The final 2024 episode of MC Fireside Chats brought together a dynamic panel of outdoor hospitality experts reflecting on the year’s achievements and sharing strategies for 2025. Hosted by Brian Searl, the panel included Sarah Krause, Kaylee Pace, Richard Chandler, Amir Harpaz, Matt Bragstad, Derry Green, Suzanne (Soo) Hammond, and Marcia Galvin. A key theme throughout the discussion was guest experience enhancements through storytelling, community involvement, and innovative offerings. The conversation opened with Matt Bragstad of Your Glamping Adventure, who celebrated a remarkable year marked by quadrupled accommodations. He attributed this success to social media influence and tourism partnerships, expressing confidence in glamping’s growing popularity heading into 2025. Building on the theme of adapting to market changes, Amir Harpaz from Harp Development predicted a shift toward long-term camping due to affordability concerns and evolving traveler preferences. He emphasized balancing park amenities with revenue strategies to remain competitive. Richard Chandler, owner of Glacier Valley Campground, echoed this sentiment by highlighting his campground’s success through themed events and a boosted social media presence. His proactive approach to extending the camping season and maximizing midweek occupancy became a focal point of his 2025 goals. Infrastructure upgrades and customer service also played a key role in operational success. Sarah Krause of Kinney Lake Campground shared her experience of a strong comeback year, supported by a top-tier team and planned improvements such as a customer-focused reservation system and a new campground management course. The discussion then turned to innovation through storytelling. Derry Green of The Secret Garden Glamping in the UK credited social media-driven storytelling for transforming his business, fueled by an investment from a reality TV pitch. He hinted at ambitious international expansion plans. Expanding on the power of authentic experiences, Suzanne (Soo) Hammond of Top of the Woods in Wales highlighted her eco-friendly corporate retreats and upcoming ventures, including a nature spa and a YouTube cooking channel. She underscored the value of local partnerships in shaping guest experiences. Kaylee Pace of Big Tex Campgrounds offered a personal perspective on managing business growth while raising a family. Hiring a manager allowed her to focus on strategic improvements inspired by industry conferences, setting a strong foundation for future growth. The discussion concluded with Marcia Galvin, President of the Northeast Campground Association, emphasizing nostalgia-driven family camping at Normandy Farms. Looking ahead, she stressed the importance of staff retention and meaningful guest engagement as essential pillars of long-term success. The conversation concluded with a collective focus on improving guest experiences through thoughtful design, innovative amenities, and personalized marketing strategies. The panel’s shared enthusiasm underscored a promising future for the outdoor hospitality industry in 2025.

Foreign.

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs.

And outdoor hospitality experts who share their.

Insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searle, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks.

Empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry.

Welcome everybody, to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks.

Also with Modern Campground and a few other places, but not as many as Amir. How many are you at? Mir? It's aspirational for me. I just need to know real quick.

Five.

Five.

I don't know, like what, what do we want to talk about? Like what do we want to lead with? Because all of you have been on the show before. We've all had great conversations. We talked about your businesses.

Well, thank you.

Sorry. Introduce everybody real quick. Right?

And then.

Yep, Matt Brightstad. So you're glamping adventure out of Tennessee. So we're Middle East Tennessee between next Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga.

This is obviously not Tennessee because when it's 50 degrees up there, I go and couch surf my parents house. It seems like these days because Tarpon Springs is way nicer than Tennessee and this is just kind of a tent.

It's kind of a glamping ish thing going on here. 2,024. Yeah, you know, we, we. Our goal is to double the number of Doors every single year as far as the structures.

And we did that, we actually quadrupled last year. So it was nice here for us all self funded.

So that was exciting where obviously, you know, you start to hit critical masses as far as the number of followers that are happening, the number, the repeat guests start happening, the people that tell their friends the, the quality, I would say of the social media influencers is increasing. And, and so as a result of that, we're, we had a lot of fun. We had, I would say, a lot of success.

I think we are exactly where the business plan that I wrote two years ago, exactly where we're supposed to be.

And, and I think we're, you know, all the right connections, all the right people, it's just serendipitously seems to happen when you put yourself in a position to be successful. And so I would, I would say both from a professional perspective as well as, you know, just from a overall energy vibe. What's happening.

Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, I think the biggest takeaway I have from there is how did you get to your parents to switch and allow you to come down?

Like, here's the thing, the backstory. I've been trying to convince Amir to swap Canada for Florida with me for years and he keeps telling me he loves the cold and wants to be.

So I grew up in Saskatchewan. Brian, I don't know where you are in Canada, so I, I, I woke up one day for college was minus 86. So like whole different definition of cold.

I'm in Calgary. So like not like we,

I love Calgary.

Calgary is one of my favorites. My sister's in Kalispell, just south of you.

My parents, when they left, moved to the north shore of Lake Superior, which might be one of the cold, like just south of Thunder Bay in Minnesota. And so it didn't take dad very many visits to Florida before he realized he didn't actually remember what warm was anymore.

And you get him down here now, I don't know that he'll ever go back. Kind of likes being.

I love it because I have. We have the blue skies and sun in Calgary, so I can go snowshoeing and do outdoors in the mountains and all that kind of stuff.

Like it's cold, but it can easily swing Tennessee day to day.

I, you know, I. I would prefer that to the beach every single day, Brian. But I'll suffer. I'll suffer through my time just walking like you're suffering.

You know, I'll just suffer. It's okay. I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to take that one for the team, for all of us here.

I appreciate that. Amir, when are you coming to Canada?

It's a good question.

I'm not sure they make a strong recommendation, Amir. Not till like May ish time frame probably.

Yeah, no, and I want to stay in Canada. We're talking about a house swap here. Amir, introduce yourself please. Sir.

Well, my name is Amir, based in southwest Florida. We own operate parks in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, East Tennessee.

Well, I have some strong opinions. There's some feedback coming from somewhere. Not sure from there is.

I'm not sure if that's. We can mute people selectively if we need to, but I don't know where that's okay.

I feel like the industry is going back to its roots and in many ways I think this in my opinion will be the biggest trend that we're gonna see.

Okay, you think it's like an affordability thing or why are they going back to long term?

Well, you know, I think obviously during COVID everything exploded. And you know, campgrounds and RV parks were one of the few options that were given to us. So that's why our V sales were exploding.

People were using it to go camping. As Covid went away and other forms of vacation came back, people were RV'd out, as I said, and wanted to go and experience cruising Europe.

Hotels and other forms and parks that were. A lot of parks that were purchased during COVID were actually long term parks that were converted by new buyers to short term parks.

And in my opinion, they failed to ask the question why were these long term parks in the first place? Were they even justified to be operated as short term parks? And. And a lot of them lacked the experiential part.

It was more of a parking lot or place to park. Your rv, but very limited amenities or experiences around the actual state itself. And. And I also think you're right.

All right, that's fair. Who do we want to do next? Let's do Richard. He's got a awesome bright orange sweatshirt that caught my eye. So.

I think, like, I used to.

Have a jeep that color. Richard used to have a jeep.

We've had it for about 10 years, and for the last three years, Covid, and then the two years afterwards, we were almost exactly the same each year as far as site nights goes. This last year, we were down about 1 or 2% in site nights, but we were up in revenue. So our campers are coming.

They.

They're still willing to spend money, but we dropped a little bit. So we've been really pushing. We're adding seasonal sites.

We're about half seasonal and half weekend, and we've got a lot of demand for the seasonal sites. We still have a waiting list for that.

So we're working to add more seasonals, but we're also trying to work on getting more people in on those shoulder seasons. Early in the season and late in the season, people just aren't interested in camping.

Up in Wisconsin, it's really Memorial Day to Labor Day, but we're open way before Memorial and way after labor, so we have to think about that about. I think six of the weekends during the summer were totally booked, but other weekends we have availability.

And since we're in the middle of nowhere, we also have a lot of availability during the week, so we're encouraging people to come midweek. We've set up a system now. If they can for two nights, they get Wednesday night free.

So if it's before or after people, we have our Internet service, so people now can work from here. They can work remotely when they come. We've got seven cabins, so people can take those. So we're.

We're working to figure out how to get more people in on those off weeks and early and late in the season.

Yeah, I do. Yeah, we're doing a lot. And it's interesting because the next county over voted us the best campground in their county.

They stole you, put you in their county.

Yeah. So we're going to use that in Our advertising as well.

But in general, we've got one person who does a lot with Facebook, and that makes a big difference for us. We never had that before. We're getting posts out there probably three times a week.

And we're now focusing like, we're taking one theme weekend and talking about it, and then we have another theme weekend. So almost every weekend for us is a theme weekend. And even now we're trying to get people interested in it. Maybe.

Do you want to come for our music festival or are you interested in the mimosa stroll? Things like that. So starting to plant the bug and get people to book.

Some of the campgrounds don't allow anybody to do booking until beginning of January. We don't. We. For us, you can book a year in advance.

Yeah. I never figured out why people waited until that long to do that, but it always mystified me. Like, I know the rates thing, right?

Is the whole thing is. Sarah, give us your opinion on it. And of course, you can talk about your campground management course on

the booking.

In January that we stopped doing that a couple years ago.

And what seemed to come out of that was it took away the excitement of that booking and kind of dragged out our booking process a little more than we thought it would. So we actually have considered going back to the January 1st booking.

It's.

It's kind of a weird. It's an odd thing. I don't know. I thought the same thing when I got into this industry eight years ago.

I said, if you would have told me I'd be taking reservations and payments from somebody a year in advance for a campsite, I would have called you crazy.

2024 was an awesome year for us. If. If I was. If anybody remembers when I was on here before, we acquired a campgr and we had a lot of struggles with taking it over.

And then our construction was delayed last year. So this year our pond open and our concession stand open and. And we had an amazing crew. We had an amazing group of J1s.

And we're switching reservation systems right now. I'm looking forward to kind of shout.

Out your new reservation system. You don say the old one. That sucked.

But the new one,

we're switching to New Book and I think that all the reservation systems all have some really great features. We're hoping to really utilize on some more customer technology, which I think New Book has a ton of. And so I love bringing that to our customers.

We always want to focus on kind of that resort feel and making things easier and less manual for us. So that's where we're going with that. And it's just. It's fun. I'm super excited.

Awesome.

So I think we can definitely come back and talk about that. Nominate somebody next, Sarah, because I don't want to feel like I'm picking and singling people out

who had the baby.

And took it away from us.

Yeah, that's me. Yeah, we've got a new baby daughter. Well, she's. I say new. She's six months old now, so, yeah, she's off with. With her mum in the kitchen now, so they're.

They're chilling out because, yeah, she'll either be amazing and everybody will fall in love with her or she'll sit here and cry at you all because she doesn't know who you are. So probably best to keep her out the way for now. But, yeah, I'm Derry. I own the Secret Garden.

GLAMPING we're based in the uk, so we're the most viewed, most followed and most booked site in the uk. Talking about, you know, bookings in advance and things like that. So we tend to book around two years in advance.

We've been going for five years as of January, but this year, earlier on this year we did Dragon's Den in the uk, which is the same as Shark Tank in the us. So I was on there, received investment from the Dragons or the Sharks in your case, which has just taken it to a whole nother level now. So it's been.

So, yeah, it's just been in, you know, trying to keep up pace with, with everything that's going on. It's been a phenomenal year.

Now, I know you're a big proponent from our last conversation about social media, the power of all that stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Are you excited for when all the Americans are off Tick Tock and you can have more of an attention on you?

You're not going anywhere, you'll be fine, you'll still be there. In all fairness, about 30 of our tick tock audience is US based. So, yeah, I mean, we've built our whole business on social media.

So we have around 1.2, 1.3 million followers across our social media platforms. That's ultimately what's built our business.

Whenever I talk about our business, although we're a glamping site, we're a social media business that has a glamping site. And, and I find that most businesses are that these days, you know, we've all got to try and market to our customers in lots of different ways.

Social media is.

Awesome. So I'll come back to you.

So who's missing? Who've. We're not adding now. So soo, is it?

Soo.

Oh, hello. I'm soo from Top of the Woods. I'm also the uk, but more specifically in a place called Wales in Pembrokeshire.

We've been going now, this is our 11th year, we're a eco glamping camping site. So we have a mix of glamping accommodation, but we also do basically, you know, people bring their own campsites. So last year was fantastic.

We've got a really, you know, we had, you know, we had a great year in terms of, you know, people coming to stay with us. We have quite a loyal return audience, which is brilliant. But we also have. Well, so that was really good. And we launched our.

We've got basically last year we launched our Green Office retreats. Which is basically our corporate proposition for basically people coming to stay in the outdoors.

Corporate company in terms of corporate retreats or executive retreats or natural networking. And we launched that last year and that's had a good sort of solid start and we're looking to sort of build on that this year.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Is there like a weather alert somebody has that's going on in there?

I know, I know.

There's not a tornado behind somebody that we're just gonna like, distract them and talk to them on the show.

That's true. So, so.

Like, you want no rain or are you asking for something reasonable in the uk?

You know, just like, you know, a couple of weeks of sunshine would be nice.

Okay. All right.

I think, I think. I don't think we had even three days of solid sunshine in one go over the summer. So it's quite. It was quite a wet summer, unfortunately.

See, I could never do that. Like I. I keep hearing people keep telling me in Canada, like, you should move to Vancouver Pass.

Like, I don't know, I want my blue skies and sunshine.

Yeah. We have long, dark winters. Everyone really looks forward to, to the summer.

But even, Even with the weather being a bit sort of, you know, rubbish, you know, it's still a great year, you know, you know, people still enjoying themselves. They have the best holidays, all the rest of it. And really that's sort of what drives sort of what we do, you know, why we do what we do, basically.

But like, you expect it to rain and be windy and cold and like raining sideways on the top of volcanoes. And so if you expect that going in, then you're like, I'm gonna have a great time. It's gonna be awesome.

So I think it's just perception and Expectation. All right, Kaylee or Marcia, who's gonna go next and who's gonna be the best for last?

I remember. Hi. I'll save the best for last because she's. She's been in the industry a long time. She's got a great story. We were on the same podcast last time.

Okay, so last time I was on here, I was. We found out that we were expecting our third daughter right after opening the campground, after building it for 15 months straight. So that was fun.

She's also six months old, dairy. So same situation.

I have my husband kind of keeping her at bay because you don't know how she's going to act, but she's literally a just a butterball ham. She's so cute. 99th percentile of weight and 42nd percentile for height. So you can only imagine. Super cute though. But last year.

We finished a our bathroom, or we're working on our bathroom right now. We finished our office. We hired a manager to oversee everything, which was kind of crazy.

It's like whenever we took that leap of faith and my husband came home and we let someone else take over the operations day to day, it just created such a better environment. I never knew how awesome having a manager was. My manager is legit. Like, she's amazing. So distancing myself from that worked out really good.

And so in May, we had the baby. Manager came on and we've just been kind of. We brought Josh home, which was kind of cool.

That was what we intended from the beginning with our campground, was to get him out of his, you know, 80 hour weeks working. And now he's at home taking care of the kids and I'm handling a lot of the back end. As you guys know, running an RV park is not a retiring type job.

So I'm still managing the day to day of it and then delegating things down to my manager. I went to Coe, which was awesome. That was my very first experience in going to a convention.

I was invited very serendipitously by Mary Arlington, who has an entire. You know, she's an executive director. Y'all know her? Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. She's great, but I got to experience that.

And so our goal was to complete the rest of the 18 sites, kind of get our head above water, and then kind of take a step back and regroup because, you know, obviously we had a baby. So now after going to that. That conference, I kind of feel like I can rule the world now. Like, I got so much good stuff from that conference.

Yeah, Laura puts on a great show. Like, obviously, she has Wisconsin, too. I was gonna try to come down there, and then I tried to book plane tickets.

It's like $3,000, like 300 a night in the Hilton last minute.

So I was like, I. I used my rewards points. And Mary, actually, she reached out to me or whatnot, because there was a. The availability to, I guess someone won a raffle.

A campground won a raffle last year.

And I posted on Facebook because I was like, you know, I'm so new into the game, and it's either I buy fire pits right now or I go to the coe, like, what? Is it worth it? And Mary immediately got on and was like, listen, you've got to go. And then she. Pretty awesome.

Yeah, absolutely. So, all right, last but not least, Marcia.

Hi, everybody. Marcia Galvin from Normandy Farms Campground over in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where it's really actually quite nice today.

More guests that want experiences like, you know, trail riding or fishing, but not just, you know, on their own.

They want somebody to, you know, explain how to do it, like have, you know, somebody from fishing game come in and talk about fishing and then go to the pond in the lake and fish. So we're. We're working on doing more experiential activities. We're also working with RV Today tv.

So we started this year working with them, doing some, some promos and some, you know, things at the park. And next year we're going to be doing some cooking segments. Somebody mentioned cooking segments. We're going to be doing that on the campground.

We've seen a lot of generational camping coming back.

Like the, the kids and the grandparents and the, you know, have camped here, you know, when they were young and now they're bringing their grandchildren, that kind of thing. They're looking for that nostalgia. Like back when we were young, this is what we did.

And so instead of building these wild things, we're keeping it simple. You know, where we added the farm back into the, the picture.

So we've got horses and sheep and donkeys and, and not a petting farm, but more of just the environment. We're going to start trail riding next year.

We're across the street from a state forest and we'll be starting trail riding as an option for guests to do. So, you know, kind of looking out of the box but keeping it nostalgic, I think, is what, you know, we saw.

We were up just slightly 1% over the past year, which to us, you, you know, it was a good year. We had happy people.

It wasn't like a few years ago when you felt tension and, you know, people coming in this, this year, people were happy and they wanted to camp. We have about 15% seasonals of our 400 campsites. So we're highly transient. We're located between Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod and Providence. So.

But we see a lot of our guests that will come for a week at a time and stay and play. They don't, they don't really need to go anywhere. We've got everything for them right, right on property. And we, we see that as a positive.

They're putting, you know, the insurance companies are putting a large thumb on the industry because they're just, they're, they're deciding what is amusement and what is a campground. And, you know, that's, that's kind of forcing decisions on a business sense of what we're going to do for new things and what we're going to change.

So. But on a positive side, something that's really been important to US is our 20 group.

You know, anybody who's doesn't know what a 20 group is, it's Ojai organized, but it's 20 campgrounds that are across the country that are non competing that can get together and talk about, you know, how much do you charge for firewood or what are you doing for new experiences. It's really business based and it's, it's contributed a lot to our business.

Awesome.

Sarah, you have to listen to me first before you talk about cam ground management. Right. So my takeaway is, is, is education. Right.

And obviously for those of you who know me, either through the show or other areas, you know, I'm big into, into AI and technology and how things are progressing.

And so I think there's a big component to educating the industry that people need to pay attention to both from their perspective and from their staff's perspective as well. And, and this is something that we've been thinking about at our company.

Um, and I don't want to get too deep and weird and crazy, but we were, we're looking at literally retraining how like rethinking how we train everybody in our company into more of a stop training them for a specific skill and train them how to learn, teach them how to educate themselves.

Oh good.

Well, we campground management course and then everybody else like education maybe and then everybody else doesn't have to stick with that.

Yeah, well, I've been inspired by a lot of seminars we've seen you attended the imprisonment improv training and, and all of. I love all of that stuff. And then we saw a need and we thought we should fill a need.

And, and finding and hiring and training managers for campgrounds is a huge need. So we created a campground management course. It's an online self guided course that you get a certificate when you complete.

It currently has 19 different modules and it covers basic from what is a campsite and what is a camper and all the way to, you know, legal stuff. Everything. It covers everything. Laurie Sieberson has been a big part of creating that course and we're super excited to roll it out.

And I'm super excited to give it to all of my team, not even just managers, just so that they all can learn all of the things about the campground and camping industry and be able to do all of it.

I Normandy Farms Marcia I agree with you 100% on that. Experiences. I think that millennials are the people that are coming in now with families and that is what they want.

It's not about things, it's not about belongings, it's all about experiences. And we've known that. That's what we've been taught about that generation.

So I'm excited because for us, the greatest thing about running the campground is providing all those experiences. I say all the time, can you believe I get paid to drive?

So what's interesting to me is I don't think it's just that age group. Right.

Like, I think, I think what we've seen, and this is some of the reports that we've done with Scott Bear too, is, is that it, People are being much more selective with where they're going camping and that's a consequence of less camper nights, but also less budget and inflation and all the other things. But they're just being very picky.

And so when it comes down to like, I'm going to choose where the best, you know, maybe I'm only taking one vacation this year instead of two or three that I did in the past. I need to make sure that that vacation is the best it possibly can be. So now instead of like, do you have a pool? Do you have a playground?

It's do you have a pool of playground and activities or an experience is, I think is what we're seeing. So it's not just younger, it's everybody, which I think.

And if you're able to be really well rounded with it, you know, we try to do stuff for adults all the way to two year olds, you know, so, yeah, absolutely.

Amir's nodding quite a bit, so we'll let Amir go next.

No, I totally agree with what Marcia said. And Sarah, you know, experiences are definitely, you know, I think, a major driver.

But, you know, I'm hearing also from a lot of campground owners, not just on the podcast right now, we're flat or for this year or. Yeah, occupancy increased by. By point. And that, to me, actually, you're losing money if you factor the cost of inflation.

So, you know, to me, I think the way I've been trying to rethink our properties is like, concentrate on occupancy. Occupancy is king.

And you know, and even not, don't be afraid to lower the rate, but then try to supplement that by, while people are on site, what are they going to buy to supplement that?

Yeah, I mean, you have to get them in the door. And I think there's going to be more fierce competition than there ever has before.

And we talked about this on past shows, but I've talked about this with my clients, too. Like, there's.

There's going to be less people, period, because there is less money who are interested in traveling, period, let alone RVing or whatever else. The industry is still going to be just fine. I'm not saying it's going to be a massive drop by any stretch of the imagination, but.

But there's going to be. You're going to have to compete more. Just like we talked about experiences in swimming pool versus playground. It's not the same thing.

So I think it's getting the people in the door to. Then once they're there, then they're willing to spend on those extra ancillary expenses.

But you've got to reimagine what you offer and what you're giving to people. And so I think that's a great strategy to start with.

Something that we did is that we also. We lowered our weekly rates. So that's something I learned from the conference as well, is it was roi. It's not return on investments. It's your rates.

It's your occupancy.

And, like, really looking at each site and saying how much can I make off of this site per night and focus on that as opposed to looking at it from a broader perspective like a lot of us do.

It's like if that site's not filled, even if I were to be able to get 20, 30 bucks for it, as opposed to my normal nightly rate of 55, then it's worth it to fill it. Because like you were saying, there's those other streams that you can get from selling to those individual people in that.

Site as long as they don't have a cybertruck and they're trying to charge you to your pedestal.

I'm like, okay, I can ice cream truck and play the old ice cream music and you know, just thinking of creative ways to, to do that as well so that you can make more per week or more on your daily transient people.

I mean that's that kind of stuff really like it interests me just thinking about the ways that nobody's been thinking about stuff for the last 20, 30, 40, 50 ever years because they haven't been forced to. Right.

We were having a fascinating conversation with, I think it's Greg Emert I was having a conversation with about automated RV parks and there's that RV self park place. Right.

But we're just like, and some of this may never come true, but we're thinking about self driving cars in the future and you know, they're going to be able to drive to New York from New York to la, whether you have a self driving RV or whatever while you sleep in the back. But they're still going to have to stop along the way until we solve battery technology in 30 or 40 years to charge.

Right.

Then maybe they're not sleeping at your property but they're charging. And so then, and so your revenue and what can I make them buy while they're here even if they're only here for two hours instead of overnight?

Is there a restaurant? Is there a vending machine? Is there a bicycle rental? Is there a whatever. So just that stuff is fun. It fascinates me. Who's next?

Go on, I'll jump in a second. Because it's exactly what I talk about when I do lots of talks when it comes specifically to social media as well.

And I always say, I describe this business, we're an experienced provider, not an accommodation provider, because that's what it is. You know, when it comes to camping, glamping, all these sorts of things, we're all experience based businesses that have accommodation.

So I think the, the accommodation is secondary to me. As long as it's got minimum standards, you know, you want it to be, have a nice bed, have heating power, all that sort of stuff.

But that kind of is irrelevant. The grand scheme of thing, it's what you, what you offer to your customers when you're there.

And then when it comes to social media, this is the, the, the, the perfect kind of insight into it. Because social media is basically just storytelling. So you need to be able to tell a story.

And if all you offer is of your experience.

Yeah, if, if all you can offer is a, a flat field to put your tent up and that's it, there's no story around that of what you can do, what you're going to experience, how you're going to enjoy it, what you're selling, all these sorts of things. And this is what's really big on, on social media is, is, is about that story.

Now it can be the story of the owners, it can be the story of the guests, or it can be the story of what you're offering when you're there. And the more that you do that, or the more things you have to offer, the, the more storytelling there is to put out there.

And then again, content is key and it's, it's volume. You know, the more content you can put out, the bigger the audience you will have. It's as simple as that. If I.

Quality content. Quality content. You said that before with the algorithms. Right, but just to be clear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

So if I put out one piece a month or 100 pieces a month, if I'm putting out 100 pieces a month, I'm getting way more of an audience, I'm getting a bigger following, I'm getting a bigger reach, all this sort of stuff.

And if you're offering all these different things, it just gives you opportunities to create new content around it and, and engage with your customers and give them a reason to come to you as opposed to going to anybody else. You know where we're looking at, as we're expanding, we're trying to expand into different environments.

So what we offer here in Skelmersdale will be different to what we offer in Cornwall, because the experience down there, you can be by the beach, you can go surfing, you know, all these sorts of things which you can't do where we are, you know, we're in the, in the countryside here. So it's finding these locations based around experiences that we can expand our, our audience across social media.

I agree with everything he said. In fact, Brian, I would go as far and say that our industry, and I'm, you know, reducing our industry to primarily RV parks and campgrounds.

I'm not doing as good a job on social media and storyteller as some of the more high end glamping resorts, you know. So I totally agree with what Terry's saying.

You know, if I look at what Ben Wolf does with his properties that are more, you know, I think we have a lot to learn going back to also the education.

If I can't add something to that as well, I think, I mean, you know, everything everyone's saying is completely bang on in terms of experiences. That's how we've always looked at it.

But I think there's also a different layer that people need to think about as well, which, you know, I'm sure some of you are already sort of doing that is the authenticity that they experience. So, you know, you know, people come and they stay with us. I mean, we're an eco site, so we're a car free site.

So it's all really about the nature experience and really that switch off. But what gives something real provenance and authenticity is also that you're working with local businesses.

Those stories that you bring to the, to the table, they feel they're contributing to the economy. They're dealing with real people that are looking after them for their holidays.

You're not just sort of, you know, managing the campsite, you are hosting them as your guests on site as if they were friends, you know, and the opportunity, local food, you know, local activities. See things that are off the beaten track. It's almost, you know, you go back to the sort of storytelling.

It's all about the storytelling, but it's also storytelling with depth that's based on the authenticity that you offer. Not just, you know, something like, you know, there are a lot of campsites across the world.

I mean, what makes you different apart from run by yourself and your location, but it's also those interactions, you know, you have those connections and those relationships with people.

So for example, you know, a few years back, which we don't run this, this particular experience anymore, but we run something called a wild gin experience. We worked with a local gin distillery, I worked with a local forager. We created wild gin as part of their holiday.

They took away gin, you know, that they had basically distilled themselves.

But what mattered to those people was that they were doing something that was really celebratory in something quite unique because those herbs and spices. Your point, Derry would be quite different if it was in Cornwall, quite different Scotland.

And that's what people want, is they want to understand the place that they're coming to stay in as well as just sort of the campsite is what I'd add to that anyway.

Well, I think if you step back, what we're all like, what we're really talking about is brand.

Like brand leads to storytelling and having an idea of what you want to include in your story, but also how to present it in the tone of voice in your audience and who you're talking to and, and all the things, whether it's the local business nearby or the flat field, that. Right, whatever it is, just it's building your brand. And I think many people struggle with this.

Oh, sorry. I think branding is super important. I know whenever we were building, we got. We use Tick Tock.

So the American tick Tock and we have most of our following is from America because they watched us build. We had a story that was related with me and my husband building the campgrounds ourselves. It wasn't. You kind of have to know where to place it.

So.

So for us, there was nothing pretty about building the campground at all. Not, not for the brand. Not. Yeah. So we went on, we went on TikTok and we started building there because, you know, you could blog and stuff.

So you really have to ask yourself, where do I have? Especially with the glamping industry, you know, obviously that's way more Instagram type content.

Whenever you have more events, that's more Facebook type content.

And whenever you're doing the nitty gritty and you're being authentic and you can be your true self, then that's where the big tech, like, that's where like the tick tock comes in and stuff like that. So just, it's definitely helpful to put a brand to it.

And I think half of the people that came and stayed with us, they were like, oh, I saw your story on TikTok and I'm A huge believer in using social media to build your brand. And I feel like it's free and it can bring people to love what you do and stuff like that as well.

I absolutely love that. I love this. I'm actually a chief marketing officer in my corporate life, my non glamping life. This is my passion project.

So I agree with everything that all of you just said. I'm going to add a couple more things. If I'm thinking about what does a new or let's say a burgeoning one.

One of it is managing your positive or maximizing your positive experiences. People do not take anywhere near advantage. They start five star reviews. The first ten are like amazing. You're like.

Then very quickly after that, they just become your expectation. Then you get a four and you're freaking out because all of a sudden your overall average is not where you want it to be.

So I think one is figuring out ways to get as much mileage out of positive stories. Amazing things. I loved everything you said there, Dairy. I'm gonna add a couple more not related to this topic. I think we've hit this topic big.

One is networking. That kind of fits with education, but I think oftentimes it's a lonely job.

There's not a lot of us, your friends down at the pub don't know the crap that you're going through every day. So networking with other people that understand the crap you're going through.

And that, by the way, can be other glamping owners that can be other camping owners that could be Airbnb hosts. We all kind of deal with different flavors, a lot of the same stuff.

And so to realize that you're not alone in this space and then the last one, not to steal from Steve Jobs. I think so many people don't take advantage of the fact that we have one of the biggest CRMs available. All of us have lots and lots of guests.

We have all these different customers that all want to communicate with us. So there's an element there of listen. Ask them. You know, we. We all think we know what everyone wants, but there has to be elements of listening.

But Steve Jobs said nobody ever came to him and said, build an iPhone. Because they couldn't even imagine that. I don't think anyone ever said, get an ice cream truck there, Kaylee. They never even could imagine that.

That's such a cool, crazy experience as part of their overall camping experience. So I think there's an element of listening, but I think it's not listening to the words they say. But what's at the heart of what they want?

What do they mean?

Something that's unique. Each of you, each of the people listening.

I think if we do those three things together, it gets exciting, it's, it's fun, it's a, this is what gives me enough energy to be the corporate stooge that I get to be every single day.

So we'll see that. I mean, that fascinates me, right? Because we've talked for years because I do marketing too for 500 campgrounds, right.

And we've talked for years about using tools like HubSpot or you know, a CRM to segment your email marketing into different groups and wish people, people happy birthday. And you know, don't send cabin emails to the people who have RVs and just understanding what they want in their value.

But like, I think, I think now as we head into a world of AI, I think in 10 years, we look back on this moment like, what the are we thinking sending the same.

If you can't personalize and make that email authentic, especially if you have a story about them, if you don't have a CRM that you're capturing what they said in their five star review or you're capturing what they said when they wrote in your book in one of your, you know, if you have a, if you have more of an Airbnb or glamping structure, if you're not capturing that somewhere, you're not taking advantage of that, reminding them how great of an experience they had last year and why in the world haven't you joined us again this year? We just had an ice cream truck. Like you're missing it.

You're missing out on and taking advantage of a huge, huge gift that by the way, the three other all of us talk about the competition has gone up.

None of those campgrounds have the list of emails that you guys have that each of us on this call have that, that all of, all of the new starters have. None of them have that CRM, that's, that's your secret weapon. Now you choose not to use it or you send to your point, Brian, perfectly.

You send a, you know, a cabin email to somebody that you know has an rv, you've lost them completely. Now it's, now it's a wasted email address and they'll actually somebody else.

But if you give them an authentic personalized to say, hey, we're growing here, we listen to you or we know what you loved about this last, we're making it better it's game on. You can keep them for life.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is just. I mean, we can do this right now. We already know how to do this. We know how to use AI to personalize emails.

Like, we can pull the data from the CRM. I just think it's going to be like, we're just going to look back on this. Like, what in the world were we thinking? It doesn't make any sense.

It was a bad customer experience. It was bad for us, it was bad for them. We have all the data. Just people aren't collecting and organizing it and utilizing it in a way that they can.

And give you one more.

Somebody with a bad experience. You can maximize that as well with a personal email saying, I fixed that. That thing. I listened to you.

I fixed it.

I want to prove you. I want to prove that we actually created a better experience. You have it both ways. Once you get somebody in that system, got to take advantage of it.

Yeah. And it's. And that's another interesting thing, right?

Like, you have the people who have bad experiences who leave you a negative review or who write you a nasty email or recall and curse you out, and you don't know what's going on in their life and why they did that.

And there's a fascinating book we used to give years ago at conventions when we just did online reviews and social media as a company called Hug youg Haters. It was an amazing book by Jay Bauer. Still holds relevance today.

But, like, it's just amazing to me, the people that I see that somebody will complain and they'll just say, I don't want them back. Why? Like, you're serious. Like, you never know what was going on in their life.

Like, yes, there are for sure, like, some people who you don't want back, but I think they're a very small minority of the people who actually complain at your park.

And if you get them back and they love it, you're gonna get four or five more bookings out of them and all their neighbors. And that's the magic.

They're your biggest. They're. They're kind of like your biggest supporters.

After you've fixed something, they will, like you said, turn around and tell about five other people. Like, they just. They have more of a passion about it because you took time out of your day to fix it. So, yeah, 100% agree with that.

I use constant contact for communicating regularly. And I think I'm to the point now. I don't send anything out anymore without getting some AI input because there's so many things that it can improve.

You have to edit what they edit, but any marketing pieces, you just, you have to really take advantage of some of the resources like that that are available.

As I'm going forward, one of the things I want to do is reach out more to the RV dealers is if a camper, if somebody buys a new camper, we want to get them from day one.

So somehow I need to be better at communicating with the RV dealers in the area and give them, you buy one, get one free, some special deal like that. And I think with AI, I can start doing that. So I, I just think that you're crazy if you're not using AI.

There's so much knowledge that I. And some of the people I have are just because I'm a big geek and have no life that live in my head about AI and best practices and stuff like that.

But yeah, there's, there's a lot more. Like we said, my big thing with education, right. There needs to be more education, not training education. Who else?

And, you know, we've, we've gone from having to host job fairs because we've, we had positions to fill to not having had, have to hire anyone because we have such a high return rate.

And it's, I feel like it's because if you treat people well, they're going to, you know, they're going to like what they do and treat you well as a business.

So I think, and, and you know, since COVID when people really had the opportunity to rethink their purpose in life, that type of thing, you know, a lot more people are doing what they like rather than doing a job because it's a job.

And, you know, if we can kind of nurture new employees coming in to see what the outdoor hospitality industry has to offer, I think it's just going to be a win. Win for campgrounds.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the. There's Seth Godin. Seth Godin. I was watching a video of his, and I've been showing it to people for, I don't know, 13 years.

But he was talking at a TED youth conference about how, you know, school is broken, this whole, like, training thing versus, you know, actually teaching people how to learn. And he was talking about creativity and stuff like that. But that, but, but that's part of it, right? Is.

Is teaching people to appreciate what they're doing. Right.

And an example he gave in the talk was, like, baseball cards, like, if you want to create a baseball fan, do you teach people about the history of baseball and all the things in Abner Doubleday and all the, you know, wonderful things that went into the sport and how it became where it is today? Or do you have them sit down and memorize the top 50 batters by batting average? Right. It's.

It's the difference between teaching people, like, why do you, Marcia, have a lot love for outdoor hospitality and all the things that go into it versus just memorizing the different types of full hookup sites and electrical pedestals? Right. So, yeah, I think we can build more of those people and then.

And then they just take that to their families and then they go camping themselves.

Absolutely. Yeah.

All right, what else we got? We got five minutes, six minutes, five and 45. I don't know. I can't do math. Anybody else have anything they want to share about that topic or.

I think that, I mean, one thing that I'm sort of seeing in the UK is there's, you know, the outdoor sort of holiday is something people are sort of really looking to. To help with things like their mental health and a disconnect from the technology.

I mean, we, I think very much because of the offering that we have, and I can only see that really growing because the conversations are really only just starting to happen between the generations about how they feel and how they need to have that rest and that time away from the technology. I mean, I. Technology background. So, you know, I get, you know, I use AI every day, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

But there is a point where actually you just need to step back.

And I think, going back to your point, Marcia, about, you know, people have got this, you know, they, they're more discerning about what they want to do in their work, but even if they are passionate about what they're doing in their work, they just need time out and they need a rest, and nature is an enabler to sort of get them back to good. And that's only certainly in the uk that is just a growing, growing space.

I mean, it's, it's something that, you know, we're trying to optimize with our corporate retreats because a lot of companies are recognizing, to keep their staff retention and their sort of highly digitized lives that people actually need a break to have real companies conversations around a campfire, you know, have a few drinks, marshmallows, get to know each other, you know, that kind of stuff.

And certainly, you know, well, being is certainly up there for the kind of things that we're offering.

Well, I think it's an interesting, you know, we talk about the tip of the iceberg is the email personalization. Right?

But I think, and we certainly can't discuss this in the next three and a half minutes, but I think there's, it's very interesting to me the interplay between the increase in growing sense of technology and AI and automation and all that, that will enable us to get people outside quicker, to give them a better experience, to personalize that experience to them so that they can have those things that you're talking about. So it's interesting how I think technology is as demonized as it is for taking people away from that.

Actually now is moving into an era where if we do it right, which is a big if, can actually allow us to enjoy the outdoors more.

You know, write me a blog about how camping has changed since the 80s. And then it'll just spit something out and then you can turn around.

Oh, hi.

It can just spit something out and then, and then, you know, you can turn around and put your own personalized touch on it, but it gives you a really good outline, you know what I mean? To be able to create content quick so that you can turn around into your campground.

So, yeah, I mean, you just needed to use it to ideate again, something that we can't talk about three minutes, but Two minutes now, people.

I think people generally want to feel like they're part of something, they want to contribute. We found it very successful to get people engaged.

If we do like our cancer survivors weekend, we raised several thousand dollars for cancer fighting organizations. People want to be part of that. They like the idea.

So what we're talking about doing now is even having a charity of the month so that we would have 50, 50 raffles and asylum auctions and raise money for that given charity during that period.

That's a great.

All right, let's go around the room real quick. Talk about something non camping. What are you guys doing for the holidays and what are you looking forward to? Kaylee, you want to start?

I'm going to the campground. I'm gonna be working.

What are you doing and what are you looking forward to?

No, my daughter. So I have three of them and the youngest, 16 months, oldest 1 16. So she's getting a car old beater. So she's getting that.

And then my youngest, that's. Or my, my middle child now is. She's five, almost six. She's getting a puppy for Christmas, so I'm throwing that on my plate too.

Then we're going to the campground. So that's kind of what we're. That's our little holiday plans. We're going to be finishing out the bathroom.

I'm just going to go in order around my. How I'm viewing people here. Marcia.

Oh, I'm just going to be a grammy to my two and a half year old granddaughter Evelina. So I'm looking forward to some downtime with her this winter.

Awesome. Soo.

I think plenty of food, drink, friends, family, a bit of wild swimming and that's. I'm really looking forward to a bit of a rest, really.

Oh, sorry, I need to get you off. Richard.

We don't have any big plans for the holidays, but in January we have to spend two weeks visiting our daughter down in Grand Cayman.

Well, that's. I mean, it's not a. Doesn't sound terrible to me, Richard.

It's a family visit. We don't have fun. Just a family thing.

You can come up to Canada too, with a mirror if you want, and I'll go down there. Danny derry

Yeah.

So spending time with family. I got a random knock on the door this afternoon. My uncle, who's from North Carolina, decided to get on a plane yesterday and fly here.

So he randomly knocked on my door and it turned out he stayed until January. My brother, who's based in Mississippi, he gets here on Sunday with his wife. So we've got. Everybody's evacuating the US coming over to.

To the Great Britain. So, yeah. Spending time with family. But I'll be totally honest, I. I can't stop. I'm excited for next year. So I've got loads of stuff on my plate.

Yeah. The two weeks over Christmas I look forward to every year. I'm like, I need. Because nobody wants to talk to you.

That's it. No phone calls, no emails, no LinkedIn, nothing. I can sit there and actually focus on. On what I want to do. And then it's like a.

It's like a nice reset and then January restarts and off we go again.

Yeah.

I probably shouldn't say this out loud.

I give my team two full weeks off for Christmas and they probably think it's because I value them and it partially is, but also it's because then just I have more quiet time and I can focus on all the things. Right. So it's mostly because I value them. I'm just messing around.

But Sarah, hopefully tomorrow Xander passes. My son passes his driver's test and not six inches of snow and making lots of cookies and playing lots of jackbox parties. My goal.

Matthew.

Well, first Derry. When you get a random knock on the door tomorrow, it'll be me and the great hat that's come to visit.

You know, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee. We're all kind of in that same area. No, I'm going to figure out how to keep rocking a T shirt with this fantastic hat.

I'm going to figure out better pairings of that. I'm going to say a lot of prayers.

We've got a lot of guests staying intense in 50 degrees over Christmas and New Year, so we're gonna say little prayers. That it. That all those furnaces keep working and everyone stays happy and warm and just spending time with family. That's why.

That's why I wake up every morning anyway.

All right, last but not least, Amir.

Well, I'll be. I'll be going to Vermont with the family to. For the holidays to ski for a little bit and, and then come back after the new Year.

So you are going to a cold place, just not.

Yes, yes.

Nobody has good skiing here, Amir. Like really, really, really good skiing.

I know, but, you know, Vermont with Kids, it's just easy. It's a short flight.

All right, all right, that's. That's fair. All right, so we're gonna close out here. I'm gonna play that. You guys can go if you want. It's a little bit.

We're gonna have a co host. We're going to change the topics around. We're going to talk about all kinds of stuff. We're gonna have new shows, new reports.

2025 is going to be a great year. We're all going to work together to make it that way, no matter what the external things are. Right? So super excited for that.

And, you know, that's it. That's all I got. We'll just listen to this little song and see if anybody approved. Appreciate it. Like.

Ringing in our ear no kids zooming around in golf carts Late at night we're jinglin by the snack bar in pure holiday delight we're all camped out out for Christmas Hallelujah yes.

Thanks for joining us for this episode.

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