MC Fireside Chats – September 17th, 2025

Rafael Correa: Hello, hello and welcome to Modern Campground Fireside Chats. I am your host today, sitting in for Brian Searl. My name is Rafel Correa. I’m the president, CFO here at Blue Water, and I am joined by an amazing, wonderful all-star cast of characters here. Jeff, Mike, Sandy, welcome, welcome to the show. 

Jeff Hoffman: Hey, Raf.

Sandy Ellingson: Hey here. 

Rafael Correa: Awesome. We’re gonna jump right into it. So I thought maybe, why don’t we just do a quick round robin, everybody do just a quick introduction of who you are your connection to the outdoor hospitality industry, and then maybe just finish off with something that is peaking your interest right now that you’re passionate about or that you’re spending a lot of time on whatever the, one of those three things might be.

Sandy, why don’t you kick us off? 

Sandy Ellingson: So I serve as a Campground advocate. I’m a retired technologist on a consulting firm and love Camping, so I was an RVer first I build bridges between the Campground industry and campgrounds. And right now I am really passionate about a new project that I am working on that will actually facilitating, facilitate helping both the industry and campgrounds by partnering on service.

So I am looking for campgrounds who are interested in being a part of that project, and I can tell people more about it later. 

Rafael Correa: Very interesting. Jeff. 

Jeff Hoffman: Ah, yeah. My name is Jeff Hoffman. I started Camp Strategy as a consulting firm trying to help smaller mom and pops and individual campgrounds get less, stress free and get profitable.

The one thing I’m looking, forward to a conversation is to talk about where everybody thinks Camping is headed for the 26th season, because we’ve gotta always be looking forward, not backwards.

Rafael Correa: Great. Go ahead, Mike. 

Mike Harrison: Mike Harrison, Chief Operating Officer of CRR Hospitality. We own and manage outdoor hospitality, RV and glamping resorts and properties.

We also do third party management and consulting. And I would like to hear from Jeff how he could make me more stress free and make my properties more money. Let’s talk after the call. And yes, for me the single biggest focus is on what’s gonna happen in 2026 using our magic eight ball and understanding how we’re crafting our budget. Flexing our strategies to accommodate what I think we all believe will be a down year. 

Rafael Correa: Yeah, definitely. That’s a great place to start. Maybe why don’t we just do get a pulse, right? What we felt happened this year, what we heard happen this year, what little data points that we have.

I agree, looking forward is the only direction we should look, but the retrospect is always helpful in that forward look. And turn it over to you guys and then obviously I’ll share my 2 cents from our portfolio and how we did. But it wasn’t a, it wasn’t a breakout year.

I don’t know that we’re at the bottom. We’re somewhere hovering around the bottom in my perspective. That was the bad, mostly on the RV. I can tell you from the Blue Water side of the world that we saw the further. I feel like that, that if my Campground had a naturally longer distance for those guests to travel, the more destination parks may be tied to national parks that don’t have significant MSAs, metro areas around them.

Those are the ones that saw the biggest slide in revenues this year. The more local stuff it did perform. Some even performed better than last year. And the one like bright shining star for us, and I can share that, I’m really excited about is the vacation rentals. The unique accommodations, cottages, park models, all of those actually performed and are showing a upward trajectory versus a downward like the transient RV. And then obviously significant growth in the long term. That was our, 2025 in a nutshell.

Mike Harrison: I’ll just say ditto. That’s how I’ll answer. Very similar trends for us. We in general, I think have a better lens because every single one of our properties is in the southern part of the US. So we always know, at least six, eight months in advance, if Q one’s, pacing is different.

And so in 2023, Brian was calling me Mr. Doom and Gloom. ’cause on these calls I was already saying 2024 isn’t gonna be as spectacular as we think it is. And then we got to 2024 and then obviously 2025 and then 2026. And I think every indication, everything you read Jeff Kreider just released that.

I don’t wanna call it a great article ’cause it’s not great news, but some good article about, the snowbirds and pacing, travel and Leisure released the information about transient travel to the US being down 8%, nationally and all the international travel. We obviously know about the Canadian and Mexico changes.

And what that all says is, we just gotta change our strategies. There’s certainly gonna be less transient. And as you already mentioned, pivoting to long term and really what is, I don’t wanna say the bread and butter, but the heart of the industry and how the industry started is in that vein.

So we’re seeing the same thing, some encouraging trends. I think the upper price is doing better than the mid price. And vacation rentals is an example of that. And the hotel business is seeing the exact same thing. The upper price hotels and the economy of hotels are in a good spot, and the middle hotels are the ones that are struggling, mid-tier hotels, excuse me.

So that’s how we’re approaching our budget season and how we’re looking at 2026 in general.

Rafael Correa: I appreciate that, Mike. 

Sandy Ellingson: And I think it’s, I think we have to go deeper and we can’t just say we’re gonna have less transient traffic. The question is, why are we gonna have less transient traffic? And I’ve been working closely with Scott Bahr and some other people doing research, and one of the things, or several of the things we’re seeing is that, one, we have more people leaving the indu, leaving Camping than we are bringing in.

We had a hugely loyal, older crowd that constantly traveled. They were used to Camping. Now they’re not, they’re aging out, but we’re not bringing a younger demographic. Why are we not bringing in the younger demographics? First, we’ve got more competition. Second we’ve priced ourself out in a lot of ways of what they can afford.

And third, we all did, A lot of us did away with tent Camping, which was the gateway drug. For RV Camping. And so we’ve gotta really hone in and identify why are we not bringing these younger people in? And if we don’t, we will continue to decline. The second thing is, I feel like there is a strong case to be made, which can’t truly identify this in research yet, but I’m pushing to get it with the RV industry as a whole and what’s happening with the sales of the product.

I just did a quick thing ’cause I work with a lot of the property management softwares, love all those guys. Did some calls and said, hey, talked to a bunch of my parks and said, when somebody cancels, will you ask me a question and keep a little note for me? Why are you canceling of, this is not scientific, but of the ones that I got back from my parks, which was about 200 and I think 17.

30% of the people said their unit was either in the shop, they were concerned about their unit and being able to travel a farther distance. Or they had bought a unit in April expecting to camp all summer and still didn’t even have possession of it. And so this is impacting our occupancy if people are buying units and then can’t camp in ’em.

And so there’s some things that are just, we need to catch up on our, how we are bringing new people into our industry, but also how the RV side of the industry. We need to build better bridges and work together. And that’s part of the project that I’m on. And I do believe we’re gonna be able to solve this, but it’s kinda like what you said, Mike, we’ve been sitting here for years talking about, oh, this is gonna be a bad year. Oh, we don’t have as many, we don’t, transient is down, but nobody’s really digging deep and we’re not working together to determine why is transient down. And that’s where I think we really need to focus.

My second thing is that, and this is what I tell all my parks, is stop selling a site and start selling an experience. That’s what people are looking for. And every park, I don’t care how small you are, I don’t care how old you are, can create experiences by partnering with things around them, by bringing in food trucks. Those are the things that younger people are looking for.

And then the last thing we’ve got, there’s a really cool new tool that’s just come out that I’m really recommending and it actually is where you see when you go to buy something, it says for easy payments, right? Yeah. And the, alright all that does is get young people in a cycle of paying high interest rates on, paying over time. It’s, I don’t like that, but there’s a new tool that’s out that’s more like a layaway plan and I’m testing it now, but there’s three things it’s doing for my park.

One, it is increasing the younger people that are booking because they’re getting to pay over time. Two, it is extending their booking window because, since they are gonna get to pay over time, they’re saying I’ll book four months out, not a week out. And then third, because the parks are prepared, when that guest gets ready to leave. Their exit, their departure email, we’re sending it out a day before they leave.

And so it says, Hey, make sure to stop by and rebook for next year and you can pay over 12 months. And so they’re rebooking. So it’s increasing the repeat business the cost of this tool. I can’t share the name yet, but it’s only, they, the way they make their money is 1.5%. That’s it. That’s cheaper than any of the online booking tools, right?

So why would we not wanna use that? So those are my things that I’m super excited about right now that I think can actually make 2026 a better year for us. 

Rafael Correa: It’s all innovation, right? And if you’re not constantly reinventing yourself and finding those new angles you might as well be dead because you’re, you will be eventually.

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah.

Rafael Correa: Jeff, how about you? How was how was the 2025 end of season for you? 

Jeff Hoffman: Most, a lot of the parks that I’ve worked with were up for the season, but that’s because they had a lot of room to grow. So we got in and changed some things. So they are doing good. The one part that I actually own, which is this is, it’s what, 60th year or something? So it’s well established.

Rafael Correa: Wow.

Jeff Hoffman: We only had about four, 4% growth, so it was a little slow, but it still, we were positive this year only had one park that was down. And I’m trying to figure that out because it was an established park and it didn’t do well this year. That’s something we gotta dig into.

Why, what did we miss, the marketing? Were we looking at the wrong crowd? Why was, why was that part down? Had to be, there’s gotta be a reason. So we’ve gotta dig into that. And as for me, this is my favorite time of year because this is budgeting season for the Northern Parks and somewhat for the Southern parks.

But to me, this is when I get really pumped because we’re looking forward, we’re trying to take a look at what we did right in ’25, what we did wrong in ’25, and correct those things in ’26. I don’t think any of my budgets are gonna be overly optimistic because I have no idea where the economy’s going and how that’s gonna affect people.

As you have different properties, Mike and Raf some of them go to a higher end where they’re always gonna have discretionary income. Some of the parks are down in the blue collar. And lower range where that discretionary income might start being affected. So that’s gotta come into play on, depending on the type of Campground that you’ve got.

Rafael Correa: Absolutely. 

Jeff Hoffman: But yeah, no, said, end of the year. 

Rafael Correa: Hot off the press, the Fed Reserve announced a quarter point interest rate cut. I don’t think there’s any giant surprise there. How do we think, how do we think that impacts the, the more real estate transactional side of this business next year?

The current trajectory of the Fed and the government, transactionally, this was an extremely slow year on the resort side. As far as sales of properties where do we think that heads in 2026? 

Jeff Hoffman: Do you? It depends on your outlook, whether you think the Fed is. Gonna keep cutting by quarters or if they’re gonna cut this quarter and see what happens with inflation, because they’ve cut a quarter point. We were talking before the show started, the Fed is just in an right now, no win situation. 

Rafael Correa: Yep. It’s a tricky one. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. And I, yeah, I would love to see it come down to six because unfortunately one of my mortgages coming up for renewal. And I would selfishly

Rafael Correa: Yeah, selfishly, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Jeff Hoffman: I’d like to see ’em cut it by a point. But I got a feeling that’s going to it. It’ll spur business, but I don’t know if it’s going to help with the inflation and everything else that we’re gonna see.

Rafael Correa: Yeah. And I think that goes to what Sandy’s talking about, pricing ourselves out. The reality is that.

While rates have gone up and it actually the affordability of Campground is something that we absolutely have to take a hard look at and analyze. The reality is that margins for most owners haven’t improved, right? Because our costs are going up dramatically as well, whether it’s insurance the cost of labor, everything is going up.

And so these rates that we’re charging, it’s not like owners are really pocketing the delta here. A lot of it’s trying to keep the justification for the investment alive. 

Jeff Hoffman: Right. If you look at, say, sorry, if you look at your three major I when I said that 

Sandy Ellingson: I’m shutting up. Go ahead Jeff.

You guys are through from next. Come on. Okay. 

You first. 

Jeff Hoffman: Alright. If you look at your three major expenses to run a Campground, which are insurance labor, and utilities, they’re all going up. They’re not really controllable. And if wages keep skying, we’ve got no choice but to go up in rates at a time when people are coming down.

The third part or fourth part of that is real estate taxes. I have a county where the auditor has decided that he’s going to tax us on NOI and not comparative.

Rafael Correa: Ouch.

Jeff Hoffman: So I had a Campground that is on the books for 400,000. He thinks it’s worth 4 million, which it isn’t because he’s doing his formulas wrong, but they need to figure out how to get more money.

So they’re gonna start looking at different formulas to figure out real estate taxes. And at least in Ohio, I know other, every other state is gonna be different, but they’re all running into the same thing as they get federal funds cut, they’re at the schools. They’re looking for ways to get that money back.

Mike Harrison: I think it’s always important to talk about State of the Union and talk about, what our conditions are macro and micro, but there’s nothing you can do about what’s gonna happen with your insurance or, minimum wage or, those are all things that are conditions not uncontrollable.

And so I think that’s why, you mentioned earlier, Raf, and you and I talked last week, right? Necessity is the mother of all invention. And DoorDash. One of the best things that has ever been invented. Especially if you order.

Rafael Correa: Not from my waistline.

Mike Harrison: That’s right. Especially if you order crumble cookies. It happened as a result of COVID. Not going into restaurants seeing you survive. And they found ways around to, to do it. And I think you guys had a great example on your LinkedIn page, that you announced another new partnership this morning with the thirsty promotion.

And I think that’s, what the owners and operators that are gonna succeed in this tough condition need to do. Do you just, and I say this to our team all the time, right? Do you just let the circumstance happen to you or do you do something about the circumstance? And the owners and campgrounds and glamping and resorts that are, just not thinking about tomorrow and thinking about innovation and thinking about invention and thinking about new marketing and thinking about changing marketing, segmentation they’re doomed to, have a very tough year.

And you just can’t accept that, right? Your owner can’t accept it, your cashflow can’t accept it. And more of a philosophical point really than anything else is, owners and campgrounds, and hopefully it’s some of these, whether it’s the glamping show or the, OHCE show coming up, I don’t know that there’s a lot of sessions or topics, they’re gonna cover it.

It’s a lot of the generic stuff that we’ve been doing. There’s some newer topics, wonderful topics about advanced revenue management that, particularly people are gonna be speaking about. But I think that’s where some of these 20 groups or, if there’s a outdoor hospitality think tank, how do we move forward in this new normal, without just suffering.

Rafael Correa: No, it’s a great point, Mike. And I think, the beauty of our free market economy is this, it’s a very much survival of the fittest and who evolves the quickest and the nice part about our industry, and honestly, one of the reasons I love it so much, Blue Water, we also live in the hotel industry, hotel world, and, but our core competency and where we focus, 95% of our energy is in the RV world, RV and, Campground industry.

And the reason for that is because it has so many levers still to pull to create value. It’s not as mature of an industry as the traditional hospitality industry, which is much more subject to the cycles. It’s been leaned out as pretty much as aggressively as it can be. We still have opportunities to find efficiencies, get creative technology improvements, service and customer service level improvements.

That I think is what honestly gets me excited about the future, right? About the future of this industry. And at the end of the day, I think that what’s gonna happen, the lead up to this and all the fervor of buying and people buying on betting on the come of RV or betting on, those COVID high numbers that they might have acquired on, like the pain is starting to set in, right. And that pain eventually, you’re either gonna have to be dynamic enough to whether the storm and evolve out of it or bow out of it.

And I think that’s what’s gonna be interesting to see in the coming, year or two is how does that shake out as we’re coming to that end of that five year term note that originally financed that deal. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. And what I was gonna say earlier is when I look at things from a higher view viewpoint since I work with both the industry and the campgrounds.

And so when I said we’ve priced ourself out, I wasn’t talking about just my parks because i’m a huge advocate for my parks. I felt like the rates needed to come up. So many of the, my favorite parks couldn’t keep up with their infrastructure ’cause their rates were so low. And I was perfectly willing as a camper to pay more to keep them around.

But when I’m looking at it holistically, the cost of an RV went up significantly. And early ownership, gas prices went up. So travel was more difficult. Cars that you had to use to tow ’em went up. And so there was just this overall increase that made it harder for the younger person to get into Camping, which is why I love the idea of understanding those dynamics and then saying, okay, let’s bring back tent Camping, let’s go and revisit car Camping.

Toby O’Rourke spoke at the breakfast that they do in Elkhart and she, when she mentioned car Camping, they, all, the eyes in the room were like this big because they’re like, people are Camping in their cars.

Rafael Correa: Oh yeah. Still Camping.

Sandy Ellingson: And my camp, when my campgrounds heard that term, first they went, I don’t want, a homeless person living in their car in my Campground.

What they weren’t understanding is most of these people are spending 2,500 to $5,000 on equipment and they’re Camping in their cars, but specifically they put up their tent, but they sleep in the car ’cause they feel safer. There were all these amazing reasons that Toby had done the research on that she was sharing with us.

We need to be embracing some of those things. We need to focus our marketing more on a closer market, understanding the cost of gas, those kinds of things. Again, I’m a strategic thinker anyway, and so this is natural for me, but I, and for a lot of the smaller campgrounds, they don’t have somebody, like Mike or Jeff or Raf to look at all this really higher level things.

But I do believe if we’re sharing that information to help us all look at how we need to improve, we raise, we all raise the level of Camping and improve the industry as a whole.

Rafael Correa: I totally agree with you, Sandy and you’ve got a foot in both worlds, right? The RV world and the Campground world, and, which is great.

And I, one of the things is I’ve matured in this industry and grown up and understand who is who in the zoo. I’ve always been taken aback honestly by the, quite frankly, the lack of cooperation and collaboration. Not because there, it’s not a, it’s not a between the RV industry and the RV campgrounds and the places where the people, we share the same consumer.

We’re providing very different services. We’re very different businesses by our nature their manufacturing, where real estate and hospitality. But we have this very similar, the same exact customer that why wouldn’t we want to, attack it, cradle to grave together. But I can tell you that in my experience, that I’m seeing more of collaboration, more of that cooperation and more ideas about how we work together now than I’ve ever heard before, which is exciting to me. And this is part of that evolution. This is part of that, how we grow.

I’m curious, from anybody on the panel here, what are some ways that, you know, ’cause at the end of the day, COVID was a great thing for our industry, gave us great exposure. We couldn’t have bought that kind of exposure in ad dollars that we got through the COVID era.

But now it’s up to us, right? It’s up to us to, to drive the future forward and drive demand for our industry. The cruise lines are pushing what they’re selling. The airlines are pushing what they’re, the hotels are out there pushing the resorts, the Disney worlds. They’re all pushing and we’re competing against all of these options, what are some ways that we get out there as an industry, collaboratively working together to go nurture and capture this customer?

Jeff Hoffman: One of, one of the things that right now helps with my Campground is and not to push any one thing, but because it’s a KOA. We do have national advertising that’s focused at certain groups depending on where we decide that the market is at that point for Camping that’s something individual campgrounds can’t quite do.

Even with your groups, I don’t know how specific you can get your marketing, but I’m sure it’s better than the average guy. And one of the reasons I look at that, ’cause you had brought up the hotel industry and although they keep building and building more hotels, what it does, it’s driving out the weak performers or the older hotels in that area.

And we haven’t evolved to that point yet in the Campground business. But we’re going to get there. If people don’t keep trying to monetize their campgrounds and staying where they were, they’re gonna start looking like that old roadside resort that ends up doing just weeklys at a motel. They’ve gotta look at the overall perspective, where the industry is going, and who they’re actually competing against, and who they’re competing for.

Rafael Correa: So you don’t wanna be the Howard Johnson is what you’re saying? 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. And, we haven’t reached that point yet. But there’s gonna be some campgrounds that no matter what I do, I can’t save because they didn’t stay, they didn’t stay up on, on with the market. They didn’t stay up with their repairs and upgrading their stuff to, to accommodate the modern campers.

Rafael Correa: Yeah. I was, I read an article the other day about Howard Johnson and the history mean, and it’s wild because both Howard Johnson and Marriott started as restaurants. They started as like soda shops and evolved into the hospitality world that we know today. One of ’em is still with us. One of ’em is no more. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. And Howard Johnson’s was like, yeah, it’s the same thing. Holiday Inn is still around. But at one time they were the biggest thing around. There was a smaller one called L and K that built small units throughout Indiana, Ohio, and that. And they crashed and burned. And even big companies can crash if they don’t keep up.

Rafael Correa: That’s right. 

Mike Harrison: I think our vision statement for CRR has evolved the industry to the modern world. When I came into this space from the hospitality space and the lodging space, after 30 years, I clearly saw, it was antiquated and there are still park owners out there that have an AOL email address, right? Or they have the website that they built. 

Oh, there you go. They have the website that they built 20 years ago and they haven’t updated it. And, their pictures are 480 pixelated. And unfortunately, what happened to the hotel business is probably gonna happen to the RV, outdoor hospitality business.

And 25 years ago, John’s roadside in the Knights inn, they started to, mom and pops got started to, get bought out by larger institutional investors. And if you did not keep up, then you became or like the Home Depots and Lowe’s to the small construction stores.

And I think, we’re gonna see the same thing here. Is, to your point, Jeff, if these, campgrounds do not evolve their technology, both digital and because it’s gonna be more competitive in the past, you build it, they would come, these, a lot of these campgrounds have been there for 50 years and haven’t needed to do anything.

Now that there’s so much more competition and there’s so much new supply and the new supply that’s coming in is far more sophisticated with marketing and digital and focusing on the customer experience and AI and all those other things and these other campgrounds to be left behind, if they’re not.

So I think that’s, Raf, to answer your question, what are we doing? We focus on experiential hospitality and, providing the experience. If you look on App My Community, you’ll see a new video that was posted it’s a promotional video for the company, but, featured one of our properties and one of our, canine influencers.

And it just shows exactly that. It’s just a very, modern take on what people are looking for, right? The days of static pictures of a beautiful pool, that just doesn’t get you the customer. It needs to be experiencing the pool and the kids jumping in and splashing in the pool and, the days of pictures of RV sites it’s gonna continue to evolve.

That’s not what people are looking for. And as AI continues to change the iterative search and the generative search for how people are finding campgrounds and how that’s gonna change for SEO. All of those things matter even more. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to paid ads, Google rankings, sponsored ads, SEO, ’cause it’s already changing.

I’m sure you’ve all done this, if you put in RV campgrounds near. Sometimes it pulls up the random, the historical, the way we’ve seen it with sponsored ads and a map and a list. And sometimes, AI will, Gemini will pull up and it’ll say, oh, if you’re looking for a great Campground in the Verde Valley, there’s three that really come to mind, blah, blah, blah.

So what’s the next evolution of that? Booking tools, into the AI generative search, as some of you have probably seen as TikTok go, with the booking tools there. So it’s changing and it’s changing fast, and I remember seeing these same things in the hotel industry and, people were poo-pooing, the mobile, when I first started to yeah, mobile is now, 6% of our reservations, it’ll never grow any, any further than that.

Now it’s 70%. And if you look at the stats in our industry, it’s no different, right? It has continued to, so folks who don’t have their websites, I could go on and on. Sorry, I went off a little tangent there. 

Rafael Correa: No, and I you’re absolutely right Mike. And I think that, you really highlight a huge point, and I’ve had this experience, personally in our portfolio.

Having the wrong digital marketing strategy, which is inclusive of your website, your paid advertising, your SEO, and now your, the even how your sites are searchable by AI agents, like all of those things are just so incredibly critical to capturing new customers and new market share.

Obviously, your guest experience and what you’re doing on site is critical to maintain your customer base. But, we had a hotel last year that we partnered with the wrong person. We thought they had the local market knowledge, and we gave them the responsibility of our digital advertising, but they didn’t have experience specifically in hospitality.

They were market knowledgeable, but not hotel knowledgeable. And the reality is, I’m not trying to market to locals. I’m trying to market to people that are coming to that market, which is always a unique challenge, right? And when we took it over this year and said, all right I think we can do a better job.

We saw an exponential, I’m talking about a 18% jump in our revenues this year by doing it the right way. Same hotel, right? Same, everything, the same. And it’s been exciting to see it. And it, and again, it just shows the importance of that. Comprehensive digital marketing strategy to be found to be discovered, to become the next favorite park or favorite property for someone else.

Jeff Hoffman: Yep. And then we were also talking about, when you look at technology, I just gave a talk to a 20 group about how to start looking and implementing technology across your existing Campground. But if you wanna scale and have more parks, you definitely have to embrace technology to be able to scale up.

And one of those is, you brought up that initially online reservations in the hotel business were, yeah, 6%. Then they went, 30%, 50%, 70%. And now it’s about, I’d say 85%. We used to have a call center for all of our properties where we employed like 10 people that did nothing but answer the phone and make reservations at every other property.

And we got down to, we sent it back to the front desk because they could handle the volume because everything was coming in online. And now we’re looking at, and I think we’ve talked a little bit before the show of trying to figure out how to get AI to be our agent for answering the phone because it doesn’t have bad days, it doesn’t have a personality, it doesn’t have anything to do and it doesn’t miss phone calls.

So that is one of the next things we look at, is to increase our phone coverages through technology. 

Rafael Correa: Yeah, that’s an exciting evolution that’s happening real time. And I think, Mike, we talked a little bit earlier, it’s, you described it very accurately when you’re saying like the tool, maybe feels like it’s an elementary school right now, but in a few months it’ll be in middle school, that it’ll be in high school.

And that’s how quickly it evolves and learns. And so it’s a matter of time before it’s, and not much time, quite frankly, for that to evolve into a meaningful tool that really helps capture business that you otherwise could potentially be missing or subject to whoever’s answering it at.

Jeff Hoffman: The more people that adapt it, like Mike, he is, being one of the educators of the system, hopefully we all benefit from his pain. And when we adapt the system that it’s going to be perfect. Thank you Mike. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. Yeah. Mike’s not just cutting edge, he’s bleeding edge.

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. 

Mike Harrison: I always, I’m sure you’re all familiar with Simon Sinek and you know the story of why, and he has the chart. He didn’t create it, but he uses the chart of the law of diffusion of innovation. And they’re the early adopters that sit on the front of the bell chart and the late adopters. And, he describes that, the early adopters are the ones like the Wright brothers who break things and break your arms and et cetera.

And the late adopters are the ones that like the only reason they don’t have a rotary phone anymore is because they don’t make them anymore. And then, there’s the middle bell curve. And we think it’s important to innovate the space and. Rising tide raises all ships, right?

And the more the outdoor hospitality benefits and grows we wanna participate in that, right? We want to drive it forward. We wanna push, whether it’s with this AI technology or whether it’s the revenue management or whether it’s some of our marketing we wanna push everybody, to evolve so that we can become as well known as the, lodging industry and a just a different kind of option.

And we have so much more flexibility because not only are we vacation option, but we’re also living option. And, so in many ways it’s a more stable, cash asset. It’s more insulated for downturns. With the type of segmentation that we have. Getting to that point it’ll take several more years and Raf’s doing great work and OHI is, our talking about, classifications of the tax goods for the REITs and that will also help as we get more investment into the space. So I think those are the things that we just gotta continue to work on. 

Rafael Correa: Yeah. 

Mike Harrison: And it’s. 

Rafael Correa: But it’s also why it’s interesting, right? It’s what gets us up and gets us moving during the day. I think we’re all by our nature problem solvers, and, we welcome that. We don’t see ’em as problems. We see ’em as opportunities.

I think that’s a, that’s a natural state you have to embrace in this industry. And I think that originates all the way back to the mom and pop owners who were running their properties and, fixing sewer lines and, you just you addressed it, you just dealt with it and you managed through it.

And I think that’s something that still rings true today in the industry even at, is as it continues to evolve and become more sophisticated. 

Sandy Ellingson: Can I bring up a somewhat controversial topic, but one that I’m stressing out over. 

Rafael Correa: Alright, Sandy let’s get to the hot take.

Jeff Hoffman: We love controversy. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. Mike, you’re gonna know the minute I open my mouth what I’m talking about.

I am very concerned about the number of parks and especially large park groups that are moving more towards long-term stay than transient for a lot of reasons. And one, I think a lot of ’em are doing it without understanding some of the legal implications of what they’re doing because so many of these parks are filling themselves up with an RV that says right on the side of it, for recreational use only.

It is not to be lived in, it is not a park model. And the more this happens, the more the federal government and HUD are beginning to look at what we’re doing and saying, okay, you are no longer a recreational park, you are now a mobile home park, which puts us right back from where a lot of people ran from years ago.

Secondly, during COVID, I worked on the team that tried to make sure that all those people that we gained, that came into the Camping industry, not because they had any interest in Camping, but ’cause they were stir crazy, right? So they bought a unit and they went to a Campground. And the problem was that we had so many campgrounds that were sold out, right?

They ended up going into a long-term stay park, which if I’m being nice, I call it a neighborhood. If I’m not being nice and I’m not being public, I call it a squatter park. And so the what happened was they would, the squatter parks saw what was happening and they said, oh my gosh, they’re getting $150 a night for what used to get $30.

I’ve got two spaces open. I’m gonna now market those. So we had these people who knew nothing about the Camping world go into these parks and go, if this is what Camping is not interested. And so we had this huge PR barrier to get over. We did very well with that, and we retained about 60% of those people that entered stayed.

But I’m concerned because again, we have hotels, we all know the kind of brands of the hotels. We know which ones are the low brands, which ones are the high brands. Nobody has a clue about that when they’re Google searching about an RV park. It might be an RV park, it might be a mobile home park. It might be a resort. There’s so many names.

So these new people that we need to get into the industry, look at these websites that don’t necessarily reflect what the park is, go there, and now we’re fighting to get ’em back because we’ve given them the wrong first visit. I don’t know, I’m just really struggling with the idea.

’cause I’ve got quite a few parks, park owners that I love, and I totally understand why they think they need to move to a long-term stay model for all of their sites. But it’s taking away from the recreational sites that we are gonna have for next year, and that, that worries me a little bit. So where do you guys fall on that?

Rafael Correa: I’ll start, I think that there’s a couple factors, right? I don’t disagree with you, Sandy. That, that, that use case probably exists somewhere. I can tell you in our portfolio, most of our long-term or annuals, it really functions more like a beach home or a vacation home for them. They’re not living in them, they’re just leaving it set up and they come on the weekends every weekend, every other weekend. And utilize it. And it basically acts like a vacation home for the season. And it’s not even year round for the most part. 

Sandy Ellingson: Which is another section we need to educate about, but keep going. 

Rafael Correa: Sure. And then I, there’s another subset of our portfolio. Where we do have parks that act as where people are there living there, but it’s more for contract labor, right?

And so we just recently launched a partnership with Vivian Healthcare. These are folks that place traveling, nurses all over the country, and they’re always looking for places to stay. Some of those folks have really adopted the RV lifestyle because of their traveling nurse. It gives ’em mobility, flexibility, and affordable cost of living.

For all those reasons. It’s a natural partnership, but, those are usually contract workers. They’re there for a period of time, it’s their temporary launch pad, and then they, move on to the next place. That is the primary, but I question, right?

The thing that runs in my head is how much are we cannibalizing our own transient RV community into those long-term stays. And is it material, I think that’s yet to be seen, right? How much it actually ultimately impacts, because the reality is that the customer that is living in their RV, and as you describe it, is not the customer that I’m looking to attract to one of our properties anyway.

So I think that’s a different customer altogether. But it is something that we have to monitor and be aware of. I think it’s, it is a, it’s a hot take on a hot topic that I appreciate you bringing up. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. And your thinking on that, and my problem is especially with a lot of the parks that are single owned mom and pop type parks, they don’t have that strategic thinker in their ear.

They’re thinking dollars and cents, and they’re thinking, I’ve got an empty site. I need to fill it up. I might can fill it up with somebody to come in here and live. But what happens is the more that do that, it still impacts those of us who are trying to build strategic parks.

Mike Harrison: I think, yeah, I agree with Raf a hundred percent.

And our properties are similar, Raf and I, we’re not the majority of the industry in general. We’re gonna be managing nicer, newer facilities that don’t want to have the $200, $300 a month, stay. But that’s the majority of the long-term living. That being said, similar to our discussion earlier about the evolution of the industry, the other discussions we’ve been having is classifications of parks, right?

And, finding the common semantic, which OHI is also looking at, championing and adopting so that we can get to like how the STAR report is for the hotel industry. So we can classify an upper upscale park, an upscale park, a resort, what’s the difference between a resort and a park, a long term park, a transient park, a park with glamping, a glamping park.

And so that, we can start to, have a common semantic for both the customer and the investor, because they’re all different. When we first got into this space, we did not understand. We’ve looked at all the numbers and Sun and ELS, and they’re like, oh my gosh just a lot of people, 98% occupancy in, in, in Florida. And we didn’t really understand, we thought we’d do these great transient parks and we didn’t understand, oh, that’s not what those are. Those are full long-term, people bought houses down, and that’s what a lot of people get into this from an investment standpoint.

They don’t understand the dynamics and customers are no different. And, but that is our job as operators and owners and marketers to make sure that we’re educating the customer for different segments. We don’t have the same meta ad for every customer. Of course not, we’re targeting specific different segments but I think that classification, which ain’t happening next month or the month after, maybe not even next year.

That will certainly help. And it’s the same thing we continue to talk about. It’s the consolidation of the industry, the consolidation of the data, the consolidation of the marketing and the message, which is why it was so important for OHI to change their name and move forward, into what the new, new industry is.

Rafael Correa: Jeff, you got any thoughts on this one? 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. What I look at, there’s investors that want the steady income when they buy a park. They want it to mirror almost a mobile home park where they’re getting X amount of monthly income off of all of those sites. They’re not dependent on the weather, so that’s the investment they like.

And then there’s the one in between where they have seasonals and transient which is, transient obviously is a higher revenue site. If you keep it full. Seasonal sites generally don’t perform as well, but they will give you a sustainable income. So some people really like that.

I’ve always looked at a blended type of Campground where you’re doing some seasonal business where you know you have a base and then depending on your occupancy, the types of pads and your percentages, we take a look at it because sometimes if you make a seasonal take one and make it a seasonal site, it’ll drive your occupancy up on a backend site.

The only thing that will happen is maybe on a holiday you’re not gonna do as well as you would’ve, but for the 180 day season, you’re gonna actually, in the end, do better. So it, everything is a mathematical mix when you’re looking at your Campground and to how to make it optimize itself. Whether it’s management or we do site management 

Rafael Correa: At Blue Water, we have a practice and we refer to it as the HIBU exercise that we do during our budgeting process.

And the HIBU stands for highest and best use. And we actually, it’s a concept very common in real estate to say, all right, what’s the highest and best use for this real estate? That’s what we should value it on, our hibu process. Site by site, what is the highest and best use for this site?

Is it as a cabin? Is it as an RV site? Is it as a premium RV site? Is it as a seasonal RV site? And there’s a lot of driving factors around that calculus that we put into it every year. And so our continuous improvement lever pulling, value lever pulling in our portfolio is largely driven by this HIBU analysis where we’re really taking a hard look at next year and then making a strategic plan for next year on a site by site basis and almost force ranking them, here’s the sites that generate the most revenue from site X, Y, Z to site A, B, C, that generates the least revenue.

And we’re really focusing on that bottom 20%. And in some cases, if I have a transient site that’s doing 2,500 bucks, but I could sell it as a seasonal site for 5,000 bucks. That’s the calculus that Jeff’s talking about. To really make those financial decisions.

And I think that’s part of it too, Sandy, of what’s happening is the, the level of analysis and analytical thinking around like optimizing value. And the other piece of the puzzle is, interestingly enough is that I was shocked by the, when we moved into a lot more seasonal for ourselves and some of our clients.

I was worried about being able to fill this kind of target, budgeted seasonal sites. But the reality is the consumer wanted it at least in our portfolio. And so we, and we’re seeing strong demand for next year at an even, on a higher target goal for that. And I think, of course, the people like we as investors are folks who are trying to insulate themselves from some of the volatility we’ve seen in the last few years. And so it’s the safe play to get that long-term seasonal income.

But more importantly, the demand is there. And that’s it’s interesting to me that folks that buy RVs to be mobile, to be able to explore, are choosing to, and I think that might be a reflection of, maybe this is the cheaper approach, right?

I pay for the season, it’s an affordable beach house or an affordable lake house or mountain house, alternative for them. And I think that’s an interesting discussion and maybe it’s an adaptation that you’re seeing relative to what the consumer is actually wanting to have. 

Sandy Ellingson: I believe every part needs some type of a seasonal program. So I’m not against the seasonals. When I say long term, I’m talking annuals. People that are, their rigs are not moving. They’re living there year after year. So it is truly a neighborhood. 

Rafael Correa: It’s a good debate. It’s a great debate and I appreciate you bringing up the topic because it’s, I don’t think that as usual in our industry, there’s not a black and white right or wrong answer for anything.

There’s a case by case scenario for just about any topic that we want to talk about. But I appreciate you bringing it up and I think it’s a great discussion.

Coming to the end of our time here, so I just wanted to, as the host, I gotta, maintain law and order around here. But in Brian stead, I wanted to go around the circle real quick.

And I wanted something I love to do personally. I’m a very avid reader. Love reading books articles, which, by the way, I was gonna make this comment earlier, but there was a Wall Street Journal article I think everybody should go take a look at talking about how Comcast is trying to reinvent digital advertising and making it way more accessible for you to advertise on streaming TV. That I think it’s, a neat innovation that we should be paying attention to as an industry because they’re trying to claw back ad dollars from the metas and everybody else and Google. And I’m curious what that bears and I’m guessing it’ll probably be as they try to penetrate the market pretty affordable.

So something I think that we should take a look at. But curious, want to go around the circle, what’s something that you’ve read recently? Whether it’s an article, a blog post, a book, that it’s inspired you, made you think, give you a new perspective. Anybody can go first.

Jeff Hoffman: I love to read, so I always have an audio book going when I walk or when I work out. One of the ones that I keep going back to, and the theme goes through almost all management literature, is either the EOS or the Rockefeller system as far as management. And I’ve probably read close to 50 books on different management styles and they all end up being using that same premise about getting yourself organized having accountability and setting goals for everybody, but inclusive goal setting.

And to me, I think that’s the key to getting started and also being able to scale up to the next level. And, for people just starting out or having a little bit of stress, I recommend it’s a dumb book, a little book called Profit First. 

Rafael Correa: Profit First. 

Jeff Hoffman: And if Ralph for you guys it might not work, but it’s a good little book for smaller companies.

Rafael Correa: I’ll take a look at it.

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. Shows them how to take care of their cash flow and why when they show that they made a profit, they have no money left. 

Rafael Correa: Profit and cash flow. Two different animals, huh? 

Jeff Hoffman: Yes. And it explains it very well. 

Rafael Correa: Good. Awesome. Appreciate that recommendation. How about you, Sandy?

Sandy Ellingson: Because I’m on this project for service, it’s interesting. I’m reading a lot of information. Just on, what does service really mean and is it just fixing something? Or is it more than that? And it’s really brought me back to a topic that I used to do a lot on which is called, is Servant Leadership.

Jim Blanchard had the Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum, and there was a, there’s a lot of books on servant leadership, but it really is impacting me where it talks about flipping the script so that you take the CEO and they’re now at the bottom of that pyramid, right? If you’re looking at your org chart, because that CEO’s job is to serve the people that direct report to him, but at the top, the consumer or the guest, or wherever we’re calling them, they’re the people that we really are here to serve.

And I think in some ways since COVID, we’ve lost that and that there is a big demand for real customer service. And while I’m a technologist, so I love all the AI and all that kind stuff. I do think there still is a strong case for, especially when on property, right? That interaction. I tell people all the time, the difference between a Campground and a hotel is you’re never gonna walk into a hotel and the manager’s gonna come out of his office and go, oh, hey Sandy, did you bring Morgan with you this time? Which happens to be my dog, right? And what are you gonna be doing?

But 90% of the camp brands I go into, because I do tend to go to some of the smaller mom and pops, they know me, they know my name, they know my family, they ask how things are going, they stop by my site. And in a Campground we can go and ask for, to borrow a cup of sugar, but I sure wouldn’t go in my house code across the hall to a, say, Hey, can I borrow some sugar in a hotel?

So I think all of that speaks to service. And so that’s kinda where I’m at with really trying to go back and look at what is the origination and the things that we need to continue not let go of in customer service and servant leadership. 

Rafael Correa: That’s great. Thank you. Sandy, how about you, Mike? 

Mike Harrison: Death of a Vampire was the most recent book I read, I know we’ve got 30 seconds left here, but we’re we do a kind of a leadership reading series with our teams, our managers, and I know this sounds a bit generic, but we’re doing Who Moved My Cheese again? It’s, because today’s environment. You know, are we doing what we’ve always done and just sitting happy and fat, and our cheese is gonna be gone?

Or do we gotta find new cheese? And that’s the time where we gotta find new cheese. I know it sounds so basic and old, but it’s an important one. 

Rafael Correa: No, it’s great. Now I’ll go 

Sandy Ellingson: it again. 

Rafael Correa: Couple, i’ll give you two. One is the Almanac of Naval Ravikant which was he, I dunno if you know anybody knows Naval, but he is a, the, a philosopher entrepreneur.

And love his, loved his book. He’s also led me into my next reading, which is Sapiens, another great book about human evolution. Recommend both of those ones really inspiring and changing my perspective on the world these days.

Sandy, Jeff, Mike has already left us, but I want to thank you guys so much for being here today. This was awesome. I hope we make Brian proud with this. But I know I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion.

The hot takes on the hot topics always is what we should be talking about. So Sandy, thank you so much for being unafraid as always, and Jeff, for your wisdom. Genuinely appreciate you both spending the time today.

Jeff Hoffman: All right thank you for hosting. You did a great job. 

Rafael Correa: Take care guys. Have a great one. Thank you everybody.