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Since shopping for our campground property this summer time, we’ve been on a crash course in land possession.
Along with designing the park itself, we dove into every part from working with the Colorado Division of Transportation to research how our RV park will affect freeway visitors circulate to easily determining methods to get mail. (After which getting mail final week that claims FINAL DISCONNECT NOTICE from the fuel firm who was apparently sending us mail for 2 months but it surely all disappeared into the USPS abyss…smh)
We’ve cherished 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 had been actually our dwelling. Most nights of the 12 months we spent camped in an RV park someplace within the nation, so we’ve stayed at each kind 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 tons.
RV parks the place we by no means ever wished to depart 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 ft away from mine.
We’ve skilled the nice, the dangerous, 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 below are our favourite campsites ever!)
There are loads 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). Many 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 completely 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. These are our folks. And people are the folks we would like this campground to be for. Individuals such as you.
This implies 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, persons are pumped about that. However this concept that we might cater each side of our park to this area of interest of campers engaged on the highway.
Individuals have requested:
Aren’t we alienating different campers?
Aren’t we nervous that we’ll lose enterprise by focusing our campground on this smaller area of interest of vacationers?
However the reply is not any.
As a result of after we began the RV Entrepreneur Fb group and podcast in 2016, folks had an identical response. Aren’t there too few folks searching for that? Isn’t the area of interest too small to make for 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 be aware: Should 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 a tremendous take a look at run for this concept of making a campground particularly for this rising group of distant staff.
With out saying “we cater to nonretired full-time vacationers” or “we’re targeted on supporting digital nomads” or “camp with us for those who work remotely”, listed below 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 through the day to work a bit.”
“My work is distant so I might be bringing it with me for the week and we’ll be touring through the weekend. It’ll be my first time working away from dwelling 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 loads 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 need to serve. All we stated is that now we have fiber web and a coworking house and it attracted precisely the form of campers we’re searching for. (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 highway?
After all not!
We don’t even ask for those who 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 superb camper is searching for, our superb camper discovered us. They noticed our facilities and critiques and acknowledged that this property was for them.
I believe that with somewhat search engine optimization one thing related will occur as soon as we’re an operational RV park competing with different parks in our space.
Niching down is without doubt 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 pays to camp with you. However it additionally means we are able to serve a particular group of campers higher than each different RV park within the space and improve our bookings.
Simply as RVing is gaining popularity than ever, the alternatives for distant work and working a cell enterprise are plentiful. 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 outside locations.
As a result of there’s actually nothing higher than ending your workday and heading straight into views like this 😍
