Starting a new RV campground...

westernrvparkowner wrote:

Underserved markets may be a illusion. Most of us travel during peak times (there is a reason peak season is peak season). An area that is appears underserved to an outside observer may only be underserved for a few days or weeks. It would be economic suicide to build a facility that was only full during the absolute peak usage. If you did, most of the sites would site idle most of the time. You would never make up the construction and land costs of those fallow sites in the few weeks it was truly "peak". You really need to be able to fill sites for multiple months, not multiple weeks. In the example above, a park on the ocean, in warm climes, is an exception to normal parks regarding occupancy. And such a land parcel would cost multiple millions as raw land, they really need that $1.5 million a year to justify not putting condos on that prime property and walking away rich.

I've seen parks in desolate areas where you wonder what the draw is, yet the parks stay full. Maybe because they turn it into a resort-style place...??? But we recently made a reservation at a COE campground right on the beach for Labor Day weekend that was more than half-empty at the time we reserved. Note that we were late the game on reserving for that weekend and all other places we checked had been booked for a long time. The COE place is nice and gets great reviews, and its the only campground near the beach anywhere nearby.

So I say all that only to illustrate that I think it has as much to do with the "experience" as it has to do with the location. Of course, this is the Southeast, where seemingly everyone has a RV.