bob_nestor wrote:
I could be in a minority here, but I think the RV Campground "industry" has not taken the time to fully understand and capitalize on the attraction of overnite camping at places like Walmart. McKinney is on a heavily traveled highway (US-75) for campers headed south for the winter and north for the summer. There aren't a lot of good places for them to stay for the night in and around McKinney. As a Boondocker Welcome Host I've had a lot of campers stop in for a night on their travels thru the area, and I'm one of the few BW Hosts in this area.
My suggestion would be to consider an option for over-nighters - maybe away from the rest of your sites, but with greatly reduced prices and possibly electric as an option. Having a common spot for dumping tanks and filling with fresh water for them would be nice too. How one would get the word out and advertise this would be a bit of a challenge, but I suspect that after a short time the word-of-mouth advertising would kick in.
The Walmarts of the world are free. An RV Park cannot compete with free, it competes with services. There is no easy or customer friendly way to offer services to some guests and no services to others. That guy who takes a highly discounted site with no services or electric only is probably also going to want to dump, fill his water tank, let his kids play on the park's recreational equipment, take the dog to the dog run, use the Wifi, maybe use the restrooms and perhaps even take a long, hot shower. Putting coded locks on everything makes it a pain in the rumpus for the full priced guests and likely will just frustrate the cheap one. Plus, who wouldn't open a door or gate for someone who "forgot" the code. Turning the park staff into mini prison guards checking IDs at every turn wouldn't work either.
A very low priced option would probably cost the park revenue. There would be many guests who would normally pay the full fare, but see that cheapo sites are available and take them instead. Revenue would fall even if occupancy went up slightly. A park would much rather have 50 guests paying $50 a night ($2500.00) than have 60 guests with 40 paying the full fare and the other 20 paying $20.00 ($2400.00) More revenue with less expenses is good for profits. And I would bet that you actually wouldn't get those 10 extra guests from Walmart and the like with a $20.00 rate, because you are still $20.00 more expensive than free.
