Is this fair?
I had an interesting conversation with a CG owner not long ago about who pays what & how much do they use for what they pay. As he said, something is not right. The RV owner comes in, maybe takes a...
Forum Discussion
JJBIRISH wrote:We have a winner. Electricity, water and sewer costs parks a lot of money, but break it down by site, per day and it is a very small number. Somewhere from a low of three to a high of maybe ten dollars a day, and that includes all the common area expenses. The big costs are the amenities. A good commercial bath house is well in excess of $100,000. Same with a commercial pool. Roads, wiring, piping, hookups and the like can easily run $5,000 to $10,000 per site. The office building another $50,000. Then there is Land, cheap in Kansas and Nebraska farm country, higher near cities, obscenely expensive near major attractions, national park entrances and waterfront, and a true horror story if you want Ocean Beachfront.
The price is set to cover the cost of the CG, it’s services, and its amenities… seldom is it a al-a-cart thing…
in almost all cases you pay for the availability of the services and amenities, not for you choosing to or choosing not to use them…
By far the bigger expense is making these things available for use, not in who uses them…
After covering those costs, you still have labor, equipment, taxes, operating expenses and the owner needs to make a living. Odds are he wants to live at least as well as the average guest, so making $5000 a year after taxes probably isn't going to do it. You pay for all that when you rent a site, not just the water and electric bills.
And I would wager it probably comes out to nearly the same large rig vs small rig. Big rigs might use more electricity (though a popup with a roof air that runs constantly because there is no insulation might use more than the biggest Prevost), but the big rig guy probably uses his own shower, his own hot water and his own toilet paper. The tenter uses probably takes a much longer shower, because they are treating themselves to unlimited shower time by staying in a developed park. The tenter uses the campground's toiletries, because they don't have regular toilet facilities in the first place. Chase all the pennies and in the end you probably will find there is not true high cost or low cost rig.
