Tag: Travis John

RVing shenanigans of the past year

No, this is not a glamping tent, no matter how much it looks like one. It’s an Airbnb rental, which means it sits not in a campground but on a residential site—along with 12 others in Minnesota.

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.

This week, for example, the RV Industry Association breathlessly announced its “top 10 highlights from 2023!” and led off with its 2023 Vacation Cost Comparison Study. Released last April, this 125-page analysis “found” that “RV vacations cost much less than other types of vacation travel, even when factoring in fuel prices and the cost of RV ownership.” “Found”— rather than “established” or “determined”—was an apt choice of verbs, given its overtone of accidental discovery.

Indeed, as I wrote here and here, the “comparison study” suffered from several analytical errors and oversights, leading me to conclude that “the argument that RVing is an economical way to vacation works only if such a vehicle gets deposited in your driveway for free and it never suffers any mechanical issues.” But at least RVIA was touting its cost-benefit analysis in an understandable if flawed attempt to bolster sagging RV sales, which despite such efforts continued their plunge right through the end of the year. There’s less excuse, however, for RVIA to continue promoting such questionable claims today, even if in the guise of a top-ten list of the past year. That’s like the White Star Line citing the April 2 completion of RMS Titanic as one of its highlights of 1912.

Perhaps RVIA leadership is just too lazy or too innumerate to engage in a bit of critical thinking about its output. As much can’t be said for the outright grifters that the campground industry has attracted the past couple of years, few of whom can claim ignorance of the scams they’re peddling. Take Travis John, for example. As I wrote last January, John was looking to raise $8 million from 10,000 or so investors so he—and they—could buy a campground. The sales pitch included a lot of trendy jargon about non-fungible tokens and how John’s company, Campers DAO, would use “latest blockchain technology and an innovative business model to turn a membership into an NFT asset.”

Apparently that innovative business model didn’t find a lot of buyers. And, of course, the whole airy-fairy world of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible anything began wavering, culminating in the November conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried. But by then John had already retreated to a hidey hole somewhere, announcing in April an indefinite delay of the Campers DAO launch while it went about “building more value.” Not a peep out of him since.

Meanwhile, the unbelievable promise of a full year of luxury RV camping for just $3,100 a year has proven to be just that, as two of the four partners in the Whispering Oaks Luxury RV Park in Arkansas filed suit in December against the other two. The aggrieved partners averred that it is “no longer reasonably practical to carry on” the business, not least because, they allege, Brian and Stacy Sides misappropriated business assets for personal gain, bounced checks and otherwise acted in ways that “damage and destroy the business.”

How shocking was that? It shouldn’t have been. As I wrote in April (what’s with this April thing?), Sides already had a record that included defrauding three Joplin, Missouri women out of a combined $29,000 for work he never performed. But when a local reporter earlier this year asked him about the incident, he responded with the classically moronic “there is another guy that done that” riposte. It goes without saying that not a shovelful of dirt has been turned at the luxury RV park site, its website has vanished, and so has the entrance billboard.

Other fantastical campground deals announced last year remain to be played out, including a luxury (aren’t they all, these days?) RV park in Danville, VA proposed by developer Joe Cubas, whose other bright idea is to make that town a Virginia version of Sturgis, SD. And, of course, there’s the grand design by failed Florida real estate developer Ricky Trinidad to build a “white glove” RV resort in Pennsylvania covered by a massive, transparent air dome. Local politicians in both municipalities have been tripping over each other in their eagerness to welcome these so-called revitalization projects, so one can only hope a brisk winter will shock some sense into them.

The seductive—if empty— promise of a financial bonanza for the locals is often enough to mute the critics when someone proposes a multimillion tourist development, but several notable exceptions were notched in 2023. Among them was the victorious campaign in Saugerties, NY against a proposed KOA glampground under the Terramor name plate, and the less heralded deep-sixing of a $30 million luxury (yes, again) campground proposed for New Hope, Tennessee. While the Saugerties battle featured a relatively media-savvy grassroots movement in a relatively economically resilient area, New Hope is “a wide spot on two-lane Route 156 that has one Dollar General, two beauty shops and a meat processing business,” as I wrote in, yes, April. But in July, after a bit of local agitation and a petition drive, the developer backed out.

Local resistance isn’t always effective, though, if an RV resort developer has exceptionally deep pockets and the locals are slow to cotton on to what’s happening. That’s been the story in Midway, Kentucky, where town fathers initially welcomed and then belatedly backpedaled from a monster project known as the Kentucky Bluegrass Experience Resort, projected to become one of the ten largest RV resorts in the eastern U.S. When the full scope of the proposal—and how it would impact the local community—finally sank in, Midway’s city council tried to block the project by refusing to extend municipal water and sewer to the site.

That was more than two years ago, but despite the lack of subsequent headlines, the developers didn’t just go away. Instead they played the long game, culminating in October in approval of an ordinance allowing RV parks to operate private sewer plants. Such private plants had been banned a couple of decades ago, after several local mobile home parks had private systems that failed, spilling raw sewage into local waterways. But history doesn’t repeat—does it?

Finally, one more example of perseverance against local opposition deserves spotlighting. Christine Wyrobek, told by her local planning commission in May (not April!) that she could not build a glampground on her 45 acres abutting Lake Vermilion, Minnesota, went ahead and did so, anyway. She’s just not describing it as a campground. As she explained to a Star Tribune reporter in September, her 13 campsites “fall securely within the county ordinance allowing short-term rentals for fewer than 180 days on residential property—which also allows for VRBO and Airbnb rentals.” And so glampground out, Airbnb rentals in.

Just when you thought all possible blurring of the lines about “camping” had been achieved. . . .

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Now you, too, can buy a campground!

One sign of a market top is when people with no relevant experience start hitting up strangers for money to fund a new venture—and getting it. Another is when that sales pitch is so arcane it requires pages of explanatory text just to describe its underlying premise. Yet another is when the goal of all that fundraising transforms a quotidian quest into an epic venture, as with the announcement issued Jan. 23 on the PRNewswire to let RVers know they could become part of a “member-led community unlike any other.”

Meet Travis John, self-described passionate RVer and founder of something called CampersDAO, which in his words is “focused on buying and operating the best RV parks in the world.” That’s right, the world. This ambitious undertaking will create “a global community of camping enthusiasts by merging blockchain technology with the great outdoors,” which presumably has been waiting for just such a moment. And the marriage of these two great forces will be consummated just as soon as CampersDAO attracts up to 10,000 investors willing to pump in a minimum of roughly $500 as Trailblazers or $1,000 as Pioneers, for a projected total investment of $8 million or so.

Oh, but there are a few wrinkles. This is not a stock offering. John is not offering secured bonds—or, for that matter, any kind of security at all. Membership in “the world’s first Web3 camping community” will be gained through purchase of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, priced in Ethereum at the time of minting. Put another way, CampersDAO—the DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization—“uses the latest blockchain technology and an innovative business model to turn a membership into an NFT asset.” So if you’re looking to pile up some NFT assets, this may be just the play for you. Want to own a campground? Maybe not so much.

Let’s start this exercise in skepticism with the maestro himself, an Orlando, FL-based self-described entrepreneur whose various hustles—according to his LinkedIn account— include NewFutureRealty and NewFuture Digital, neither of which has any discernible online presence despite Travis John’s claims of having “experience building Web2 product and service businesses.” John also claims to be affiliated with Charleston, SC-based Healthycell, where he says he is “head of the tech stack, growth strategies and partnerships for a new patent-pending dietary supplement line using MICROGEL technology.” Healthycell actually does exist, although good luck trying to find out who owns it, and it actually does market Microgel products. Whether those products do much for you, on the other hand, is an unknown, as Healthycell scrupulously acknowledges that its Microgel statements “have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

On to all that geek-talk about Web 3.0, NFTs and DAOs, all of which also exist and none of which you’ll be able to explain to your grandfather—although John gives it a shot, burning up hundreds of perfectly good words in the attempt. But strip away all the techno-babble, and what it comes down to is that a DAO is governed by its owners, who are all the people who purchased its NFTs. One NFT, one vote—but vote for what? That depends, as John himself concedes, noting that “the degree of decentralization in a DAO can vary, with some being more decentralized than others,” depending on “the protocol it is built on, the importance of the protocol to the overall crypto ecosystem, regulatory factors, and the maturity of the organization.”

As for how that applies to John’s project, or what kind of protocol it will have, he hasn’t said yet. Maybe that will be made known by Earth Day, April 22, when John is planning CampersDAO’s official launch.

Assuming the sale is fully subscribed (it should be noted that John has yet to say what will happen to the sold NFTs if it isn’t), it’s doubtful there will be enough money to buy even one of “the best RV parks in the world,” much less a promised “network.” Eight percent of the NFT sale is scheduled to go to the NFT launch and a third of the balance will be used for operating costs, with the remaining $4.8 million to be held in reserve “to cover operational costs, RV park purchases and future growth.” Exactly what “operating costs” will necessitate spending several million dollars remains unspecified. And while $4.8 million will suffice to buy a decent campground, it won’t come even close to touching a world-class RV park—assuming that some of that money isn’t diverted to cover even more of those pesky “operating costs.”

As sketchy as all that sounds, though, it’s not without precedent. In fact, John seems to have gotten his brainstorm (as signaled by one of his LinkedIn “likes”) from a similar DAO launched just about a year ago, albeit in that case on behalf of the golfing world. LinksDAO raised nearly $11 million for the purpose “of purchasing a network of global golf courses while designing parallel experiences in the Metaverse”—a truly baffling aside that I’m not making up—as well as “building the world’s greatest golf community.” Founder Mike Dudas planned, at that time, to acquire LinkDAO’s first course by mid-2022 and open it for play by the end of the year.

To date, however, LinksDAO is little more than a buyer’s club for golf enthusiasts looking for discounts on clothing and gear. Indeed, as one DAO observer told a Forbes writer last February, such arrangements amount to little more than a “group chat with a bank account.” As for actually buying a golf course, LinksDAO acknowledged that additional funds will have to be raised. Moreover, it should be noted that owners of LinksDAO NFTs won’t automatically gain membership in any golf course that might be acquired—that will require a separate fee.

For all that, the LinksDAO’s NFTs were all snatched up within 24 hours of being dropped, suggesting at least one reason for Travis John’s enthusiasm. There’s every reason to think CampersDAO should be DOA, but that’s expecting too much from people who undoubtedly will clamor to join a member-led community unlike any other—which it will be.

As they say in Rome, caveat emptor.

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