Feds go after reservation algorithms
Aug. 23: The U.S. Justice Dept. today filed, at long last, an antitrust lawsuit against the real estate software company RealPage, accusing the company “of facilitating a price-fixing conspiracy that boosted rents beyond market forces for millions of people.” RVers, who have seen a near-doubling of site rates over the past four years, can only hope that campground reservation software providers will face similar scrutiny.
Having wheels no guarantee of safety
Aug. 5: One of the prevailing conceits of developers seeking to build RV parks in flood plains or in coastal areas subject to storm surges is that their customer base is mobile. Got a storm coming your way? No problem! Just disconnect the utilities, hook up the hitch and you’re on your way! Well, not so fast. For as Hurricane (now Tropical Storm) Debby is demonstrating, sometimes the rubber doesn’t meet the road.
Oregon a hellish RV epicenter
Aug. 3: Oregon is one of only three states whose current wildfire count is in the double digits—and it’s got twice as many major wildfires going as neighboring California (Idaho, also a neighbor, is the third), engulfing nearly twice as many acres. Not the first spot you might choose for a national RVing association to host its annual convention, with more than 700 RVers expected to roll into Deschutes County in mid-August—and if the flames don’t get ’em, the smoke almost certainly will. Maybe it’s time to start rethinking this whole idea of summer camping.
A handful of updates on past posts
July 31: Summer is half over, so what better time to spin up a grab bag of updates of past posts: Ghost Town in the Sky is still kicking after a lawsuit is resolved. West Virginians succeed in sinking not just one but two proposed RV megaparks. A luxury RV megapark proposed for Danville, VA is transformed into a conventional housing development. Reservation software systems like CampSpot should be casting an apprehensive eye at San Francisco. And Frank Rolfe, my favorite punching bag, has really outdone himself this time.
RV bluegrass is seriously out of tune
July 21: Bluegrass can refer to a musical style similar to country music but consisting entirely of stringed instruments. It can refer to the lush grass covering much of Kentucky’s rolling hills, giving that state its nickname. But these days it also can mean a battleground pitting the developers behind a monstrosity known as the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort against that other Kentucky icon, its thoroughbreds. Indeed, the very thing that’s most central to the “bluegrass experience” is under existential attack.
Scrambling to insure Florida parks
July 17: As extreme weather makes owning an RV park or campground ever more of a crap shoot, insurance companies are either hiking premiums to unaffordable levels or not offering policies at all. Now the Florida campground association is looking for alternatives—and in doing so is revisiting a concept first pioneered by Evergreen USA, whose insured campground customers were also its owners. Is it too much to hope that other industry associations, which thus far have ignored the wolf outside their doors, will pay attention?
Full-timers add to election denialism
July 14: It’s depressing to realize, in this age of political extremism and escalating threats to democratic governance, that among the most blithe contributors to this sorry state of affairs are full-timing RVers. Not all full-timers, I hasten to add. Just those who think that their chosen lifestyles as so-called “travelers” should exempt them from fundamental civic obligations while leaving their civic rights intact—even as that attitude further chips away at voter confidence in the integrity of our elections.
Fiddling while California burns
July 11: California is burning once again, with something like 200,000 acres already turned to charcoal—and here it is only mid-July, with three to four months of fire season still ahead of us. Yet when Dyana Kelly, head of the state’s Outdoor Hospitality Association (OHA), wrote to her members recently, the burning issue on her mind was something else entirely: ARVC’s decision to rebrand itself as OHI. How rude! And how beside the point.
When big RV parks face Big Weather
July 6: Extreme weather season, exemplified by forest fires, hurricanes and tornadoes, is upon us, and in its crosshairs are three of the biggest RV park proposals ever conceived. Yet one of those projects has given no indication that it’ll be deterred by something so banal, a second is officially still on track but threatened by non-weather related developments, and the third has gone AWOL. Maybe it’s time to recognize there’s something fundamentally different going on?
Stetler a victim, hustler—or both?
June 30: Gigi Stetler, a relentless self-promoter and self-described champion of RV buyers, was arrested this week on charges that she had failed to pay $471,447 in sales taxes to the state of Florida. The incident is only the most recent challenge facing a woman who claims to have been stabbed 21 times, had her dealership go up in flames and repeatedly tangled with the industry’s 800-pound gorilla, Marcus Lemonis, but whose memoir, “Unstoppable,” suggests she just may bounce back from this setback as well.
When con artists become predators
June 25: There are con artists who spin marvelous stories that seduce an entire community—and then there are the con artists who target just one or two people, predators who whose only purpose is to separate a mark from his money just as quickly and ruthlessly as possible. That’s the story of Duane and Stephanie Smith, who got taken to the cleaners by Brian Eddie Sides for a third of a million dollars while supposedly building a luxury RV park.
RV hustlers circle closer to the flame
June 23: One of my favorite flimflam artists, if only because of the scale on which he operates, is Ricky Trinidad, who for nearly two years has been casting his spell over the destitute town of New Castle, PA. After making a hash of things in Florida, where to lose your shirt in real estate suggests you might be dumber than a manatee, Trinidad apparently decided he would have an easier time of it in an area where hustlers aren’t tripping all over each other—but he may be out of running room.
Maybe it’s time to rethink s’mores
June 19: If there is any one iconic image of what it means to go camping, it has to be that of a family or group of friends clustered around a campfire under a starry canopy, sparks twirling into the sky to join their celestial counterparts. But at a time when the landscape increasingly resembles a tinderbox, and wildfires are already marching through several states, is that an anachronistic—and destructive—self-indulgence?
The bloom is off the RV camping rose
June 13: Gas prices are down—but so, perhaps counterintuitively, is demand for gas. That’s not great news for RV park and campground owners, who became accustomed to boom times during the pandemic but have seen demand softening since early last year. Perhaps that means we’ll see the flip side of “dynamic pricing,” as less demand results in lower site rates?
How efficient can RV parks become?
June 9: While my June 6 post concluded that employment at RV parks and campgrounds was not keeping pace with the industry’s growth, reader Ed O. Bridgman contends that I overlooked the industry’s greater efficiencies. He cited his own campground as an example—but Homestead RV Community is hardly representative of RV parks overall, and computerization will take you only so far in an industry that prides itself on being in the hospitality business.
Pay more, get less—by the numbers
June 6: National Go RVing Day is this Saturday, and that seems as good a reason as any to take the pulse of the RV park and campground industry and see how it’s doing four years after the pandemic broke its back. Bottom line? If you do as the industry is urging and go RVing this weekend, expect to pay a lot more than you did in 2019 in return for dirtier accommodations and notably less personal service.
For RVers, the outdoors is a war zone
May 29: One of the more insipid refrains emanating from the RV park and campground industry is that it’s in the business of “creating memories.” Well, it certainly did that this past Memorial Day weekend, as tornadoes wiped out two RV parks, in Texas and Oklahoma, and Houston hit a record-breaking 115 degrees. With forecasts for an exceptionally active hurricane season starting this Saturday, the outlook for many RVers this summer is a whole lot of shake ‘n’ bake.
Why would any RVer pay Frank Rolfe?
May 26: Frank Rolfe is at it again, trying to cash in on the RV park acquisition craze by passing himself off as an expert on something about which he knows squat. Now it’s via an “RV park investing boot camp,” for which he wants his marks to pay $997 to get the same information he’s selling in his “home study course” for half that amount. Either way, though, you’re better off saving your money—unless what you really want to own is a trailer court.
You say tomah-to, I say . . . cabbage?
May 23: The RV Industry Association, intent on promoting its contention that RVing is 60% cheaper than other modes of travel vacationing, is suggesting we “take a look” at a current story in Rolling Stone magazine. Unfortunately, that’s an even shoddier piece of reporting than RVIA’s original analysis of RVing costs, which was deeply flawed when first announced last year and which doesn’t get any more convincing with this kind of advertorial “support.”
Industry-wide blacklist in the works
May 18: The customer is not always right—and sometimes the customer is not only wrong but a self-entitled jerk who needs to be given the boot. But what happens when campground owners start sharing a secret list of “undesirables” who don’t even know such a blacklist exists, much less that they’re on it? When does an understandable desire to protect one’s business morph into a hidden surveillance system rivaling that of the Stasi or KGB of yore?
What convertibles tell us about RVing
May 14: Convertibles, once the epitome of wind-in-your-face freedom on the open road, have been shunted aside by the technological creature-comforts of SUVs. So too with the camping and RVing industries, hell-bent on defanging the great outdoors in order to lure “travelers” who want to think of themselves as intrepid adventurers but don’t want to get sweaty about it. Or as KOA recently commented, camping “has emerged as much more than a way to get outside.”
Myth about RVs and flooding lives on
May 11: When Jackson County Circuit Court in Mississippi convenes this Thursday, it will hear a novel theory that the federal government thinks putting RVs in flood zones is a good idea. That’s total bunk—but what else are you going to say if you want to build Mississippi’s biggest RV resort in a swamp that has a history of being mauled by a disastrous hurricane, with more of the same a reasonable expectation?
Glamping as a Japanese movie villain
May 4: Well, that didn’t take long: just a handful of years since it burst into general American consciousness, glamping has earned a central role as the villain in a newly released Japanese movie, “Evil Does Not Exist.” You’ll have to figure out for yourself whether that’s a mistranslation or a bit of wry social commentary.
Three Ponies breaks a leg; shoot it?
May 2: They shoot horses, don’t they? Maybe the same fate should await the stumbling Three Ponies RV Park and Campground, which was supposed to open next spring just outside Vinita, OK. But that was before a previously unrecognized flood plain threw a hitch into its giddyap, and without taking account of this being part of a much bigger $2 billion theme park being developed by a company with no comparable experience, the non-disclosure agreements it compelled city leaders to sign and the fact that this is all occurring in the middle of tornado alley.
Here’s a remote way to kill RV parks
April 27: Adam Lendi, self-styled “real estate guru” and owner of the Beyonder chain of campgrounds, has a management style that he says is best suited “for people who want a life outside of their campground.” Sure, absentee owners are vulnerable to any number of investment-killing pitfalls, from property neglect to theft to alienated campers—but the reward is personal freedom! Lendi’s secret? Just hire the right manager, silly. If you can.
RVers’ public image is less than great
April 21: When the Mansfield City Council unanimously voted this past week to deny a rezoning application for a proposed new RV park, it had no facts about the campground itself—it was the very idea of a campground that it was rejecting. Because while the RV industry views itself as appealing to an adventurous, freedom-seeking community of self-sufficient nomads, much of rural America sees only the scrapings of society, including child molesters, drug addicts and homeless vagrants.
Notes on an evolving RV landscape
April 17: In a sign of the times, K&K Insurance is advertising itself as providing campground coverage “designed for your unique needs”—unless those unique needs include a Florida address, in which case, too bad! Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has taken note of the Biden administration’s tougher line on price-fixing, and the implications that has for companies using algorithms—like campground reservation systems—to make pricing decisions. But it’s not all bad news. Not with Hilton Hotels moving into the luxury end of the campground business—the end that charges $1,200 for a one-night stay.
Signs we’re at an RV market top
April 11: If it’s published by Forbes it must be factually correct—right? Except that these days the erstwhile business journalism powerhouse is peddling its cachet to any wet-behind-the-ears businessman willing to pay for its imprimatur, with no apparent oversight and no apparent regard for whatever nonsense such ersatz reporters spew forth. Take, for instance, the assertion by investor Ben Spiegel that today’s average RV owner is only 32 years old, an absurd statement echoed by an industry trade press that should know better because, well—because it feels good, at a time when the real news is anything but.
It’s the good Samaritan needs help
April 6: One clue that an enterprise has lost its way comes when it starts “rebranding,” usually with the explanation that it’s seeking a wider audience or is identifying its actual “core discipline”—“people-moving” instead of flying airplanes, for example. Or, for example, the membership organization formerly known as the Good Sam Club, which yesterday changed its logo (again), trotted out the nifty tag line, “Good to Go,” and said it is going to be partnering with Princess Cruise Lines. Because nothing says freedom of the open road quite like a floating petri dish.
Camping got too big for its britches
March 30: Once upon a time, “camping” meant a tent and fire ring and “campground” meant a bunch of tents and fire rings, plus—possibly—a communal bathhouse and swimming lake. Sixty years later, it can mean a village of year-round RV park models, tiny homes and cabins on wheels, but the regulatory apparatus that assures campground safety and conformity with surrounding uses is still back in the lean-to age. No wonder local communities get up in arms when a developer tries to sell them a “campground” bill of goods—and they figure out just what that means.
Deschutes dithering about RV homes
March 27: There’s a lot of dithering these days in Deschutes County, Oregon, about whether it’s a good idea to give a government stamp of approval to people living in RVs as their permanent homes. But if the U.S. Navy has adopted RVs as acceptable housing, can civilian governments be far behind? And the RV industry hasn’t said boo about such blatant misuse of its products—despite years of insisting RVs are not suitable for long-term living—so it must be okay . . . right?
Milking a hollow Senate hearing
March 23: The Senate Budget Committee held a public hearing Wednesday that set out to explore how much of an economic cost the outdoor industry is paying because of climate change, and the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable was quick to trumpet the proceedings. But neither the ORR nor any of the outdoor industry’s major players participated in the hearing, leaving just three minor players to make the case—one of whom, a 23-year-old Nordic skier, became a punching bag for a supercilious Louisiana legislator.
RV red flags keep popping up all over
March 20: Representatives of RV manufacturers and campground owners keep radiating good cheer about the upcoming season, paying extravagant notice to every uptick in sales and reservations. But while there’s cause for cautious optimism, there’s at least as strong a case to be made for a less than stellar 2024, as even those who are closest to the action are indicating—not to mention a decision by Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis to unload nearly a fifth of his company stock.
The seal on your RV? Just a tax stamp
March 16: Buy a manufactured RV, and chances are that somewhere in a prominent location near the main entrance you’ll see a gold badge—if it’s a motorhome, silver if it’s a travel trailer or fifth-wheel—that amounts to an industry seal of good housekeeping. But when you get right down to it that seal is little more than a private-industry tax stamp issued by the RV Industry Association, and because RV sales have slumped so badly, tax collections are down sharply. All of which means the RVIA has a big problem.
Campers flying solo and on the cheap
March 10: Reports about this year’s annual survey of U.S. camping from The Dyrt have focused largely on the sector’s continued growth—but dig down a bit and you’ll find significant drop-offs among working-age adults. Then there’s the growing appetite for free camping, apparently in reaction to higher rates—and to younger generations’ growing propensity for not canceling reservations and being no-shows. And why are almost a third of all campers going it alone?
Hustlers, beats and Wendy’s CEO
March 8: It’s been almost a month since Wendy’s CEO caused a firestorm by telling analysts the fast-food chain was going to experiment with dynamic pricing, and the dust still hasn’t lifted. But campgrounds and RV parks already have all but universally embraced the approach, with little comparable push-back, and for them it’s been a windfall. After all, the less a customer understands why he’s paying what he’s paying, the better for business—and even more so if that customer is convinced he’s getting a special deal.
Using ‘nature’ as a propaganda tool
Feb. 28: Michael Patterson insists that his plans to build a glampground on the shores of a relatively small 30-acre pond in southern Maine won’t be environmentally harmful because “I’m trying to keep it wilderness.” His opponents, on the other hand, claim those plans would “devastate” the ecosystem—even as they contend that the pond’s ecosystem has already been “dramatically reduced” by over-development. Both sides are trying to score points by invoking a natural order that was erased years ago.
New homes are now smaller than RVs
Feb. 21: This past Sunday offered a stark study in economic contrasts: the New York Times ran a sizable story, headlined “The Great Compression,” detailing how we’ve entered “the era of the 400-square-foot subdivision house.” And television social commentator John Oliver offered Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a million dollars a year to step down from the bench—as well as a $2.4-million Prevost motorcoach just to sweeten the deal. The Prevost is actually bigger than the homes chronicled by the Times.
RVs as ‘housing’ a recipe for slums
Feb. 17: Squeezed by a housing crisis that is approaching Great Depression dimensions, state and local governments have started turning their backs on “decent, safe and sanitary” standards that have long guided the home-building and mortgage-lending industries. In Oregon, that means deciding that yes, people should be allowed to live full-time in “vehicles . . . designed for use as temporary living quarters,” even if their kitchens are outside. And even if they don’t have a toilet—unless a county decides maybe that should be taken “under consideration” as an “additional standard.”
Let’s face it: we’re all tourons
Feb. 11: There’s an undeniably smug pleasure many of us take in observing others’ failings or stupid behavior, such as the “tourons”—a mash-up of “tourist” and “moron”—who try to pet wild bear cubs or take selfies with bison in Yellowstone. Yet how much difference is there between the tourist who ambles up to a wild animal and the tourist who thrashes heedlessly through a tick-infested meadow, or who kicks up leaf mold and breathes in fungal spores, or who ignores a mosquito bite even after the headaches it caused progress to vomiting, high fever and aching joint pain?
Need RV repairs? Be prepared to wait!
Feb. 7: Last summer I reported on a possible silver lining to the grey cloud of plunging RV sales: the decline in high-margin sales meant dealers had more incentive to beef up their servicing efforts. And, indeed, there were some encouraging signs that months-long repairs were gradually getting shorter—but that was then. Today that’s history, with average wait times of up to 89 days for some warranty repairs—and as with any average, that means some waits are considerably longer. What the heck is going on?
ARVC/OHI: adrift without a rudder
Feb. 3: The organization formerly known as the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds, or ARVC, is having one heck of an identity crisis. Its “rebranding” as Outdoor Hospitality Industry alienated its core membership, without any indication that the change has broadened its appeal—and now it has decided that RV parks and campgrounds across the U.S. can be dues-paying members without also belonging to a state association. Look for mayhem and confusion to ensue.
A warning shot about RV price fixing
Jan. 31: The use of algorithms to set prices of common goods and services, enabled by widespread computerization and data scraping, has seeped into various parts of the economy—including how camp sites are priced. Now an impending piece of legislation , targeting price-fixing in rental housing, is about to be introduced in the U.S. Senate, with obvious implications for RV parks and campgrounds. Using algorithmic pricing “is no different from doing it over cigars and whiskey,” according to one of the bill sponsors.
Why does KOA play a numbers game?
Jan. 27: KOA tooted its own horn this week by announcing that thanks to independent parks becoming franchisees, as well as new RV park construction, it had reached the “elevated number” of 511 branded locations across North America, marking another “year of significant expansion.” Which sounds swell only as long as you ignore the 525 locations it claimed in 2021, or the 515 it had two years prior to that. So what’s really going on?
More RV sites don’t mean more room
Jan. 20: If you’re a recreational RVer—someone who bought a travel trailer or class C motorhome thinking you’d like to take the kids camping—a pair of reports this past week by two long-time campground observers could make your head spin. One indicates the U.S. will gain as many as 18,000 new campsites over the next three years–but the other suggests the demand for those space from residential RVers will be considerably greater.
Turning a deaf ear to Mother Nature
Jan. 13: It’s been a helluva week on the weather front, and nowhere more so than in Marianna, Florida, where a likely tornado smashed through the Florida Caverns RV Resort—just five years after Hurricane Michael caused $2.5 million in damages. But the resort’s owner says he’ll rebuild again—even as a volley of recent reports suggests that yet another repeat is increasingly likely. Is the RV industry capable of reading the writing on the wall?
Holes down which to throw money
Jan. 8: Years ago, when I was reporting from a coastal city in South Carolina, I learned the classic definition of a boat: a hole in the water down which you throw a lot of money. RVs are like that. The romance of the road, like the siren call of the sea, quickly founders on the shoals of high fuel prices, constant maintenance and the realization that you’ll never spend enough time on the thing to justify its price tag.
RVing shenanigans of the past year
Jan. 2: The end of one year and the start of another frequently prompts retrospectives by those seeking closure or looking to demonstrate their cleverness. Sometimes it would be better if they didn’t—but despite that bit of homegrown wisdom, I’m giving it a shot, anyway. There was just too much tricky business going on in 2023 to move on to 2024 without one last mention.
Renting Dirt 