Am I too picky about cg's?

qtla9111 wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:
If park owners listened to these forums (and I usually don't), you would find even more run down parks than you do now. The biggest gripe most people have is price. For some reason people think an RV site is overpriced at $25.00. Well you can't upgrade a park on $25.00. Too many park owners get scared into thinking all their business will go away if they charge the prices needed to upgrade and keep a nice park. Does anyone have an idea of how much it costs to do a good renovation? Two years ago I did a complete redo of a bathhouse. $125,000 later, I have the best facility there is, period. But that $125,000 I spend earns me not one penny more in revenue unless I raise prices.
Wifi, another item that 99.9% of the people do not appreciate. Last night I had 147 connections to the wifi network at 9PM. When have you walked into a McDonalds and seen 147 people on their network? I have to cover 9 acres. How many 9 acre Starbucks are there? I would love to have larger sites, but in prime RV real estate country an acre of land can cost over $200,000. How can that cost be covered if I put 4 sites per acre? Answer: only at about $200.00 a night. Put 12 or 14 sites on an acre, then you start looking at a more manageable nightly fee.
Now there is absolutely no excuse for filth. That is fully in the control of management. But I seldom have stayed at parks that were truly filthy. Then again, I don't go seeking the lowest price. Before I got into the business a very successful park owner told me the last thing you wanted to be was the bottom priced park, because that will draw the bottom feeding customer. Maybe your solution to always finding bad parks is to set your sites on the mid-priced parks, they might use some of that extra money for upkeep and improvements.

Now you know as well as I do, you didn't spend $125,000 on a bathhouse without getting something in return; a tax deduction, maintaining your park to continue to attract existing business, and to bring in new customers. No business person invests money without some kind of return.

I absolutely got a return, I raised prices. My point is parks that re-invest and improve have to charge higher rates. If you always seek out the lowest costs, you are going to find the parks that are not re-investing and improving and you end up getting exactly what you pay for, lowest cost usually equals lowest quality. This thread was about how parks are disappointing to people because of their poor quality and poor amenities. What I see is usually the same people who complain about the poor parks are also the ones who whine about the prices. While they don't always move in lock step, price and quality are usually very closely related, pay more and you get more.