How are the RV parks faring?

I tripped across the following while looking for insurance quotes. It is 5 years old but gives us an better idea of how much traveling to Mexico dropped. 80 % means it is a long road to recovery. I might also add that just recently 5 countries have put out advisories against traveling Mexico. Does not help the cause.

Bumpy Road for Mexican Auto Insurers


Insurers business being down some 80% seems to verify many Nomads recent observations of empty campgrounds, hotels and surf spots...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/13/bumpy-road-me...

Some points I found interesting. And, as always, it's the medias fault:

"... As do hotels, restaurants and other tourist-dependent businesses in Baja California that have been hurt by the decline, the insurance sellers on the north side blame bad publicity from a rash of drug-related violence in Tijuana, high gasoline prices, economic woes in the United States and new federal travel regulations that kicked in last year, which they say made an already bad situation worse."


"... former Baja California road-trippers and spring-break revelers have opted to stay home or go elsewhere in the wake of drug-related border violence, more travel regulations, higher gas prices and a tight U.S. economy, businesses that sell auto insurance policies for travel to Mexico are struggling.

"... it’s about 80 percent down, compared to how it used to be,” said Fred Knechel, business manager of Baja 4 Less Mexican Auto Insurance Services in San Ysidro"

"... this time, there doesn’t seem to be a recovery in the near future. This is definitely long-term,”

... "Everyone is hurting with no one crossing,” said Jason Wells, executive director of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce. They have pretty much lost all their clientele. It is very bad for them right now.”

..."one steadfast part of his clientele is the Mexican-born traveler who drives home to visit family. They are not spooked at all,” Nordahl said, whose company does the bulk of its business online. “Things have slowed down (for them) a little bit, but that is just due to the economy, the price of gas. None of them are concerned about the violence or anything, because they can cut through the hype.”




\"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\"
1961- JFK to Canadian parliament (Edmund Burke)

Costa Bella in Zihuatanejo is full, it holds three rigs.

There will be one vacant spot for next winter.

Russ: I will look for you @ Q.

Moisheh

I just talked to Playa Bonita and she says that they will be almost 100% full for he next 3-4 months starting with their coming Christmas crowd. I talked to Gus Brown at the reef rv park this morning and he will have all beach front and 2 nd row lots full starting at the same time. They both said that this year has been one of their best in a long time and both are already taking reservations for next November......so it looks like the decline is over if they are saying that their business has increased. Now having said that....it used to be that you couldn't get a space without a reservation 6 months to a year in advance. We are not back there yet, but the blood loss in the RV world in Mexico may have clotted up a bit. We lost a lot of RV parks here in Peñasco as the developers were making way for hotels and condos....then the economy of 07-08-09.......overall tourism has increased fantastically, it will just take the Rvers time to figure that out for themselves. We are doing our part to encourage Rving in Mexico to large groups as outlined earlier in this thread. Naomi and I plan to be in Quartzsite this January on behalf of the State of Sonora once again. Hope to see you there, but like everywhere else the numbers at Q have dropped to half of what it was before.

Here in the La Peñita RV park, it is about 75% full with 77 or 80 rigs. Many people we have met here in the last 11 years we have been coming down have either gotten too old, or have bought condos and such either in PV, Mazatlán, or elsewhere. We know at least ten people here in the park that store their rigs and either fly or drive down, because they are tired of bad roads or they are getting older. There are quite a few newer folks in the park this year also. I talked to a fellow from one of the parks in RdG and he said there were 5 rigs out of 10 spaces. We drove through Lo de Marco a couple of weeks ago, but most parks there were pretty empty. Seems like quite a few are coming in later this year too.

moisheh wrote:
4x4: Have you been to the mainland? I would guess that there are just 60% of the RV spaces available as compared to say 2008. So of course it is in decline. I cross many times a year at Nogales. It is rare to see more than 4 units @ 21. From HMO to Nogales I often see zero units and at most 6. I don't know if you can access the archives with the search engine but every year RV'rs post the number of rigs in their parks. It is less every year. There are some Caravans but they are a drop in the bucket. Just go to any snowbird park in the SW and mention you are heading to Mexioo. The campers will start telling you all kinds of negative stories. Those are the potential new RV'rs but we will never see them in Mexico. If the Churches cannot sell any books it is because there are no new travelers. You are skewing the facts. In order to determine a decline one must have a starting point. I would think most of us are using 2008 and earlier. Why would we be comparing to 2011 or 2010? You remind me of an RV dealer in Canada back during the oil embargo in the 70's. He was being interviewed about RV sales. I don't know if you are familiar with that era but sales were darn near zero. Winnebago shares went down to a few dollars. This dealer said his sales had doubled. Later on we found out that the previous month he sold one unit and this month two. That is what you are doing. The market will never get to where it was. The Mexican Gov. is not interested in promoting RV tourism and the CG owners could care less. Most are old and just waiting to get big bucks for the properties. They spend zero on maintenance and less than zero on advertising. If there has been an increase it is probably less than 1%. Meaningless. You wont find any real statistics.

Moisheh

With all due respect to you and what you have written: I certainly agree that TOURISM in general and RV included in that, DECLINED after a certain point back around 2010. However every single REAL financial indicator points to the fact that it has been INCREASING since it's bottoming out. That means by definition it is NOT in DECLINE. Just because the market is not back to where it was yet does NOT define a decline.

Now the other problem with what you wrote is the reasons you cited for RV Parks closing.

The real reason, I beleive, that they are closing is because they are land intensive, infrastructure intensive businesses that just dont have a good ROI (return on investment) UNLESS they are very large and have a Year round occupancy rate of about 60%. Did the decline hurt many? Yes definitely. But it also made them look for other income opportunities, like selling off the land for development, building apartments etc. On a square foot per dollar of income basis RV parks are not a particularly attractive business model. Especially when they are the small size of most parks in Mexico.

Now as for your observations; there is no doubt that what you write is what you are seeing... BUT that is only one or two hours of ONE day at one location ie the border. Making sweeping judgements about overall tourism from that is just not possible. At least any meaningful judgements.

As for park occupancy. What most posters are writing indicates about a 50 or 60% occupancy rate for November. That is not bad and is surely not a 'Decline" from the past few years. Secondly here in the Baja while many parks are not full they all tell me they are booked for Jan and Feb.

Now for the Churches. Their book about the Baja ranks at Amazon at 25,856 This number is updated monthly. That is out of 400,000 books titles amazon sells. It's not a great number but it's not bad either and tells you that sales are probably pretty regular but not setting the world on fire. On the other hand their Mexico Camping boook is rated at 113,452. It's clear from these numbers alone Where people are going in MEXICO based on the sale of the book. For some perspective Dan Browns THE DAVINCI CODE is ranked at 7,646. Any number under 10,000 is considered very good for sales at Amazon so you can see that to say that the Churches are not selling any books is just not accurate. Especially for an ultra niche market like RV'ing in Mexico.

Now let me play your game for a minute: here I sit in La Paz in an RV park. I have been heree one week. In that time I have seen and or met no less than 7 Overland Expedition vehicles that are driven by Europeans (and one American Uruguayan couple) either heading North or south to or from South America. What can I deduce form this? Can I say this is a Decline? or and Increase? NO. Can I assume this is a popular activity for a certain percentage of Europeans..Yes. That's about all I can reaaly assume from this. (Other than a lot of Europeans have a lot more time off than Americans since most of these folks are gone for up to three years at a time).

So just seeing something does not mean you can draw definite conclusions one way or the other.

As for younger folks not coming to Mexico. I have met and seen Many many of them here in the Baja and most are on longer trips and have crossed over from the mainland or are going TO the mainland.

So I think that we all must be careful of trying to draw meaningful conclusions from sketchy anecdotal data. And if any of you can post some REAL data from a reliable source please do. I'd be the first to read it. But until then ALL the indicators and signs are that travel here is INCREASING over it's low and is NOT in DECLINE.

Edit sorry for hijacking the thread

Thanks for all the updates on rates. I haven't increased my rates in nearly 5 years. Costs have held the same, labor a bit higher each year, depending on volume, when it is slow, don't expect a raise....just like any other business.
My rates will increase Jan.1. Thanks again.

kyle86 wrote:

Wm.Elliot wrote:
On a roll? I'm 63 and I've never earned more than I do now. But... It seems like when I was 30 I had more disposable income. We bought new vehicles, a travel trailer, and other toys. We traveled much more then too; across the US and into Mexico every year. Now, even though we earn more than ever there's not much left over for travel. Our travel trailer hasn't moved in 3 years. We don't spend money frivolously either.
Unemployment is low, not counting the 94 million Americans who have given up. Young people return to live with the parents, others live 8-10 people to a house (three's company has become eight's company).

I'm not citing political causes. Everything is so expensive. There aren't many manufacturing jobs left in America. There's too much dysfunction.
I'd hate to be 20 years old now and starting out.
The world our parents left us isn't like the world we will be leaving our kids.

WARING:::: Rant below

This is true. I'm 29 and all my friends who graduated college are in the same boat as us. Neither my wife nor I have been able to get more than just jobs. Careers are impossible it seems. I was cleaning toilets and sweeping floors and my wife working in child care. It's been 5 years of this so we are packing up and moving out to hopefully find a better area. Most older folks probably call this being a crybaby or being entitled or selfish. My wife and I have never grossed more than 40k. Every year prices of everything goes up and up. Other that friends of mine who scored government jobs, we youngins are in the same boat. We don't want to collect the government dole, we want jobs and oportunity. I see 5% unemployement rate and LAUGH. Older folks are doing just fine as they were able to advance their careers to a point where they are at the tops of their fields. Nobody is moving though to make way for the younger generation, it seems like folks who are in their good jobs are staying put. Like I said we are called lazy and entitled but hell i have a bachelors degree and still doing service jobs we were doing as teenagers. Every fast food resturant around here has middle aged people working in it. Teenagers can't hardly even get their foot in the door at a fast food resturant. So maybe things are just fine and dandy for some, but where I am is a different situation. New cars cost a fortuine so we keep fixing up our 200k+ high mileage 20+ year old vehiclrs, we owe a fortuine in student loans, "good" jobs pay $10-$15 an hour. Healthcare is wrecked, I owe thousands in debt because of our high deductable and I am healthy just needed an endoscopy for chronic heartburn. No jobs are offering pensions of decent retirements. Social security is broke. The skilled trades have been over-run by illegal crews. The future for my generation looks pretty crappy. Like I said none of my friends can get good jobs either unlese they scored govt positions. I guess I'm a crybaby but it feels good to vent. I am happy to have a home with air conditioning, modern electronics and gadgets, and a loving family. It's frustrating folks saying well go back to school and get a masters maybe then you can get a job that pays more than 29k. Most employers treat us badly since there are mile long lines of people waiting to take our posittion. I have basically been told I'm replacable at the past few jobs I've been at. Yess yess woe is me, but I'm being proactive, I sold all the toys and bought an rv, we are staying positive and hoping we can find good jobs if we open our search nationwide. This is sort of last ditch effort to get something started. Nobody wants to be in their 30s and still not have a career established. We are going to keep our heads up and hopefully God will lead us to our calling.

First, IMHO both of these post should be removed as have nothing to do with the topic or forum.

That said: Believe it or not sounds like you had/have it better than me when I was your age. Agree with a lot of what you have posted BUT where are you located? I had to move family many times to stay at the top of the food chain. What is your degree in? Some/most are only good as wallpaper. Again I received an Engineering Degree & Math Degree so I would be at the top of the food chain. I worked while getting my degrees except the last year to keep the loan amounts at a manageable level and paid everything back ASAP. Have never had debt as loan interest is middle class cocaine. Loan interest will eat your future alive, wait until you have cash to purchase. All about choices. The world has gotten tougher but you have to adjust and find the opportunities that remain even if it means moving away from family & friends. I did. All was not rosy as we (the Old Folks) moved into & thu the workplace.

rocmoc n AZ/Mexico

Edited rant, sorry for hijacking the thread.