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Since shopping for our campground property this summer season, we’ve been on a crash course in land possession.
Along with designing the park itself, we dove into all the pieces from working with the Colorado Division of Transportation to research how our RV park will affect freeway visitors circulation to easily determining how one can get mail. (After which getting mail final week that claims FINAL DISCONNECT NOTICE from the gasoline firm who was apparently sending us mail for 2 months but it surely all disappeared into the USPS abyss…smh)
We’ve beloved attending to share this course of with you particularly after listening to what number of different RVers have additionally thought of working their very own park!
For years, RV parks have been actually our house. Most nights of the 12 months we spent camped in an RV park someplace within the nation, so we’ve stayed at each sort of RV park through the years.
RV parks the place after we drove away neither of us might bear in mind the identify.
RV parks that have been truly trailer parks (Google Maps nonetheless hasn’t realized that there’s a distinction!)
RV parks that have been simply parking heaps.
RV parks the place we by no means ever wished to depart as a result of we had good wifi, sizzling showers, and onsite mountain climbing trails.
RV parks with free breakfast (truly I feel it was solely ever one park they usually served frozen waffles, however hey I nonetheless bear in mind it…seven years later!)
RV parks the place I listened to the waves outdoors my window.
RV parks the place I listened to the couple subsequent door whose open window was 3 ft away from mine.
We’ve skilled the nice, the unhealthy, and the knocking on our door at 8 AM that we had two hours to depart as a result of our riverside campsite was going to flood as quickly as they opened the dam. 🏃♂️🚌
For essentially the most half, our tenting experiences have been common. Common wifi. Common facilities. Common campsite. (With just a few notable exceptions—listed here are our favourite campsites ever!)
There are lots of causes this occurs, however one missed motive is that almost all RV parks attempt to enchantment to everybody. Tent, RV, cabin—they’ve crammed all of it in. All of them have the identical primary facilities each different park within the space has (showers, laundry, wifi). A lot of the parks are sometimes so comparable that all of them mix collectively in your head.
Heath and I made a decision that we wish our park to be completely different. Not simply within the we-don’t-want-to-be-average method, however we wish it to be clear who our park is for and cater particularly to these varieties of campers.
After so a few years of touring, we’ve by no means stayed at a campground that catered to our wants as full-time RVers engaged on the street. These are our folks. And people are the folks we wish this campground to be for. Folks such as you.
This implies establishing a park with the facilities that digital nomads and RV entrepreneurs need—like dependable high-speed wifi.
We’ve had pushback on this concept. Not the wifi, persons are pumped about that. However this concept that we might cater each facet of our park to this area of interest of campers engaged on the street.
Folks have requested:
Aren’t we alienating different campers?
Aren’t we anxious that we’ll lose enterprise by focusing our campground on this smaller area of interest of vacationers?
However the reply isn’t any.
As a result of once we began the RV Entrepreneur Fb group and podcast in 2016, folks had an analogous response. Aren’t there too few folks in search of that? Isn’t the area of interest too small to make for a very good enterprise?
Nope.
There are over 18,000 folks in that Fb group and 200+ episodes of the RVE podcast. The viewers is certainly smaller than specializing in all RVers and even niching all the way down to all full-time RVers (there are over a MILLION full-timers alone). However Heath noticed a tiny gap available in the market and swooped in.
By specializing in a smaller area of interest of campers, we might higher serve a nook of the market that wasn’t getting any consideration.
(Aspect word: In the event you’re attempting to determine a goal marketplace for what you are promoting, Heath dives into this concept of niching down on this 11-minute podcast episode)
I discussed final week how we arrange an account on Hipcamp to host campers on our property earlier than we break floor this winter. It’s been an incredible check run for this concept of making a campground particularly for this rising group of distant employees.
With out saying “we cater to nonretired full-time vacationers” or “we’re targeted on supporting digital nomads” or “camp with us in the event you work remotely”, listed here are just a few messages we’ve gotten from campers requesting to guide at our campground:
“Planning a surf journey to Montrose river park. Want wi-fi in the course of the day to work a bit.”
“My work is distant so I can be bringing it with me for the week and we’ll be touring in the course of the weekend. It’ll be my first time working away from house and I’m excited to discover one other metropolis within the course of!”
“Your fiber web was actually the clincher as a result of we might want to add lots of footage whereas we’re there. I wished to ask what your add speeds are?”
We didn’t promote on our itemizing that these are precisely the kind of campers we wish to serve. All we stated is that we’ve got fiber web and a coworking house and it attracted precisely the type of campers we’re in search of. (We at the moment have 300 up and down, and can improve to 1 GB up and down as soon as we open for actual subsequent 12 months, BTW.)
Do we are saying no to the tenting requests from individuals who aren’t engaged on the street?
After all not!
We don’t even ask in the event you plan on working throughout your keep. How bizarre would it not be if we did?
However by focusing our park on the facilities that we all know our perfect camper is in search of, our perfect camper discovered us. They noticed our facilities and critiques and acknowledged that this property was for them.
I believe that with somewhat search engine marketing one thing comparable will occur as soon as we’re an operational RV park competing with different parks in our space.
Niching down is likely one of the extra intimidating facets of creating our park as a result of in a method it feels such as you’re deliberately limiting the quantity of people that can pay to camp with you. But it surely additionally means we will serve a particular group of campers higher than each different RV park within the space and improve our bookings.
Simply as RVing is rising in popularity than ever, the alternatives for distant work and working a cell enterprise are ample. Our aim is to create a tenting expertise that permits distant employees to journey extra by providing the facilities they should work on the street whereas tenting a stone’s throw away from lovely out of doors locations.
As a result of there’s actually nothing higher than ending your workday and heading straight into views like this 😍