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Since shopping for our campground property this summer time, we’ve been on a crash course in land possession.
In addition to designing the park itself, we dove into every thing from working with the Colorado Department of Transportation to research how our RV park will affect freeway site visitors movement to easily determining find out how to get mail. (And then getting mail final week that claims FINAL DISCONNECT NOTICE from the fuel firm who was apparently sending us mail for 2 months however it all disappeared into the USPS abyss…smh)
We’ve liked attending to share this course of with you particularly after listening to what number of different RVers have additionally considered working their very own park!
For years, RV parks had 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 keep in mind the title.
RV parks that had been truly trailer parks (Google Maps nonetheless hasn’t realized that there’s a distinction!)
RV parks that had been simply parking heaps.
RV parks the place we by no means ever wished to go away as a result of we had good wifi, scorching showers, and onsite 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 keep in mind it…seven years later!)
RV parks the place I listened to the waves exterior my window.
RV parks the place I listened to the couple subsequent door whose open window was 3 toes away from mine.
We’ve skilled the great, the dangerous, and the knocking on our door at 8 AM that we had two hours to go away as a result of our riverside campsite was going to flood as quickly as they opened the dam. ????♂️????
For probably the most half, our tenting experiences have been common. Average wifi. Average facilities. Average campsite. (With just a few notable exceptions—listed below are our favourite campsites ever!)
There are numerous causes this occurs, however one missed purpose is that the majority RV parks attempt to attraction to everybody. Tent, RV, cabin—they’ve crammed all of it in. They all have the identical fundamental facilities each different park within the space has (showers, laundry, wifi). Most of the parks are sometimes so related that all of them mix collectively in your head.
Heath and I made a decision that we would like our park to be totally different. Not simply within the we-don’t-want-to-be-average manner, however we would like it to be clear who our park is for and cater particularly to these kinds 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 highway. Those are our folks. And these are the folks we would like this campground to be for. People such as you.
This means organising 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, individuals are pumped about that. But this concept that we might cater each facet of our park to this area of interest of campers engaged on the highway.
People have requested:
Aren’t we alienating different campers?
Aren’t we anxious that we are going to lose enterprise by focusing our campground on this smaller area of interest of vacationers?
But the reply is not any.
Because once we began the RV Entrepreneur Facebook group and podcast in 2016, folks had an analogous response. Aren’t there too few folks on the lookout for 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 Facebook group and 200+ episodes of the RVE podcast. The viewers is certainly smaller than specializing in all RVers and even niching right down to all full-time RVers (there are over a MILLION full-timers alone). But 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.
(Side be aware: If you’re making an attempt to determine a goal marketplace for your enterprise, 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 staff.
Without saying “we cater to nonretired full-time travelers” or “we are focused on supporting digital nomads” or “camp with us if you work remotely”, listed below are just a few messages we’ve gotten from campers requesting to e-book at our campground:
“Planning a surf trip to Montrose river park. Need wi-fi during the day to work a bit.”
“My work is remote so I will be bringing it with me for the week and we’ll be traveling during the weekend. It’ll be my first time working away from home and I’m excited to explore another city in the process!”
“Your fiber internet was really the clincher because we will need to upload a lot of footage while we’re there. I wanted to ask what your upload speeds are?”
We didn’t promote on our itemizing that these are precisely the kind of campers we wish to serve. All we mentioned is that now we have fiber web and a coworking area and it attracted precisely the sort of campers we’re on the lookout for. (We at present 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 highway?
Of course not!
We don’t even ask for those who plan on working throughout your keep. How bizarre would it not be if we did?
But by focusing our park on the facilities that we all know our supreme camper is on the lookout for, our supreme camper discovered us. They noticed our facilities and opinions and acknowledged that this property was for them.
I think that with slightly website positioning one thing related 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 features of creating our park as a result of in a manner it feels such as you’re deliberately limiting the quantity of people that can pay to camp with you. But it additionally means we are able to serve a selected group of campers higher than each different RV park within the space and enhance our bookings.
Just as RVing is rising in popularity than ever, the alternatives for distant work and working a cellular enterprise are ample. Our objective is to create a tenting expertise that allows distant staff to journey extra by providing the facilities they should work on the highway whereas tenting a stone’s throw away from stunning out of doors locations.
Because there’s actually nothing higher than ending your workday and heading straight into views like this ????