Over the years, I have heard campground owners consistently complain about ratings that are generated by independent, third-party inspectors from organizations ranging from AAA and Trailer Life to Wheelers and Woodall’s. With the demise of the “big books,” the consolidation of Trailer Life and Woodall’s into Good Sam ratings, and the explosive growth and credibility of online consumer review sites such as RV Park Reviews and TripAdvisor, ratings are as important – if not more important – than ever. What remains consistent is the question as to why a campground owner would be surprised by ratings or consumer reviews, as if he was unfamiliar with the shortcomings of his own park.

Perhaps it would make sense for the industry to be a bit more proactive with regard to the types of third-party assessments that would identify problems and nip them in the bud. Other industries – most notably the hotel, restaurant, cruise line, retailing, banking, and automotive industries – have routinely employed what are referred to as “mystery shoppers”. It is important to know that both your business and your employees are up to par and providing exceptional customer service. At my local bank, I noticed last week how one of the tellers had been awarded for having successfully passed 5 out of 5 such test situations during the previous year.

To make these inspections work, they must be carried out in an anonymous and seemingly random fashion. Think of the popular CBS reality TV series, Undercover Boss, where even Jim Rogers, the former CEO of KOA, went undercover to gain an inside perspective on various employee issues at three parks within the KOA franchise system. Another popular reality TV show is Food Network’s Restaurant Impossible, where host Robert Irvine helps to turn restaurants around by identifying problems with everything from their menus and décor to their staffs and the attitude of their owners. We all need to see our businesses sometimes with the objectivity of another set of eyes.

In the hotel industry, which is so closely related to the campground industry, there is a wide range of companies that provide independent inspection services. The companies include Secret Hotel Inspector, Coyle Hospitality Group, and Guest Check. There is also a network of independent contractors that provide similar services, in some instances on a smaller scale and meeting the needs of businesses with more limited budgets. These services are so important that there is actually an association of service providers, the Mystery Shopping Provider Association of North America. According to MSPA-NA statistics, 70% of shoppers (yes, that includes campers!) state that they are willing to spend up to 13% more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. Perhaps more importantly, 78% of customers have opted to cancel a transaction or did not complete an intended purchase because of a poor customer experience. Think of how that latter statistic relates to the usability of your website or the user experience during your online reservation process.

Some companies even recruit and hire their own secret inspectors, one example being Small Luxury Hotels of the World, an affiliation of 520 luxury hotels located worldwide.

What these companies share in common is the proven statistic that the fees for their services are more than offset by the increased profitability that results from the improvements in customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, staff training, and morale that are realized after implementing their study recommendations. More than simply running a white glove along a windowsill, these companies identify weaknesses and waste, and then recommend solutions and remedial actions.

It is important to have access to this type of information prior to the time of interaction with your paying guests. Why not make now the time for a new beginning? My suggestion is for some of the larger, more progressive state associations to explore an affiliation with a mystery shopping organization, and then offer this as a paid add-on service for members who are striving for excellence. Not only would the member campgrounds benefit greatly from their participation, this would also be a service that would add significant value to the member benefits package of any such state associations themselves.

As always, it is always wise to think outside the box, learn from other industries, and emulate the various formulae that have contributed to their success.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is an age-old philosophical question. While pondering the answer to that question, let me present a very similar question: If you post to your Facebook Page, but Facebook only allows for a small percentage of your followers to see the post, are you totally wasting your time? Almost anybody can quickly answer that question with a resounding ‘yes!’

Most people know that, unless you promote (in other words, pay for) your posts, only a small percentage of the people who have “liked” your page and want to see your posts will actually get to do so. Facebook claims that, “Pages organically reach about 16% of their fans on average. To make sure your fans see your stories, sponsor your posts to increase the reach of your content.” That claimed statistic (which everybody suspects is steadily falling, but that Facebook has not updated in nearly 4 years) is called into question by third-party analytics that actually calculate a far lower percentage in many if not most instances. We also know that engagement with the chosen few who will actually get to see your posts will be increased if your posts contain video or photos.

How to Beat Facebook at its Own Game

I would not advise businesses to cave in to Facebook’s financial demands. What I will advise is that businesses think smarter in order to gain the greatest benefit from this social media giant. Let’s presume that posts from your page are seen by 16% of the people who have liked your page, as Facebook suggests. Metric studies have also shown that, on average, about 35% of Facebook users see posts from their friends (as opposed to your page.) The actual percentage will vary, following a complex algorithm called EdgeRank that determines to what extent Facebook will filter any specific posted content that users will get to see. The bottom line is that, if over twice as many people are likely to see posts from their friends as they are from your page, you can substantially increase your reach if you offer people incentives to share your posts.

A Case Example

My family was recently involved with hiring the services of one of the leading wedding photographers in the local area. Toward the end of the year, the photographer ran a very clever yet inexpensive promotion on Facebook that was certain to generate a remarkable amount of traffic, exposing many new prospective customers to her services. Here is how it worked:

1. The photographer confirms in advance that couples are willing to allow their photos to be used for appropriate promotional purposes.
2. She then created a Facebook album that consisted of 35 photos, one from each of 35 weddings that she had photographed during the recent nuptial season.
3. She then shared that album with each of the 35 couples, encouraging them to, in turn, share the album on Facebook with their network of friends, asking their friends to vote (with a “like”) for their photo.
4. The couple whose photo garnered the most “likes” would win a dinner for two (valued at $60.00) at an area restaurant that is located within a frequent wedding venue.
5. In order to “vote”, each person is also supposed to “like” the photographer’s page and the page of the wedding venue (although this would appear to be an unenforceable rule.)
6. The dinner certificate was almost certainly provided by the wedding venue at no charge, in exchange for the promotional value.

The total cost to the photographer: Zero. By the end of the contest, there had been a total of 865 “likes” of the various photos in the album, each an indication of a person who most likely viewed what is essentially a portfolio of the photographer’s work. The photographer’s Facebook page currently has about 4,400 “likes”. Based upon the 16% average that Facebook claims, about 700 people would have at least seen the link to this album when it was posted. Adding in the 865 people who interacted with the album in response to the links that were shared by the 35 wedding couples, you can clearly see that this was a very effective promotion.

Using a similar degree of imagination and creativity, there are certainly opportunities for your park to benefit from a similar promotion. An idea that immediately comes to mind would be a contest to choose your campground’s three nicest seasonal sites, with the winners getting $200.00, $150.00, and $100.00 discounts toward their seasonal site renewals fees for the following year. Every person visiting the album will be impressed by the quality of the sites that they see and may be a likely prospect to become a seasonal camper themselves. Another shorter-term promotional idea (and with smaller prizes) might determine the best decorated site (or the best individual costumes) from your Halloween weekend. Get the idea?

With a bit of ingenuity, you can easily multiply the impact of social media like Facebook upon your business, at little or no cost and without paying for the privilege of promoting your posts.

I thought it would be useful to read through random reviews of campgrounds on the TripAdvisor website in order to determine whether there were some common complaints that savvy park operators might need to address. On TripAdvisor, we are generally dealing with that all-important market of first-time campers – precisely the people who are needed to grow the industry’s markets. We all know the old adage about first impressions being lasting impressions, and an experience that fails to live up to expectations could not only ensure that a first-time guest will not return to your park; you could very well sour that first-time camper on the entire camping experience, rather than turning him into the next lifetime camper.

I randomly chose campgrounds in four regions of the country and read through reviews. In the instance of one park, I found that every recent 5-star review was followed up with a management response, thanking the reviewer for taking the time to write the review; however, there was not a management response for even a single recent review that rated the campground as anything less than outstanding. The management of this campground is totally missing the point in its failure to address legitimate concerns or even to acknowledge those somewhat less-than-happy campers. Ironically, those unaddressed reviews are consistently flagged as “helpful” by fellow TripAdvisor users. In other words, these unaddressed complaints are being read by other potential guests who are thanking the reviewers for saving them from making the mistake of vacationing at the same park.

The most common complaints fell into 6 categories:

1. Extra fees. People who have customarily stayed in hotels or conventional resorts are not accustomed to paying excessive add-on fees or for paying to take a shower. I frequently encountered the term “nickeled and dimed”, and that is not good. Reviewers complained about excessive fees for everything from arts and crafts sessions to the rental of recreational equipment, but the single biggest complaint was with any park that used metered showers. One reviewer wrote, “You have to pay for your shower, and the first three minutes are cold.”
2. Indifference on the part of staff or management. Some of the specific complaints a bad attitude when staff members visited campsites, or security staff members who turned a blind eye away from issues that needed to be addressed. There were many complaints about rude employees (bad enough), but the people who referenced rude owners are really raising red flags. One reviewer documented about requesting a credit (not a refund) due to a medical emergency, and how the park owner insultingly demanded a note from her doctor! Another wrote, “The gate guards are not that friendly – actually they are aggressive and rude – and are easily annoyed.” That surly gate guard is the first person encountered upon arrival and can set the tone for the entire camping experience.
3. Small sites that are not big rig friendly. Unless camping in a group, campers generally do not want to feel like they are on top of the adjoining sites. If they are camping in a big rig, they want to be able to get into and out of their site easily and without risk of damage to their investment. In the short term, this may mean carefully assigning sites to the camping equipment; in the long term, this may mean re-engineering smaller adjoining sites into larger single sites.
4. Dirty, inadequately or infrequently cleaned restrooms. There are simply no excuses here. If it is a busy weekend, your cleaning staff may need to be cleaning your restrooms on a continuous rotation throughout the day. If you are short-staffed, hire people. The photo that I am showing below is one of eight that was included in an actual review, documenting a lack of bathroom cleaning – both short-term and long-term – at one particular park. Additional photos attached to the review show fecal matter in front of toilets, dirty floors, empty paper towel dispensers, and stained shower stalls.
5. Lack of maintenance in rentals. Be careful about overselling you’re amenities. It is probably a mistake to market aging park models as “luxury cottages”, particularly if their amenities are inconsistent with what you advertise. If a furnished park model is designed to sleep 6 people, the kitchen utensils should not be limited to 3 forks, 2 glasses and 4 chipped plates (as mentioned in one actual review). There should be a printed inventory of furnishings (that are checked and replenished by housekeeping between rentals) that will allow guests to know exactly what they should expect to find in the unit.
6. Lax enforcement of rules. Yes, we all know that rules are a double-edged sword where some people are always going to be unhappy; however, the guests who really count are the ones who expect quiet, not those who are creating a nuisance. Within this category of complaints, the biggest issues involved unattended dogs being allowed to bark, and quiet hours that were not consistently and politely enforced.

All in all, the people who are addressing these concerns are far from being unreasonable. If you were on a vacation – perhaps a cruise or a trip to a vacation resort – would you find these shortcomings acceptable? Of course not! Treat your guests with respect, meet their expectations, and your business will grow and prosper.

Recent outdoor hospitality conferences in Daytona Beach presented me with an opportunity to stay at area hotels, dine at area restaurants, and visit area attractions during the course of two stays in town. For nearly 10 years, I have been an active reviewer on the TripAdvisor website, and I have come to rely upon TripAdvisor as a reliable source of peer reviews. I like to think that I write honest reviews, and I appreciate that same honesty in other reviewers. To date, I have written 120 reviews, 49.2% of which have given “excellent” ratings and 27.5% of which have given “good” ratings. My reviews provide business owners with wonderful opportunities to obtain valuable consumer feedback. Occasionally, business owners are incapable of accepting constructive criticism, and that is their loss. When they react with an over-the-top, non-objective management response, they are truly missing the point of the entire process.

One recent experience illustrates my point. When my wife and I stayed in Daytona Beach for a few days at the end of the KOA Expo, we visited an attraction that TripAdvisor rates as #1 out of 71 “things to do” in the nearby city of DeLand. We were disappointed in this historic house tour, felt that the tour was overcrowded, and considered it overpriced. What particularly bothered me – and aroused my suspicions regarding the validity of the attraction’s rating – was the way that the tour guide came right out and asked people to submit TripAdvisor reviews, followed two days later by an e-mail from one of the owners, again asking for a TripAdvisor review. I definitely had the impression that a ballot box was being stuffed.

Of course, I felt compelled to share my experience with others on TripAdvisor, particularly since I thought that the attraction’s #1 rating was highly misleading. I went out of my way to be objective and sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of the owners, quite generously giving it a three-star (“fair”) rating that I carefully documented. Prior to writing my review, I noticed how the owners of the attraction responded to every review on TripAdvisor, and how any reviewer who did not give the attraction an “excellent” rating was essentially attacked in one way or another. I was prepared for an assault but would not be intimidated. In my case, I was told that I had “baffled” and “insulted” them with my “false claims”, and that I was obviously an “angry” person.

Other reviews received management responses that were far more offensive. Here are some samples culled from various management responses: “Your comments are unsubstantiated and more importantly not true.” “Your comments are completely false and hurtful.” “I have contacted TA to handle your harassment, (and) your hateful attempt to try and discredit us is sad at best. You should be ashamed of yourself.” “Your ‘Poor’ rating is suspicious at best.” “For someone to go out of there (sic) way to give false feedback with the intent to hurt a small business owner is sad and actually difficult for me to comprehend.”

As you can see, some small business owners cannot be objective when handling criticisms of the businesses which are often extensions of themselves. That is understandable, but it is important to put subjectivity aside and recognize that, in the vast majority of instances, a negative review is providing valuable input regarding improvements that you should consider making.

When you have the opportunity to respond to a negative review, here are a few suggestions:

1. Listen to what the reviewer has to say. Try to be as subjective as possible, putting your ego aside. The review is not a personal attack upon your reputation (even if you think that it is.)
2. Empathize, introduce a positive factor into the conversation, and apologize if necessary. An apology is not an admission of guilt but simply a polite acknowledgement that the reviewer had less than a perfect experience involving your business.
3. Try to take the conversation offline. Not long ago, I posted on Facebook how I was dissatisfied when an energy audit contractor failed to show up for a scheduled appointment. The organization saw that it had been mentioned on Facebook, responding by asking me to contact them privately with my telephone number. Offline, they apologized and re-scheduled the appointment for the following day. Any damage was under control.
4. Despite the urgency of responding quickly, before posting a response to an online review, always run it by another set of eyes. Too often, in the absence of body language and tone of voice, a response with the best of intentions might sound condescending or even sarcastic. Remember that you are trying to rectify a situation, not make it worse.

It is important to separate yourself from your business, to keep your cool, and to try to treat every review as a learning experience. If you do not like what you are reading, avoid the temptation to take things personally and as an opportunity for retaliation. Respond following the guidelines above, and then move on. Put on your big boy pants and get on with the responsibilities of running your business to succeed within the best of your capabilities.

Note: Since originally writing this post, I have continued to receive e-mails from one of the owners of the attraction in DeLand, again asking me to write a positive review on TripAdvisor. (Apparently, they do not mind spamming their customers in their pursuit of TripAdvisor reviews.) Another e-mail arrived more recently, urging its recipients to e-mail the producers of CBS Sunday Morning to ask them to do a feature story on the attraction.

Yes, you read it right. Am I speaking blasphemy? Maybe not. I am currently reading an excellent book titled “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age” by Sherry Turkle, and it is about how smartphones, texting, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have destroyed our ability to carry on emotional and intellectual conversations. In the words of the author, “Technology gives us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.” An entire generation of us, dominated by those under the age of 30, is uncomfortable with the unfamiliar concept of carrying on a direct conversation that involves eye contact, inflection, body language, and emotion.

We have grown accustomed to substituting ALL CAPS for subtle inflections, acronyms like LOL for a smile or a laugh, avatars for our faces, and emoticons for our emotions. Facebook encourages us to only post comments that will be broadly “liked”, discouraging any sort of intelligent discourse or exchange of opinions with anyone who is not like-minded. The fact is that we all have much to learn, in a respectful way, from people with beliefs and opinions that differ from our own.

In the camping experience – built upon the concept of providing people with an opportunity to get away from their routines and to commune with a more natural environment – one of the single most highly demanded amenities is high-speed Internet access. The lion’s share of my own business is the development of mobile-friendly campground websites, ensuring that campers can learn everything possible about a park using nothing but their smartphones or tablets. Camping tends to mirror society itself, and somewhere along the line society has gone astray.

As school systems nationwide have been in a mad rush to see which of whom can install more computer classrooms faster than their peers, it may surprise some readers to learn about the growth of technology-free schools in America’s computer capital, Silicon Valley. That’s right. Back in 2011, the New York Times reported how educational alternatives like the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, in Silicon Valley, had a student body that consisted of the children of executives from eBay, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Hewlett-Packard. It has also been widely reported how Steve Jobs limited his children’s access to technology at home, and how many of the other icons of technology follow the same course.

In fact, one of the latest trends in summer camps (those second cousins of family campgrounds) is the development of technology-free camping, sometimes referred to as “tech detox” camps. Mind you, these summer camps are available not only for kids but for adults, hundreds of whom are willing to pay dearly for the opportunity to put aside their cell phones for a week. There is clearly a demand for device-free vacations. In fact, one of my childhood friends (with whom I am connected on Facebook, of course) just posted last week, “I wonder if there is a place on earth where there is no cell phone service, no Facebook, no TV, no computers … I would go to that place for one week and do nothing but read, write, rest, and get away (just for a while) from this maddening crowd we live within.” Is there a campground ready to step up to the plate?

There was a recent discussion on the Campground Success LinkedIn Group that I moderate, initiated by a campground owner who wondered whether or not there might be a viable market for a pet-free campground. The general consensus was that there might be risks in suddenly implementing a pet-free policy, particularly when so many of us treat our pets like our own children; however, there is likely a demand for such an alternative. (I would consider it a far lesser risk if I was running a campground that was surrounded by 20 other parks in the immediate area, rather than a park where my nearest competitor was 50 miles away.) I believe that the time has also come for a few brave souls to experiment with running a technology-free campground, maybe testing the waters with a technology-free weekend. (Imagine the free publicity that you could garner in the press!)

This would have to be planned well in advance, before accepting reservations from any campers with conventional expectations. Campers would agree to leave their cell phones at home or locked away and to put away their satellite dishes. The park would shut down its wi-fi routers, pull the cable on TV service, and plan an entire weekend of activities and events that will allow campers to get to know one another – and to get to know themselves – like they used to do in the “good old days”. Let’s face it: Camping is the perfect setting and environment for tech-free activities and non-activities alike! You could offer things like a book exchange, an acoustic music jam session, nightly group campfires, nature walks, parent and child activities, and a Sunday morning service with a tech-free homily.

Sure, there are issues that would need to be addressed. What do you do about seasonal campers who do not want to participate? What do you do about people who do not easily withdraw from their technology addiction? Those are minor challenges that can be easily overcome. Think of the first restaurants years ago that toyed with the idea of going smoke-free. Today it is almost unheard of to find a restaurant in the United States that allows smoking, and we are all better off for the change.

Who will be the first to step up to the challenge? Without explorers who risked sailing into uncharted waters, we might still believe that the world was flat. Just think of what you might accomplish. If the lessons learned at your tech-free weekend lead to just one family that returns to having dinner together each evening without the distractions of cell phones and TV, you will have just accomplished far more than you had ever intended.

The following post is based upon an interview with Andy Robinowitz, the CEO of Social Knowledge LLC, and the owner of the RV Park Reviews website. The interview was conducted by Peter Pelland in July of 2015 and originally published in the November 2015 issue of Woodall’s Campground Management.

Let’s face it: The typical small business owner likes consumer review sites about as well as fingernails scratching on a chalkboard or tooth extraction without anesthesia. That disdain is generally unfounded. Yes, there are certainly instances when somebody with an axe to grind exploits the opportunity to try to inflict harm upon a business, but most readers of mean-spirited reviews are smart enough to read between the lines (and the usual spelling mistakes).

Smart small business owners look at consumer reviews in the aggregate and in an objective manner, recognizing the valuable feedback that the reviews provide. Big companies designate significant sums of money toward market research, employing focus groups, product sampling, surveys and many other costly tools. Whether somebody is thanking you for something that was done right, or pointing out an area where there is room for improvement, think of each review as free market research data that should influence decisions about how to run your business more successfully. Particularly when a comment or observation is expressed repeatedly, it should never be dismissed as simply an individual opinion. Reviewers are generally influencers, predicting future trends as effectively as canaries in coal mines.

The Campground Industry

Campground review sites are nothing new; however, they are growing in influence and becoming far more versatile as the sites add features and functionality designed to meet the needs of both campers and campground owners. While some review sites have stagnated a bit, and while TripAdvisor wastes valuable time deciding when to add a dedicated “Campgrounds” navigational tab, the RV Park Reviews website is undergoing some major improvements that need to be on your radar.

RV Park Reviews originated back in 2000 and has grown into perhaps the most significant contender among review sites that are specific to the campground industry. The site was acquired by Social Knowledge LLC, a Dallas-based company, in the fall of 2013, and the new owners are more focused than ever on meeting both the needs of the site’s readers and individual campground owners. They have shared both documentation and their vision for the future with me.

Over the past year, RV Park Reviews has reached nearly 6,000,000 unique users, 95% of whom were located in the United States. Both user and session numbers are up roughly 20% over the previous year, and a similar rate of growth is anticipated going forward. With well over 200,000 existing reviews, far more people are turning to the site to conduct research prior to choosing a park destination than are turning to the site specifically to write a review. (This serves to disprove the “axe-grinder” theory!) These users spend a considerable amount of time visiting multiple pages per session, considering the experiences of others while looking for campgrounds like yours. With over 30,000,000 page views over the past year, doing the math will suggest that the average review has been read over 150 times in the past year alone.

In an interview with Andy Robinowitz, the CEO of Social Knowledge LLC, I gained some insight into what the site is currently offering to campground owners, as well as some of the added functionality that will be introduced this fall.

PLP: What sets RV Park Reviews apart from other campground review websites?

AR: Our contributors, the scale of our readership, campground coverage, and amenity data are what set us apart. We tend to have more reviews per campground than other websites. Our readership has now grown to more than 6 million readers annually. About 25% of our readers return on a regular basis, indicating how the site is very popular.

PLP: What do you say to campground owners who see review sites as forums for people with an axe to grind, and what do you do to try to prevent that from happening?

AR: It’s a valid concern. We address this issue in a few ways with our policies. We also provide readers with tools to help them to better decide which reviews they want to trust, and soon we will be giving the campground owners the ability to respond to reviews, so they will have a voice as well.

To help our readers decide which reviews to trust, we recently added the rating distributions of each reviewer so someone can see if a contributor tends to only leave negative reviews. Alternatively, if you see a user who has lots of reviews with most of them being positive, then a single really bad review, you might take that into consideration in deciding whether to trust the review or not.

Going back to the axe grinders, our analysis shows that these types of issues are rare, with the vast majority of our reviews being positive. Regardless, we have a policy that requires a user to have at least two reviews approved before either will be shown on our website. This prevents people from creating an account to publish a single negative review. Most disgruntled customers never take the time to submit additional reviews. We also require reviewers to meet our Review Guidelines so they can’t just rant about poor service. We moderate all submissions from new users before they are published. Based on our historical information, we suspect less than 1 in 100 reviews are from disgruntled customers.

PLP: Do you encourage campground owners to ask their campers to write reviews?

AR: Yes, I would recommend that campground owners ask their campers to leave reviews. The more reviews you have, the better the odds that readers will get an accurate feeling for a campground where they have not previously stayed. It also helps establish a larger base for the ratings. For example, if you only have two reviews, an 8 and a 10 mean you had an average rating of 9. Then, if someone leaves a review with the rating of 6, your average falls to 8. If you have 7 reviews with an average of 9 and someone leaves a 6, your average will not change. Having more reviews is better for consumers and better for campgrounds.

PLP: You mentioned that campground owners will soon be able to directly respond to reviews. I know that Management Responses have been a key feature of TripAdvisor. Could you elaborate on what you have planned?

AR: This fall we will be rolling out a new feature called the Campground Owner’s Interface. Among other components, this interface will allow campground owners to respond to reviews. This will give campground owners a voice, allowing them to tell their side of a story so readers can use both perspectives when deciding whether to trust a review or not.

Keep in mind that review volume is important to help give more perspectives to readers. Campgrounds with lots of reviews are able to water down any negative effects from a disgruntled client. If you have 9 great reviews from happy customers and 1 negative review, it’s pretty easy for readers to see the trend.

PLP: If this is rolling out in the fall, how can campground owners get a jump start on joining the program?

AR: We highly encourage campground owners to claim their campgrounds. This fall, when the Campground Owner’s Interface is online, campground owners (or management) will then be able to manage their amenities, set their hours of operation, respond to reviews, and more. We’ll even e-mail them whenever new reviews are posted so they will know to respond in a timely manner.

PLP: What will be some additional features?

AR: We will also have a widget available so campground owners can showcase their positive reviews. Campground owners will be in control of what is shown on the widget so they can customize it to their needs. For example, if they want to show only snippets of 4 or 5 star reviews, they can set it to do that. If they don’t want to show any reviews, they can do that as well (and just link to their profile). By adding the widget to their site, a park owner makes it easy for their clients to leave reviews. We strongly suggest installing this on the campground’s website to get more reviews and help with search engine optimization as well.

Given an advance peek at what is coming, I can tell readers that there will also be tools that will allow campground owners to access their statistics at the RV Park Reviews website, keeping track of reviews, page views and more. They will also be able to directly update their seasonal dates, hours of operation, amenities and other campground information, keeping up-to-date and helping potential visitors. The amenities listing will include information that may be vital to some visitors in their decision-making process. For example, whether or not the park has cellular phone service, and if so, which cellular service providers have a signal available; whether or not the park offers wi-fi, listing the fee if applicable; and whether or not the park has showers, again listing whether or not there is an associated fee for that service.

To get started, go to the RV Park Reviews website at http://rvparkreviews.com, find your park by choosing your state and city from the alphabetical listing to the left of the map or by using the search box at the top of the page. When you find your park’s listing, click on the “View Campground Details” link. On the next page, click on the “Own this Campground? / Claim it and Unlock Features” link. Enter your name, e-mail address, phone number, and whether you are the campground’s owner, manager or employee, and you will be notified prior to the rollout of the new features.

When it comes to technology, early adopters usually benefit the most. The RV Park Reviews website is already sending you significant volumes of traffic. Make it work to your park’s maximum advantage. My recommendation is to get on board!

I do not know about you, but I pre-screen my calls before answering the phone, trying my best to avoid telemarketers, robo-calls, and other unwanted phone calls. Even though Caller ID readouts can easily be spoofed by aggressive telemarketers, a caller name that I know will always lead to a call that I will answer.

The problem comes into play if, for any of a variety of reasons, the name that is displayed when you call another phone is not the correct representation of your business name. In some instances, your business name may have changed, but the Caller ID still shows the name of the previous business … perhaps a business with a less than stellar reputation that you have been working vigilantly to overcome. In other instances, your business name may be spelled wrong, due to a careless database entry somewhere along the way.

One of my clients, Shir-Roy Camping Area, recently called me, but my Caller ID displayed the name as “CAMPIN S”. Another of my clients, Holiday Park Campground, always displays as “HOLDAY PARK” when they call. Worse yet is if your business appears as “Unknown Caller”, a situation that can be damaging to your business in its ability to contact its customers. Getting these corrected can be an exercise in frustration; however, I will attempt to offer some assistance.

First, it helps to understand how all this works. The phone number and the name that will appear on your Caller ID readout represent two entirely different pieces of information. The Caller ID represents the phone number of the originating call, and it originates with that person or company’s phone carrier. It is the CNAM that represents the name that is associated with that number, and it is delivered by the local phone carrier of the person on the receiving end of the call, doing what is called a “database dip.” The two pieces of information are alternately displayed on the same device that is broadly (and confusingly) referred to as your Caller ID.

Next, for the purposes of this article, I am referring to the Caller ID information that is displayed for calls made from landline telephones. These telephone carriers include AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Fairpoint, Frontier and Windstream, as well as cable companies like Comcast, Cox and others. Regardless of your carrier, it will access the Caller ID and CNAM databases from one of a couple dozen companies: most typically Neustar (formerly Targus), VeriSign, or Syniverse. The most dominant of these appears to be Neustar. Your phone carrier might subscribe to one or two databases, but any problems will persist unless all of the databases have been corrected.

Further complicating matters, some of these companies only update their databases annually, when new phone directories are published. As you might imagine, it is important for your business name to be listed correctly in your directory listing and on your phone bill. Presuming that you are tired of waiting, there are companies that offer to fix your Caller ID listing in these databases for a fee. One such company is called FixCallerID.com, and it charges a fee of $295.00 per phone number. However, I want to help you to do this on your own, without paying any fees.

To start, my recommendation is to call Neustar at 1 800 682-7487. Tell the operator that you are seeking to make a correction in your CNAM database listing, and you will be transferred over to an automated system where you will begin that process at no charge. The corrections are said to take “as long as 24 hours”, which is far better than waiting up to a year or paying a fee to expedite the process.

If this has not corrected the error within a few days, it is time to call your telephone carrier (either landline or cellular). Tell them that your outbound caller ID information is incorrect (or, in the case of an “Unknown Caller” situation, missing) and that you are requesting that it be corrected. They will first check for any possible errors at their end, along with any errors in the settings on your cellular device (if applicable), then check their internal CNAM database for potential errors. Any such errors will be corrected while you are on the call.

If your Caller ID information still does not display correctly, ask the representative from your telephone carrier to file a CNAM inquiry on your behalf. They will ask you to provide the same information that you provided to Neustar, but they will also have a direct route to get the information corrected with all of the other database service providers. At this point, it should only be a matter of a few days before your Caller ID information will begin to display correctly.

Yes, this process will require the investment of a bit of time on your part; however, anything that helps to enhance your business’s ability to communicate effectively with its customers is well worth the effort.

The fall campground industry convention season has just passed, when industry vendors from around the country – and beyond – make an effort to introduce you to their products and services, explaining how your business might benefit from what they have to offer. From old standbys to the latest innovations, you owe it to yourself to stay on top of the supply curve. Following a holiday respite, the convention season is soon followed by a full schedule of winter camping and outdoor shows, when it is your opportunity to shine in the spotlight. From Fort Myers and Tampa to Quebec and Montreal – and major cities in between – there are shows where your presence is desirable, if not a necessity.

Two key issues that I would like to address are:
1) How to choose the markets for shows to attend.
2) How to stand out from the crowd once you are there.

Which shows make your final cut?

When it is time to choose which shows to attend, there are many factors that come into consideration. First and foremost, there is the expense. Nobody can afford to be everywhere, and the expenses are far greater than simply the costs of exhibition. Secondly, there are the logistics of overlapping schedules and the necessary transportation and travel time. Finally – and not insignificantly – the camping shows are primarily being held in your off-season, when you really deserve some time off from those 60 or 80 hour weeks that you probably work throughout your prime season. Clearly, you cannot afford to select shows based upon random choices, and you do not want to continue attending shows without seeing measurable results. It is time to turn to Google Analytics for validation.

Rather uniquely, the contacts that you make with prospective guests at camping shows are generally going to be vaguely measured as “direct traffic” in your overview of website traffic acquisition. Most of these people will be typing your Web address into their browser while reading it from your brochure, rack card or other literature handouts. Some, on the other hand, will enter your campground name into a search box. Either way, the most important measurement for our purposes will be found in Google Analytics under Audience > Geo > Location, where you can then click on the United States (or other countries) to get a more detailed breakdown of states and even cities. You will also want to choose a custom date range to show the entire previous year of traffic, rather than the default range of 30 days, then also set it to compare to the same previous period (in this case, the previous year). That comparison allows you to view year-to-year trends.

Looking at the analytics of one of our clients, a large campground in the Northeastern United States, I see some remarkable increases in international traffic over the past year, particularly from the Western European countries of Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, along with similar increases from Mexico and the South American countries of Brazil and Argentina. Those are interesting statistics, but let’s look specifically at the United States, with the objective of choosing camping show locations. Start with the realization that you are more likely to find additional people who are interested in traveling to your destination if they are living in areas that have already demonstrated that interest, particularly if it shows an upward trend.

In this instance, I am looking at measurable traffic over the past two years from all 50 states. What we want to look for is a significant volume of traffic, so that we have a valid sampling from a viable market when looking at year-to-year trends. Percentages alone are unimportant. For example, a 113% increase in traffic from Montana that is the result of an increase from 37 visits to 79 visits is insignificant; however, a 17.5% increase in traffic from Florida, based upon an increase from 2,134 visits to 2,508 visits is a very significant upward trend that suggests that additional marketing efforts in the state of Florida might well prove to be productive.

Google Analytics will even allow me to break down Florida into 348 distinct locations, showing that the highest volumes of traffic with the most significant upward trends were from Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Miami Beach, Bay Lake, and Gainesville. On the other hand, the major markets with significant downward trends were Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers. Now, armed with the knowledge of where you have concentrated your marketing over the past two years, you might very well be witnessing a payback for your efforts. Clearly, this is the type of information that will help you to make more educated marketing decisions. Leave it to your competitors to throw darts at a map on the wall.

How to make a positive impression

When you attend a convention and trade show such as the Outdoor Hospitality Expo, you are more likely to enter a booth space with a bright, colorful display; cushioned flooring; promotional handouts; new product or service introductions; quality promotional items; and – most importantly – friendly and engaging booth personnel. People sitting at a table, more interested in making eye contact with their cell phones than with you, with booth furnishings that consist of little more than the sign provided by the convention management company and a bowl of leftover Halloween candy, simply have not demonstrated that they deserve your business.

When you attend one or more of the conventions this season, take some notes about the factors that drew you into some booths and that drove you away from others. In addition, compare your show presence with that of your leading competitors at the camping shows that you attend or where you exhibit. Is your booth up to par? An album of snapshots and that sign made by your talented twelve year old daughter is simply not going to persuade people to stop, particularly if you are working from a booth on the perimeter of a hall where the main attractions are campers and motorhomes that look like they just rolled off next year’s assembly line.

To make your camping show presence as effective as possible, allow me to offer a few absolute rules and a few added recommendations. First the rules:

• Leave your cell phone in your pocket. If you get a call, let it go to voice-mail, then check your message away from your booth, when the time is appropriate. When you are speaking with a prospective camper, he or she is the most important person in your life at that particular moment. Everyone else can wait, and you never want to give that person any other impression.
• Leave your frown and bad attitude at home. Even when you answer your office telephone, where your image is not visible to the person at the other end of the line, a smile can always be detected. Would you want to consider spending your valuable vacation time with somebody who comes across as some sort of grouch?
• Make friendly and direct eye contact, always at eye level. With the exception of the occasional person using a scooter or wheelchair, the people approaching your booth are standing. You do not belong in a chair behind a table. Either stand (taking breaks from your booth as needed, again when the time is appropriate) or sit on a stool that positions you at eye level. The importance of standing, incidentally, is a strong argument in favor of that investment in cushioned flooring, particularly for a multi-day event. In fact, I have even witnessed people specifically entering a booth with cushioned flooring, hoping to rest their feet and giving the booth attendants an opportunity to engage them in conversation.
• Gather contact information. Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter or enter a drawing for a prize with recognizable value. Ask them to identify specific areas of interest that relate to your business. Somebody who is interested in possibly spending a weekend in your area is an entirely different prospect than someone who is looking for a seasonal site. Keep your information gathering to a minimum. If you plan on following up online and have no intention of ever doing a direct mailing, there is no reason to ask people for their mailing addresses. The more intrusive your efforts appear, the more likely that people will decline to provide you with their contact information.
• Do not leave your booth unattended. If the show hours are from 9:00 to 6:00, get there well in advance of the opening and never, ever leave (or start breaking down) early. The person who stopped by to look for you when you were not there may not return and could very well be a lost customer.

Now the recommendations, the subtleties that can make the difference between generating acceptable results and generating exceptional results:

• Invest in a professional booth backdrop, with lighting, then take the next step and invest in professionally designed graphics. Exhibits themselves are relatively inexpensive these days, with some great deals to be found online and on sites like eBay. Forget about the textured panels and Velcro tabs that might come with the backdrop. Professionally designed graphics are intended to whet the appetites of passersby, providing an opening for you or your booth staff to tell the rest of your story.
• Plan in advance, and be prepared with the little things. Of course, you would never forget your business cards at home. You will also want to remember water bottles, pens and paper, even a bottle of aspirin or acetaminophen. Despite a headache or a potential backache (see, you should have gotten that padded flooring!), the show must go on!
• Always engage the people who enter your booth space. In fact, work the aisles and encourage them to enter! Listen to what interests them, and go through a process of discovery to best determine why they should choose your park over any other. Be prepared to get the conversation back on track if it goes on a tangent, spending too much time on small talk that is unrelated to your business.
• Have some great giveaways available, with your branding imprinted of course. Put them aside for your most qualified prospects or to reward existing customers who stop by. Whatever you choose, the item should be useful and reasonably high quality. Do you want your company to be identified with an item that is defective, useless or quickly breaks? A highly visible promotional item is far more desirable than something that gets dropped into a bag or put into a pocket, out of sight.
• After the event, follow up with your new prospects as immediately as possible. If you have asked them – and they have provided – their preferred means of contact, use that avenue for your follow-up.

There you have it. Attend the fall conventions, take notes to best prepare for the winter camping shows, do some basic research to choose what are likely to be the most productive venues, be prepared for your booth space to stand out from the others, then be prepared to engage people in the friendliest manner possible. Give them your literature, gather their contact information, and follow up. Taken all together, this is one of the best formulas for success when it comes to increasing your occupancy rates next season.

I often find businesses that put far too much emphasis on driving traffic to their website and far too little emphasis on the user experience once someone reaches their site. This is backward thinking that fails to address the importance of converting online traffic into customers. Think about it. If you ran a store where your average sale was $100.00, would you rather have 100 people in your store if only 1 out of 20 made a purchase, or would you prefer to have 20 people in your store with 1 out of 3 making a purchase? In the first instance, you would look very busy but would be realizing only $500.00 in sales, whereas in the second instance, you would be generating more income while giving your customers greater attention and tremendously reducing your sales overhead.

Businesses that are engaged in online commerce have their fingers on the pulse of their customer base, easily detecting the difference between active customers and dead bodies. They know that, right until that last confirming click, a shopping cart may be abandoned and an order lost. For that reason, they know that they need to do everything possible to ensure that the end user experience is as smooth and flawless as possible. Any and every little hindrance along the way takes the customer one step closer to bailing out and shopping elsewhere.

There is a rule of thumb in the website design business that says “three clicks and they’re out”. This means that, if somebody enters a website and cannot find what they want (whether it is merchandise or simply an answer to a question) in 3 clicks or less, they are increasingly likely to leave the site … often never to return. On the same token, if a user is attempting to make a purchase – or make a reservation – but encounters roadblocks along the way, I believe that the same “three clicks and they’re out” rule of thumb applies. It is simply not as easy to monitor as an abandoned shopping cart.

Other than shopping carts themselves, probably the most frustrating online content involves pages that contain forms. Let’s face it: we all dislike filling out forms. Do you like going to your doctor’s office and being asked to complete the same 4 or 5 forms every time you have an appointment? Well, it is time to stop running your website like a doctor’s office! All campground websites either have or should have some type of reservation request form, but try to be sure that your forms are intuitive and follow some basic common sense rules.

• Do not ask for non-essential (or even intrusive) information. For example, I often see people asking for a “home phone number” at a time when about half of the population no longer subscribes to a landline telephone service
• If input is required for certain fields, let people know in advance (typically with an asterisk), not with an error message after users click “submit”.
• Design your forms to adapt to user preferences instead of demanding that users adapt to the forms. For example, if somebody enters their phone number as (123) 456-7890, they do not want to be told that they were wrong and must re-enter it as 123-456-7890 or 1234567890.
• Every form submission should be followed by some sort of receipt or confirmation. If you respond to a form via e-mail, use an address to which the customer can reply with any subsequent questions, never using a “do not reply” address.
• Personalize your responses. I recently placed an order with an online merchant who sent me a series of e-mails, all with the “Dear Valued Customer” salutation. Fail!
• Follow up on promises. If you tell people that you will respond to their inquiries within 24 hours, follow up on that commitment. The same merchant who addressed me as “Dear Valued Customer” had prominent notices throughout its website that promoted “Free Next Day Delivery via FedEx”; however, after placing my order, I received an order confirmation telling me that I could expect delivery in 7-10 days. Do you think that I will ever purchase from that company again? Not a double fail, a triple fail!

Keeping in mind the “three clicks and they’re out” rule of thumb, try not to violate these common sense usability rules. It is time for you to evaluate your website not as the business owner but as a potential customer. How many customers has your website driven away today? If your webmaster is not on board, fails to understand, or is anything less than fully committed to the end user experience, it may be time to shop around.

The challenge of any website is to convert traffic into buyers who take the site’s prescribed call to action. Whether it means putting an item into a shopping cart, signing an online petition to save the whales, making a charitable contribution, or reserving a campsite for the third weekend in August, if a site lacks traffic it has no chance of converting those numbers of visitors into buyers. Fortunately, there are many ways to drive traffic to your site.

Many businesses have become convinced in recent years that the key to traffic is strictly a matter of search engine optimization (SEO). In desperation and out of confusion, they fall prey to a host of companies (who often initiate contact through spam or from a telemarketing boiler room operation) offering so-called guaranteed search engine placement or keyword analysis services that usually run automated software. Some other companies act like they possess a uniquely secret talent, with one recently proclaiming itself to be the “official SEO company of the campground industry”. The claims can get pretty preposterous. I actually received a telemarketing call a while back from an outfit in India called “BS SEO”. The name says it all!

With the decreasing role of search engine traffic, the role of referring sites becomes ever more important. The cumulative impact from established referring sites is not only measured directly by the traffic that they generate but also from the listings and their positive influence upon search engine rankings. With that in mind, one of your goals should be to ensure that your website is listed in as many online resources that are relevant to your business as possible. More importantly, check to confirm that the listings and links to your website are correct and unbroken.

Where to List

The best way to start is to compile a list of resources where your business should already be listed as one of your benefits of membership. Never assume that these listings are correct and up-to-date. Check them individually, and you will often be surprised by outdated content that could be negatively impacting the effectiveness of your listing. Start this list with your membership listings on any local, regional, or state chambers of commerce and tourism boards to which you belong. Check for details like current e-mail addresses, as well as your correct Web address, ideally including a direct link to your website.

Next on the checklist for campgrounds and related businesses are the state, regional, and national associations where your business maintains membership. These include National ARVC’s Go Camping America website and your state association website. When checking listings recently on three of the largest campground state association websites in the United States, I was shocked by the number of broken website links that I encountered. Most of those were the result of programming errors within the sites, a few were the result of spelling errors, but others were the result of updated information that was never passed along to the association by the owners of the individual campgrounds.

There were also several instances of campgrounds that had lost the domain names that were listed, even though they had new websites built under new domain names. Rather than sending people to their new (and presumably improved) website, visitors encountered either a “404 file not found” error page or a page indicating that the old domain name was for sale – either way leading many people to conclude that the campground is out of business and permanently closed. In one or two other instances, I found campgrounds with new domain names and who had not lost control of their old domain names, but did not provide redirects from the old to the new.

I should also mention that I encountered many websites with e-mail addresses that were invalid, making any attempt to contact the businesses bounce faster than a basketball. I have also encountered phone numbers that go to voicemail but that are either not set up to accept voicemails or have mailboxes that are full. Why not just lock your doors and find another line of work?

Each of the state associations has a member services website, usually password-protected, where you can enter any listing information that may be incorrect, incomplete, or entirely missing. Check your listings, and get ensure that they are as complete, correct, and up-to-date as possible.

Those are some of the most obvious resources where your campground would expect to be listed. Next, it is time to get listed in any of a wide range of specialized directories that relate to your business. Be sure to include performers who are scheduled to appear at your park. Almost all of them have their own websites, where they list their upcoming performance schedules. Provide links to them on your website’s activities schedule, then insist that they provide reciprocal links to your site. Many fans of these performers follow their schedules and could become first-time guests at your park.

Dog-Friendly Online Directories

There are many websites that list campgrounds that cater to specific types of camping. Some, for example, list campgrounds with yurts. Others list campgrounds with free wi-fi service. Others list campgrounds that are pet-friendly, and I will concentrate on these. Pets are indisputably the new family members. If your park is pet-friendly, there are many online resources that will help you to spread the word. Some of these sites even offer free listings or free trials. To save you time in researching these resources, I have compiled a comprehensive list of sites that cater to pet-friendly travel. I have excluded any sites that appear to be down, list only hotels, or are tied into another paid service.

In each instance, I am listing the website’s URL, its number of yearly visitors (as shown at StatShow.com), its annual listing fee, and the cost per thousand yearly visitors. This last number is an apples-to-apples way of comparing the cost-effectiveness of each site.

Somebody searching for camping accommodations on one or more of these sites is an excellent prospect to become a guest at your campground, probably a camper who has not stayed at your park before and would be unlikely to choose your park without this referral “nudge”. Since most people probably refer to only one of these resources – rather than searching through multiple resources – listing your park on more than one site is probably going to significantly expand your reach.

Building your presence on referral sites is only one of many ways to attract new guests. Now that you have this information at your disposal, put it to use!