B.C. Parks fee increase

FULLTIMEWANABE wrote:

PawPaw_n_Gram wrote:
Depending upon the levels at the park - an increase in campers can require more staff - keeping the office open longer hours - increasing the size of the sewer system - adding restrooms - etc.

Costs can be budgeted on X number of camper nights per year. If you get 1.5 X camper nights per year - it can actually raise fixed costs.

With all due respect meant most sincerely:

I can appreciate that as with most businesses, but an increased demand means an increase in revenue, which typically equates to a larger spread of costs so that additional revenue should mean higher profitability, albeit one may need to provide a portion of those increased profits to reinvestment for more support staff/equipment/services.

If anything I've always found generally the more customers we can sell our service or products to usually the cheaper the cost of production per item/service up to maximum capacity. Then most businesses look to more automation or higher output machinery/systems to produce even more product/service at less cost per item so more profit.

So in general, I'm struggling to get my head around how increased revenue wouldn't more than cover any expansion or additional support staff needed without an increase in purchase price? We've personally evidenced a 300% increase in the past 16 years in some CG fees, but not seen our salaries go up 300% in the same period.

Or is it more a case of the head honchos getting too greedy for their six and seven figure income salaries for very little contribution we see, in way too many public sectors of today. Usually it is never the right answer to throw people at problems or more dollars it's usually a case of assessing without prejudice the processes, systems and procedures and enforcing the expectations/accountability from employees they should of been made aware of and agreed to at hire date.

10000 camp nights at $30 = $300,000 15000 camp nights at $30 = $450,000 thats an extra $150,000 towards an additional staff member, some extra sites and water/sewer expansion, why the need to increase the per usage base cost because of higher usage demand. It would make more sense if they were getting reduced people leading to less revenue to cover the fixed costs.

There'll come a time when they do price themselves out of the market, and by then it might be too late to retrace in a timely manner. We are already hearing of folks that have stopped supporting these higher prices for little facilities, and the younger sets coming behind will have to watch their dollars stretch very far when interest rates eventually start rising to more commonly seen rates of yesteryear and that's just one of many things that could change how people have to reallocate their spending habits.

A lot of government controlled entities at National, Regional and Local levels might find before much longer they've all shot themselves in the foot. Change is inevitable, we just don't have the crystal ball to know when.

While demand does rise and fall with pricing (at least in Econ 51 class) there is much more to consider. First demand for RV sites is not that elastic (meaning price is not a primary driver). No one is sitting at an RV park in the Great Smoky Mountains saying they would have went to Yosemite if the RV sites there were $3.00 less. Demand for RV sites is much more driven by location, season and even weather. You could give the sites away in most locations and not draw a substantially greater crowd (other than taking guests from one local park to another). Since the selling features of private parks and government parks are often very different, private parks are not really in competition for business with the public parks. Public parks also are not in competition with each other since the monies end up in the same coffers. There is really no competitive element to public park pricing, hence they don't have to make a pricing decision based on business they might lose to a competitor. One of the major goals of public parks often might be to make enough money to convince the appropriate governing entities that it is not a serious drain on the governments limited resources to keep those parks open. As someone has already pointed out, apparently in BC, there is $2.00 of public money supplementing every dollar of park fees. That is a subsidy that budget officials could easily decide is too much subsidy for too few users and lead to cut backs in those parks. Sometimes paying a little more is good policy both for the individual user and the public as a whole.