RV Park Boss

A conversation with Britt Ralph, co-owner of a 28-site campground in southern Utah, right in the middle of the Mighty 5 national parks. Britt and her husband started their RV journey after he lost his college teaching job and they decided they were done working for anyone else. They sold the stability, bought a fifth wheel, rented out their house, and hit the road with two kids under three. That year on the road taught them what was missing in most parks they stayed at, and they eventually built their own. Their park sits on 40 acres with sites 75 to 100 feet apart, spa-quality bathhouses with heated floors and indoor-outdoor showers, fiber optic Wi-Fi, goat hikes, sound baths, e-bike rentals, and fresh baked goods. No pool, no hot tubs, no massive amenity budget. Just an unusually high return guest rate and reviews comparing their bathrooms to the Ritz-Carlton. Worth a listen if you are thinking about what actually drives loyalty in this business and why how guests feel matters more than what your amenity list looks like.

A conversation with Colin Miller, Director of Sales at Pacific Yurts, at the OHCI conference. Colin's pitch is straightforward: almost every RV park has a few underperforming sites, the ones by the dumpster, the entrance, or wherever nobody wants to park. Instead of leaving those sites dragging your occupancy numbers down, you drop a yurt on the existing pad, tie into the utilities already there, and suddenly you are charging anywhere from $100 to $600 a night for a glamping unit that opens your park up to a whole new audience. We talk about sizing, all-in costs, the shift toward turnkey installations with bathrooms and kitchenettes included, and some creative use cases like giving long-term residents a place to host visiting family. We also get into hot tubs inside yurts, which apparently is more common than you would think.

A quick conversation with Daryl Jensen, founder of RV Wheelier, at the OHCI conference. Daryl runs what he describes as a real estate brokerage for RVs. He qualifies buyers, handles the advertising, and structures deals around fair retail value. His pitch is simple: private sellers walk away with up to 50% more than they would get from a dealer, and his fee comes from the buyer side, so the seller pays nothing. We also get into the current state of the RV market, which is not great. Depending on the state, up to 50% of RV owners are underwater on their units right now, manufacturers are dropping new prices and pushing used values down further, and dealer lots are sitting full with no appetite to buy more inventory. Daryl thinks it will turn around, but the shakeout is not over yet. Short episode, but useful context if you own a park and have guests or tenants trying to move units.

A conversation with Declan Mimna, who runs a booking engine built originally for the Australia and New Zealand outdoor hospitality market and is now making a push into the US. Declan comes from an Expedia background, and his whole focus is on what happens before a guest completes a reservation, not after. We talk about why most park management software ignores the checkout funnel entirely, what it actually looks like when you can see where potential guests are dropping off, and how small fixes at that stage can move occupancy without spending more on ads. We also get into something most buyers and sellers never think about: the digital footprint of a park. Email lists, Google presence, SEO history. Declan makes the case that this data has real monetary value and should be part of any sale conversation. Worth a listen if you are building, buying, or trying to squeeze more revenue out of what you already have.

A conversation with Dylan from Campfire Capital Group out of Greenville, South Carolina. Dylan runs two sides of the same business: brokering campground deals and buying parks himself. His take is that being an owner makes him a better broker, and being a broker makes him a better owner. We get into where he sees real opportunity right now (the Carolinas and Southeast, not just Texas and Florida), why the portfolio play of buying 10 to 15 parks and selling at a 7 cap is more of a theory than a reality in this market, and what sellers consistently get wrong about how parks are valued. He also shares a story about an appraiser who basically copy-pasted his own report back to him, which says a lot about how that process works. Good conversation for anyone thinking about buying, selling, or building a portfolio in the outdoor hospitality space.

A conversation with Jason Olson, founder of Conestoga Wagon Company, at the OHCI conference. Jason started building glamping wagons in 2015 for his own park in Wyoming and has since sold over 700 across the country. We get into why his wagons use a double-canopy air insulation system instead of fabric (mold and smell, mainly), how the design holds up in 100 mph winds, and the high-end shower pods that snap into any wagon setup. We also talk about his modular shower house units, classified as equipment rather than property improvements, which give park owners a way to expand bathroom capacity without a full construction permit headache. Good listen if you're thinking about glamping additions or just want to hear how a small idea turned into a real business.

A quick conversation with Justin Jorgensen from Pilot Rock at the OHCI conference. Justin's family has been building site amenities; fire rings, grills, picnic tables, lantern poles, for 65 years out of northwest Iowa, and they haven't cut corners yet. We talked about why powder-coated grills fail in a few seasons while heat-resistant enamel lasts 40 to 50 years, why cheap lumber picnic tables become a liability faster than most owners expect, and why the small touches on a site, a fire pit, a grill, somewhere to hang out on a Sunday, are the details that bring guests back. Simple stuff, but easy to skip when you're focused on the big build.

Justin McWilliams stops by to talk about what it looks like to build a campground from scratch and actually make it work. In just a couple of months since their grand opening, Camp Quitcherbitchin went from 80% OTA bookings to 80% direct, built a following of 17,000 people, landed sponsorships from Pepsi and Twisted X, and is already seeing guests come back 10 times. We get into influencer strategy, corporate retreat affiliate programs, and why creating a real destination changes everything about your occupancy numbers.

Sammy Chamino and Kyle Weaver join the podcast live from the OHC conference to break down the mechanics of rapid park revitalization, high-end infrastructure upgrades, and large-scale disaster recovery.

Drawing from years of field experience, Sammy shares how his team has mastered the science of mobile home rehabilitation, turning distressed "shit show" units into rent-ready assets in as little as 14 days.

The conversation dives deep into modern property upgrades, including the power demands of adding Tesla charging stations, while contrasting the "wild west" permitting environment of Texas with the strict bureaucratic hurdles found in Florida. Additionally, they discuss the intense logistics of hurricane disaster relief, the vital importance of high-speed Wi-Fi for remote workers, and how keeping an efficient, self-performing crew moving is the ultimate key to maximizing a park's value.

Mike from Wild Energy stops by the OHCE conference to share how RV park owners are leaving serious money on the table by not metering their utilities. We get into EVs, energy-hungry Class A rigs, and some wild stories about Bitcoin miners and Tesla Powerwall abusers hiding in plain sight. If you've ever wondered whether metering is worth it, Mike makes a pretty convincing case that it pays for itself faster than you'd think.