Tag: CampSpot

Feds go after reservation algorithms

The U.S. Justice Dept. today filed, at long last, an antitrust lawsuit against the real estate software company RealPage. As reported by the New York Times, the lawsuit accuses the company “of facilitating a price-fixing conspiracy that boosted rents beyond market forces for millions of people. It’s the first major civil antitrust lawsuit where the role of an algorithm in pricing manipulation is central to the case.”

Such a lawsuit has been nearly two years in the making, following extensive reporting by ProPublica in the fall of 2022 (as I reported here) that examined how reservation companies that aggregate data from hundreds of clients—in this case apartment buildings—can then “suggest” how rents might be adjusted and what occupancy rates should be targeted. That information, RealPage advertised, could help landlords earn 3% to 7% more than they would otherwise.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this sort of wink-wink price-fixing could be applied to any mass market that uses computerized data collection and algorithmically-driven communication with its primary customers. Indeed, the Times noted that in addition to the lawsuit against RealPage, both the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have weighed in on private lawsuits against hotel companies that claim they’ve used similar algorithms to help determine room rates.

The private campground industry, suffering from a country bumpkin self-image within the “hospitality industry” to which it aspires, has uncritically adopted any number of its supposedly more sophisticated counterparts’ practices. So, too, with dynamic pricing, and then with the very sort of algorithmically-derived “guidance” that now has RealPage in the feds’ crosshairs. The most egregious promoter of this sort of invitation to price collusion is CampSpot, if only because of its dominant position within the reservation software marketplace, but it isn’t alone.

RealPage and its imitators argue that their customers are not obliged to act on the information they provide, even as their marketing emphasizes how that information can maximize revenues—and as the cost of renting an apartment has spiraled steadily upward over the past four or five years. Campers and RVers similarly have lived through a near-doubling of rates since the pandemic, and while there are numerous factors accounting for that increase, industry-wide price-fixing undoubtedly is part of the mix.

Congress has been paying attention to the broader problem, and the anti-trust watchdogs are looking more closely as well. The FTC last month, for example, began a study of how financial firms like Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase and Accenture are using data from customers to set prices. Individual states are also starting to weigh in, with North Carolina, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Tennessee—a grab-bag of red and blue—joining the federal suit against RealPage.

Against that backdrop, the campground industry and CampSpot are insignificant economic gnats that may get by for years before someone tries to swat them. Or not. Algorithms do not operate in a law-free zone, a federal lawyer said at today’s news conference announcing the lawsuit. “After all, humans create them. Our laws will always apply to the people behind the machines and the companies behind the algorithms.”

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A handful of updates on past posts

The end of July marks the mid-point of the traditional camping season, although that term has become increasingly elastic and even meaningless due to the distorting effects of climate change. Nevertheless, this seems like an apt moment to hit “pause,” check back on what I’ve written in the past and provide updates where appropriate. Some stories actually do reach a resolution, but many more have a way of continuing with no clear end in sight.

Ghost Town in the Sky just won’t die

One such ongoing drama has to do with Ghost Town in the Sky, a now defunct amusement park in Maggie Valley, NC about which I last wrote nearly two years ago. The property’s greatest champion, Alaska Presley, had entered into a business partnership with a Myrtle Beach-based hustler, Frankie Wood, who sweet-talked her into naming him the managing partner of their joint venture despite his shady past. In addition to contributing the property itself, Presley apparently covered all of the venture’s operating costs; Wood’s end of the deal amounted to little more than half-baked ideas drizzled with snake oil.

Then Presley died, age 98.

Inheriting Presley’s 50% stake in the partnership was her niece, Jill McClure, who cast a notably more business-like eye on its affairs. It didn’t take her long to conclude she was holding one end of a snake—and not the business end of it, either. The upshot was a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the partnership, filed in North Carolina’s Superior Court, alleging that Wood had breached his fiduciary responsibilities and thus was putting McClure’s interests at risk. Given Wood’s history to date, that would have seemed like a slam dunk.

But no. Ruling more than 18 months after the case was filed—in part because of numerous filing extensions requested by Wood, earning a judicial rebuke for “litigation by ambush” that nevertheless had no effect on the final decision—Special Superior Court Judge for Complex Business Cases Adam M. Conrad concluded in mid-May that McClure didn’t have a case. The legal arrangement to which Presley had agreed, and which McClure had inherited, clearly specified that Wood “is the sole managing member of Ghost Town in the Sky and that it has unilateral authority under the operating agreement to manage the company’s day-to-day affairs without McClure’s consent.”

That “management,” as the decision also observes, includes four years in which the venture “did not secure financing, earn income or hire employees.” Since Presley’s death, it also includes non-payment of 2022 and 2023 property taxes. No matter. As Judge Conrad sees it, there is nothing extreme enough to merit an involuntary dissolution of the partnership—which leaves Wood still at the helm, Ghost Town in the Sky even more of a moldering heap than it was four years ago, and McClure gamely telling a local reporter, “I’m moving forward with a positive attitude.”

Stay tuned.

Cacapon locals knock out two RV parks

While Maggie Valley refuses to give up the ghost, a two-fisted attempt to put an RV park in or next to Cacapon State Park, West Virginia, finally appears to have been defeated.

The first such effort, as I wrote a year ago, featured an overly cozy relationship between state officials and Blue Water Development and their efforts to build an RV campground with more than 300 sites in the state park. The proposal quickly generated fierce local opposition from park advocates and local residents, who objected to its size and the amount of traffic it would generate in a rugged area notable for its narrow roads and rustic vibe. As more details emerged of Blue Water’s backdoor maneuvering, the whole idea became politically untenable and ended up getting axed.

But that only made way for a competing proposal that had already been floated as an alternative to the state facility: a 50-acre private development adjacent to Cacapon State Park, with up to 241 sites for RVs, cabins, yurts and tents, as well as such mega-park amenities as a swimming pool, bathhouse, mini golf course, sports courts, dog parks, several pavilions and food truck areas. Ironically, as local opponents worried that the “oversized RV campground” would scar a panoramic viewshed rated by National Geographic Magazine as “one of the top 5 scenic views in the East,” the developer of the proposed campground was . . . Scenic LLC.

Despite boisterous public hearings that divided the Morgan County Planning Commission, all needed permits were approved and Scenic LLC seemed set to proceed. But then the months rolled by and nothing seemed to be happening, encouraging the opposition to renew its battle. In late June, more than two dozen local residents showed up at a planning commission meeting to demand a reconsideration, with some accusing commissioners of “selling out” the community and the commissioners responding that the project had met all county guidelines for commercial development, so what else could they do.

And then, just like that, it was over. Two weeks ago, Aaron Bills, Scenic’s principal owner, announced that he is stepping away from the project. The plan had been to seek a KOA franchise for the property, but apparently the price tag was too steep. This is “shockingly bad timing for finances,” Bills told county officials, according to the Morgan Messenger. “As a family, we’ve decided we can’t deliver on a KOA-branded campground”–indeed, he added, would the county be interested in buying the property for itself?

Danville’s casino-related RV park craps out

A 333-site Roman-themed RV park in Danville, VA, proposed last year by  J. Cubas Holdings of Coral Gables, Florida—which, not incidentally, has absolutely no experience in operating an RV park of any size, much less an avowed “high end” operation—is no more.

After the neighbors rose up in arms for any number of obvious reasons, Cubas switched gears and said early this year he’d build a bunch of new homes, priced between $300,000 and $350,000. Ironically, he’d held that out as a threat against the city if it refused to permit his RV park—only to have the city elders say that more housing is exactly what Danville needs. “Folks moving here, they need somewhere to live and there’s only so many places you can build new developments, so we’re happy to have this moving forward,” explained city councilman Lee Vogler.

Plus here’s another bonus: putting the kibbosh on Cubas’ “Palace Resort” also deep-sixed his plans for an annual biker rally that he promised would rival those of Sturgis, SD and Orlando, FL.

Reservation software getting regulatory stink-eye

As public officials learn about the price-fixing potential of algorithms used by centralized reservation software systems, first extensively detailed by ProPublica two years ago, they’ve started erecting legislative constraints at the national level. Now that’s filtered down to the local precincts: yesterday, the San Francisco board of supervisors adopted the country’s first local ordinance banning landlords from using certain software to set rents.

According to CBS News, the measure bans the sale and use of software “which combines non-public competitors’ data to set, recommend or advise on rents and occupancy levels.” Doing so, said the ordinance’s sponsor, amounts to “automated price-fixing.”

Yes, that’s only one city, and a decidedly liberal one at that. And yes, the ordinance applies to rental apartments only. But it’s not much of a leap to see how the same concerns can apply to widely shared campground reservation systems, like CampSpot, which aggregate user data and enable “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.”

Sooner or later, the anti-trust police may take notice.

Frank Rolfe is at it again—but badly

Finally, scarcely more than two months after an email blast soliciting customers for his misleadingly titled RV Park University, Frank Rolfe is at it again, still hyping his “RV Park Investor’s Boot Camp.” This broadside, like the previous one, touts his 30 years of experience “building one of the largest portfolios in the U.S.”—experience that can be yours for only $997. “That’s for roughly 20 hours of video,” he writes. “And that’s a true bargain investment in your education on this sector.”

Okay. Pretty standard Frank Rolfe fare thus far. But embedded in the email is a link to a video that’s supposed to seal the deal, “Unlock RV Park Investment Success,” under the equally problematic headline, “The RV Park Boot Camp Is The Gold-Standard.” The first half of the two-minute video is Frank giving his sales pitch. The second half, without anything resembling an introduction, apparently is supposed to highlight one of Frank’s investment successes: the Mission Bell-Trade Winds RV and Mobile Home Resort, deep in the heart of Texas.

This is, as you might glean from the name, not an RV park but a long-term residential mixed-use development catering to retirees (“Homeownership Made Affordable”) and snowbirds. The residents, by all accounts, are a cheerful and welcoming bunch. The place itself is a dump, showing its age and in a generally run-down condition. Its website, where the only items under “news” urges readers to check out “the exciting events of the 2022-2023 season,” is just as outdated.

Judging by this example, Frank’s boot camp deserves the boot.

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What convertibles tell us about RVing

The Hustle’s curiously disturbing yet apt photo illustration.

Earlier this month The Hustle, a daily online “brief on business & tech news,” published an article by freelance journalist Mark Dent under the headline, “Why Americans stopped buying convertibles.” Turns out, he might have been writing about a lot more than just cars.

The convertible in Dent’s case was a 2004 Ford Mustang he bought in 2010, when U.S. ragtop sales had already swooned by more than half from just a few years earlier, to around 140,000 annually. That slide only continued in the years to follow, to approximately 70,000 in the 12 months through this past February, and convertibles now account for just 0.6% of all vehicle sales. If that strikes you as unsustainable, you’re right: indeed, the sedans and coupes on which convertibles are based are themselves being pushed toward extinction, displaced by SUVs—and SUV makers that tried to sell a convertible model, like Nissan’s crossover Murano or Land Rover’s Evoque, were quickly shown the folly of their ways.

“Americans spoke with their wallets,” Dent observes. “They didn’t want the open air.”

“They didn’t want the open air” says a great deal about more than just cars, although that’s a good place to start. Cars once signified freedom and the opportunity to strike out into an unknown and mysterious landscape, and convertibles cranked up the feeling of unbridled exploration by exposing their drivers to sun and wind and roadside sounds. But no more. Rather than an emotional rush, today’s car owners want technology and a cocooned experience that shields them from the world they’re navigating, with heated seats and GPS navigating systems. Or as Dent also writes, wistfully, “We’re losing the messy, hair-flowing-in-the-wind version of the American Dream to something climate-controlled and closed off to the world.”

So, too, with camping in general and RVing specifically, recreational pursuits with a split personality vacillating between “open air” on one hand and an air-conditioned cocoon on the other. Millions of dollars are spent designing, building and promoting overlanding vehicles to entice would-be campers with the same fantasies that once beguiled American car buyers to hit the open road, preferably in a convertible, but the emphasis remains on how well these technological marvels can duplicate all the comforts of home. You, too, can strike out for the most remote wilderness, but with massive water tanks and solar panels to ensure weeks of comfort and enough juice to power satellite phones so you’re never truly disconnected.

Millions more, meanwhile, are spent defanging and insulating the great outdoors to lure “travelers” who never thought of themselves as campers and who wouldn’t dream of leaving a paved highway, but who fancy themselves as having intrepid personalities. By blurring the distinction between camping and other types of accommodation and promising an authentic encounter with Mother Nature, glamping has become the fastest growing segment of the “outdoor hospitality” industry. Here, as in every other initiative aimed at convincing the public to get out of its comfort zone, the emphasis is on eliminating discomfort.

This week, for example, the RV rental platform Outdoorsy joined booking platforms Reserve America and Campspot in offering “weather guarantees,” a hedge against “undesirable weather” that refunds your money if the sky rains on your outing. Bad sky! The insurance comes “just in time for unpredictable spring and summer weather,” gushes a press release, and is designed to give buyers “peace of mind.” Or as summarized by one of the geniuses behind this innovation, “we recognize the growing desire for outdoor adventure and want to encourage those looking to get out there to enjoy stress-free adventures”—making one wonder, of course, what definition of “adventure” the speaker had in mind.

But as the recently released Camping and Hospitality Report 2024 from KOA makes clear, “While camping has always been a popular activity enjoyed by millions of outdoor enthusiasts, in the past decade, it has emerged as much more than a way to get outside.” Indeed, KOA says it has “seen camping evolve from simply being considered an outdoor activity to becoming a formidable segment of the travel marketplace,” as though it were just one more booth in a bazaar of otherworldly enticements. “Open air” no longer suffices, which is why this is the second year in which KOA’s annual report adds “hospitality” to “camping” in its title. These days it’s all about curated experiences and mediated environments, and that requires expert intervention.

Just as the Outdoorsy spokesman makes pablum out of “adventure” by promoting “peace of mind,” so KOA deftly describes a watering-down of outdoor activities as something that “evolved,” thereby reducing camping to a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder it is building for itself. Or as otherwise explained in the report, KOA “broadened” its outlook because it understood that it needed “to look holistically at outdoor hospitality as more immersive experiences began allowing deeper connections to place and people.”

Oh, so mystical. And oh, such a crock.

The convertible, that ultimate symbol of the freedom of the road, has been driven toward extinction by the competitive appeal of plush-yet-tough digitized, computerized and networked boxes on wheels. Who needs their hair ruffled by the wind? Camping and RVing, mythologized as middle America’s ticket to connecting with the great outdoors, are on the same trajectory, done in by an “evolving travel marketplace” that places little value on “open air.” There is, after all, so much more to camping than just “being outside”—right?

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Notes on an evolving RV landscape

When we bought our campground, in 2013, there was only one insurance company that would provide us with liability coverage. It wasn’t that we were an especially bad risk. Campgrounds were such a niche market, and so poorly understood, that the insurance industry simply didn’t want to touch them. The sole exception was Evergreen U.S. A., which had been founded almost 40 years earlier and was owned by campground and RV park owners precisely because that was the only way they could get the financial protection they needed. We were lucky they were around.

But that didn’t last long. Just as we acquired a campground because—among other reasons—we thought this was a dynamic industry, larger, more mainstream insurance companies likewise realized they were missing out on a sure thing and suddenly began piling on. By mid-2014, Evergreen’s board of directors had thrown in the towel and stopped renewing policies. Bigger, better capitalized insurance companies had the resources “to beat our rates and provide incentives we can’t always match,” explained Evergreen’s president, Lucas Hartford, at the time. “In these times, price is more important than ever to our customer’s success.”

Well, what goes around comes around. This month’s Woodall’s Campground Magazine has a half-page ad from K&K Insurance advising readers that it “protects campgrounds with coverage designed for your unique needs.” Campground owners should ask their insurance agent for a quote from K&K, the ad advises—unless their “unique need” is owning a campground in Florida. Because even though the ad specifically states that K&K is a licensed insurance producer in all states, with FL license #L007299, the ad just as specifically states that its campground coverage “is not available in Florida.”

Care to guess why? What is it about hurricane central, garnished with rising sea levels and appalling heat, that makes it unappealing for a company that exists specifically to underwrite risk protection?

K&K is just a canary in the coalmine, but similar redlining is all but inevitable. And it won’t be just Florida that gets hung out to dry, or just K&K pulling in its horns, as extreme weather becomes more widespread, more prevalent—and as campgrounds and other outdoor venues increasingly are seen as being especially vulnerable.

But unlike past decades, when RV park and campground owners rallied to meet a common need, the industry these days is far too fractured to respond in similar fashion. The big corporate-owned chains have deep enough pockets to self-insure or to package their various properties into more insurable risks. The national organization that once represented campgrounds and that might have taken a leadership role in addressing a common threat now has a new, androgynous name—OHI—and broader ambitions: it wants to be the spokesperson for “outdoor hospitality,” a role that apparently precludes any conversation about climate change.

That leaves the so-called mom-and-pop owner/operators fending for themselves, just as they did in the good ‘ol days.

Meanwhile, another slow-motion train wreck affecting the campground industry—and specifically those campgrounds chasing after algorithm-driven reservation systems—is shaping up in the form of lawsuits in Arizona, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. and criminal investigations in North Carolina and by the U.S. Justice Department. In their cross-hairs is RealPage, a Texas-based property-management software company that is being accused of illegally fixing apartment rental prices.

ProPublica reported extensively on this problem 18 months ago, and in a subsequent post I raised the question of how something similar is happening with many campground reservation systems generally, and with CampSpot specifically. As outlined in a second post, Campspot already has a lion’s share of campground business, which means it also has an enormous amount of reservation data to crunch, such as site and occupancy rates sorted by campground size, day of the week and any number of other variables. This data is then available to Campspot’s clients, in supposedly anonymized form, with those campground owners free to do with that information what they will.

That’s handy for the campground owner who wants to see how his property stacks up against others. It’s also a first step toward cartelization, enabling supposed competitors to adjust rates in lockstep without directly talking to each other, which would be an antitrust no-no. Whether RealPage—and by analogy Campspot, if on a much lesser scale—are nevertheless facilitating anticompetitive behavior is the question state and federal authorities are raising, but as a Wall Street Journal article a couple of days ago noted, the Biden administration is generally taking a much harder line on price fixing.

“Any rulings against Real Page could have legal ramifications for other business sectors, such as online retail, where companies also use algorithms to make pricing decisions,” the Journal noted.

The headlong rush by the industry to embrace new digital technologies—AI increasingly is coming into play, as well—is just one more step away from the fundamental aspects of camping that made it a worthwhile pastime in the first place. It’s all done in the name of improving business fundamentals, of course, but those “improvements” invariably reshape “the business” until it becomes just like everything else: more gentrified, impersonal, homogenized and packaged—and, above all else, expensive.

The glamping phenomenon is of course the apotheosis of this trend, exploding across the campground industry over just a few years. But just how far things have gone may be exemplified by the recent announcement that AutoCamp is now partnering with . . . Hilton Hotels, which has as much to do with the outdoors as Louis Vuitton. “This is the first time a major hospitality brand and outdoor lodging company have come together in this way to create even more choices for travelers while redefining the outdoor hospitality experience,” crowed a Hilton executive. How nice for OHI’s expanding portfolio. . . .

Which brings me to one final report, that of a Colorado entrepreneur who earlier this month broke ground on Kosmos Stargazing Resort, just outside Alamosa, in the San Luis Valley. The planned 22 glass-domed stargazing villas, which have received a special use permit as a “campground,” are to be rented for $700 to $1,200 a night.

Now that’s camping, eh?

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A warning shot about RV price fixing

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. Proponents claim such “advances” simply promote greater market efficiency, but that increased “efficiency” benefits just the price-setting side of each transaction—buyers don’t have similar access to data that would enable them to get a more efficient price.

RVers and campers have experienced this problem first-hand. It wasn’t so long ago that RV parks provided rate sheets spelling out how much a particular site would cost on a particular night, but these days that kind of transparent pricing has been supplanted by “dynamic pricing.” How much you’ll be charged for an RV site will depend not just on the day you want to reserve, but on the day—and even time of day—when you make the reservation. Of course, which day will get you the best price is not something a consumer can learn, not least because the “dynamic” piece of that pricing system makes this a moving target. But this system wasn’t designed to benefit customers, anyway.

The industry rationalizes this two-step as simply a response to supply and demand, neglecting to acknowledge a third piece of today’s pricing puzzle: what is the competition charging? Back in pre-algorithmic days that wasn’t a question to be answered easily, since it required obtaining and looking at numerous published rates or contacting other campground operators directly, which not only was a lot of work but also raised all kinds of messy price-fixing and antitrust concerns. But then the campground industry embraced online reservation systems, and as the saying goes, That. Changed. Everything.

Or not. Digitally-driven sales and marketing have made price collusion a lot easier to implement, but the legal (and ethical) considerations have not gone away, making push-back inevitable.

This coming Tuesday, a group of U.S. senators will be introducing legislation, dubbed the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, to make it illegal for landlords to use algorithms to artificially inflate rents or reduce the supply of housing. The proposed law apparently was catalyzed by an extensive ProPublica investigation, on which I reported in the fall of 2022, that found software used by competing landlords was collecting their proprietary data and feeding it into an algorithm that would “suggest” what rents they should charge. As price setting goes, according to bill sponsor Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, that’s “no different from doing it over cigars and whiskey in a private club.”

Although Wyden said he believes existing antitrust laws already apply to what data-compiling companies like RealPage and Yardi are doing, “I want the law to be painfully clear that algorithmic price-fixing of rents is a crime.” Next week’s proposal, therefore, brushes aside industry protestations that it’s only providing information—in its words, making price-fixing collusion “implausible”—by make it illegal for property owners to contract with companies that coordinate rent prices. It also would bar two or more rental owners from coordinating on such information.

The parallels between rental housing algorithms and those now available to RV park owners are stunning, as manifested most widely by Campspot, easily the big dog among campground reservation software providers. The Grand Rapids-based booking agent last year made 3.1 million reservations across more than 2,100 campgrounds, processing in excess of $1.9 billion. But as reported last July, Campspot also introduced a reporting dashboard for its RV park clients that leverages all the reservation data it is constantly accumulating, enabling “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.”

Campspot’s helpful guidance to campground operators seems to fall a step short of the problem next week’s Senate bill will address among landlords, in that it apparently doesn’t suggest a specific site rate; it just provides all the information for campground owners to reach their own conclusions. 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.” Collusion? Nah—that’s so implausible.

Compared with the massive rental housing industry, RV parks and campgrounds are just an economic blip, and so may readily slip under the radar of antitrust regulators and lawmakers. But to the extent that RV parks increasingly serve as part of the nation’s housing stock, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the introduction of a Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of RV Park Cartels Act, enabling the public to make confident pricing decisions when reserving campground sites.

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Tossing a pebble into the OHI pond

The National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds earlier this month held its annual convention in Kansas City, at which its most prominently headlined action was to rebrand itself as the Outdoor Hospitality Industry, or OHI. Quite overshadowed by that announcement, and lost in the typically tepid shuffle of self-promoting panels and lectures, was a ground-breaking presentation by Michael Scheinman, CEO of Campspot—underscoring, yet again, that this is not an industry given to self-examination.

“Navigating the Camping-Hotel Crossover: Lessons for Success in Outdoor Hospitality,” if Campspot’s subsequent press release is to be believed, played to a standing-room only crowd. But the industry’s primary “news” outlet, Woodall’s Campground Magazine, couldn’t be bothered to provide more than a sketchy three-paragraph summary—although, to be fair, it did link to Scheinman’s white paper, so at least it can be read online [registration with Campspot required]. Other campground-oriented media, however, pretty much gave the presentation a pass.

That’s what happens when you swim against the current, even obliquely.

Scheinman’s apostasy was to challenge industry group-think by asking an obvious question, “Why are campgrounds increasingly considering hotel best practices?” As he summarized in an opening statement, the industry’s uncritical embrace of hotel industry tactics and tools “can lead to poor guest experience, sub-optimal revenue optimization and costly and unnecessary investments”—not exactly what a convention full of vested interests devoted to selling hotel industry tactics and tools wants to hear. Little wonder, then, that Scheinman’s tossed pebble sank beneath the pond’s surface with scarcely a ripple.

Long-time campers and RVers are well aware of this trend, which began in earnest with the pandemic but can trace its roots to the turn of the century, when a hotel and casino executive was tapped to become president and chief executive of the industry’s largest campground chain. As Jim Rogers told Forbes magazine a decade after assuming KOA’s leadership mantle, “the casino business is so cutting edge and the camping industry is so ‘back of the woods’ ” that he was having a lot of fun making the latter look a lot more like the former. Among his many transformative initiatives, for instance, was a full-court press to add cabins—many, many cabins—to RV parks, which Rogers explained “are just like a suite in a hotel except the interior is all wood.”

That myopic outlook has become even more prevalent today, Scheinman observed, thanks to the pandemic-driven flood of institutionally-backed investors looking for a more stable alternative to the volatile hotel-asset class. As those investors applied their hotel experience to their campground acquisitions, a similarly pandemic-driven class of new customers flocking to this alternative form of lodging brought expectations based on their experiences with hotel and vacation rentals. Meanwhile, hotel-focused managers, consultants and software vendors also piled into this “new” business opportunity, but in doing so “often needed to convince campground operators that they were ‘missing out’ when neglecting key tactics and tools used in hotels”—as good a description as any of most OHI convention content.

This perfect three-way storm of hotel-oriented pressure to change traditional campground culture and practices has been augmented by technology, which provides campground owners with labor savings while creating opportunities for new revenue streams. But as Scheinman wrote, “given the relative dearth of campground-specific software related to point of sale, loyalty, customer relationship management, accounting, and others, they were led to hotel-centric solutions.” In short, there now exists a hotel-based feedback loop that has pushed the campground industry out of Jim Rogers’ “back of the woods” to the front of the line, although that line may not be one you want to be in.

For campers, the application of hotel-centric solutions to campgrounds has meant significantly higher rates and add-on costs, less face-time with a shrinking number of campground employees and an ongoing shift in the ratio of RV sites to various forms of lodging. It also, arguably, has resulted in a shifting ratio between “nature” and physical comfort as fundamental aspects of the camping experience, requiring that nature’s less comfortable aspects be minimized, if not eradicated: more outdoor lighting, more paved surfaces, more hard-sided shelters, and so on. And as nature gets pushed to the periphery, a compensatory emphasis on “amenities” takes its place, from wifi to golf car rentals to organized programs such as movie nights or kids’ activities.

These developments, although widely discussed in campers’ forums, are largely unexamined by the campground industry itself, which continues lurching in a direction largely defined by the newcomers. Indeed, it’s notable that to the extent a spotlight has been trained on the subject, it’s being shined by a graduate of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, alma mater of a significant number of the new campground investors. Nor is Scheinman a disinterested observer, as much of his white paper’s conclusions lead to an explanation of why Campspot is ideally positioned to provide campground-specific—rather than hotel-centric—services that meet the industry’s unique needs. In that respect, Scheinman’s presentation was only a more sophisticated version of the usual self-serving OHI fare.

But self-serving or not, Scheinman dared raise questions that the RV park industry would benefit from considering. A little bit of critical thinking and discussion would go a long way in disrupting the relentless promotion of campground “modernization” —which, of course, explains why Scheinman’s white paper has received so little attention. And while his “solution” may be to Campspot’s advantage, that doesn’t make his observations less trenchant or the problems he highlights any less urgent.

One likely reason site fees are up

Scarcely more than a year after ProPublica reported that algorithm-driven software was partly responsible for exorbitant apartment rents, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (subscription needed) that two of the companies behind such practices are being sued by tenants in federal courts in Tennessee and Washington. The lawsuits come as the U.S. Justice Dept.’s antitrust division continues an investigation that started last fall and considers potential enforcement action against RealPage, the company at the heart of ProPublica’s reporting.

At issue is a pricing system, used by dozens of landlords when setting their rates, that analyzes giant amounts of proprietary data —provided by those same landlords—to come up with “suggested” rent increases. This amounts to collusion that is illegal, anticompetitive and keeps rents artificially high, the lawsuits contend, pointing to such evidence as a landlord saying the pricing software enabled him to “push rents more aggressively” and “quickly.” Marketing materials from RealPage, meanwhile, boasted of the opportunity for landlords to “outperform the market by 3% to 7%.”

Why should that matter to you? Quite possibly because a similar dynamic is developing within the campground industry, as I reported in broad strokes just days after the ProPublica story, and then more specifically this past July. That’s when Campspot, a leading reservation software company now serving more than 2,200 RV parks and campgrounds, announced its release of Signals, a computerized database that enables campground owners to see the competition’s aggregate rates, occupancy, revenue per site and other variables in real time.

As with RealPage, Campspot maintains it’s simply amassing “anonymized metrics,” so no proprietary data is disclosed. And as with RealPage, Campspot stresses that it’s only enabling its customers “to compare their performance against a recommended comp set”—what they do with that information is up to them. Indeed, in a consolidating industry that is seeing a rapid increase of investor-owned chains, Campspot sees itself as providing smaller operators with tools to offset their larger competitors’ advantages of scale and marketing resources. “Our goal is to level the playing field,” a Campspot executive assured me in August.

Well, maybe. Then again, Campspot is rapidly closing in on oligopoly status—it claims to be processing approximately 25% of all campground reservations in North America—and can fairly be said to occupy the “big data” niche within the campground industry that RealPage is accused of claiming among landlords. Indeed, a letter from four U.S. senators to the Dept. of Justice earlier this year raised concerns that RealPage’s software, YieldStar, was playing a significant role in driving rent inflation in some of the country’s biggest markets—even though YieldStar’s data base represents only 8% of all rental units nationwide, or less than one-third Campspot’s market share of campground reservations.

“Given YieldStar’s market share, even the widespread use of its anonymized and aggregated proprietary rental data by the country’s largest landlords could result in de-facto price-setting by those companies, driving up prices and hurting renters,” the senators wrote. Similarly, the algorithmic use of “big data” across industries as varied as grocery chains, ride-sharing companies and the pork and poultry industry has resulted in ever more widespread automated pricing across the economy, increasing costs, reducing market competition and fueling rising concern in the Biden administration.

The campground industry is neither as large nor as vital to social welfare as its apartment counterpart—although the balance keeps shifting, as more money rushes into the sector and campgrounds increasingly accommodate long-term residents—and therefore tends to fly under the regulatory radar. But that creates a conundrum for Campspot, whose business plan depends on attracting attention, even if some of it is unwelcome. For example, the Inc. 500 for 2023, a list of the country’s fastest-growing private companies, was announced just a couple of months ago—with Campspot weighing in at #341, up from its debut appearance the year before, at #487. The company’s three-year revenue growth rate? An astonishing 1,693%. Those are the kinds of numbers, when viewed in the context of market share, that can make antitrust regulators sit up and take notice.

But unless and until they do, the juggernaut keeps rolling along. The National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds (ARVC) announced mid-October that it has a vaguely defined “new partnership” with Campspot, even though a fistful of other campground reservation companies also are ARVC associate members. Just what this new partnership entails isn’t clear, other than scheduling Campspot to lead a “featured breakout session” Nov. 8 at ARVC’s annual convention. (The session title, interestingly, is “Navigating the Camping-Hotel Crossover: Lessons for Success in Outdoor Hospitality,” attesting to Campspot’s founders’ hotel industry roots.) But it does attest to Campspot’s increasing influence and agenda-setting capability within the industry.

Ultimately, being successful in business is neither a sin nor illegal. The point at which it becomes questionable, however, arises when “success” flows from unfair advantage. The lawsuits in Tennessee and Washington, as well as any Justice Dept. action against RealPage, may well signal whether big data has crossed that line—and if it has, whether Campspot has something to worry about.

‘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.

In a lockstep march to higher prices

Fair warning: this is a lengthy post, and would be much longer if I hadn’t already sketched out some of the context last October, in a post headlined “Can ‘dynamic pricing’ beget cartels?” It might help to read that before plowing ahead here, but in a nutshell, my basic premise was that the ongoing consolidation of online reservation systems is creating an opportunity—already widely common in the apartment rental business—for cartelization, with Campspot best positioned to take advantage.

Campspot has done nothing since then to dispel that possibility—indeed, just the opposite. And that suggests even higher prices lie ahead for RVers and campers.

Cartelization, briefly, means “an act by market participants to form an association to control or attempt to control generation, distribution, sale or prices” of a commodity or service—price fixing, in other words. It’s illegal in the United States, but that doesn’t mean established businesses don’t want it. They just don’t want to be caught at it. So a key understanding here is the realization that “market participants” may include not just primary players—campgrounds and RV parks—but also secondary parties who have some control over prices, with the consent of the primary players, but who don’t take direct payment.

Until recently, the possibility of price-fixing in the highly fragmented campground industry wasn’t a real concern. When I first got into this business, more than a decade ago, the FTC-fearing sages at the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds (ARVC) would get all atwitter if campground owners at an ARVC event would start discussing or comparing rates, but that was an absurd overreaction. With upwards of 12,000 campgrounds scattered across the width and breadth of the United States, all but a comparative handful owned by as many individuals, the thought that there could be any meaningful collusion on prices—or anything else—was laughable.

But times have changed. It’s not that the campground industry is now more consolidated—it is, but still not enough for individual campgrounds to coordinate pricing—but that its reservation systems have moved inexorably to online providers. Whereas campgrounds and RV parks until a few years ago each had their own reservation systems, some so primitive they consisted merely of large wall calendars or complicated index-card assemblies, now virtually all use one of a dozen to 15 computerized service providers that enable campers to make reservations online.

As they became entrenched within the industry, such reservation systems promoted several pricing innovations that eventually overwhelmed resistance from campground owners who didn’t want to antagonize their customers. Cancellation fees, site-lock fees and larger up-front deposits have all become standard, but even more pernicious has been the spread of dynamic pricing, which eliminated the old rate sheets in favor of algorithmically-driven rates that vary according to supply and demand. One result is that even campground owners don’t know what their campers are paying at any one time—but they do know that their bottom lines have gotten fatter, so they’re only too happy to play along.

It’s important to understand that none of this amounts to price-fixing in a traditional sense, and indeed, an argument can be made that it’s almost the opposite. Although a campground owner may set an upper and lower limit for how much his reservation system charges for a site, the actual outlay by any one camper is outside his field of vision, so to speak. Moreover, that campground owner has only a vague idea, at best, of what a competitor 20 miles away is charging for a comparable site, never mind the rate charged by a campground at the other end of the state.

But there is someone who does know all that, and more: the reservation system provider.

Client campgrounds of most reservation system providers number in at least the hundreds, which is a good start but still not enough to efficiently drive prices higher. Campspot is another story. With more than 1,800 private parks in North America comprising approximately 200,000 sites, it has enough aggregated data from numerous unrelated clients to follow in the footsteps of a Texas-based company named RealPage and its proprietary algorithm, YieldStar, which has significantly increased apartment rental rates across the country . As detailed in an exhaustively researched ProPublica article, YieldStar  “suggests” optimum rates for thousands of open rental units each day—rates that often are significantly higher than the market rate, and frequently higher than experienced property managers believe are obtainable. And guess what? Over time, such “suggestions” have been adopted ever more readily.

That’s not to say that Campspot is doing something similar, but to suggest that its growing dominance increasingly puts it in a position to do so. And given the inexorable logic of market dynamics in a consolidating industry (meaning both RV parks and campgrounds and online reservation systems), some such outcome seems highly likely.

In that regard, two recent developments suggest that Campspot’s drive toward overwhelming its putative competitors is gathering steam. The first is its announcement Feb. 14 of “Campspot Accelerator,” unabashedly described as a “new revenue-driving feature” for campgrounds. Basically an advertising platform grafted onto the reservation interface, Accelerator “placements” are “intentionally selective and thoughtfully designed to create the most value for the consumer while maximizing the potential for the campground.” Translation: campers reserving sites through Campspot will be enticed to spend extra money, with a portion of the proceeds going to the campground.

Thus far, Campspot is offering two such “accelerators.” One is a partnership with RVshare, which connects RV owners and campers looking to rent an RV—which, okay. But the truly innovative offering is Sensible Weather, which is selling an insurance-like product that “reimburses a camper’s reservation costs when rain impacts their experience.” Claiming that weather “is the most stressful part of planning a camping trip,” Accelerator now offers to make the insurance available for purchase when booking “to help increase camper confidence and enhance the overall experience.”

This adds a whole new dimension to what reservation systems offer, and until other providers catch up, promises to give Campspot even more of a competitive edge in building its client base—and why wouldn’t an RV park owner jump at the chance? But Campspot isn’t just broadening its sales appeal by adding new revenue generators to its menu. It’s also getting a promotional assist from . . . wait for it . . . ARVC, the same organization that once upon a time got panicky when members asked each other about their rates.

Two days after Campspot made its Accelerator announcement, ARVC sent out a membership email blast with the subject line, “Save Time With Campspot.” The actual message, featuring a prominent ARVC logo over a Campspot picture of a happy couple looking at a laptop screen, started with: “Campground owners and operators love the time-saving, stress-reducing features of Campspot. In fact, you might even catch Campspot owners doing a little happy dance in front of their computers from time to time.”

Ugh.

The email goes on to tout Campspot’s grid optimization, provides a link for requesting a demo, and quotes a happy customer. It doesn’t mention any other reservation system provider, even though most, like Campspot, are Supplier Council Members of ARVC—and most provide similar grid optimization features. And it never acknowledges that this email was a paid advertisement, which most assuredly it must have been, because why else would it have gone out?

The bottom line is that Campspot is moving quite aggressively toward monopolizing the campground reservation business, raising the specter of still higher rates for RVers down the road. This move is being greeted with the ready compliance of campground owners who see nothing but more profit for themselves. And it’s happening with the ironic cooperation of ARVC, which apparently has pivoted 180 degrees from its once-overblown anxieties about price fixing.

Who would have thought that a backwoods industry like this would end up on the cutting edge of money-extraction practices?

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The new ‘campers’ really aren’t

If there’s one trend that has many veteran campground and RV park owners shaking their heads, it’s the largely pandemic-driven phenomenon of “the new camper.” Considerably younger, more diverse and more urban than their predecessors, the newcomers have changed not just the quantity of campers, but their overall quality—and not always in a good way. At least not from a traditionalist perspective.

Perhaps no one statistic sums up this new reality more succinctly than the answers to a Campspot survey, taken this past August, that among other things asked campers why they camp. A less than overwhelming 10% of 1,556 respondents answered “to spend time in nature.” The three larger responses could as readily have applied to an ocean cruise, a hotel stay or a ski resort: 23% for vacation family time, 19% for relaxation and 17% for proximity to outdoor activities. In other words, the one characteristic that traditionally set camping apart from all other vacation options has become the least important reason for doing it.

A summary of the Campspot survey was distributed at a breakout session at the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds annual convention last week, which was only fitting. Campspot, a cloud-based campground reservation management system, has been a principal driver behind both the swelling tide of new campers—who are most comfortable in the online universe—and of the increasingly transactional nature of “the camping experience.” With more than 2,000 campgrounds in its customer base, for which it processed more than $1 billion in gross bookings within a recent 12-month period, Campspot has been a leader in pushing “revenue optimization” in all its various incarnations, including demand pricing, site-lock fees and increasingly onerous cancellation fees.

But other industry representatives at the ARVC convention sang the same tune, usually to lay the groundwork for urging campground owners to accommodate the changing demographics. Typical in that regard was the observation by Jon Gray of RVshare, a peer-to-peer RV rental company, that the new campers are “looking for hotel-type amenities,” which he contended is a “great opportunity” for campground operators. In real-world terms, “great opportunity” means the opportunity to spend more money on various upgrades, increased amenities and all the marketing bells and whistles that go along with that. More spending, in turn, will necessitate higher rates, but the new campers, everyone seems to agree, not only can afford to foot the bill but won’t even notice the difference. “They’re conditioned for it—nobody says anything,” piped up an audience member at the Campspot presentation.

Indeed, KOA’s North American Camping Report 2022, released in late April, found that nearly 40% of the new campers have annual household incomes exceeding $100,000. Moreover, nearly half went glamping in 2021 and the rest planned to glamp this year, which is to say, planned on the least outdoorsy—and most expensive— way to “camp.” That high level of glamping interest contributed to KOA’s broader finding that 36% of all campers went on a glamping trip for the first time in 2021, with 50% saying they would seek a glamping trip this year.

While industry purists may shake their heads at such trends, others are all too willing to jump aboard what they see as a gravy train. As one such campground owner observed at a cracker barrel discussion about managing RV parks in a softening economy, “When we first started we welcomed everyone, but then we started upgrading our clientele.” Added another campground manager, who runs a large Florida park, ” People will pay to have fun. That will never go away.”

Just how pervasive the change has become was evidenced by ARVC’s choice of campgrounds for its prospective owners’ workshop, a pre-convention one-day session attended by approximately 30 people learning the business as they prepare to build or buy an RV park of their own. Following a morning of quick-and-dirty workshops, the prospective owners piled into a bus to drive an hour to . . . Camp Margaritaville RV Resort, the only example of what an RV park looks like that they would be shown.

Nice place, Margaritaville. Two restaurants, 401 sites that include 75 RV park models, 650 imported palm trees, artificial turf throughout, its own call center, a cashless economy—everything that’s needed, said one of its amiable owners, “to propel old-style RV parks into the present day.”

[Next post: Whistling past the graveyard? Despite all the upbeat emphasis on “the new camper,” a softening economy has some campground owners scrambling.]

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