buying campground

TenOC wrote:

donn0128 wrote:
Do you really want to work 100 hours a week for less than minimum wage? Sounds really romantic, but the investment in time and money can be huge. And the rewards minimal at best. At the worst, poor managment, location, or any number of other factors could wipe you complete out financially.

Invest the money into mutual funds and let someone else do the work. Or if you really want to WORK be a campground host at one of the national parks. That way you can enjoy someone knocking on your door at 3:00AM complaining about no toilet paper in the bath house. . . .:Z

Got to disagree here. Parks can be very profitable. But you have to run them as businesses. As for long hours, only somewhat true. If you have a reasonable sized park, hiring help is very feasible. Yes, if you only have 30 sites, you are going to be it. But the daily operations do not really take much labor. And, many parks are seasonal, so you take those 70 hour summer work weeks in exchange for 5 hour weeks in the winter. Not a bad exchange.
A couple of places people get into trouble are in hired labor and pricing. Some park owners hire out all the labor. If you can't dig up a broken pipe or repair a leaky faucet you probably shouldn't own a park. Hiring a plumber, a carpenter or an excavation company for every drip or crack will quickly place you on the road to financial problems.
Owners also need to realize they need to price for profit. Too many parks fear losing a customer or two over a couple of dollars increase in price. That price increase is earned over every camper night, a dollar increase in price at a smaller park will return a thousand or two to the bottom line.
I know of one park where the owner stubbornly refused to raise rates over many years. He was always complaining he was barely making ends meet, having to work long hours and his guests were always troublesome and he found himself sliding backwards financially, costs were rising while revenues were not. Finally, one year he raised his price $2.00. He didn't lose any business and did make a bit more money. He then settled in to a pattern of raising prices and now he is about $10.00 higher than when he started. He now is making money, has the ability to hire some help, has some money to re-invest into the business and his customer mix has improved. He is a "Happy Camper". If a business owner is not making money, there is no way his business can serve the customers. Profit is not a dirty word. It needs to be priority number one because without a profit, the business cannot improve and grow.