Month: July 2023

Chill out by camping? Not exactly . . .

Want to go camping? Today’s heat map for the U.S., with the red areas clocking in at more than 103 degrees, are considered “dangerous,” while the darker orange shows highs of 90-103.

Summer is only half over, and the death toll of people out for a walk over the past month is already impressive. Toward the end of June, it claimed a 31-year-old man and his 14-year-old stepson hiking in Big Bend National Park; roughly a week later it added a 57-year-old woman hiking in Grand Canyon National Park. On July 18 it was a 71-year-old man collapsing at a restroom shortly after hiking in Death Valley National Park, two weeks after a 65-year-old man had also died in the park. Four days later, two women, ages 34 and 19, were found dead after hiking into a Nevada state park outside of Las Vegas.

All were doing nothing more remarkable or strenuous than taking a day-hike in areas traversed by countless others. They weren’t roofing a house or picking crops or working at some other job that required them to be outside—they were simply “recreating.” And all had headed into that tantalizing wonderland known as The Great Outdoors during the hottest summer ever recorded, in temperatures that greatly exceeded that of their body cores, seemingly without a second thought about the mortal danger they were courting.

What were they thinking? Can we just write them off as stupid or ignorant, gene-pool outliers that confirm yet again why the Darwin Awards will never run short of nominees? But if that’s the case, what are we to make of the tens of thousands of presumably more aware Americans who each year move to Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Antonio and other gateways to hell, where if the heat doesn’t get ’em, the lack of potable water eventually will?

The fact is that as a species we’re not very good at changing ingrained behaviors, nor are we mentally flexible enough to recognize when a shifting social or environmental landscape makes such changes prudent. We’ve always done things this way, so we’ll continue. And if we do somehow recognize that a change is afoot, we tend to think such change is lineal—a straight-line progression—rather than exponential, which it sometimes is, and which would require a far more robust response from us.

As a result, the prophets are ignored. It’s been just one year since First Street Foundation released its sixth national risk assessment, this one devoted to hazardous heat. The bottom line, as I wrote at the time, was that “extreme danger days,” with temperatures over 125 degrees, would affect approximately 50 counties with 8 million people this year. Presciently, the report went on to claim that extreme temperatures would be concentrated across the middle of the country, in an area stretching from the Louisiana and Texas border north through Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. The map that accompanied that prediction looks an awful lot like the heat map at the top of this page, generated this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Yet most people are still oblivious to such research, even as the heat keeps cranking higher: Phoenix, for example, which continues to be a relocation magnet, is just wrapping up a full month of air temperatures exceeding 110 degrees every day, never mind the temperatures on asphalt roads and car door handles, which can cause second- and third-degree burns. But people in leadership positions whom we might expect to know more, and to know better, are just as oblivious to the implications of what’s happening—even when those implications pose a threat to their livelihoods. Or maybe that’s precisely why they turn a blind eye.

The campground and RV park industry is the poster child for this sort of willful ignorance. Global warming, climate change, extreme weather—all are subjects that never get broached by the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds, whose preferred sense of “leadership” is to promote the latest whiz-bang technology or hotel-derived hospitality trend.

And while Kampgrounds of America has at least started asking campers about their weather-related concerns, it has yet to translate its findings into any kind of action agenda, despite many opportunities to do so. KOA’s July report, for example, found that 62% of campers have changed travel plans because of weather concerns, “with 22% canceling, 22% altering locations, and 18% revising the nature of their trips.” What did KOA learn from that? Apparently only that there’s enough camping demand that nothing much changed, as “approximately 21.5 million households participated in camping” over the July 4 holiday, a level “mirroring the previous year’s.”

Nothing to see here!

So now, as we head into the dog days of August and toward the traditional Labor Day frenzy, it’s steady as she goes. The status quo will prevail. The campground and RV industries will keep enticing people to go camping, with pictures of happy families roasting marshmallows and millennials spooning in their Class B vans, dirt bikes suggestively parked nearby. We’ll hear a lot about about “making memories” and “world class experiences” and about the restorative powers of connecting with Mother Nature.

Just don’t take a walk while you’re out there.

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‘Signals’ a sign of higher rates ahead

A screengrab of Campspot’s new reporting dashboard, Signals, which enables campground owners to compare their rates and occupancy levels with competitors in real time.

Campground rates keep going up, driven by increased demand and industry gentrification, the predictable result of RV parks getting acquired by investors whose only motivation is return on equity. But now there’s another development that inevitably will goose the trend: this week’s release of a computerized database enabling campground owners to see what the competition is charging in real time.

The reporting dashboard, called Signals, draws on the massive amount of data compiled by leading reservation software provider Campspot, which currently claims to have a customer base of approximately 2,100 private campgrounds and RV resorts. More than 3 million campground reservations were made through Campspot’s app last year, with millions more expected this year, and all the data from all those millions of reservations is crunched by Campspot and funneled into Signals—enough, as Campspot acknowledges, for Signals to be “the only product . . . for the outdoor hospitality industry at such a large scale.”

While Campspot emphasizes that this information flood is anonymized, blended into pools of parks with “similar” profiles, it nevertheless allows individual campground owners to compare their metrics, such as average daily rates, occupancy rates and revenue per available site, with what everyone else is doing—and to make adjustments as desired, usually to increase revenues. Or as Campspot puts it, “With these tools at their fingertips, campgrounds are able to stay ahead of the competition, make confident pricing decisions, and unlock their park’s full potential.”

I forecast just such a development last October, in a post titled “Can ‘dynamic pricing’ beget cartels?” that reported on the monopolization of data within the apartment leasing industry, how that had enabled the development of algorithms that came perilously close to price-fixing, and how Campspot was positioning itself to do the same with campgrounds. That post was followed by one this past March, “In a lockstep march to higher prices,” that detailed Campspot’s growing domination of the reservation software industry “with the ready compliance of campground owners who see nothing but more profit for themselves.”

Fawning industry observers like Ohio-based Modern Campground, which bills itself as “a dedicated news source for the outdoor hospitality industry,” see no reason to be concerned by such developments—indeed, Modern Campground praises Signals as a long overdue “comprehensive, large-scale tool for competitive benchmarking.” The new database “offers campground operators unrivaled insights to inform their pricing strategies and sharpen their competitive edge,” it rhapsodized yesterday, explaining that the previous lack of such a resource created “challenges when it comes to optimal pricing and maximizing revenue,” but Signals will “change that narrative by offering a unique benchmarking solution that could transform how the industry operates.”

It doesn’t take a genius to decode that a campground’s “optimal pricing” is a camper’s inflated invoice, while “competitive benchmarking” is an oxymoron that describes an anticompetitive practice. But there’s little doubt that Signals and similar computer-driven innovations are indeed transforming how the industry operates, leading not just to higher prices for campers but to a greatly consolidated software reservation industry—a development that campground owners will come to regret, once they realize how much that tail will be wagging their dog.

In other words, in the long run everyone will be a loser. Everyone, that is, except for Campspot.

Bubble, bubble, glamping trouble

The glamping industry’s propensity to over-reach, an affliction from which not even the biggest corporate players are immune, currently is on vivid display in the Maine town of Lamoine. What started as an overly ambitious proposal to build a subdivision of geodesic domes has galvanized so much local opposition that the town is now considering a six-month moratorium on any new lodging—and conceivably could kill the proposal altogether. If that happens, call it death by hubris.

The offender in this case is Clear Sky Resort, an Arizona-based developer that wants to plop scores of plastic bubbles on a coastal stretch of Maine, the use of which could be purchased for several hundred dollars a night per bubble. All that must have seemed quite reasonable from a distance of 2,000 miles, but for some significant percentage of the 1,800 or so residents of Lamoine, none of whom would get a piece of the action, it sounded more like an invitation for a whole lot of strangers to come parading through town, trampling the coastal wetlands and disrupting the quiet that locals have treasured. People started talking. Petitions were drafted. Lawyers were hired.

And before you know it, things started unraveling. Although Clear Sky initially secured a conditional go-ahead from the local planning board, the opposition soon discovered that Clear Sky hadn’t bothered to apply for permits required to disturb coastal wetlands—a prerequisite for seeking the planning board’s consideration. Having put the cart ahead of the horse, Clear Water also had run out the clock on meeting certain purchase obligations, and therefore couldn’t demonstrate that it actually owns the land it wants to develop—another prerequisite for local review, not to mention evidence of an alarming lack of attention to detail.

And then, just to cap it all, the entire grand scheme provoked so much opposition that the town now is contemplating a six-month moratorium while Lamoine’s residents and officials review town ordinances with an eye toward aligning them more closely with the town’s 2020 comprehensive plan. That plan, a 145-page document, stresses the area’s rural nature and its residents’ desire to encourage small businesses and home occupations. It most definitely frowns on large tourist accommodations, calling for the prohibition of hotels and motels in rural and agricultural zones—which is to say, anywhere outside of the town core. And compliance with its vision almost certainly will put an end to Clear Sky’s ambitions in the area.

Derailing Clear Sky’s plans might have seemed improbable even a few years ago, when tourism development was widely welcomed as an economic shot in the arm by many struggling rural communities. More recently, however, the growing scale and intensity of RV parks and glampgrounds have disrupted the very attractions their promoters claim to be enshrining. And just as extractive industries like mining and lumbering siphon away an area’s riches while returning little to local residents, the new megaparks—with their restaurants and recreational amenities—capture most of the spending their visitors generate.

Small wonder, then, that more communities are calling a time-out while they wrestle with an unexpected inflow of disruptive investment capital. A six-month moratorium similar to the one Lamoine is considering was adopted in nearby Tremont a couple of years ago, prompted by a proposal for a 154-site “luxury campground”; the result was strict new standards for future campground developments, including size restrictions and spacing requirements. A long-running—and largely bogus—attempt to revive a failed amusement park and associated RV facilities in Maggie Valley, N.C. resulted in a political maelstrom two years ago and a subsequent six-month moratorium while the town developed a “smart growth” set of guidelines.

Other towns and counties are likewise recognizing that their ordinances and zoning regulations have not kept pace with a rapidly changing campground industry. The idea of a rustic natural setting for a few dozen campground trailers, providing families with a couple of days to enjoy fresh air and a natural vibe, has become laughably quaint. Even the initial “glamping” push, in which a traditional campground would be augmented by a handful of yurts or safari tents equipped with beds and minimal furnishings, has morphed into upscale villages of plush accommodations that really amount to nothing more than canvas-sided dispersed resort rooms—yet all still regulated by decades-old rules that never contemplated the creation of such instant subdivisions.

It’s against that backdrop that Lamoine’s residents will be attending a public hearing August 1 to discuss the proposed moratorium, followed by a vote on Aug. 15. Passage of the moratorium is not assured, but given Clear Sky’s missteps to this point, I wouldn’t want to bet against the irate local residents who are marshaling the “yes” vote.

Aug. 17 update: The moratorium was approved two nights ago by the overwhelming vote of 397-2. See here (end of post) for a brief summary.

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For RVIA, fed regs bad, fed $$ good

While temperature spikes get most of the press, it’s the steady rise in background temperature, graphed here, that sets the stage—and the prognosis is not good.

The news is chockablock these days with weather-related alarms, most—flooding in the Northeast aside—having to do with extreme heat: Phoenix breaking all records for consecutive days above 110 degrees, China setting an all-time high of 126, Iran winning top honors by hitting a heat index of 152 (!!). Given that the normal body temp is 98.6 and that brain damage will occur at 108, it’s clear that human survival increasingly is at stake.

So what are we to make of the continued ostrich-like posture of the RV Industry Association?

Even as the heat numbers hit new highs, the RVIA issued two press releases in the past week that a) suggest it exists in a parallel universe, in which there’s nothing to be concerned about; and b) that it’s not above trying to have its cake and eat it, too. The first, dated July 13, reported the association’s “comments” on new emissions standards being proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency because, you know, global warming; the second, dated July 18, conveyed its thoughts about the need for pull-through EV chargers because, you know, global warming.

Notably, neither press release mentions global warming, or even the more anodyne “climate change.” The closest either gets to acknowledging that there is anything environmentally amiss is to give a nod to “greenhouse gases” in the comments on emissions standards, but when it comes to EV chargers, even that goes unmentioned. Indeed, the EV release makes not even the slightest attempt to explain why such chargers have become topical—it’s as though we’re simply seeing a change in drive-train fashions. Hemlines go up, and hemlines go down. Internal combustion engines are in, and then they’re out. So it goes.

Regarding the proposed emissions standards, the RVIA correctly notes that the new regulations will, if adopted, “increase the cost of engines in both motorhomes and tow vehicles.” And really, what else do we need to know? Higher internal combustion engine costs “will severely limit the use and affordability of motorhomes,” which “will severely hurt motor home manufacturers, dealers, their employees, and their families.” And switching to electric drives wouldn’t be much better, because “the batteries would take up space that is otherwise necessary for housing the various elements of a motorhome.” Indeed, the batteries’ extra weight would leave RVs “no longer capable of being equipped with the components typically found in a motorhome.”

In other words, RVIA doesn’t think attempts to limit greenhouse gases are a good idea. Nor does it think that battery technology is a viable alternative—or it didn’t until July 18, when its second press release made the case “for federal funding to be used to install pull-through electric vehicle charging stations to meet the needs of RVers today and well into the future.” Federal regulation, bad. Federal dollars? That’s another story.

At stake, as the RVIA took pains to point out, is $5 billion for the states to install DC fast-chargers and an additional $2.5 billion for cities, counties, local governments and tribes to establish community charging hubs. RVIA wants to make sure that RVers aren’t overlooked. “Our team has been working to ensure that RVs are not left behind during the transition to electric vehicles,” the release quoted Jason Rano, RVIA’s vice president of government affairs. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deploy EV charging nationwide.”

The July 18 release included a link to an 8-page report and financial analysis, much of it focused on electric trucks pulling RV trailers and on electrified RV trailers, both of which are better served by pull-through sites than by more conventional head-in charging stations. But the report also avers that motorized RVs will be hitting the road as soon as next year, with Class Bs leading the way, followed by Class Cs and Class As—the ones that can’t be electrified without losing “the various elements of a motorhome”—starting in 2026.

Sometimes the left hand really doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Or saying. Meanwhile, it bears noting that the EPA’s proposed new emissions standards wouldn’t start being phased in until 2027 and then over the subsequent five years.

It’s not unusual, of course, for a trade association to reflexively oppose any government regulation affecting its members, and especially so if it’s going to cost them money. Then again, these are not usual times. The economy is littered with industries that opposed necessary regulations—coal mining comes most prominently to mind—by claiming that such changes would create too much economic hardship. The changes came nonetheless, if not by government intervention then via more ruthless marketplace discipline, and the resulting economic pain was all the deeper and more extensive because its victims were less prepared than they would have been otherwise.

RVIA’s members would be better served if their trade association acknowledged that the old ways are unsustainable—that new emissions standards are being proposed because alarm bells are ringing about the air being on fire. Instead of reflexively opposing attempts to put out the conflagration, RVIA should take a leadership position and ask the question it has so far avoided: what can we do to sustain the RV industry in a rapidly deteriorating environment whose demise our products currently are hastening?

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When things don’t add up . . .

Poor innumeracy. Its big brother, illiteracy, gets all the ink. Can’t read, or can’t read with comprehension? The world clucks in sympathy and looks for ways to make it all better. Can’t perform basic mathematical operations or figure out what numbers actually mean? No one cares—quite possibly because no one notices.

That’s the problem with a widespread knowledge deficit: the only people who notice are those without it. While there are a lot of people who know the world is a sphere and so will call you out if you proclaim it’s flat, there are far fewer people to notice when you fail to move a decimal point or mix up medians and averages.

Latest case in point: a recent press release from KOA announcing that registration revenue was up more than 12% this past July 4 weekend over the same period a year earlier. Fair enough—as far as it goes. But then one notoriously fawning RV “news” website took that simple fact and spun it thus: “In contrast to the broader camping industry, which saw a marginal increase of less than 1% in camping households compared to 2022, KOA’s growth in popularity is noteworthy.”

See what happened there? KOA reported growth in revenue, which the innumerate website then compared to growth in camping households. Apples and oranges. The 12% growth in KOA revenues may have been the result of a 12% growth in camping households, but it’s possible—and in KOA’s case, quite likely—that most if not all of of the revenue growth was a result of higher rates.

To be fair, the hapless RV website was helped toward its unsupported conclusion by KOA itself, starting with the misleading headline on its press release, “KOA reports double-digit registration growth for Fourth of July.” “Registration” could refer to people; it could refer to dollars; it could refer to camper nights. It is an inkblot test for the innumerate, the interpretation of which tells us more about the perceiver than about the inkblot.

It didn’t help, then, that KOA’s press release went on to quote from its own monthly research report for July, which claimed that “21.7 million households camped over the Fourth of July this year, less than a 1% increase compared to 2022.” That non sequitur was followed by the enthusiastic claim from KOA president Toby O’Rourke that “the numbers are a great indicator of how the public responds to the KOA brand,” which only gave the innumerate RV website an invitation to pile one unsubstantiated conjecture on top of another, to whit:

“The divergence [between revenue dollars and campers] offers a blueprint for success to private campground owners: carving a niche brand identity in a flat market could be a game-changing strategy. The commendable figures unveiled by KOA underline the the potential rewards of focusing on enhancing the customer experience.”

That’s quite an ass-kissing leap from an extremely flimsy platform.

It’s noteworthy that KOA didn’t make an actual misstatement—it simply threw out a couple of unrelated numbers without context, then patted itself on the corporate back for the implied connection. I doubt this was a calculated misdirection—it’s more likely that whoever drafted the release was as innumerate as the sycophantic RV website that took its premise and cranked it up a notch. But the result, whether through calculation or sheer sloppiness, is nothing more than shallow propaganda.

Here’s a different conclusion you can draw from this sketchy information: KOA is jacking up its rates so high it may soon find itself treading the same path as its avowed hospitality icon, Walt Disney, which is seeing a marked decline in amusement park attendance. Tune in at this time next year to see if that’s closer to the mark.

RV parks a magnet for flimflammery

One of the images on Royalty Camping’s website, extolling developer Ricky Trinidad’s vision of year-round RVing under a massive air dome. See how many RVs you can count—there’s a bunch!

We can now confirm that campgrounds and RV parks are no longer backwaters of commercial real estate—indeed, that they have come to fill the niche once occupied by time-shares and dredged swampland. RV parks have become the latest get-rich-quick scheme (as see here, here or here), a siren call for grifters, flim-flam artists and speculators who wouldn’t know a blackwater valve from a city water connection but who will fill your head with visions of free-spending campers parking for a few days, dumping a load of cash and then moving on again. It’s just free money!

Is your community economically disadvantaged? Is it, perchance, located in a largely rural or agricultural area? Why then, you might be just what the hustlers are looking for, as they roll into town with their barrels of snake oil and their fast-talking prescriptions for all that ails you, weaving fanciful word pictures of the Truly! Amazing!! wonders that they will create. A first-class development—no, a royal development, fit for a king! White-glove service (whatever that means)! And a list of amenities as long as your arm, including not just a swimming pool but a lazy river—and get this: that lazy river will be in use all year long because the entire campground will sit under a series of humongous, transparent air domes!

Isn’t that beyond awesome?

In its broad strokes, that kind of sales pitch is being repeated from one end of the country to the other. But if the particulars in the previous paragraph resonate especially for you, it’s because you live in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and you’ve been hearing a lot from Ricky Trinidad. New Castle is yet another wan Rust Belt city, 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh and 100 years from its economic heyday, with a poverty level north of 20% and median household income roughly half the U.S. average. Ricky Trinidad is a failed Florida real estate developer who wears his religion on his sleeve and has never built or operated a campground in his life, but who has been assuring New Castle and surrounding Lawrence County that he has the answers to their economic prayers.

Specifically, Trinidad wants to build two small housing developments, The Kingdom Place and Royalty Place, as well as Royalty Camping, a 30-acre campground with approximately 150 RV and tent sites and a dozen “luxury cabins,” plus various sports courts, playgrounds, a large reception and recreation facility—and, of course, that lazy river. All those perks will attract people from across the country, creating a tourism boom for the county, Trinidad has promised. At the same time, the campground won’t be intrusive because, as Trinidad told a local reporter, “we’re going to berm all around it plus a six foot fence. It will be a 25-foot berm, like a hill.”

But that was early days. Even as Trinidad was speaking at public hearings and countering local objections, the germ of an idea that was being planted in New Castle was rapidly blossoming into something much bigger. Something revolutionary. As Royalty Camping proclaims on its recently unveiled website, “We’re changing the RV camping industry.” Exactly how isn’t specified, but apparently a lot of it has to do with putting the entire campground under a transparent dome—or maybe under a series of smaller domes. Whichever. Both concepts are mentioned on the site, but the particulars aren’t important. What’s important is that this innovation will make Royalty Camping “the only campground in the world offering indoor winter camping,” including the whole gamut of normal camping activities, such as BBQ grilling, fire pits, hiking and biking, swimming and so on.

And as the site makes clear, New Castle is just the beginning. A section titled “Locations” identifies seven such in five states, including Colorado, Utah and California, replete with stock photos of people doing fun things in the great outdoors—although no camping facilities actually exist at this time. As Royalty Camping concedes, it’s “in the process of determining several strategic and convenient locations” for a campground in each of these “locations.” But a guy can dream, right?

Trinidad’s vehicle for all this dream-weaving is his latest LLC, called Metrovitalization, born from the ashes of Metronomic LLC, a Florida development company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September of 2020 with more than $87 million in debt. But Metronomic’s financial woes began months before Covid hit, becoming most evident when it stopped making interest payments on a $5.75 million mortgage, starting Dec. 1, 2019, and when it didn’t pay its 2019 property taxes. The bulk of Metronomic’s debts consisted not of mortgages, however, but of $51.3 million in unsecured loans owed to Qidian, a crowdfunding investment platform—an object lesson, perhaps, in the perils of such “investments.” Meanwhile, despite all that money sloshing around, Metronomic completed only one building and lost all 17 of its Florida properties.

Metrovitalization is picking up where Metronomic left off—literally, as its website list of past projects consists largely of architect’s drawings of incomplete Metronomic ventures. Both firms are described by Trinidad as very faith-based, an orientation into which Trinidad has leaned heavily in New Castle. “We believe in Evangelism and the revitalization spiritually of communities,” he told the New Castle News. Indeed, Trinidad added, he had ended up in New Castle after hearing about Jubilee Ministries International, which is led by New Castle-based pastor Dr. Mark Kauffman. His LinkedIn page further asserts that Trinidad “is passionate in sharing the word of God, through practicing living it in all areas of his life, leading Bible study groups and serving in multiple ministries for God.”

That kind of confessional sharing plays well in some quarters, where it justifies overlooking red flags and warning signs that would torpedo a more secular entrepreneur. “He’s a really good Christian guy who is investing in the community,” contended State Rep. Maria Brown, who represents the New Castle area and who recently took down her government Facebook page in response to a flurry of anti-Trinidad comments. The posts, she told New Castle News, made it seem like the developer is “a sketchy, despicable and untrustworthy man” and not the sort of thing she wanted to see on her page.

“Sketchy” in fact may be apt, but Trinidad is plowing ahead nonetheless. Although public hearing comments were all but universally opposed to the campground, citing its disruptive impact, township supervisors have approved a conditional use request—with certain stipulations, such as lengths of stay—and the proposed game-changing campground is now seeking additional county and state permits.

This being a fast-moving and ever-evolving scheme, it’s unclear whether Royalty Camping’s air dome(s) will be perched on top of the 25-foot berm or inside it. Either way, it will be an eye-catching testament to the power of faith.

KOA takes a holistic view of glamping

It’s been a couple of months since KOA released its latest annual report on North American camping, and as usual, subsequent industry coverage was faithfully upbeat. Most stories homed in on the economic numbers, proof that camping has become a force with which to be reckoned : 58 million households camped in 2022, spending $52 billion, an $8 billion increase over 2021. Campers spent on average $332 per day, up $19 per day compared to the previous year. Nor are these campers a bunch of vagabonds: 28% have annual household income of more than $100,000, compared with a nationwide rate of 21%.

But take a closer look at the 60-page report and a few dissonant notes can be discerned—starting with the title, North American Camping and Outdoor Hospitality Report 2023, which for the first time includes that bit about “outdoor hospitality” under its umbrella. As explained in the introduction, KOA decided it was time to look “more holistically at outdoor hospitality” because—well, because why isn’t exactly clear. As the introduction further explains, in a mystifyingly abstract and circular manner, “As more leisure travelers choose the outdoors over other alternatives, it is critical to view this growing space inclusively.”

Suffice to say that the 2023 camping report wanted to look at glamping—perhaps because KOA is itself getting into the glamping business, perhaps because it wants to acquire more ammunition in its quest to have KOA campgrounds pick up their pace of gentrification—even if that required some contortions. There is, for example, its statement that “glamping, formerly viewed as a subset of the camping industry, attracts guests who had not previously considered camping.” Translation: glamping has become so popular (10 million households in 2022) that we’ll drop that “subset” business and put those glampers in the same camping basket as everyone else. The result, alas, is a relatively unfocused report on shifting categories of campers, glampers, RVers and even leisure travelers, at times broken out separately and at other times combined into one undifferentiated statistical mass, under the “outdoor hospitality” rubric, and let the reader puzzle it out.

Having thus muddied the waters, the KOA report doesn’t go out of its way to explain precisely what qualifies as “glamping.” A glossary at the end of the document describes it as “staying in unique accommodations with enhanced services and amenities,” which is as slippery as nailing Jell-O to a wall: unique? enhanced? Meanwhile, the only glamping example in the report’s text is a reference to “renting a canvas tent at a glamping resort,” which despite its circular reasoning, could describe any number of regular campgrounds with a few teepees or yurts available. Is that glamping?

That lack of precision may explain the report’s most mystifying set of numbers, average daily expenditures—for accommodations, food and beverages— of $155 for “campers” vs. $184 for glampers. The first total seems excessively high, given that more than half of all campers are sleeping in family tents (or in backpacker tents in the backcountry), but the glamper total seems even more out of whack, considering that relatively few glampsites can be had for as little as $184 a night (and forget about food and beverages) and nightly rates of $400 and $500 are not unusual. Who are these glampers, and what is their secret?

But campers or glampers—what’s the difference, and who cares? Actually, campground owners should care, because glampers are by definition not camping in their own RVs or tents, a traditional campground’s bread and butter. Glampers are in search of “unique accommodations,” which means not only that the pressure is on for commercial campgrounds to make significant capital investments “to meet guest expectations,” as KOA would have us believe; but also to keep changing the lodging mix to maintain that “unique” draw. Heaven help those who fail. As another unheralded report finding notes, the biggest reason why campers are least likely to repeat the experience is because they’re “bored while camping.” How precious is that?

It’s ironic, then, that even as KOA has taken a more “holistic” approach to “outdoor hospitality,” all signs are that the entire enterprise has reached some kind of plateau. Camping overall made up 32% of the report’s undefined “leisure travel market” in 2022, a 20% drop in share from 2021. The surge in glamping interest, which saw 4.8 million new glampers in 2020 and 4.9 million in 2021, took a big step back in 2022, to 2.1 million—still a hefty number, to be sure, but suggestive of a certain faddishness that may be peaking. And while a record high 15.2 million households self-identified as RVers in 2022, that represented just a 2.6% increase over 2021, compared with double-digit increases the previous two years, also suggesting a marked slowdown.

But here’s the most sobering—if largely unremarked—finding in KOA’s report: even as the growth in camping households of all stripes is leveling off, more and more of those campers are going elsewhere. Last year, only 18% of all camping nights were spent in private campgrounds, down from 22% in 2021 and continuing a steady decline from the 25% posted in 2018. National and state parks have seen a similar drop-off, from 40% of all camping nights in 2018 to 35% in 2021 to 31% last year.

Where did everybody go? A big chunk of them went boondocking, at 16% of the total in 2022, more than double the 7% in 2021. Looks like glamping is not the be-all and end-all, after all.

P.S. One additional finding in the KOA report merits attention: 40% of all campers report they have difficulty walking or climbing stairs. ‘Nuff said.

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On Ellsberg, Exxon and RV expenses

As significant swaths of the country swelter under heat domes and wet-bulb temperatures that run into triple digits, a growing number of Americans may find themselves wondering at all the fuss about “the great outdoors.” And if the heat isn’t enough of a deterrent, there’s the lung-searing smoke from more than 500 Canadian wildfires that are expected to burn for several more months and that already have consumed an area the equivalent size of South Carolina.

All of which prompts, on this date celebrating independence, two unrelated but parallel thoughts.

The first is that we owe a debt to Daniel Ellsberg, who died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 92, for more than his leaking of the Pentagon Papers. Long after that pivotal point in political history, Ellsberg was still prodding American journalists to look beyond the surface of current events. And one of his most consequential nudges, as recently recounted by David Sassoon, founder and publisher of Inside Climate News (ICN), was to insist that the press needed to expose what the oil companies really knew about global warming and when they knew it.

That challenge led directly to ICN’s 2015 publication of a 24,ooo-word investigative series called “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,” that chronicled how the oil company’s own scientists had warned its management committee that burning fossil fuels was warming Earth’s atmosphere. That was in 1977—more than a decade before NASA scientist James Hansen famously told the U.S. Senate, ““The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.” Yet in the 46 years since its own employees rang the alarm, Exxon did more to change the political climate than to preserve the natural one, casting so much doubt on climate science to protect its own financial interests that there are people who to this day deny the evidence of their senses.

Sooner or later, reality will prevail. Rising seas, shrinking glaciers, increasingly erratic and extreme weather will not be wished away. Whether Exxon and its ilk will be held accountable is an entirely different question, of course, but thanks to Ellsberg and those he inspired, the ammunition is there if anyone cares to load it. Meanwhile, however, we can count on the Exxon effect as being one of at least two major causes behind the coming demise of camping as an attractive pastime or lifestyle: who wants to take on energy-sapping heat and life-threatening air pollution if there are air-conditioned alternatives available? Cracked earth, curling leaves and brown air do not evoke poetry. Torrential rains, hail the size of golf balls and tornadic winds don’t soothe the soul.

Yet punishing weather is only half of the picture. The other major cause behind the coming decline in camping is that it’s become just too damn expensive, even as its growing financial burden falls on the demographic least able to shoulder the load. Camping industry leaders have been inordinately giddy over survey results that show the average age of RV buyers last year was 33, signaling—in their eyes—the revitalization of an industry that had been in danger of aging out: move over, grandma and grandpa! The millennials have arrived and they’ll save the day.

But maybe not. Consider that the RV Dealers Association reports that the average RV sold in May went for $51,896, with most of that amount financed over 16 years at a 9.61% interest rate. That works out to a monthly payment of $517, often coming on top of a mortgage and car payments—and oh, yes: student loan payments, which are about to kick in again after a three-year hiatus. That’s a huge bite for a discretionary purchase, even as overall U.S. household debt has spiked to $17 trillion, including a record $986 billion in credit card debt—up 17% in just 12 months. Does that sound sustainable? And if not, what does that imply for future growth?

Couple those financial stresses with KOA’s statistic that two-thirds of all first-time campers are less than thrilled with the experience, and the outlook for campground operators is grim. Industry leaders have tried to reframe these adverse forces as “pain points,” which is to say, as marketing and customer service challenges that can be massaged away, but it would be more accurate to call them existential threats. There’s no massaging—or messaging— away either the financial burden or the climatic oppressiveness that increasingly defines the camping experience, and that’s without even getting into the increased prices and gentrification of commercial campgrounds, the notoriously shoddy construction of many new RVs or the apparently growing boorishness of a significant segment of the camping public.

Old-timey RVers like to think of themselves as independent spirits, and at one time that may have been more true than not. But on this Independence Day, all signs point to such a halcyon camping age being as much a part of history as the Revolutionary War. Campground owners, meanwhile, would be well advised to brace themselves for the coming drought.

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