Building an RV Park from scratch under 50k?

myredracer wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Doesn't take anywhere near 125 sites to be profitable. Say you had a 40 site park and built it for $800,000. Operates for 8 months out of the year with a 60 percent occupany rate (not bad, but not exceptional either) At $40 a night, that would be revenues of $230,000. Figure operating costs of about 30 percent, you will have net income of about $160,000. That's a 20 percent return on your investment, not too bad. Even if you paid a manager couple $5,000 a month for those eight months, instead of running it yourself, you would have a return north of 15 percent. Can't get that on your savings account.
The trouble with the OPs situation is $50,000 is a far cry from $800,000 and building a park in the middle of nowhere won't ever generate $40 a night rates or 60 percent occupancies.

125 sites didn't seem right. This is the first time I've seen a CG owner post actual realistic numbers. Thanks. We've been in a few CGs with only around 20-30 sites so small ones do work.

Curious, how does an owner market your CG/RV park to get customers in the door, esp. if new? Do you need to get connected with C-C, RPI or one of the others? Does internet only work? Get into local tourist type magazines? It's nice to think about building a CG but I'd be pretty nervous that nobody would show up.

Internet is the best advertising medium today. Who knows what will happen 10 years from now. I would only get involved in two types of parks, destination at a location where people want to be, or an overnight park located on a major thoroughfare preferably near a mid sized town. You would have to plan on at least three years to build traffic. A problem many new parks have is they were built on the cheap, using existing buildings etc. They look half-done and reviews will reflect it and they will have a very hard time building reputation and hence business.
If I was doing it, everything would be brand new, and that would be the theme of my advertising. I would have highway billboards on the approaches to the park, preferably about 10 to 20 miles out proclaiming "ALL NEW PARK".
The third advertising leg would be to either affiliate with GoodSam or become a KOA. Those are established names that draw customers.
Magazines and the like are a waste, unless you have a seasonal park and I have no experience or expertise in those parks so I wouldn't know what works for them.