Urgent request to campground owners

bigdogger-agree 100%!

Does anyone really believe that photos of the sites would actually convey valuable information anyway? I just spent the last two months shopping for a winter home in the Palm Spings, CA area. I probably looked at 500 homes at various real estate websites. The homes I went and personally toured looked nothing like the photos. Mansions on line quickly became slumlord qualified in person. It's not just real estate it's virtually any advertised product. When was the last time your Quarter Pounder with Cheese or Subway Sandwich looked anything like the ones shown on the TV ads?
Even if they did show some representative photos, what is to assure you that you get that site and not the less desirable one a few sites down? If you are attempting to choose a park based on their website, you are already a couple of strikes down in the count. Use the review sites instead.

6 years full timing I have found that the CG's that show those types of pictures are CG's that always pack you in like sardines. THAT is why they don't show pictures of their CG sites just the pool and kids etc.

If they showed pictures of their CG sites you wouldn't go there!

Actually the best CG's I have stayed at don't even have a website! :C

Locate the CG on Google Earth. Then, they can't hide the fact that it is a tree-less parking lot with barely room to get a slide out. Can you guess what I don't like?

Matt

I have often said the same thing. I have not gone to many campgrounds because their pictures were of people and fish. I also figured they must not have any decent sites.

I also fully agree.

Our younguns are adults and we do not look forward to a place with kids running all over - we taught ours the 3 R's ---- Respect for self, Respect for others & Responsibility for our own actions.

In general, that is not taught anymore and we really don't like kids - or adults who act like kids - tromping thru our site, etc.

We even once - because they had filled their site with a tent next too the trailer - pitch a tent for their kids on OUR site. The management of the place said to just ignore them! Oh, they also used our picnic table and even pulled it alongside theirs. Let's just say we addressed the issue ourselves until we could leave early the next day. The manager would not give us a refund but the asst mgr pulled us aside and told us to come back in an hour when the manager would be gone and she would give us our money back. And she did. She was to become the manager the end of the month; maybe that turned things around there.

Sorry I digressed.

We LOVE Catalina State Park on the other side of Tucson from us. Go to their website sometime - private parks / campgrounds could learn lessons on how to show pictures of sites from them.

In addition to winnietrey and GordonThree, Web hosting can get expensive as more pages and pictures are added not to mention the cost of web design.

Then there is the decision of which campsites to display, only the pull thru, or backins or all.

Campsitephotos.com

Several of the campgrounds I've run across on the Internet appear to be using websites that were created in the 90s (or at least they look that way). Ancient websites that were created before digital cameras became cheap, and scanning photographs wasn't very common either. Today ownership may have pictures of their park, but the ownership and the person that cobbled the website together have grown apart, and no one knows how to add pictures fifteen years later...

Case in point, vintage 1998 website... this is a great campground, but their website needs some serious help.

http://www.alconapark.com/

From experience, designing a web site is hard. You try very hard to design it to attract the type of business you want. The campsites may indeed be crummy, or it could be they are trying to attract people with kids. As could be they have found that is where the money is. Rather than people who want great campsites.

But I agree, I am much more interested in campsite photos. But does not necessarily mean, they have lousy campsites, may just be trying to target a specific group