MC Fireside Chats – May 7th, 2025

Brian Searl: Episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with you as always. First episode of the month, typically. So we’re talking about trends and insights. We’ve got Scott Bahr here from Carin Consulting Group, who is our wizard of trends and insights.

We’ve got Simon Neal here from Camp Map over in Europe who will share some interesting stuff with us, as he always does. Miguel’s missing today, missing in action. So hopefully he’ll pop in. Mark Koep’s here, who has a lot of trends and data and insights as always, too. And then we got two special guests.

We got Brian Linton from Linton Hospitality, who’s gonna talk a little bit about his company. And we’ve got Mary Arlington, who’s the jack of all trades. Wizard of All Things, starts something new every two or three days, Mary, but sticks with a couple of the really good ones. So we’re gonna talk about Rivers & Rockies’ Coalition and some of the great stuff she has going on there.

And then we’re missing Rafael. He’s travel, he’s tra rafael’s tra you gotta yell at him, Scott. Rafael’s traveling to the Florida Show. He’s I can’t make it. So you need to tell him like you made it to the show. 

Scott Bahr: I’m sitting here in my hotel room and he couldn’t, oh my, yeah. Okay. I’m on it.

Brian Searl: He couldn’t be bothered to do that for us, so

Scott Bahr: I’m on it.

Brian Searl: He can buy you a whiskey or something, but yeah. Okay. So typically how we normally start the show, I just want to toss it to our recurring guest is Scott, Simon , Mark, is there anything that you guys feel has come across your desk since the last time we were able to get together here that you feel is important for us to talk about, cover? Anything you wanna bring up? 

Mark Koep: Yeah I’ll jump in, Brian. I was recently at the West Coast event, the California show or the West Coast event, and then also at the Texas event. And in both sessions I did there, I spoke about AI and what was interesting about it is in California asked the question of the audience. How many of you.

Brian Searl: I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you, but what’s AI? 

Mark Koep: Yeah, exactly. I’ll get into that. Let me get into that, Brian. At the California show, I asked how many people are using AI and about a third of the audience raised their hand. Three weeks later in Texas, I asked that same question about 95% of the audience raise their hands.

To the question of what is AI? There’s different genera, most people it’s Chat GPT, right? They’re using large language models and so forth. And obviously there’s a lot more depth that can go into that. But

Mark Koep: much like Brian’s model and Brian, you and I talk behind the scenes. You and I are really well aligned on the overall thinking, which is most people are not prepared for what’s happening right now in real time in the world.

And my goal in these presentations, and Mary was there she can attest this, my goal is honestly to scare the crap out of the audience about what was coming with a simple goal of them walking outta that meeting going, I need to learn more about this and actually be proactive in my efforts around the use of AI, not only from a personal level, but from a professional level and how it’s gonna impact the overall economy in the world.

So just wanna share that, Brian I give you full credit ’cause you’re way ahead of the curve on this and obviously way advanced, but it is changing and people are starting to recognize that it’s here. Just moving really fast. 

Brian Searl: So two things. Do you think one, that it’s moving that fast California to Texas span of a week or two, or do you think that people from California stalked you and followed you to Texas?

And that’s why it increased so dramatically? That’s my opening first question. But then number two is I’m curious how you scare them. I’m just fascinated by like how do you what’s your version of scare? Because mine’s probably different. 

Mark Koep: Yeah, yours is probably different. Yours is, I guarantee you yours is different, just knowing you.

So my way to scare is the simple statement and it’s a bold statement, but I don’t think it’s actually that bold. I’ll simply preface that, the primary advertising channel you have available to you is Google search. And I just want y’all to know that Google search is dead and in six months that’s gonna pan out.

And that usually creates the disconnect in their minds where they’re like, wait a second, how can Google search be dead? And then you just go into the logic about how Google’s moved results down. They have AI results at the top and you know how everything is changing in that regard. And so it gets people to realize that their simple marketing that they’ve been doing is no longer gonna work.

They actually have to hit people in various channels. It’s actually fragmenting again, right? It came tight where it was Google and Facebook and now we’re fragmenting to different channels. And just that in and of itself is enough to where people wake up to the idea.

And then the thing I’ll do on stage is I’ll pull up Chat GPT and go to the voice interface, right, with the Chat GPT. ’cause most of the people can see their skepticism in the audience as you’re talking about it. And then I’ll have that conversation with AI on my phone and use the microphone to show them how powerful that tool is.

And the net result is, I’m validating what I’m saying. ’cause once they realize that those tools are available and you can do that, then it’s the recognition that this guy’s not just blowing smoke. He’s telling you the truth, that the world is changing, the entire digital landscape is changing.

And the other thing that I say very honestly, and I think Brian, you may or may not agree with this, even the best experts don’t know what the world looks like a year from now. We just know that it’s changing fast. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, for sure. I like, I typically say three years, right? But yeah, it’s, it’s gonna keep exponentially speeding up.

So I agree with that statement. It’s interesting, like you and I both do marketing and how, like you have to get people’s attention sometimes. I don’t think either of us really believes that Google’s gonna be completely dead in six months. But also that’s the way you get people’s attention.

You can be like, Google’s slowing down just a little bit. Hopefully you’re watching my presentation about how it is. They’re not gonna pay attention to you then. But yeah, I don’t know if you read the latest stats and we don’t wanna spend too much time on this in the show, but there was Google said there’s one and a half billion users, and I don’t know, they define users of AI overviews.

Which is the real kind of threat in Google more than anything, is that your site is ranked differently and cited differently in those AI overviews. And it’s citing deeper content like blog part blogs, articles, stuff like that. There’s 650 million monthly users of Chat GPT already there are 350 million monthly users of Google Gemini that came out in their monopoly to trial or whatever.

And I want to say last week, but like it was a couple weeks ago, I saw this stat within the last seven days of that stat being published, there were a billion searches on Chat GPT, like searches of the internet, not prompts in one.

Mary Arlington: That was Mark.

Mark Koep: Yeah. One, yeah, that was me doing all those prompts. Yeah. No, what I find just in my own usage of the tools that over the last two weeks, my go-to source is actually Chat GPT and Gemini, depending upon which one I’m logged into at the time to begin my deeper research. Now I may go to websites and so forth for even deeper, but I’m relying heavily upon these AI tools.

I know I’ve integrated ’em in all of our processes here in our own business. And the reality is there’s longer tail conversation about that. Because and I actually this is a question for you Brian, ’cause I know you’ve gone deeper on this. As you look at it, the real question becomes if the AI models are essentially scraping the web for their information and they’re providing you a summation of that information, they’re basically destroying the business models of a large portion of the web businesses out there that rely on

Brian Searl: Oh yes, for sure.

Mark Koep: Eyeballs. So as those websites go outta business, where does AI get its information? And in its results. And that’s a big question on the marketing side of how do I get ranked in these chatbots and everything else. So I’m interested in your.

Brian Searl: That’s two things, right? And again I don’t wanna spend too much of the show on this, but it’s a good conversation.

Like we need to have it. I just I want to make sure we get to our guests and you’re not distracting me, like I’m distracting myself to be clear. I’m not blaming you. But there, there’s two different things with ai, right? There’s first of all, it already has started creating its own synthetic data, is the answer.

It’s just I don’t wanna say just ’cause that’s the wrong word, but it’s just as it has the same amount or greater amount of an ability to create new text and especially these new thinking models, new thoughts than as human beings currently do, right? Most human beings. And so it can create they’ve been doing this for a couple years.

They’ve used it to train some of the new models, like on syn, they call it synthetic data. So that’s number one. Number two is we have no idea how to get the stuff in like we do. We know a little bit of things right, on how to get it ranked, but mostly, and we’ve talked about this on Outwired too with Scott. Mostly it’s, brand like the importance of, back links, but also the conversation around your brand.

So press releases, mentions of social media that are not on your page. Just like reputation right, is an easier way to say it. Brand and backlinks are gonna be important. And then obviously what’s on your website, like not just keywords, but the structure and the schema markup. And if you don’t know what those words are, go ask your website developer.

Those things are even more important than the future too. But that’s not really scaring ’em though. Like you’re just it’s important you’re waking ’em up. You probably are scaring them, but I ended up British Columbia. I was speaking to their association on a webinar maybe a month ago, and I ended that thing with I asked Joss, I was like, do you want me to scare them real quick?

And he’s like, all right, sure. Not knowing what I was gonna say. He probably regrets it, but I was like, like we’re headed toward like you’re seeing this already, like the US and China are battling for supremacy in AI. Where you’re headed to is one day, neither one of them probably wanna do this right now or even would consider ever doing this, but at some point, one general is gonna be like, I’m gonna give the AI control of my missiles.

And then unless the other general does the same thing, he’s gonna get obliterated. And that’s where we’re like, that’s the end game where we’re going to whatever country gets it first. I’m not saying it’s gonna be missiles and Terminator and all that stuff, but whatever country gets it first, that’s why we’re, that’s why it’s never gonna slow down.

That’s why Trump won’t let it slow down. Xi won’t let it slow down just because they need to be first. So that’s the scary end game. If you wanna scare ’em next time, Mark.

Mark Koep: I don’t go that deep. 

Mary Arlington: I wanna see how you’re gonna transition from obliteration of the planets to campground. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I don’t think that it’s going to actually obliterate the planet to be clear, but like generally I use it as like Mark says, Google is dead.

I use it as a way to get their attention because that is why the best case scenario for the world is that we slow this thing down and understand what it is and, legislate it and protect jobs to a certain extent from it. And however we can, right? But we’re not going to do that because all the companies are racing each other and all the governments are racing each other.

And the first one that gets to what they call super intelligence is literally gonna be able to tell the super intelligence turn off the United States. So that’s why they’re all racing. It sounds crazy. But anyway, let’s talk about something else fun. So see how you sucked me down that rabbit hole Mark.

Mark Koep: No problem. Glad to do it.

Brian Searl: All right. Anyway, like AI is really good and you should study it and it’s gonna be great for your campgrounds. But you have to pay attention to how fast it’s moving, mark said. Anybody else have anything on their plate? Scott or Simon? 

Scott Bahr: The only thing I would say is just recently, it seems like I’ve had several conversations about campground size, like number of sites. And I was talking to someone earlier today about there’s a campground that’s in the works that’s gonna have 3000 sites. 

Brian Searl: And is it in Myrtle Beach or somewhere else? 

Scott Bahr: I was like, my response to that was a question is will these like gigantic RV parks and campgrounds become like the malls 

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Scott Bahr: Are in 10 years, will they be abandoned and deserted? My personal opinion is that’s more likely to happen than the idea that we’re gonna be overrun with gigantic parks. I just, I don’t know. I just don’t think that’s gonna happen. And I feel like these huge parks is, their shelf life is limited, and I would be open to any sort of contrary opinions on that.

And by the way, if you wanna scare someone at a lower level, just do an AI search on trip planning to their area and see whether or not their Campground shows up. That’s a little bit more realistic in terms of 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s what Mark’s doing, I think. Yeah. That’s what Mark’s doing.

Mark Koep: Yeah, actually I had a conversation with an owner in Texas and he was like he was ask, he was going around asking multiple people on their Chat GPT to do the same query, and it was driving him nuts because the results were different under everybody’s device. Yep. And so he was like, wait a second I’m the best one and I’m not.

It was that whole conversation. It is actually the old school SEO conversation, just with a new tool that’s using it is how come I’m not number one for that search result?

Scott Bahr: Yep.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mark Koep: Scott, it’s funny you mentioned the size of sites. ’cause I was actually thinking this, just this last week because a lot of investors, like the investment groups like buying parks that are 200 sites or more, right?

They can justify the expenses so forth, but yet when you go into those 200 or site more parks, they’re usually 60% occupied. So 120 sites are filled. You don’t. Would it be more efficient to run a hundred site or a 90 site park with larger sites that you’re charging more for so you’re making more off that, that piece of land that you have the property on.

It was just an interesting conversation I was having in my head. So it’s funny that you mentioned that about the 3000 site park. All I can say is a 3000 site park. As long as they provide the amenities that people want in that area, it’ll do fine. But who knows what it looks like long term if those amenities degradate and they don’t take care of ’em or whatnot.

Brian Searl: It’s such a longer conversation that we don’t have time to have fully on this show. And then we’re gonna actually explore a little bit of this on Outwired later about talking about niching down your marketing and who to target and who to speak to and should you ignore Gen Z or embrace Gen Z or all the things.

But when you talk about those 3000 site parks, like they work in Myrtle Beach, obviously there’s a clear use case for a market like that’s massive, where it’s gonna work. But yeah, I’m of the mindset, like you, like I don’t know that the 3000 site park works anywhere and it doesn’t, and I know you’re not saying that Mark, but like who are the people? What do they want? And then could you use that even at the 240 or 60 site park that you use as an example can you use that site to build more amenities or make more revenue or put a restaurant or have day passes to something, or an arcade or a bowling alley, or, something that’s revenue generating versus just sitting empty because you’re 60 or 70% occupied.

’cause let’s be honest, I don’t think that the RV industry is suddenly gonna skyrocket in the next five years and be able to double the cap. There’s too much inventory coming online. And we’ll talk about that on the show, but like we have before, but there’s just, there has to be a difference maker for your property.

What’s your story? What’s your experience? What’s your difference? And there are people who will line up for that. What Scott described as the mall experience, but there are a whole lot more people who will line up for a niche experience tailored to their generation or preferences, or if they’re an adventure seeker or a solo traveler or a car camper or whatever, right?

And so if you can niche down into some of those that make sense for the market that you’re in, then you’ll have a whole lot easier time with 200 or 3000 or whatever you’re building. You generally agree with that Mark? Or as a market?

Mark Koep: Yes, I agree with that completely. Yep.

Scott Bahr: Yeah it’s kinda like how we went from all the malls being abandoned to people wanting a more intimate experience in the downtown area with boutique shops and restaurants and so on.

It’s like that. I think the desire for that has more staying power than some sort of

Scott Bahr: much more generic type of experience. And, again, going back to the idea of why people want some kind of outdoor hospitality experience it to me. It seems like they don’t want overall. I think there will be a movement away from the gigantic mini city places and to a much more intimate personalized, hospitality based experience.

Brian Searl: I have a new Jessica, you can drag him up there when he’s talking so they don’t have to look at my ugly face all the time. I have a new person running the show for me, so that’s why you saw the intro start and stop. ’cause she was like, yeah, this intro’s good, and she wanted to see it twice. That’s the story behind it.

But anyway yeah you just have to figure out who your people are. Is really all it is. And I think a lot of people, especially in this boom we saw after Covid and I’d love to hear your take too, Mary on this working with so many associations and parks. I don’t know how much build out there was in, in your areas versus like Texas or something, but there’s just bit, there was so much rapid thought about buy, buy, buy, buy, build, build, build. And everybody did the same, some worse than others, but generally following the same blueprint. And that blueprint was great for and Mary certainly has way more education in this aspect, right? But for the boomers who’ve traditionally been the RV type guest than it does for the future and it may ebb and blow, like nobody’s saying that’s not a good, can’t be a good business model.

But is it as good as it was 10, 15, 20 years ago? I dunno. You tell us, Mary. Introduce yourself first, please. 

Mary Arlington: Oh boy. When I was a park owner, the boomers were definitely my audience. But I’ve sold long enough ago that society has changed. Back when I was an owner though, there were parks already in the country that had thousands of sites, and they did very well.

They weren’t around every corner, but they did very well in their niche. They often were for long stays. They created their community. Maybe they were in the north or the south and they were populated for some months of the year. That was all great and they did very well. But there has been an enormous shift across the country, bringing in many more of those.

I know Colorado had an enormous boom through the past six, seven years and and quite a few parks, I’d say about eight years ago, started buying up neighboring land and expanding that they could. But the vast majority of my parks I cater to the privately owned campgrounds and RV parks and resorts and glamping and all that.

Whatever outdoor lodging is to you, that’s what we try to cater to. And I would say that the vast majority of them remain smaller. I’m gonna say. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Mary Arlington: A hundred and twenty five, a hundred fifty sites, and fewer. But I still have some parks that have 8, 10, 12, 15 sites, and they’re pleased with what they have.

And maybe they’re landlocked. I know one of ’em is right on the side of a canyon. Without obliterating a mountain, they can’t grow at all. So they find their niche, they market to their audience, they satisfy those people. And if what you’re looking for has 2000 sites and loads of amenities, then there are those in the area that they can go to instead.

Brian Searl: Yeah, there’s no wrong way to do it until you run into the accounting investor accountability point of your journey. But before that like you can really build anything you want. And if you’re happy with the eight to 10 sites, then that’s great. If you’re happy with the 50 to a hundred, that’s great too.

But it’s interesting to me that we often hear from so many people that it’s a math problem and I understand that from an investment standpoint, right? On paper it’s okay, we can have 3000 sites earning income of X site. We make a whole lot more money. But then they don’t study the market and recognize whether there’s 3000 people there.

But also if you look at people like Brian, who’s a guest on our show, and we’ll talk to him about his company in a second. It’s not even a number of sites problem. It’s a, and maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong, ’cause you’re obviously the expert, Brian. But it is a math problem, but it’s not necessarily a quantity problem to get to the math you want. Is that fair, Brian? 

Brian Linton: For sure. Yeah. We’re in the boutique glamping space. So Ferncrest is purposely intimate and small and obviously the economics of glamping versus RV are primitive. Camping is different. So that, our operators, ’cause we have a franchise system, so Ferncrest, we started it a few years ago, opened up the home base location in Pennsylvania.

It’s 25 site glamping destination with geodesic domes and some wall tents really family focused, targeting the millennial, the millennial young family. And with two to $300 ADRs, you can have a really sustainable two. Business with those fewer sites. If I’m an RV park operator, Mary it’d be tough for me to justify at least, economics of covering expenses and paying employees and still taking home money if I only had 18, 10 to 20 or 25 RV sites.

But with glamping, you can do quite well with a smaller assortment. There’s plenty of glamping destinations out there with four sites, right? A lot of people blur the lines in glamping as well. And, landscape resorts all of a sudden become glamping.

And I’m more on the glamping is still more of a camping experience and the hard sided like resort is more outdoor hospitality in a broader sense. To each his own, when they define what glamping is. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Glamping can be anything you want, right? And I think, yeah, I think I like it, and it’s part of the appeal to me of the word glamping.

Like we were talking a few weeks ago to the RV industry, people who were on the show and we were exploring I briefly brought up like flying cars and I was like, listen, like recreational vehicle, boy, that can be anything in the future. If you guys really wanted to expand the demographic of what, that could be anything.

So I like the appeal of being able to create your own thing, do whatever you want. Like obviously pay attention to the money and the math and all those things that are important to your market, to your niche, to who you’re gonna attract. But ultimately it’s a, what is your goal? Is your goal to return on ROI to investors? Then maybe you need to build bigger or more sites or more quantity to achieve that math problem.

Or is it, I wanna be happy with nine, 10 sites, or I wanna be happy with 50 to a hundred RV sites or whatever. I think there’s a clear path. And Scott, you can talk me through, like I know we recently went over the KOA North American Campground report on a bunch of shows that talked about amenities people are looking for and things like that.

I think there’s a clear path to taking an RV park and if you provide a good enough experience, I bet you could charge $150, $200 a night. If you had the amenities to back it up where you weren’t just another, I also am a luxury RV park with pads. What do you think, Scott? 

Scott Bahr: Absolutely. And there, there are some parks out there already doing that. Find that and people are willing to it. And it’s much the as almost any attracts a certain type of clientele as well, and that’s what some parks want. They want to attract that higher income demographic to their sites. And they do that by, they up the ante. They offer, much more involved, services so that essentially it’s a resort, only you park your RV there. 

Mary Arlington: I actually, the first time I went clamping, it was at a campground. It was just another RV site, except instead of pulling in an RV, I walked into a safari tent. It was gorgeous. It had a deck, it had a fabulous bed with wonderful linens, and it was, pricier than a cabin or pricier than an RV. But it was still extremely affordable. But the difference that I wanna get to in a minute is that it was a campsite.

Brian Searl: Yes.

Mary Arlington: It was me coming and sleeping and doing whatever I wanted.

I went home from that experience. I didn’t do AI ’cause it didn’t exist. I Googled, it did exist, but we weren’t using it anyway. I Googled glamping Montana vacation or something like that. And I start seeing these really cool things. And then I look at the price tag and it’s astronomical.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mary Arlington: Compared to what, it wasn’t anymore 149 a night, but, oh my gosh. I got a chef’s breakfast every day delivered to my deck. I could take all the equestrian rides I wanted the whole time I was there. There were these, massage appointments. There was, It was a, total escape from reality.

Anyway, that’s not how I live, but I said to myself, what did I Google? Glamping Montana vacation or something. And what if I had changed it to glamping Colorado vacation and I would’ve been shown campsites or glamping sites that had completely different definitions. You have to know really what you’re looking for.

Brian Searl: I just wanna take a note for other recurring guests, Mark and Scott, that association leaders have got to earn a lot of money to be able to stay at places like that. ’cause I still can’t do that. Can you Mark or Scott, like this is, we’re in the wrong. 

Mark Koep: I think it’s a perk of the job.

Brian Searl: But you bring up a good point, right? Very valid. There’s so many, back to the definition of glamping, right? It can be anything. But also think, and we talked about this on a show, I don’t know, maybe a month or two ago, I think Ali Rasmussen was from Spacious Skies and a few other people.

And we were just talking about ability and the requirement of people to need to be creative these days. If you’re headed into what, by all accounts, I’m just gonna keep quantifying this ’cause this isn’t Outwired, I’ll be more uncensored later, but what all accounts looks like, perhaps, possibly maybe a bad economy that may or may not impact the Campground industry in a negative way quote unquote. Whatever’s happening if people are not going Camping in the numbers that they were in 2021 and 2022 for sure that we know that exists, then there must be a way for you to differentiate yourself, whether it’s experience or amenities or type of site or, whatever that is. And so I think there’s a need for there,

let me rephrase that. I think there hasn’t been a need for a lot of park owners, whether they want to or not. So not sliding the park owners themselves. I think there has been a need or hasn’t been a need. Sorry, I keep messing it up for a long time. For park owners to really need to get creative unless they’ve wanted to, because it’s their passion or they wanna design something unique like Brian’s properties like that.

I Think now you have to, and I’m not saying that means you have to rip up your whole park make it a glamping resort or something like that. You really have to put thought into this to differentiate yourself from your competition. And that’s what you experienced, Mary, not what you saw.

Like obviously the Google search very valid point, but also is the market for both of those things argue that by number of people that can afford to stay, there is probably a larger market for the safari tent on the campsite. But by people who have aspirational desires to go, what they see as glamping in the media, way more people on the other side, they just can’t quite afford it yet.

When those meet in the middle. I think it’s gonna require park owners who do want to participate in glamming. Doesn’t mean they have to, be a little bit more creative than just slapping a tent on what was formally an RV site. What do you think, Mary? 

Mary Arlington: It’s a nature of business. Those years ago when I was a park owner, I differentiated myself in ways that were current at that time, such as this new fangled thing called wifi. Nobody had it. 

Brian Searl: Nobody still has it, Mary, we’re still preaching about it. 

Mary Arlington: And, so staying current with the trends, staying ahead of the trends, that’s what separates you. Certainly there are people who still don’t have online reservations. They still don’t have even Excel spreadsheets. If I ask them how many sites do they have and what’s their occupancy? They don’t know.

Then there are others who, because they’ve embraced online reservations and front office systems, I can ask ’em the question and they say, I don’t know the answer, but gimme a second. ’cause I’m, automated, I just have to ask it the question. So the times are always changing. I prefer to be one who stays ahead of the times.

Years ago when I was in college, I was told by a professor that I have some uncanny technique or ability to see a forest fire when it’s just a spark. And those of us who can do that let’s not call it a forest fire though, but just we see something and we think we’re gonna go down this road because I think I’m going to need later.

The day that I bought an RV park, I created a website and there were parks that time, the vast majority didn’t have websites. Whatever your language is for today, glamping whether you want to have niche market. But here’s another thing I wanna throw out there. It depends on where your vacationing.

If I’m going to someplace like Colorado, which I know so well, ’cause I’ve been to every Campground, RV park and whatever you wanna call it. I’ve been to a mall in Colorado. 

Brian Searl: For the one burnout Bob’s gonna create in a second, but go ahead. 

Mary Arlington: The people who go to those parks. Colorado is the playground. Colorado has, the amenities, they’re not coming because this is the coolest campsite in Colorado. Although some are, you cannot stereotype in our industry. For example, a jelly stone. I’m thinking of the one up in Estes Park. Their clientele is primarily from the metro area, and Colorado residents and they’re going up to Estes Park for the family activities at the Campground, but also for Rocky Mountain National Park.

But for the most part most of the campgrounds in Colorado don’t have a pool. They don’t have mini golf. They don’t have bingo on Friday and a band on Saturday, because that’s not what the people are coming there to camp for. So you gotta know who your audience is, why they’re coming to your area, what you wanna sell, and then do it really well. Do that, that you want to do very well.

Brian Searl: For sure. I think there’s I agree with everything you said, but I think there’s also an argument to be said, like Steve Jobs, you can sometimes create a market. So one of the things I never would’ve imagined looking for at a hotel, and I know this is like way, I went to Iceland a couple years ago, right?

There’s a hotel who like, again, backed up to like beautiful Iceland, which is crazy breathtaking. But Colorado has a lot of breathtaking stuff too, right? Just had outdoor hot tubs that you could walk off patio, not right up against the building, but like out in the field, like 20 feet, right?

And just water lines running to ’em and just people that would sit in there, right? So I think some ways that you can enhance and create a different market based on your location too. And I don’t think you disagree with that, Mary. I just wanted to add that. 

Mary Arlington: Yeah, that’s a great addition. And there are campgrounds in Colorado that will have maybe hot tubs because people will be. I know there’s a park in Leadville where a lot of the, campers come because they’re gonna go hiking, climbing, or cycling, and they’re up near 10,000 feet elevation. Oxygen bar kind of could come in handy. Hot tubs come in handy. That you can certainly think outside the box to create a difference. To stand out from the RV park that’s two or five or 10 miles down the road. 

Brian Searl: And sometimes it’s not even that hard, right? It’s just the, there’s two steps in my process. We’ll use the hot tub for an example, right?

Looked at my market, I’ve determined that a hot tub might be a good fit for me. Let me put it right next to the pool. Or let me put it 20 feet out from the building where you can have a good mountain range for you. That’s a little harder. Maybe that costs me a thousand bucks to run pipeline under whatever, right?

But I can also charge extra for and make a lot of money back. I. Yeah. As a result of that. Instagramable and whatever else. So Simon, I know I’ve left you out a little bit. I’ve been trying to get to you. I appreciate your patience. I’m curious, as we talk about some of these different things. Size of parks and the rigs and the behavior and the amenities, this is a little bit different over in Europe with the type of parks you guys have over there, right?

Simon Neal: Yeah, I think and I would say generally it’s all holiday driven. It’s highly seasonal, and I think the average park size is around two to 300, certainly from customers that we see. But there is some really big parks as well. We have a couple over 1,000, and 1 of 2000 units here close by. And they’re good actually. You get a similar experience in these parks as some of the smaller ones. Main differentiator is they often have massive water parks, several different pools, things like that. So it is that kind of super amenity, which attracts people to them. But the experience when you’re in the park is actually quite nice.

It’s segregated. You have different areas. You feel like you’re in a town, you have quite a bit of town, you have a loud bit of town. You can go for a walk in the town, it’s safe. Your kids can cycle for kilometers and it’s fine. So I think pretty good balance, but generally the average is a bit less. In Terms of size two to 300 units, I would say. What is. 

Brian Searl: Go ahead. Please finish. I’m sorry. 

Simon Neal: I was saying just when we’re talking about amenities and, catering to the changing demographic, there’s definitely been a lot of investment recently and just improving the basic amenities first. Like great showers, great toilets. Great kids entertainment, even if it’s something small, it’s there. Have a pool, great, but it’s not necessary.

And then can, kind of building on top of that, looking into local experiences and booking things outside the Campground as well. But huge investment in quality even if you’re not changing the size of the Campground. That’s been pretty significant here the last five years and that’s kind of gone in parallel with prices going up as well. At the same time. 

Brian Searl: Maybe I’m making too big a deal of this, and you can tell me if I am, but the neighborhood thing interests me and I’m interested have you ever stayed at one of the 3000 plus resort places in Myrtle Beach or anywhere else?

Oh, Mark left. He turned off his camera or maybe he’s not there. Anyway. We’ll ask him when he comes back. Have you ever stayed at one? 

Mary Arlington: 2000?

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mary Arlington: I think the largest I’ve stayed at is close to 600. 

Brian Searl: I was just curious you brought up the neighborhood thing and the different types of neighborhoods, Simon. Is that common thing over in Europe? Because I’m imagining it a couple different ways, right? I’m imagining it like I’m just overreacting to it and it’s not really as big a deal as I think, and two, I’m imagining it as like I can serve a whole lot more people if I have a quiet part of town and a noisy part of town.

Simon Neal: Yeah, it’s definitely, I think, I don’t think any of them have been designed from the beginning to be like that. They’ve organically and being reorganized to fit. But you definitely have like, this is the mobile home cabin glamping area. This is, front, super posh, high value, and you have the kind of lower value ones further away, are the ones in the forest, the ones like in the more new area closer to the pool. So they definitely are split up. have the amenities for each area as well. So you, when you’re in that zone. You kind of feel, you don’t feel like you’re in a massive town. You feel like you’re in a small village.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Simon Neal: Walk to the big town center and everybody’s there and it’s full of action and the restaurants and the bars, and then you go back to your quiet village after five minute walk. So quite nice 

Brian Searl: Easy, obviously, if they have Camp Map to find your way around.

Simon Neal: Of course, yes.

Brian Searl: The properties. So that just, I threw you one, Simon.

Mary Arlington: So I wanted to add to that if I could. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, go ahead. And then I wanna ask Scott a question about the large RV sites in the neighborhood. 

Mary Arlington: So there are campgrounds that have come up with this brilliant idea that not everybody loves pets, but I have to welcome pets because otherwise I’m gonna be excluding a large population.

So what they’ve done is they’ve said, oh, you’re coming with pets, you have to be in this part of the Campground. Oh, you’re not with pets, you’re gonna be over here. Same thing with children. I’ve seen parks just gravitate to whatever I don’t know works for them. If they’re large enough, they could even do all of the above. They can have an area that has no kids, an area that has no pets.

Brian Searl: What about a property like this, Scott? Let’s say we have a 3000 site property, but it’s carefully segmented, either intentionally or organically afterward, like Simon said into, is that paused ’cause I was like, Hey, wait a minute, that’s a thing Simon says like, do you have that in Europe? 

Scott Bahr: Simon says, yep. 

Brian Searl: Okay.

Scott Bahr: I thought the same thing.

Brian Searl: Sorry. We should play that game one week, Simon. Anyway, so Scott is that a thing that could help these parks survive and thrive? Because we talk a lot about the different amenities, like in the KOA report and the things people are looking for. Some of the up and coming things forest, bathing or grounding in the grass. And even if you don’t have clear signage or a clear direction in screwing up organically, like at least the guests would know. If they’re trying to ground and they’re in the dog area, they’d quickly realize they were in the wrong place, right.

Scott Bahr: Absolutely. And I think that in and of itself, a very different type of atmosphere. In fact, several years ago Mark is ignoring us, but was a part of that, the whole Campground of the Future thing. And that was, I don’t know, seven or eight years ago we did that.

Brian Searl: Yeah. Mark’s pretty old.

Scott Bahr: And one of the things.

Brian Searl: Sorry, go ahead. 

Scott Bahr: Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, I mean, I actually said was the Campground of the future might be a larger park that on the periphery for different types of experiences, but in the middle you have the community area. You have a place where the store, maybe restaurants, whatever. And Mary mentioned this too, it’s like a person can go back to their area, to a place that they prefer, whether it’s a no kids area, a no dog area or a no kids or dogs area.

And that would accomplish that. And that is the future of a much larger park, where it can still feel like a much more experience, but you’re part of this larger community. 

Simon Neal: We even have one customer who has a huge section of the park, which is naturist, so completely nude guests. And then the other section of the park is normal and, split beach. And it’s also quite common to have beach dedicated for dogs, with facilities, for dogs and everything there. They can swim in the sea there, but they can’t go in other areas. So there’s definitely lots of variation around.

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think that’s interesting. If you have, again, we talked about available to warrant a higher priced RV site. Higher priced RV sites that has, even exclusive amenities or VIP experiences or, There’s just lots of ways to do this, but I think the creativity is gonna be an important component to if you want to, and it’s okay if you don’t, but if you want to level up into a bunch of larger sites or to go more than eight or 10, if that’s the career path that you’re on, or if you’re investor driven and that’s what they want, then I think that creativity’s gonna be necessary to set yourself apart from the competition in like the now, like for anybody who’s building now or in the future.

So, Brian, let’s talk about your company a a little bit. We haven’t gotten into it too much. I’m sorry. We’ve been having a good conversation. 

Brian Linton: We’re talking about pets. We, do really well with the $40 a night dog fee. That’s a huge profit center because that doesn’t mean that they get to do damage with $40 a night. That’s just a dog at our glam ground.

Brian Searl: Have you, can I just play devil’s advocate for a second? Have you, ever studied, and clearly the $40 night thing works for you. I’m not suggesting it wrong, but have you ever studied what would happen if the dogs were free while you, obviously there’d have to be way to protect your investment in your tents and who you’re allowing in there and not the, I don’t wanna single a lot of breed, but like.

Brian Linton: Sure.

Brian Searl: The little chihuahuas that destroy everything, we’ll pick on them. Have you ever explored offering, like people will spend a lot of money on their pets, so is there any data, and maybe you know this Scott too, is there any data with lower pet fees obviously would attract more people, whether it’s the right people, the wrong people, depending on, how you wanna take care of your tents and your price point overall. But I imagine there’s probably some profit be made there, isn’t there? 

Brian Linton: For selling like, various amenities for the pet versus all of it.

Brian Searl: Yeah. Or either amenities for the pet or, deluxe treats or local organic stuff or something like that. 

Brian Linton: That’s a great idea. You’re saying lower the pet fee, but then potentially. Add in, a lot of other opportunities.

Brian Searl: Like it’s the same as me. Like I go to the farmer’s market and I like to buy my food there, but there’s a little stall there from a lady who like hand makes like beautiful treats that are icing like I’m tempted to buy that every time.

And then the little, carriers are there and all the things. And so I just feel like there’s a big opportunity for people to be like, my dog went camping here, or who knows what it’s. 

Brian Linton: Yeah, I think we should definitely add some of that type of stuff into our, we have a camp store, like a self-service checkout camp store at our properties and, we probably don’t have enough dog stuff in there I don’t think we have any dog stuff in there actually. Which 

Brian Searl: 5% royalty. You remember I said it. 

Mary Arlington: When I had my RV park, I had a pet area, a pet section in the store of leashes and food and toys.

Brian Linton: Yeah.

Mary Arlington: It was appreciated. It wasn’t even like, oh, thanks, I needed a leash. It was, wow, I got this cool, whatever, sweater or whatever. And it was a memory from the RV park for them.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Brian Linton: Dog sweater? You were selling dog sweaters?

Mary Arlington: Whatever. I had all sorts of things. I had toys, I had this little miniature tent that was a sunshade for dogs or cats. It collapsed just like a tent does. And the owners could take it and put it up at any campsite they got to and.

Brian Searl: It’s the essentials. It’s the unique things. Right? It’s the things that they remember buying there. Like, I still remember my little Yorkie, I bought her like little booties that were just like, I don’t know, I think half wool and half cotton or whatever. We ended up not really liking ’em in the snow up in Canada ’cause like they just got wet and stayed wet, but They protected her feet a little bit from the cold when she was walking on dry ice or something. But we remember getting those at Banff, I can’t find ’em anywhere else in Banff National Park in a tiny little pet store. That was locally run. That causes those memories and that ability to just say Hey, this is something unique, I got it here and I could only get it here. Then it does dual purpose. One, it makes ’em wanna buy it ’cause it’s unique and gives you money. But two, it makes ’em remember you. 

Mary Arlington: And Instagram. 

Brian Linton: Instagram. Instagrammable moments. 

Mary Arlington: They’d turn around and post it that night on a blog or in a Facebook post. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Interesting. 

Mary Arlington: Expected the free publicity. 

Brian Searl: It’ll be really interesting to see and we don’t have enough time to talk about that at all today, but it would be really interesting to see what the Instagrammable moment is that we should talk in Outwired sometimes, Scott, the Instagrammable moment of the future.

Will it get to the view point where like our phone cameras or our watch or whatever. I have a really cool thing to share about tattoos too later, Scott on the show. But will it get to the point where the phone can like completely immerse you in experience? Could you do a selfie in a virtual world and share it with all the friends who aren’t camping with you in real time? Look at my experience, like I’m, it would be really interesting to see how that work, how people share things in a,

Brian Linton: I think you already sort of can do something like that. I would think though that the real Instagrammable moments , it’s changed so much over the last few years, really since the last four or five years with TikTok and the videofication of everything, this idea of pictures and Instagrammable snapshots is now, it’s really more about obviously content, but then the content is not just Hey, look at this pretty thing. It’s really about the stories behind things. That’s like our focus is very much on stories versus just on the finished product. I think stories are what almost have a defensibility from virtual reality in a way because, and that’s why I love this industry so much, by the way. I haven’t chirped in on the AI stuff, but I love this industry because it can be enhanced by AI, but it can never be taken over by AI, Because as long as humans

Brian Searl: No, it can be. So this is, and again, I don’t want interrupt, I want you to finish your thought, but we talked about this in Outwired, it can be supplemented by AI

’cause we were talking about 54% of people in New York City who don’t own cars, who can’t get outta the city or don’t wanna fight the traffic, but could experience a virtual campground and then be like, oh, I really like this. ’cause they never would’ve considered it before. So I think there’s a

Brian Linton: Correct. Yeah, it’s gonna help greatly with the marketing. Yeah. I don’t believe in the.

Brian Searl: I’m gonna replace it. I’m with you 

Brian Linton: VR aspect of Hey, I’m gonna go camping and stay in my apartment because I’m gonna be immersed in it. I think that’s.

Brian Searl: For sure, but there will be a lot of Gen Zers and people who will be like, this is my version of camping. Especially when you can feel it and.

Brian Linton: Smores over the stove top while they’re wearing a headset. The stove top becomes a campfire. 

Brian Searl: I’m not advocating for it or saying it’s better at all. I’m an outside guy. I’m just saying there’s gonna be a large portion of the population that doesn’t currently go camping now, they’re not gonna take away people.

Brian Linton: Sure.

Brian Searl: Who have never experienced camping, who that will be their version of camping. 

Mary Arlington: Once somebody has gone camping, they won’t go back to that. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Brian Linton: I think to the point. 

Mary Arlington: People are here for offering the experience. 

Brian Searl: But how do you then get them to that point? So my argument on the show was like, maybe this is a marketing opportunity. Maybe you spin up a digital version of your campground and they stay for a dollar a night. you could I don’t know, 10 million people for a dollar a night and introduce ’em to your real campground, and they come and spend $65, a $100, $150 So I view it as a marketing opportunity.

Brian Linton: Yeah.

Brian Searl: I don’t view it as a replacement. 

Brian Linton: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Yeah. AI and VR and all of is marketing enhancements and those that people embrace it are gonna do really well with it. And even like storytelling back to that, storytelling is enhanced greatly by LLMs Chat GPT or Claude or Gemini, any of those, because anybody’s able to become a better storyteller through social media because they can take the jumbled mush in their head and they can synthesize it into actual stories that they can then record and tell through social media.

So that the playing field is gonna get harder and harder with storytelling. But the idea that a lot of people are still stuck in when it comes to social media marketing is it’s about the finished product. And people think hey, like this beautiful campsite that I videoed and I cut and I edited and I put some inspirational music behind it is gonna attract people.

That’s not what attracts people these days on social media. It’s deeper stories why behind things. 

Brian Searl: For sure. A hundred percent.

Brian Linton: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Simon, I’m curious what you think. So obviously you run Camp Map, great company, provides a lot of digital maps, and this is a second shout out to you, but there’s a purpose for doing the second one, Simon.

But really, great company. Has recently doing, expanding over here to KOA and doing a lot more work in the United States. I’m curious what you think the future of mapping and guest information looks like, Simon. 

Simon Neal: Yeah, I mean we keep our maps in the 2D world at the moment, and I think they still belong there for some time.

Brian Searl: Agree. I agree a hundred percent. I’m just curious where you think it might go. 

Simon Neal: There’s plenty of ideas up here that we’re gonna build, but I think the end of day.

Brian Searl: Are you’re not gonna share them with us? Nobody watches the show. Just tell us all your secrets, man. 

Simon Neal: No, a map is a communication tool, right? So what do you wanna communicate? And it should be done in the easiest, simplest, most informative way possible. So that’s what we always aim for. It’s a bit like 3D television. Sounds great, extra dimension, but people don’t really like it very much. So looking at how we could expand that going into 3D if you wanna go there. But you just need to keep it a great experience. That’s the most important thing. What’s the tool there to do and make sure it does that the best it can do without trying to put bells and whistles on it, which often ends up spoiling the whole thing. But I think for sure we’re building a data set now where you could build a lot more on top of it.

Particularly with the AI. I’ve seen what Google is doing fragmented, street view images from satellite images. They’re filling in the gaps with the AI, so you could actually build quite a lot on top of what we already have. But for now, I think the experience is still okay as is, but in the future for sure, it’s gonna, it’s gonna get different.

Brian Searl: Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you. I don’t think I’m advocating to change the mapping experience I’m talking about, just like we’re talking about RV sites, if there is enough of a market for it, which I don’t think there is right now, but there’s probably going to be different subsets of people who look at mapping and like you said, the information in different ways.

So can we also provide a VR map? I have an AI that posts on LinkedIn for me on my feed. I’ve tailored it to be in my voice, but like it posted once couple months ago, I think, or a couple weeks ago, about like creating an eight bit like Minecraft map of your park, right? Just little stuff, those little things can help you stand out too. Even if they’re geared toward kids or adults or a specific group of people. And I’m not saying you should do that, but if you identify a potential market for that, that could enhance your revenue or help you, then maybe that’s better. So 

Simon Neal: Yeah, for sure. And like I said, the way we’re building our product, it’s set up to build stuff like that on top of it quite easily. And I think it’s the market demand, like you said, if somebody comes along and says, yeah, I really wanna have this, or we identify something new, it’s gonna really add value. It’s gonna be fairly easy to build that on top.

Brian Searl: Yep. 

Simon Neal: Yep.

Brian Searl: Mary’s gotta leave here in a second. Mary, do you wanna do the campground real quick? I have a made up campground for you.

Mary Arlington: I just wanna talk a few minutes about Rivers and Rockies, but I’ve about lost my voice for the day. 

Brian Searl: Let me give you the briefly about the campground and you talk about Rivers and Rockies, while you recover your voice. Is that okay? Alright, with that, Jessica, can you hit the screen share on my camera?

There. Okay. Dunno if you guys can see this, this’ll still be bigger. So this is burnout Bob, our Insane campground consultant, Scott knows this. And so I said make up a campground that’s never existed. Burnout Bob style. And it’s called Wild Panic Pines Campground and Emotional Recovery Center, where the only thing organized is the chaos.

It’s located somewhere between a haunted lumber mill and abandoned cheese factory and a portal to the screaming void. GPS doesn’t work here. You’ll know you’ve arrived when your radio starts playing only bagpipes. And we won’t go through all this right, but features and attractions, the triangle of mild peril.

A section of campsites arranged in a geometric shape, proven by Bob’s cousin who got kicked out of community college for turning a spreadsheet into a salad to increase camp drama. Ooh, that’s good, Mary. That would be good. Can you imagine having one of those at your park? 

Mary Arlington: Love it. 

Brian Searl: Every triangle corner has a picnic table with one broken leg and a passive aggressive squirrel.

The mystery pool, water temperature, unknown contents, also unknown, may be haunted by the ghost of a lifeguard who is too chill. Theme nights include survival bingo. Win prizes by locating matches a raccoon or your missing dignity. Margaritas and minor injuries. Self-explanatory. Reverse karaoke. The audience sings, the performer cries. Chainsaw Larry Whitland and Helen Pavilion. I don’t even know if I could say that two times fast. Bring wood. Leave a changed person. Cry Once he respects that. What else do we got? Rules.

Mary Arlington: How much does AI say this is gonna cost us? 

Brian Searl: I don’t know. That’s a good que. Oh, it does say that. We’re gonna get there. We gotta do the rules. Quiet hours are whenever Chainsaw Larry is napping. If you see something strange in the woods, don’t report it. Write a haiku about it. All raccoons are staff. No exceptions. And no refunds ever. Even if you never arrive, especially if you do.

Primitive site is only $7 and one secret. A full hookup costs $42 in a small vial of your tears. A glamping year is $138. And a performance of interpretive dance at check-in and cabin. We don’t speak of the cabin. I like it. What do you think, Mary? 

Mary Arlington: I think he did a good job. 

Brian Searl: All right. I mean, it wasn’t me. It was burnout Bob. So tell us about Rivers and Rockies. 

Mary Arlington: Rivers and Rockies. It’s basically a state association, like many state associations like many states have for the campground owners. And it is just got a larger net. There’s about 13 states that are eligible for membership and they’re mostly states that have never experienced the benefits, the wide array of benefits that the parks in South Dakota and Colorado have had for 56, 55 years.

So we took Colorado and South Dakota’s associations. The members threw together ideas of what benefits they liked and didn’t like, chewed it up and threw away some and enhanced some and kept some, and then spread the umbrella across all these other states that hadn’t been experiencing it.

So this I don’t know if we’re eight months old yet, seven months, eight months old, something like that. And it’s just a really exciting opportunity to see the blending of Colorado and South Dakota’s associations, which I used to be the executive, I still am. But when they were standalone associations, I was the executive director of each. And I saw how they had common things and how they did things differently.

For example, Colorado could use more in advocacy. And South Dakota has an excellent advocacy team and process in place. And so learning from South Dakota and applying it Oklahoma or Nebraska or Colorado, any of these states. And it’s just really a good opportunity for the park owners who would like to have a little more localized kind of organization working with them. And it’s a lot of fun actually. And here we are, seven or eight months old.

Brian Searl: I wanna try to, I’m curious ’cause I always try to ask a spin you on the head question and I’m really sorry we didn’t get to you for so long in the show. And if you have to jump off, please. I’m just curious. I think it’s an interesting concept because you’ve been around obviously and helping campgrounds for much longer than I have. Although I feel like it gets older for me, I think it’s 16 or 17 years for me now. It’s just crazy to look back on and think. But 

Mary Arlington: I remember when you came into the industry, I’m on year 26, I think. 

Brian Searl: Nice. Yeah. So lots of experience, lots of wisdom. So that makes this question even more interesting I think few people have an opportunity to do this, right?

To come in and say, we’re going to not, we’re gonna create something new based on what we already know. there are a lot of associations that exist that can improve and have improved and continue to improve. But there’s very few opportunity to say, we’re gonna create something brand new and learn from all the things we already know and bring it all together into one, like really good association. So I want to ask that question that you think I’m going to, what are some of the great things that you think came out of that? But before you answer that, I want to try to spin it on the head and ask an interesting question. What’s something that you were like, oh no, that can’t be part of our association. We learned that doesn’t work. 

Mary Arlington: Marketing. Marketing is one that we Marketing. Yep. Marketing. We spit out Colorado and South Dakota still have Camp Colorado and camp in South Dakota, and they still do really well. But how does somebody like me say come camp in Nebraska when I have zero, one or five parks in membership at this point?

So we can’t, and if we would bring Nebraska marketing into South Dakota or Colorado, then there are already preset opportunities with grants and programs through the tourism office that are very specific to within the boundaries of a particular state. So we couldn’t. And we simply said, not gonna happen.

Now we will continue Colorados and South Dakotas on their behalf. But, so that was when we spit out. One of the things we did a lot better was when we created this from scratch, basically pulling together all these ideas, we changed the membership year. It used to be based on the calendar year.

It isn’t anymore. When you come up for air in September you come up for air clean up your park and all that. You’re gonna move into your off season. You’re gonna be making changes for next year. And it isn’t, it doesn’t make sense that you drop membership midway through that cycle.

So our membership year for the parks is October through September. So just one of the examples of how we got smarter. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. interesting. Okay. I think we’re always. Is there anything else you wanna say about Rivers and Rockies? I’m really sorry, I meant to get to it earlier. We just had such a great conversation.

We were going back and forth. We never get to everything we want. We’ll have you back on the show to talk more about it. 

Mary Arlington: That’d be great. Yep. I need to be in another meeting, but it’s a pleasure to be with everybody and thank you so much. 

Brian Searl: Real quick, give your website URL before we go. 

Mary Arlington: rrolc.org. 

Brian Searl: Thank you Mary. I appreciate it. 

Mary Arlington: Thanks Brian. Bye. 

Brian Searl: Final thoughts everybody. We’ll start Simon please and then obviously share where they can learn more about Camp Map. 

Simon Neal: I think just on the stuff we talked about last month is things are looking good for the season. think in the next four weeks I’ll restart to kick off here in Europe with the first big holidays of the schools.

So looking good and very positive so far. Camp Map, yeah, you can find us at campmap.com. We help campgrounds improve marketing guest experience with professional digital maps. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you Simon. I appreciate it Scott. 

Scott Bahr: My closing thoughts are that we should look ahead till later in the season this year.

I think we might, have some things settle. I think things might, rebound a little bit in terms of, know a lot of people are, have some concerns and stuff of where we’re at right now. I’m relatively optimistic about later in the season, the August, September timeframe.

Brian Searl: Good. That’s awesome. and then we’re gonna find out more about Carin Consulting?

Scott Bahr: carinconsulting.com. I won’t spell it out, but on there we have a resource library and we have a bunch of the reports I’ve done with Brian as well as the overall, Camping Outdoor Hospitality. It’s a free resource for everyone. There’s a lot of information there and always reach out with questions.

Brian Searl: And last but not least, Brian, I know like, again, I keep apologizing to everybody. I would love to talk more about your franchise model. We’ll have to have you back on the show. Sometimes these conversations just go this way. But is there anything else that we need to know that, about Linton Hospitality or your, sorry, your, it’s a different company. Why do I have Linton Hospitality in my notes? 

Brian Linton: It’s my holding company, but Ferncrest is the brand. We have a hotel, we have a hotel in Philadelphia, but then we have Ferncrest, which is our Glamp ground concept, which is being franchised across the United States.

We have many, many in development right now. It’s sort of a sleeper mode. Not many people would know about it. But due to our large personal social media following, we have, I personally have maybe about 750,000 people that follow me on social media. So that’s fueled a lot of, again, back to that storytelling and the ability to get a lot of people into our world and our sphere and, it’s opened up a lot of opportunities for us and we’re developing a lot of glam grounds as a result. So all under the Ferncrest brand, creating sort of systems, processes, marketing all behind the scenes through the franchise network that’s gonna allow landowners and aspirational glam ground owners to open up glam grounds with us rather than doing it on their own.

It’s scary to do it on your own and, lot of people want the cocoon and the safety net of a brand and working with somebody like us. 

Brian Searl: And what is the one thing, just ’cause we have to go, and I promise we’ll have you back on the show, I’m sorry, the one thing that sets Ferncrest apart? 

Brian Linton: The one thing that sets Ferncrest apart is, yeah,

Brian Searl: You can only pick one man, we don’t have enough time. No, I’m kidding. I know there’s more, but one thing where you’re like, yes, this is why Ferncrest. 

Brian Linton: Sure. I would say the wellness amenities, the wellness focus, it’s all about, touching into that modern need for health and wellness. And yes, it’s about family and it’s about a whole bunch of other things. At the end of the day, we create outdoor refugee, like outdoor spaces for people to really rest, recoup and rejuvenate in nature and in a luxurious way, not in a Camping way. ’cause lot of people like me that have young kids and don’t want to go through the work.

So it’s the core elements of glamping, supercharged by our brand, supercharged by our operations and our customer service and all the things that make it special. 

Brian Searl: And if they’re interested in learning more about Ferncrest, where do they go? 

Brian Linton: I actually recommend people, first and foremost check me on Instagram or Facebook. It’s called Finding Promised Land is my personal behind the scenes accounts. That’s where I document the whole process of building what we do. So Finding Promised Land, and then if they wanna check more about the business model and franchising, findingpromisedland.com as well, is what they can look at and that’ll take them into all sorts of different areas.

Brian Searl: I gotta ask, I know Scott, if it’s in Simon, if you wanna jump out, I gotta ask though, like, where’d find Finding Promised Land come from? I’m just curious. 

Brian Linton: So, in Covid 2020, we left Philadelphia for a year and we lived in a town called Promised Land. We bought an old motel, we moved into it. We lived in it Schitt’s Creek style and that was the informal name for that town.

It’s right next to a Promised Land. It’s called Promised Land State Park. It’s called Promised Land. And so it was inspired by that, but now it’s very much, we don’t live there anymore. But it’s very inspired by that sort of journey of finding Promised Land. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you for being on the show, Brian.

I really appreciate it. Thanks to my one remaining guest who stuck with us, Simon, and you’re in Europe too. It’s late for you. Everybody else I just can’t handle this. It’s too late in the midday for me. We gotta go. but I appreciate so check out Camp Map, check out Brian, at Ferncrest. I really appreciate you guys being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats and we’ll see you next week guys. Take care 

You 

Simon Neal: too. Bye