the economy starting to go up in really 2010/11 after the 2008/9 debacle I think that that was the advent of social media that was in Facebook was taking off It was easy to just go post and people would come and so I don’t think people are used to this yet. But yeah, I think the conversation needs to be started. What do you guys think, John, Beth, Ali?

How’s KOA doing? 

John Kieffer: KOA has a wealth of data and information across their 550 or so franchises. And we benefit from that. We belong to a circle group, a group of seven or eight other campgrounds, and we meet on a quarterly basis, review our financials, we share everything, we talk about trends that the other campgrounds are seeing and that we are seeing.

And we learn a great deal from not only the 20 group, but from I’m trying to remember what the 20 group reports the reports that they produce and our ability as Mike has suggested, we can look out 12 months in advance and see what our reservations look like year over year versus the same exact day, previous year and see trends.

I think you’re correct about the baby boomers, a lot of them retiring and I hadn’t really thought about we don’t see a great deal of Canadian patrons, but we have a few and I’m interested to go back and look at the data and see if we find that decreasing and it could be what you’ve suggested.

But we know we got to be flexible looking forward. We are looking at things every day. What can we do better? What can we what can we institute to provide a better camper experience without costing us any more money? 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think that mindset also comes from what you, the award you won, right?

The rising star, just looking at all those things. Not that other campground owners don’t do it, but I think that. It’s probably a minority, whether it’s 30%, 40%, right? But it’s not 80% or 90% who are doing what you’re doing to get to the level of a rising star. Is that probably fair in your opinion? 

Beth Kieffer: I think it’s fair.

If I really look, if I watch whether it just be observational data or trend data on reports, But what’s happening in our park, and so each year we’ve been open, even though we’re a new park, we’ve made adjustments to small things like pads to make it easier for people to get around, to building new sites, and taking old sites out that are not performing, and giving the people what they are asking for.

John Kieffer: But you’re correct. The data that KOA provides is not embraced by all the parks. 

There are some old time franchises that have been in the system. 30, 40 years that kind of resent of being told what they need to do to succeed. They blindly been able to succeed over the years.

And I think the train’s coming where these older parks that aren’t willing to change and adapt and improve. They’re going to face some tough roads ahead. I think our embrace of all the KOA programs and support and data is what’s helped us achieve the Rising Star and what what we hope will be a bright future continuing to embrace and support what they provide for us.

Brian Searl: Why don’t you touch briefly on, for the people who don’t know, just what the Rising Star Award is. 

John Kieffer: Rising Star Campground in the KOA franchise system is a new campground less than five years old that exemplifies what KOA believes to be a a pattern of success. And we we fully supported all of the franchise requirements.

We, year over year, KOA comes out and they check our park. They have a checklist of between four and six hundred items. They go to every cabin, every site, bugs in the light bulbs, they look at your restrooms, they look at, micro trash, and they grade your park, and over the years, I think we scored a perfect score, three out of five years, and Two years, I think we were one or two points from perfect, but we literally embrace everything KOA provides.

And I think that’s helped us. Besides the fact we every year we improve our operations. We we’ve upgraded sites, even though we’re 5 years old, we’ve upgraded 10 different sites to a more deluxe camper experience from Paul Penn sites that provide areas for their patrons pets. And then more deluxe camping accommodations where we’re seeing the older, more affluent demographic continuing to rise.

We’re seeing an increase in 4% or 5% year over year when some of the less priced accommodations were dropping and I think, that’s probably industry wide, but I think the hotel industry is seeing the same thing. The lower priced hotels are struggling, but your Ritz Carlton’s and your higher end hotels are doing very well.

But, what we’re trying to do is accommodate that trend and try to improve the camper experience for those that are willing to pay a little bit more. 

Ali Kieffer: It’s also about listening to your campers, too. Our NPS every time someone stays, they have a chance to rate their stay. And by looking at those and taking their considerations.

We are able to not only help our staff learn what our customer is looking for, but also our park as well. We’re able to do more with the offer. And in terms of marketing, KOA really does have a whole lot out there in terms of reports of campers and new campers. And for us on the back end, we’re able to go in and change the market based on those reports.

And it’s, For the past couple years shown really that our demographic has switched more from a regional to more of a local. So we have changed how we market and that’s helped us increase our revenue as well. 

Beth Kieffer: And I talked about those survey results and the NPS score, and we’ve always averaged 90 and above.

Last year we were at 94. It wrote we wrote something from nineties to 92 to 94, and that’s, that is. People saying they really enjoyed their stay here, which we’re always told by. 

John Kieffer: Every camper gets an exit email requesting they rate our, rate their stay in a campground, a KOA campground. So we get a review whether or not they enjoyed themselves or not.

And you learn more from the bad reviews than the good ones. But we embrace that information and try to use it to our benefit. 

Brian Searl: I think it’s an, 

Sandy Ellingson: I’m sorry, go ahead, Brian. 

Brian Searl: No, go ahead, please. 

Sandy Ellingson: I was just going to say, the one thing that’s different about you at a KOA is as a part of a KOA franchise, you’re trained on what to do and how to do those things.

You also have some technology behind you that’s helping do that for so many of the parts. Every property management software has an email that you can send out to ask for a review, right? But if nobody is doing anything with that, or you’re not trained how to respond to that. 

Brian Searl: Or nobody knows it exists to turn the button on to say 

Sandy Ellingson: It means absolutely nothing.

And I so value KOA and how they’re willing to share all of their research each year. With the rest of us so that we can grow, but I’m going to give a shout out to Ali to I will say full disclosure. I totally respect her and everything she’s done. My opinion might be a little bit jaded, but she hasn’t seen the data that we’ve been working on in the research, but the outcome of this research shows that she is doing everything right for the new rising traveler, and we’re calling them travelers now, we’re going to shift that language, we hope. To be successful because all of the things that have that are value propositions for them are actually embraced in her park. So she has the right price point.

She’s not over amenitized, but she is absolutely representing the outdoor lifestyle. And they are looking for those kind of things. These things resonate with them. But I don’t know if you’re actually targeting that demographic, Ali. I don’t know if you’re doing anything like that. But that is who they’re looking for.

And so if they’re looking for you, how do we help you find them and bring more of those to you? Because. I liken it to a church. If you walk into a church and there’s only a bunch of old people there and they don’t even have a nursery, that church is dying, right? And so if you go into a campground and all you have is old people, that might be fine if you’ve only got 35 sites and you don’t want to grow, but if you’ve got 400 sites and you’ve got to fill all those 400 sites and all you’ve got is old people.

They’re dying off. You have got to replace. And that is like a key finding that we’re seeing is that we are not replacing campers. 

We have got to pull from the travelers. We’ve got to embrace the travelers and we’ve got to be replacing some of these older campers. If we want to continue to succeed. 

Brian Searl: I want to make sure that I just throw out a positive sentiment here, Sandy, because we’re working on the longevity thing with AI. Like we might solve that and make the baby boomers live another 60 years. 

Sandy Ellingson: Hey look, I can talk about old people because I am an old people, okay?

Brian Searl: Ali, do you want to comment on any of that? 

Ali Rasmussen: Which Ali are we? 

Brian Searl: Sorry, Ali who Sandy was referencing from Spacious Skies. 

Ali Rasmussen: Oh, okay, I actually didn’t know which Ali you were referencing at the time, Sandy. So to respond you know what? I think that we are trying to focus on trying to appeal to the broadest customer base which is in part, not necessarily about highlighting very specific attributes of the physical things of a property but more the vibe the human to human elements the yeah, it’s less about what I think we were looking at promoting during the high pandemic years, which was really very Instagram focused type of just the experiential nature of it but focused on those physical elements those hard tangibles when really, we are trying to focus on the intangibles and how we make people feel and how we bring and welcome and invite. Is that what you meant, Sandy?

Sandy Ellingson: No, I think that what you’ve done with Spacious Skies really takes us back to the core of what camping used to be. 

Ali Rasmussen: I think yeah. I think that’s right. And took me a second to, get back there. I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t come blasting into this industry thinking that I was going to do, this and that to change things.

But I think you’re absolutely right. And we had to get there. We like camping is uncomplicated and what has been enjoyed for decades and decades is like still what is. is so great about it. So yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: What we saw during covid was the rise of a lot of people coming into the industry who really didn’t understand our industry and a lot of the hotel investors coming in. And so we ended up with a lot of really great resorts that are very over amenitized. 

Ali Rasmussen: Yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: But that is that diluted the idea of what the real camping experience was like. And KOA did a great job of maintaining that to some extent, even to the extent that I think KOA is one of the only campgrounds that still requires you to do tent camping.

John Kieffer: That’s, I want to address that because so many new parks are, in my opinion, exclusionary. 

They want to provide a 65 foot concrete pad with a deluxe fire ring and nothing else. We’ve got a park that’s got four deluxe tent sites. We’ve got basic sites that are all gravel that are very inexpensive.

We’ve got more expensive they call them standard sites that are middle of the road. We’ve got deluxe cabins. So if you’ve got a family group with, maybe you’ve got some family members that don’t camp and they want to stay in a cabin. And you’ve got some young kids that want to stay in a tent site.

And you’ve got the grandparents that have a really nice deluxe motor home. We can accommodate them all in our campground. And we found that to be very beneficial. We see it all the time. We wouldn’t win the support of those groups if we weren’t able to offer all those different types of accommodation.

Brian Searl: And I think it’s important to say to like we talk a lot about experiential hospitality and the experience. The experience is not a box check that I have a concrete pad that’s 65 foot. It’s not a box check that I have a miniature golf course. It’s the brand, the experience to Ali at Spacious Skies to Mike at CRR who just came back on.

I was going to say he jumped off. Welcome back. Mike. We were just talking nice about you so 

Mike Harrison: I don’t believe in it. It feels like you’re shaming all my highly amenitized campgrounds with concrete pads. 

Brian Searl: You tell a story, don’t you Mike? You emphasize service. You emphasize quality alongside that.

That’s what’s different. 

Sandy Ellingson: That’s right. 

Mike Harrison: Yeah. And I think the experiential hospitality, I’m actually teaching a class on Monday exactly about, about that topic, which is, the campground, and it’s no different than a hotel. It’s the physical structure, right? But the customer, the guest, or in Sandy’s word, the traveler.

Is coming for the experience, the, and so that’s whatever kind of campgrounds you are and I wouldn’t call us exclusionary. I would call us we’re niche, right? It’s no different than a boutique hotel or a full service hotel that maybe doesn’t accommodate a particular kind of, guest.

And there’s places for all the campgrounds, whether you’re tent camping or glamping or larger parks or amenitized parks or not parks. Whatever experience you’re providing for whatever customer and segment demographic you’re going after, it’s really that experience that touches on that.

But I also, Brian, I want to go back to something that John alluded to earlier, and, we talked about KOA having great tools, but, I’m not sure, and I can’t speak for John, why they won this award. I don’t know. It’s because they have great tools. It’s probably because they have curiosity and whatever park you are, whether you’re KOA or another one is really interesting.

I did a revenue management session a couple months ago, and we had asked the entire room for a survey, who forecast more than 90 days out. And there’s 100 people and only 4 raised their hand, which was really, it wasn’t surprising to me. It just shows me that there’s opportunity and that those four folks have, a lot of curiosity and to Sandy’s point earlier about, campgrounds don’t evolve.

If campground owners don’t evolve, what does that look like? And I do think, it needs to continue to be a topic in the industry. Next week, Ali and I Ali Spacious Skies, Ali and I will be at Ohio Connect, which is their first regional event of its kind for a smaller group.

And one of the main topics is exactly that curiosity. Which is also one of CRR’s values, but trying to help park owners and park managers understand, whatever it is, whether it’s you losing Canadian travelers, what do you do to offset, whether it’s, the demographics changing and all the baby boomers.

Let’s say they’re just retiring. Let’s not say they’re dying. And how do you pivot? And so I think that’s really what, Sandy and some of the other group are talking about earlier is how do we help, fellow campground owners and managers exercise that curiosity muscle, so that they can evolve whatever circumstance they’re dealing with, whether it’s a demographic segmentation.

Yeah, particular type of customer profile. So anyway, I just wanted to follow up on that from earlier. I thought it was really interesting. And Ali and I will be talking about that next week. 

Brian Searl: I want to play devil’s advocate for a second and be a little bit more controversial because I started the show that way, but I’m curious what you think.

Is it possible? Like we know we can teach owners to view the data, to look at the data, to read the reports. Is it possible to teach curiosity? Because I view it as like critical thinking, right? It’s something very similar to that. Is it possible? 

Katie McLeod: I think curiosity is something that’s incredibly difficult.

I think it’s either ingrained in you or it’s something that just isn’t because I see it in the campground industry. I see it in my previous academic career. And you see it over and over again, the people who are going to be successful, the people who are going to be motivated to try to make this customer experience or try to succeed in an academic paper that they’re writing, like they’re going to have this curiosity.

And I think that’s actually, it’s something that I don’t think you can train, but I think that it’s something that is incredibly important if you’re going to succeed longterm, especially in something that’s as competitive as the campground industry. 

Sandy Ellingson: I don’t think you can train for it, but I think you can hire for it. And that’s all about building the right tool. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, but if you can’t train for it, then you, then the pool of people that are available for you to hire from is very small. 

Sandy Ellingson: Oh, I don’t think so. I think that you get, there are, I think there’s a balance of all personality types. And when you understand where your imbalance is based on your personality types that are on your team, you have to figure out how to hire and where to hire to balance your team.

Brian Searl: That’s true. 

Sandy Ellingson: You can’t have a whole bunch of accountants who are all about their head down in the, in the books and the numbers, you’ve got to have some visionaries who are going to challenge that and say, what about this? What about this? People like me who refuse to shut up. 

Ali Rasmussen: But would you argue that you have to have a natural curiosity to even know that you have gaps to fill?

Brian Searl: Yes. 

Ali Rasmussen: I totally agree. You have to, if you’re going to be a business owner and you’re going to employ it, even one more person, you have to be looking at it as a, what are the other puzzle pieces to make this team whole. But I think that and Katie, I didn’t know that you were in academia before, but I know from marketing and human behavior and consumer behavior principles, I think that, it’s leaders or folks that get on podcasts in this industry like we could even stand to try and message or trick people into being open to things like being curious and in critical thinking and digging deeper because it’s that it’s the rising tides concept lift.

We all have to do it. We all have to, you don’t get be on the same level to, continue to succeed in this space. And I have a, 

A well just to finish this part of the conversation, but I have a specific question that I’d love to ask everybody. 

Brian Searl: Okay, I want to go ahead, Katie.

Katie McLeod: Oh, no, I was I was at the national school at the end of February and I was talking to Larry Brownfield and he was telling me about this one time he was going to check a KOA, of course, and he was early. He was sitting in his car and one of the really young employees. I think he said she was like a teenager.

She came up, she drove up and as she was getting out of her car, she bent down and she picked up a piece of trash and then she looked around and she like picked up something else off the ground. And then as she was going into the office, she just put it in the trash and something that really struck him was like, wow, the owner has done a really good job at training his staff, like what the expectations are.

And so I guess going back to curiosity, I wonder if it’s, maybe you don’t need to have somebody who has curiosity for everything, but maybe you just need, you need to be curious enough to set the expectations that other people can follow. 

Brian Searl: That. Yes. Because the pool of curious people is small. Like I, I lean toward what you guys are saying.

I think I agree with you that it’s probably close to impossible to train somebody is not curious or has not deployed critical thinking in their lives to become that. Now I’m going to try that and prove it wrong at my company. Like we’re actually developing all course with AI to try to teach people critical thinking, and we’re going to let all our employees take it and see if it works.

So I’ll have data after that point. I hope I’m wrong. But yeah, that pool of people I think it starts from the top down, like Ali was saying, and if you’re the curious one at the top, which not all business owners are. In fact, I would say most of them probably aren’t. And that’s not saying anything bad about those business owners.

It’s just a type of person. You can be successful without being curious, but curiosity helps you be successful, especially in a time where we’re in right now, like where everything’s changing so rapidly. 

Ali Rasmussen: Indeed. Eric was lucky that he married somebody curious, and I can say that because he’s not going to, he’s not going to watch this.

Sandy Ellingson: I’m dying to know what your question is, Ali. 

Ali Rasmussen: Okay I actually have to wait. Can I ask you, John, Beth and Ali, I would love to know. What you all think the main things are that other KOA franchisees long, long time franchisees are really resistant to? 

John Kieffer: What we hear, and we hear this through feedback at the convention and also through our 20 group.

And of course we have ambassadors, they call them brand ambassadors that come to our campground once a year and they grade us. But as a brand, my own opinion is that All KOA should seek to raise the standard, the quality the camper experience. And as a personal example, we’ve had people stay with us that have never camped before, and then they’ll go on the road and they’ll stay at other KOAs That may be 30 or 40 years old and have not upgraded their infrastructure.

They don’t have the power, still 

Ali Rasmussen: But are still passing inspection? 

John Kieffer: But barely. And and so that, they make the 70, the barely passing mark. And and it, we really need to raise the entire brand so that across the country, if somebody stays at a KOA campground and they don’t have a good experience, that hurts us.

They may not choose to pay a little more and stay at a campground in Blue Ridge, Georgia. That’s a KOA franchise. So. 

Ali Kieffer: It goes back to that curiosity, that business owner and what that business owner really wants. And whether or not they are willing to go the extra mile to put in that extra work. 

John Kieffer: Instead of curiosity, I see that as a competitive attitude.

The day we found this property and chose to design the park and build it, we wanted to see it be the best park in the region. And we’ve maintained that attitude and we continue to maintain it. It’s a competition. We want to succeed. Not only for our own personal interest, but because you take a lot of pride in all the effort and ambition and the time that you devote your life.

Devotion to this, and you want to see it succeed. 

Beth Kieffer: Ali, another response to your question is that some people come into this thinking that they’re just gonna open up spots and people will come because it’s a campground. And for, in many cases, especially the ones that are on the highway, they will.

Not that they’ll maybe enjoy it because maybe it’s not as nice or whatever, but to have upgrade and do these things, you do have to have that entrepreneurial, that business financial sense. And I don’t know when we hear negatives about we don’t want to from owners that don’t want to upgrade or don’t want.

It’s going to be because it costs them too much money. They don’t have the money to do it. And so it’s how do you meet the grade or how do you meet the expectation without money or what else you do to be able to bring another area so that you’re getting points in another area and, you have to work on that over a five year plan, but I just feel like it’s.

I don’t want to say lack of business sense or the entrepreneurial. 

Brian Searl: It’s lack of curiosity is exactly what it is. So what John was saying about curiosity and competitiveness, if you put people, if you put business owners in a room who are all curious, I bet you 98 percent of them are also competitive.

Ali Rasmussen: That’s why we love our KOA because all of them are curious, all of them are competitive, but they have an open mind, open spirit. 

Brian Searl: But if you also likewise put all those KOA owners who are not changing in a room, It’s not unique to KOA. I bet you most 98 percent of those people are also not curious. It’s not a KOA thing.

It’s a resistance to change and not being curious thing.

Ali Rasmussen: Okay, I’m gonna ask my other question because it’s what I constantly obsess over and I would just love to know how everybody else is thinking about it. We’ve already touched on it, right? Like we have a population who makes up or has historically made up such a large segment of our customer bases and it is they’re aging out and, how are we replacing that, that customer base?

How are we bringing the younger generations and demographics into this type of recreation and leisure? And I’m trying to like put it into words that doesn’t, that don’t sound rude, but my, I’m a millennial and then we’ve got, Gen Z and younger generations.

And I think that, like when something is too difficult or like physically difficult to do. My generation and younger tend to just think of it as more of a barrier. And I grew up, camping. I’m assuming most of us, we’re all in the industry because we like it.

And I liked, I always liked, hiking to the camping, to the campsite and pitching the tent and it’s and putting in the work to start the fire and cook your food. And then, we get an RV and it’s you got to work hard for the fun and for the relaxation.

You got to, get there and then you got to pack yourself in, you hook yourself up and set it all up and whatever. And it’s it’s fun, but it’s effort. And I think that, our younger generations are like more and more resistant to effort, especially physical effort. And we live in this virtual world.

But we obviously need to bring in new customers. We need to create new customers to create the new demand and I know what like we do in our messaging and in our experience and what not to continue to convert non campers into campers. But, we’re just like one little company.

And one little brand, 15 little campgrounds. I think that this is obviously such an industry wide effort that needs to take place. We all need to be running in the same direction on it. And I think that when it comes to the RVing side of things, I look at tenting as like the gateway.

The gateway drug into camping, but, we want RVers, want more and more RVers. And as an RV owner, I know just if you are even like a degree, less tolerant of problem solving with the things that, break down or are required of you to hook your rig in to, to enjoy your time.

Like I, I think that, and Sandy, I know, this intimately, like the conversations and the collaboration between, campground owners and RV manufacturers, just like needs to solidify more and more to, make sure that they are rolling out products that. Our shared guest base, our future campers who are not yet campers, will be tolerant of not only using actually purchasing and owning.

And there’s a whole, like just a tangent to go down, with the concept of like ownership and physical places to put a rig. If actually do end up purchasing one. Anyway, how does everybody approach like creating new customers to build your demand? 

Brian Searl: Can I take that as a non campground owner for a second?

And then you get to the real answers that matter. I think it’s interesting to me because you’re right, tenting is a gateway drug. But I think we will take RVers and we want to encourage people to buy RVs. But I think there’s a more complete picture of we just want people to camp. And if that’s in a cabin, if that’s glamping, if that’s an RV rental, if that’s a luxury tent from a bat.

And so I think that, that definition of a gateway drug should be expanded. Although RVing should not get lost in there at all. That’s critical, right? And then I think to your point about, like, where their hard work and physical work and all that you put into place, I think you’re correct, but I think it’s the opposite of the curiosity. I think it’s teaching them passion for something. 

Ali Rasmussen: Yes, it has a lot to do with education. Yes. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, and so it’s the same like Earl does at Black Folks Camp Too. 

Ali Rasmussen: Yes. 

Brian Searl: But it’s with all demographics, right? There’s so many people. That just don’t understand all the things that the outdoors can bring them.

And so I think you very much can treat, train and teach passion. Absolutely. But we’ve got to tell a story that doesn’t always involve purchasing $100,000 rig. Sometimes it does, but we’ve got to tell the whole story. 

Katie McLeod: ARVIC or now OHI went through that a couple years ago, right? When they did their rebrand.

And I think that same year I think that it was probably Larry again, honestly, because I go to every Larry talk. But Larry was also saying look, we’re at an inflection point. And so now is the time where you need to do some kind of pivoting are there, or your business is going to, you know, suffer from it. And basically attacking on to what Brian says is yeah, we have been working to widen what camping can be for people.

I personally think that I resonate a little bit with you were Hey, like we’re trying to be in nature. We’re trying to go back, like we’re trying to disconnect. So that’s something that I have always worked really hard for in my campgrounds. Not necessarily to be like a resort, but to be like a, a place where you can disconnect, relax, chill. Traveling is actually so stressful. Being in the RV park, being in the campground should not be stressful. So that’s something that I’m working on actively is like getting more cabins, having more tent sites, like having more avenues for travel.

Also, something that I think is underrated, and I’m always surprised, is guys, have bathhouses for your customers. Because that is something that makes people so much more likely to want to go camping if they’re not intimidated by these camper bathrooms. I’m always shocked by how much of a thing that is.

But actually, my real question for you, Ali, is you were talking specifically about RVing, correct? 

Ali Rasmussen: Yes, but I definitely agree that like the definition or rather who you are. We are targeting and bringing in, we are not the type of company that is gonna turn away car campers or, 

Katie McLeod: Yeah, me either.

Ali Rasmussen: Like Van Lifers or Schoolies or anything like that. Come one, come all. So yeah.

Katie McLeod: Everybody’s money is good money, right? 

Ali Rasmussen: Everybody’s money. 

Katie McLeod: Especially like if they wanna be outside and they wanna be enjoying like the same thing that we enjoy and they wanna be doing s’mores and stuff, like that’s what it’s all about.

Ali Rasmussen: Totally. 

Katie McLeod: It’s not about how expensive your rig is, but something that I think is interesting and something that I’ve seen popping up like more around me is that RV parks are offering like first setup type stuff where they like the camper will get their RV, they come to the campground and they do these little like teaching moments with them.

Which my manager is like amazing and he will do that with anybody anytime, no matter what like he lives for it.

Ali Rasmussen: Yeah.

Katie McLeod: I think that kind of thing is something that has such a value add that you put a dollar amount on that because then they have an emotional tie to you. You’ve helped them set up their RV, now they have a life skill that’s gonna help them for years to come and it’s really not that intimidating, once you’ve done it a few times.

Brian Searl: But it helps with the passion, right? There’s a fork in the road when they’re the first time camper there. It’s my first camping experience going to be like, how the f*** do I hook up this sewer thing? I’m struggling with it for two hours or it’s done for me. And now I can enjoy my experience and further my passion.

Ali Rasmussen: And you’re taught to do it while it is getting done. Yes, absolutely. And Katie, I totally agree. And before we like fully advertise, that hands on help, I have to make sure that, like our insurance covering. 

Katie McLeod: Yeah. That’s because I was gonna actually ask about that. 

Ali Rasmussen: Does anybody know?

Katie McLeod: Yeah. 

Ali Rasmussen: Because I know that we’re not helping anybody back in their trailer, I’ll tell you that much. 

Katie McLeod: Right, right, right, right.

Sandy Ellingson: This research that I was talking about actually is the first time we’ve ever done anything that’s all inclusive. That includes the RV industry as well. And so we’re looking at what is their impact on us? What is our impact on them? 

But one of the interesting things that we’ve been doing for four years now is partnering parks with dealerships. And we teach the dealerships how to do what we call a maiden voyage. And so what they’ll do is they’ll come out and they’ll do, they will send out to all of their people that are looking to buy a rig or have just bought a rig and say, Hey, we’re doing a maiden voyage at this campground.

We try to teach them to do it between Tuesday and Thursday because that’s our lower occupancy. They’re marketing to local people. And then that’s exactly what they do. They bring them in. And they teach them a 2nd time. How do you hook up your stinky slinky? What do you do when the slide won’t come in?

All of some of the basic kind of things that they need to know. And it, for the parts that I’ve had doing that, it’s amazing. They get their midweeks filled up. The dealerships love it because they’re getting to market, to a different group. That’s not necessarily in their database. And this is, I’m passionate about two things and I will say, in my defense, I am not against high end resorts and I love all of Mike’s parks.

But I am, but right now, my passion, because we’re so deep in this research is about replacing what we are losing and then building communication bridges between all aspects of our ecosystem. And so 

Brian Searl: Which requires curiosity. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. We have to proactively do these things. If we’re going to succeed in 2025 and beyond, because what the industry does impacts us and what we do impacts them. And we’re never talking to each other. 

Brian Searl: But I think stopping here at just the let’s do the hookups, which is a great thing, right? That so many parks aren’t doing or just stopping at the let’s talk to the RV dealership about the first, I can’t remember what you called it. It was something really good.

Katie McLeod: The maiden voyage. 

Brian Searl: I’ll remember it. First journey experience, right? But let’s be curious even more how else can we foster a passion for the outdoors through the activities at our campground? Like I still remember when I was starting out, like I was, I bootstrapped my whole company and we were on the road working, like doing videos of KOAs so many years ago, I went to the Natural Bridge KOA and I think it’s changed ownership like eight times since I was there like 2011/12, but they’re used to the owner’s brother used to work there and there was a little like old fire pit at the entrance, like one of those old stone, like pizza oven type things. It was super old. And he used to teach people how to forage and cook food and survive. And that was one of their activities at the campground. And that can also generate a passion for the outdoors. And so I think there’s a big opportunity for owners when they’re even planning your activities. Like an ice cream social is great, but maybe you could be more curious. 

Ali Kieffer: I think another way too, and we’ve started playing around with this, is social media influencers. Because if you have someone come into your park and take great videos of not only your park, but of the surrounding areas, and they can post that for you on their socials, all of their viewers and their new viewers are going to see that and they’re going to want that experience.

John Kieffer: Brian, to your thoughts, though, too, as far as what can we do to improve the camper experience? The campground and the amenities are one thing, but we’ve started bringing in food trucks on Friday nights when people have been driving all day, and they can, instead of having to get out the pots and pans and cook, they can walk up, have an adult beverage food truck.

We have fly fishing lessons on Saturday mornings that don’t cost us any money. We have a musician that comes and plays. We have a wine tour company that’ll come and pick people up and drop them back off at the campground. None of that costs us any money, but it improves the experience of the people that stay with us.

Brian Searl: Now you just need to tie that deeper to the outdoors. We need the food truck to be like a fear factor experience, so they like foraging for the bugs and the protein and the 

John Kieffer: No, it’s not- 

Brian Searl: Lust or a passion for the survivalist. 

Katie McLeod: A little bit of mushroom roulette, if you will.

Ali Rasmussen: Yeah, 

Brian Searl: We’re almost out of time. So I want to go around and just give everybody a chance to give final thoughts on anything you want to talk about. Anybody want to volunteer to start? 

John Kieffer: I’ll start just an observation. When we were at the San Antonio convention, Larry Bramble, who was brought up earlier, I’m sorry, had a conversation with him about, the new park construction, during COVID and during the camping boom, everybody thought it would be great to build a campground, make a lot of money.

They really didn’t understand what it takes to build a campground. In 2024, KOA started with 66 prospects sites all over the United States that people had an interest in trying to build by the end of the year, that was down to six by the time they ran the financials and they ran the cost of construction 

Brian Searl: And the physical labor.

John Kieffer: And the physical labor. Everything’s more expensive. That he was saying that site costs are now averaging $60,000 a campsite to build them. That’s more than double what we spent. So the impediments and the obstacles to enter the industry now with a new park are very steep. And it’s going to drive rates further and further up.

And my concern is we’re gonna drive people out of the market. People can’t afford. So whatever we can do as an industry to welcome the younger campers that can’t afford to go out and buy a $30,000 travel trailer. But if we can do things to accommodate them, I think our industry benefits. 

Brian Searl: This some of that cost of site build, though, have to do with the type of site you’re like, if you’re not building a luxury RV site, because we did this crazy thing on our Outwired show last week, where we went from $5 to a trillion dollars and took that just through a campground ownership.

And one of the things that said to start with was just rustic, out in the woods, camping without the facilities start like cheaply build. 

John Kieffer: That number is inclusive of our camp store, very nice deluxe bath house, pool amenities. We did all blacktop, throughout and some of our sites are all concrete, but we do have a good many of them that are gravel and it was the overall average.

If we took our, a little over three million dollar cost of construction and divided it out by our 95 sites. We came in a little bit over $30,000 five years ago, five and a half years ago, 

Brian Searl: Okay. Who’s next? Nobody? Pick. Sandy. Go ahead. 

Sandy Ellingson: I would just want to echo that for any of the parks that are listening in the, I think one of the most important things you can do so far this year is begin looking at how you’re going to on board new guests. How do you bring new guests into your park to replace the ones who’re leaving. Everything is going to circle around that. All the other things we’re learning is going to tie into that 

Brian Searl: Good advice. Katie. 

Katie McLeod: Yeah, no, something that resonates with me and that I’m hearing a lot is like the return back to nature, the return back to like old school camping, if you will.

So, how can you make an experience that’s unique to your campground that also gets people back in touch with nature. So whether it be the fly fishing, whether it be learning how to forage for food, whether it be a fishing tournament whether it be maybe some kind of like treasure hunt where it gets people out and exploring your property and getting back to nature.

I think that we need to find a way to get our guests to disconnect and to come back to nature and to come back to just, I guess, the outdoors and it’s really exploring and enjoying the outdoors. And that way we can build a I guess like a community that way. 

Brian Searl: That’s easy. Like we just spent the last 15 years in the wrong place. Don’t be able to upgrade their wifi. Just turn it off. 

Katie McLeod: That’s true. 

Ali Rasmussen: What’s “turning off”?

Yeah, no, I can just add on to what everybody has said for sure, and Katie just ended with the perfect word, community. I think in addition to, the return to nature and wanting to disconnect and escape I think that, COVID did not do us any favors when it comes to community.

And like we were literally kept apart. And we were encouraged to not physically interact. And I think that, in part contributed to the messaging of just if you’re going to come camping, it is this experience that is all about, like amenities and features and like devoid of like other people. Yes, there’s like service elements of it, but I know that at Spacious Skies, like we are really like working really hard to build a friendly, like human to human, just a high connection type experience with others, like other people in nature. So that you’re not expecting to come camping and just be in your own little silo on your own site, it is all about, coming to the campground and who you’re going to see and who you’re going to hang out with and who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to commune with. And I think that is something that we’re hungry for and that I know that younger generations are hungry for not just folks with families or who are retired and looking for that second wind.

No, I think it’s, I think it’s everybody. Everybody is hungry for actual human connection. 

Brian Searl: I think it’s just reaching them and teaching them what they’re, sorry I didn’t mean to cut you off. I do, are you finished or 

Ali Rasmussen: I am now. 

Brian Searl: Okay. I’m sorry. I apologize. You were delayed on my end. I think you’re right though.

I think it’s it, I think everybody, whether you’re young generation, old generation, whatever still has available passion. I think the, and I was watching because I’m a geek, I was watching just an AI video that gave a chart that just talks about this last night that talked about the information overload that we have in the last 10, 20 years, the more of it on social, the more of it on blogs, the more of it on website content, the more of it on TV.

Everybody’s basically got a cable television in there, pocket right here. And the graph was basically saying the more information that comes, the less attention is on specific information. So I think the willingness to have a passion for the outdoors is there. I think people just are distracted and have their passion fragmented in so many other places.

And that doesn’t mean those places are wrong. They’re wrong for us. And it’s certainly I’m a big advocate of the outdoors. And I think that people can be trained to have that passion. We just have to focus on thinking outside the box and reaching them where they are.

Ali Rasmussen: Great. 

Katie McLeod: Yeah, absolutely. 

Brian Searl: All right thank you guys for being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats in 55 minutes, I have another show in case you’re bored and want to hear me talk more for two hours with Scott Bahr. Where we’re going to dive into some data. We’re going to talk about what are we going to talk about today, Lisa? I can’t remember. Something about campers and how they’re viewing how they want to see parks react and be talked to if they’re willing to come this year. It’s a whole lot more than that. I did a terrible job at it, but. I’ll be here in about 55 minutes talking about that. 

Other than that, thank you guys for joining us on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. I really appreciate all of you joining us Ali Katie Sandy John and your family, that’s too small to read your names. I have bad eyes. Sorry. One of them is Ali. I remember that. Beth, okay. Yes. It’s just, it’s super small on my screen. I’m sorry, Beth. Nothing against you. Thank you all for joining us. I think it was a great discussion. Katie, we’d love to have you back on sometime. I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more about Quilly’s RV Parks.

Katie McLeod: Oh yeah, that’s fine. There’s a lot to talk about. 

Brian Searl: Appreciate it. And we’ll see you guys next week on another episode. 

Katie McLeod: Thanks, everyone. 

Ali Rasmussen: Thank you.