WiFi

Tony B wrote:
What I dont get is that marinas have to be more expensive to maintain than campgrounds. Thay are usually just as remote and maintaining docks with water and electricity has got to be more expensive than maintaining dirt with water and electricity.

I disagree that campgrounds and marina's are just as remote. Areas like Galveston Bay are ringed by very high quality data carriers. If you are visiting a campground out 10 miles from the edges of town - it is often impossible to have high-speed internet.

The wiring to support it from the trunk side simply doesn't exist. My brother lives 5 1/2 miles from the phone switch via the phone wiring run in the small town where we grew up. He will never have DSL/ high speed internet - with currently available technology. Yes, he still uses dial-up. There are hundreds of small towns across the country which still only have dial-up service available.

That distance from the city and businesses is a large part of why campgrounds exist.

Also campgrounds tend to be more spread out physically than marina's one a per site basis. A 'tight' campground is 20-30 feet between rigs. A 'good' RV campground is 60 feet or more between rigs.

Also - it is much easier to install/ update/ maintain service runs on marina docks than a campground. You can get to the wiring runs in a marina, you have to dig in a campground.

One last issue is consumer demand.

At this point in time, people are not refusing to stay at campgrounds because the WiFi is not usable. That might change.

My perception is that the average person staying in a marina has quite a bit more money in their boat than the average person staying in a campground. Folks with better economic resources demand better services. The marina's probably lost business to the first marina that put in a highly reliable WiFi system. So the others had to upgrade to compete.

Bandera Texas is the only place I know of this kind of happening in campgrounds, where two new campgrounds were built with the WiFi infrastructure done right. Several of the older campgrounds have seen some of their regular yearly customers move to the new CG because of WiFi access. A couple have decided it is worth the money to upgrade.

One has decided it isn't worth the money, and if the business keeps dropping off, they will just shut down and sell to real estate housing developers.