westernrvparkowner wrote:
In all seriousness, it sure would be nice to occasionally see a thread that actually praised those people who invested their life savings to own and operate an RV park. Yes, the odds are great that those owners are not expert electricians, master plumbers, professional heavy equipment operators, arborists, internet professionals, accountants, master marketers, human resources professional and world class in customer service all at the same time. But these park owners were willing to look past their weaknesses and take on a business that requires them to deal with all those issues and more. RV park owners have to deal with complicated water, electrical and sanitation systems. They have undertake strenuous manual labor tasks and then immediately move on to financial and regulatory issues. Maybe a passerby thinks it is just ring up a site rental and pocketing the money, but it is much more than that. Those park owners demonstrate that they have a whole lot bigger cajones than those people who criticize them.
RVPO You are obviously an intelligent person
And I would like to engage you in a reasonable and civil discussion but you make it impossible by spinning everything I write into the negative, dealing in sarcasm and supposition and just generally not having an open mind about your own industry.
You could be a great resource to further the understanding of what RV Park Owners have to deal with here on this site instead you seem to relish in the negative, and being more than a bit sarcastic especially with those that disagree with you. This is a true shame.
But to bring this back to my post which you so heavily criticized;
Praise was given where praise was DUE. Nobody gets it automatically just because they have invested their money.
Anyone who has been in the business world as long as I have has enough experience to estimate pretty closely labor, land, utility, wage and other costs for just about any business...It takes me just a minute to know how many sites there are and multiply out average industry occupancy rates at a given rate. It's NOT rocket science. I can do the same for restaurants, having owned one, I can count customers per hour and meals served. Again the food costs labor and overhead are pretty well known across the industry.
As far as customer service goes it takes only a few minutes with someone to tell if they are good at this or not. Their body language, eye contact, facial expressions and tone of voice are all give-aways.
Their patience with questions, their openness and friendliness...none of these take more than a few minutes of contact to tell what you are dealing with. I rarely get it wrong. Again this is not that difficult.
You don't believe it but I do have an understanding and respect for what it takes to run an RV Park. Years ago when I first retired at 53 I went to a foreign country where I didnt speak the language negotiated a deal for property, acted as my own contractor to renovate an old villa and build a boutique hotel. I also had to know the cost of bricks, labor cement and steel and everything else and how to wire 3 phase electrical do proper plumbing, and I designed it myself.
I also had to work with and train a staff with limited to NO English language skills in the art of tending bar, serving ("at breakfast you need to be there within 60 seconds of their butts hitting the chairs with menus in hand and a coffee pot) I had to fight to get wifi. There was not a single POS credit card machine in the entire town. There wasnt even an ATM in the first year.
So all in all I understand your challenges and respect them. And while an RV Park and a hotel are different they share more in common than they differ in.
My post was about what I have observed. I did not criticize any park by name nor did I paint all owners with the same brush. I think I was much fairer to them than you are to me.
So please next time try to see the other side. You know as well as I do that what I have described in my post is out there. It's not personal. It's business.:)
