TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Under Canvas's CEO said publicly that a new owner (and potentially a different ownership model) is likely, the same week they closed a $145M refinancing. Let's take a look at the portfolio today, nearly 8 years into KSL's hold, and what it means if the biggest name in glamping trades.

Trail Map:

What RV parks actually sell for per site: from under $10K on the very low end, to $15K-$30K in many seasonal, mid-range deals, and $40K to $50K and up for amenitized long-term stays and resorts. A recent $97M portfolio at about $62K per site, and a 2023 deal north of $140K, counting planned upgrades. Plus what drives the range in values.

Field Notes:

Conventional advice says keep glamping and RVs apart. A recent podcast on the subject, 3 operators who mix them and how, and my take on what actually moves the needle on mixed camping/lodging site types.

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The One Big Thing

Under Canvas is looking for their next owner

A $145M refinancing, a private equity hold approaching its expiration date, and a CEO speaking openly about a coming exit. Here's where the biggest name in glamping stands.

"We're nearing the end of KSL's ownership horizon," Under Canvas CEO Noah Brodsky told CoStar on Oct 19. "It's very likely that in the near future, as the company transacts again, that we would see a different ownership model."

I find it interesting that a CEO would say that publicly. And the timing lines up with a big debt move.

Sarah and Jacob Dusek started Under Canvas in 2009 with a camp in West Yellowstone, Montana. California investment firm SBJ Capital invested in Nov 2017. In Dec 2018, KSL Capital Partners, a Denver private equity firm focused on travel and leisure, bought a majority stake in the then 8-camp company. Terms weren't disclosed, but Inc. later reported more than $100 million.

KSL added another $25M in 2022 (CoStar). Matt Gaghen, from KSL, became CEO in late 2020. Brodsky, a former Lindblad Expeditions and Wyndham executive, took over in Apr 2026, and Gaghen moved to executive chairman (Under Canvas).

The same week, Derby Lane Partners funded a $145M loan "to refinance debt and support the expansion of Under Canvas," per PERE. Derby Lane, a real estate lender, launched in Oct 2025 with up to $1.8B from backers including Fortress, Koch Real Estate Investments, Liberty Mutual Investments and others.

Based on public records and prior press, we're assuming this refinance pays off Blackstone's $110M loan. County property records show a $110M mortgage from a Blackstone real estate debt fund (BREDS IV), recorded in Jan 2022 on Under Canvas's West Yellowstone land and later on its Grand Canyon, Columbia River Gorge, Fields of Michigan and Santa Fe properties. In 2022 the company told CoStar "Blackstone is a significant debt provider." What's still owed, and how much of the $145M repays it versus funding growth, isn't public.

KSL lists Under Canvas under Equity Fund IV, a $2.68B fund that closed in 2015. Private equity firms usually plan to sell within about 5 to 7 years, though Bain says buyout holds have recently stretched to about 7, up from 5 to 6 in 2010 to 2021.

I started hearing rumors that Under Canvas was up for sale about a year ago. Obviously no deal has advanced yet. That usually means one of two things has to come next: the right buyer shows up (or increases their bid), or price expectations adjust.

I came across one more public data point that seemed interesting: In August 2021, a BlackRock fund paid about $50M for 2,172,486 Class A shares of Under Canvas (not to be confused with Blackstone's loan). Funds like this estimate what each holding is worth every quarter, a figure called a "mark." The fund still owns all the shares, but it has marked the stake down to about $4.8M as of June 2026, about 90% below what it paid (SEC filing).

It's one minority investor's own estimate, not a sale price or a value for the whole company. The fund doesn't explain its Under Canvas number; its reports only say it values private holdings using things like revenue multiples of similar companies and a guess at when it can sell (semi-annual report). We also don't know who gets paid first in a sale, these Class A shares or KSL, so it says nothing about the value of KSL's stake. And this fund has marked most of its 2021 private deals down hard, which seems to be relatively common for 2021-era growth deals, but Under Canvas is cut deeper than most.

So the 90% markdown is an estimate, not a price. The mark moves: it went up between Dec 2024 and Dec 2025 (about $7.7M to $8.3M) before dropping again this year, and a real sale could land above or below it.

When I profiled Under Canvas in Ed 10 in Jul 2024, it had about 700 tents across 13 camps. Today it's 17 properties and about 950 units (mostly tents, plus some cabins) across 3 brands:

• 14 Under Canvas camps, about 839 units, from Acadia to Yosemite.

• ULUM Moab, the luxury tier, 50 units, opened Mar 2023.

• The Outdoor Collection: The Fields of Michigan (45 units, up from 23 at acquisition) and Bar N Ranch in West Yellowstone (about 16). County and state parcel records show Under Canvas Inc. as owner of both.

Santa Fe opens in Apr 2027 as number 18, starting with 45 tents with in-tent cooling, and the company says temperature-controlled, hard-sided cabins will follow, a first for the brand. Brodsky also told CoStar they're piloting small cabins at four camps now, aimed at families and bigger groups, and the Fields of Michigan added air conditioning to its tents for 2026.

The classic camps still don't have AC (Under Canvas FAQ). When I stayed at the Smokies camp in 2024, no AC or fan and no fridge were the two gaps I noted (Ed 10). No fridge makes sense with bears and other wildlife around, and it obviously nudges guests toward the on-site food and beverage. The Park Service counts even an ice chest as a bear attractant, so I get it, but I missed having somewhere to keep drinks cold.

One more thing I find interesting in following Under Canvas: 3 of the 6 properties added since mid-2023 aren't national park gateways: Columbia River Gorge, White Mountains (3+ hours from Boston), and the Fields. Santa Fe will be the 4th. The company calls these "distinctive outdoor markets" (TravelAge West). It might be a sign their site criteria have broadened beyond park gateways and that national park adjacent site inventory doesn't match the desired growth rate.

That's just my read, and it's unconfirmed, but I find it notable given the national park strategy seemed non-negotiable until recently and has become such a defined one for many glamping and RV operators alike.

What I'm watching for:

• Who the next owner is, and whether the land and the brand stay together. Brodsky said he'd "absolutely expect to see an evolution of our model in the future, but a protection of the brand."

• Whether the cabin pilots grow into a bigger part of the product.

• Whether more lenders follow Derby Lane into glamping.

Last fall on the podcast, we asked what Under Canvas's next chapter looks like. It's getting close.

The Trail Map

What RV parks actually sell for per site

Per-site prices run from under $10K to well over $100K, and 5 things (market, season, product, financials and deal terms) explain most of the gap.

Price per site is often one of the first numbers people want when evaluating RV park deals: it provides a “price per pound”, but it’s also imperfect and easy to misread.

Here's the range we discussed on the podcast with a top Texas broker:

• $12K to $20K a site is where a lot of everyday park deals land.

• $40K to $50K a site and up is usually approaching high-end resort territory.

From deals I’ve looked at: under $10K a site on the very low end, $15K to $30K in many seasonal, mid-range quality deals, and $40K to $50K and up for amenitized long-term stays and resorts.

One recent comp near the top: in Feb, a 7-park RV resort portfolio across 5 states traded for $97M with 1,562 sites, per the press release, or about $62K per site (I broke it down in Ed 37).

Near the very top: in 2023, RREAF Holdings bought 5 RV parks in Alabama, Florida and Texas at a "total capitalization" of $157M (press release). RREAF's own property pages list about 1,090 pads across the 5, or more than $140K a pad.

Worth noting that the $157M is a "total capitalization" that may include planned upgrades, not just the purchase price, but it's still well north of $100K a site. We've also talked with large resort owners anchored at north of $100K a site before they'll sell, a long way from where most deals actually trade.

Plenty of parks were recently built at a total cost of $50K to $70K a site or more, so plenty of owners are anchored at sale prices at or north of that, depending on their willingness to lose money or break even.

So why does one park trade at under $10K a site and another at well over $100K? Five things drive most of it:

1. Market. It's often regional, and the market drives much of the rest: season, product, length of stay and the mix of unit types.

2. Season. A park that shuts down for winter earns on fewer nights than a year-round one. I still see very rustic seasonal parks in the Northeast asking or trading at $10K or less per site.

3. Product. Resort parks with lodging and amenities sit at the top of the range vs. rustic seasonal campgrounds at the bottom. Length of stay also plays a part. Longer-term stays are seen as safer, less operationally intensive investments and trade at lower cap rates and higher values.

4. Financials. The broker put it plainly: price per pad "has always been a really tough metric," because two parks that look and feel similar can have completely different income due to different average length of stay and RevPAS (revenue per available site).

5. Terms. Seller financing and creative deal terms can change a headline number; the $97M deal came with "attractive seller financing terms," per the brokerage that sourced it (RVBusiness).

Field Notes

Should glamping and RV sites share the same campground?

The usual advice is to keep glamping and RVs apart, but I think mixing them comes down more to physical viewsheds and site planning than brand.

I was listening to a recent Modern Campground Fireside Chat, and the panel got into a question I've been chewing on for years: can you put glamping and RV sites on the same property without hurting the performance of the lodging?

I've had this conversation over and over with developers, investors and people building new camping concepts, and it's been a big point of analysis and contemplation in projects I've worked on.

The conventional advice: don't mix them at all, or put them in entirely separate areas. A Modern Campground article last week said the same: if you add glamping to an RV park, put it in its own area, away from the RVs.

The panel was more nuanced. One owner said mixing can work with enough physical space; he told of tent campers who left a nearby park over a neighbor's generator. Another said a traditional park can have both, but knocked operators who put a few trees around an old RV site and call it glamping. A third said the glamping area doesn't need to be isolated, just different. The line I agree with most: it all has to feel cohesive.

What operators actually build looks like neither extreme:

• Village Camp Flagstaff (Roberts Resorts): RV sites on the west half, cabins on the east, the amenity core in between, one entrance, though about 22 cabins sit inside the RV half (Village Camp site map; Flagstaff Business News).

• Roamstead (Cosby, TN): an RV loop on one side, cabins on the other, yurts across the creek with their own parking, and safari tents inside the RV loop (Roamstead site map).

• Sun Outdoors San Diego Bay: 197 RV sites with a cluster of 49 cottages set among them, and a palm-lined promenade so cottage guests can skip the rows of rigs (The San Diego Sun).

So even the operators who separate them still mix a little at the edges. What they really manage is what the lodging guest sees at and on the way to and from their site.

Here's where I land: I think there's merit to the idea that your ADRs and occupancies get pulled down from a poor site mix or unfavorable viewsheds: a glamping or high-end cabin guest doesn't want to walk out the door and see an RV or a site where a guest pitched their own tent. But I'd push back on the idea that it's impossible to manage from a brand perspective. I think it's probably more about the actual physical viewsheds.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

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In this solo edition of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, lets break down the massive, industry-shaking news that just dropped: Patrick Industries and LCI Industries (Lippert) have officially agreed to combine in an all-stock merger valued at a staggering $7.7 billion in enterprise value. As two of the absolute largest giants in the RV component space, this historic merger of almost equals is set to reshape the landscape for manufacturers and everyday RVers alike.

Alex dives into his immediate gut reaction, exploring the massive financial footprint of this new mega-company, the leadership shakeup following Jason Lippert’s recent retirement, and the undeniable trickle-down effect this consolidation will have on aftermarket competition and consumer choice.

With new RV retail sales already down double digits heading into the middle of 2026, what does this new era of consolidated power mean for the future of RV manufacturing and pricing?

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we sit down with Garrett McKinnon to talk about the future of campground discovery, AI-powered trip planning, and evolving camper behavior.

Garrett shares how CampgroundViews has grown into one of the industry’s leading virtual tour and trip-planning platforms, helping campers explore parks before they book while giving operators new ways to market their properties.

The conversation dives into AI tools, virtual tours, midweek demand challenges, experiential travel, remote work trends, and how campground operators can create more compelling reasons for guests to travel and return. Garrett also shares insights from partnerships with RecPro and Campground Brokers of America, along with broader thoughts on where the outdoor hospitality industry is headed next.

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In this special solo edition of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, Alex reflects on Memorial Day weekend and what the first major holiday of the camping season revealed about the state of outdoor hospitality.

Drawing from new AAA travel data, KOA research, and firsthand operational experience, he breaks down the mixed signals campground operators are seeing across the industry—from softer RV sales and shorter booking windows to strong demand for local, experience-driven travel.

The episode explores how camping behavior is evolving, why occupancy alone no longer tells the full story, and how parks are adapting through long-term stays, hyper-local marketing, and experience-focused hospitality strategies.

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we break down the latest industry trends, economic pressures, and market shifts impacting campgrounds, RV parks, and outdoor hospitality operators across the country.

The conversation covers Matt’s trip to the Florida & Alabama RV Park Conference, where AI, rising payroll costs, park valuations, and increasing competition dominated discussions among operators and investors. We also unpack the latest developments surrounding Sandy Pines Campground in Maine and what its bankruptcy proceedings could signal for high-profile outdoor hospitality assets.

We dive into the newly released 2026 Outdoor Hospitality Industry Outlook Report, discussing occupancy trends, ADR, RevPAS, rising credit card processing costs, staffing challenges, and the growing divide between transient and long-term campground business models.

Finally, we revisit the proposed Lippert and Patrick Industries merger and what its collapse could mean for RV manufacturers, campground operators, and the broader RV ecosystem.

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we sit down with Billy Rhyne, developer of Horseshoe Ridge RV Resort in Wimberley, Texas, to break down what it actually takes to build a high-end RV resort from the ground up.

Billy shares his journey from working in software with no prior experience in outdoor hospitality to developing a luxury, amenity-rich RV resort in the Texas Hill Country. We dive into the full process—from finding the property and navigating complex entitlements to self-performing construction and delivering a high-end guest experience.

We also explore the realities of operations after opening, including lessons learned from third-party management, and Billy’s deep dive into marketing—from firing multiple agencies to building his own conversion tracking systems, AI-driven SEO tools, and automated email campaigns.

This is a candid look at the complexity behind building and operating a modern RV resort—and the level of detail, effort, and persistence it takes to do it right.

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we break down the latest industry data, major hotel brand expansion into outdoor hospitality, and new signals from the RV market.

We unpack insights from the 2026 KOA report and Campspot’s Q1 data, including shifting demand, changing camper demographics, and the evolving balance between occupancy and pricing.

We also cover continued hotel entry into the space—from Best Western’s new glamping collection to Under Canvas expanding near Yosemite—and what it means for independent operators.

Finally, we dive into major RV industry news, including a potential merger between Lippert and Patrick Industries and what slowing RV sales could signal for the broader market.

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we go deep on AI in our first AI “Tech Corner” takeover—breaking down the real tools, workflows, and use cases we’re actively using across campground operations, investing, and day-to-day work.

Matt shares his experience building with Claude Code and OpenClaw, including how AI agents actually work, what it takes to set them up, and the reality behind automation. We also unpack the shifting economics of AI, including recent pricing changes from Anthropic and what they signal for the future of AI tools.

On the operations side, Alex walks through how AI is already impacting campground revenue management, highlighting new predictive pricing and occupancy tools inside reservation systems like Campspot—and how even single-location operators can now leverage data like a full-scale revenue manager.

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AI Tools Mentioned in the Episode:

Claude (Anthropic) – https://www.anthropic.com

Claude Code / Claude Desktop / Claude AI – https://claude.ai

OpenAI / ChatGPT – https://www.openai.com

OpenClaw – https://openclaw.ai/

Claude API (Anthropic API) – https://console.anthropic.com

OpenAI API – https://platform.openai.com

Gemma (Google) – https://ai.google.dev/gemma

Campspot AI-Powered Occupancy & Pricing Predictions: https://software.campspot.com/blog/now-live-ai-powered-occupancy-prediction-and-pricing-recommendations/

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In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we break down a major shift in campground demand: the growing role of events, experiences, and timing in driving bookings.

We explore how large-scale events like the World Cup and Route 66 anniversaries are creating massive but short-term demand spikes, and what operators can learn from failed and successful development attempts tied to those opportunities. We also dive into the rise of experiential programming, using Terramor’s wellness retreat as a case study in how campgrounds can create reasons for guests to return—not just places to stay.

Finally, we discuss operational efficiency for smaller parks, including new staffing models that help reduce payroll pressure while maintaining strong guest service.

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TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Retail RV sales dropped 14.5% in January and oil just hit $100/barrel — 2 forces stressing the industry from both ends, with the transient segment hit hardest.

Trail Map:

Small parks are hard to make work as investments — payroll alone can hit 20-25% of gross revenue. Here's a staffing strategy that might finally change the math.

Field Notes:

I manage admissions for a 38,000-member Facebook group for RV park buyers. The 4:1 buyer-to-inventory ratio sounds like a hot market. Most of those "buyers" will never buy anything (and don’t actually intend to).

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The One Big Thing

Two macro headwinds just stacked up

RV sales fell 14.5% in January. Oil hit $100/barrel. Here's what that combination actually means for your park:

The RV industry was supposed to recover in 2026. Lower interest rates, pent-up demand, cautious optimism — analysts had built the bull case. Then, January retail registrations dropped 14.5% year-over-year. Not a plateau. An acceleration — January 2025 was down just 0.88%. And before anyone had time to process that, oil hit $100/barrel on the back of the Iran conflict.

These two forces compress the market from both ends. Expensive financing suppresses new RV purchases. Expensive fuel makes long trips harder to justify. Fewer new buyers are entering the market, and the existing owners are traveling shorter distances.

The 11 million households that own RVs aren’t one market, though. A significant portion is in long-term sites — annual leases, seasonal placements, and full-time living. They’re not making trip-distance decisions at all.

For the transient segment, the story varies by market. Some areas have been experiencing softening transient demand for a while now, and markets that saw heavy development during the 2020-2022 boom are dealing with oversupply on top of that. Expensive fuel is a new headwind stacking on existing ones.

The operators best positioned are the ones close to population centers, in markets that aren’t oversaturated. Shorter trips, closer to home, more frequent (maybe? hopefully?) — not longer. If your value proposition requires a long drive to reach you, or you’re competing for transient sites in an oversupplied market, both of those cases just got harder to make.

Are you seeing any shift in demand, booking windows, or trip length in your market?

The Trail Map

A staffing model that might finally make small parks work as investments

Small campgrounds (under $500k gross revenue) are genuinely hard to make work as an investor. I keep coming back to this. The revenue is limited by site count, but the fixed costs don’t care — and payroll has a way of creeping to 20-25%+ of gross revenue. That’s a number that eats up all of your cash flow.

I had a conversation with Steven Kramer at Campground Support recently that stuck with me. He’s built a remote manager service specifically for this problem, and the math he laid out is worth sharing.

The traditional model for a 50-site park: 1-2 employees. Someone in the office, someone outside — or one person doing both. Call volume at a park this size can vary, but either way, someone sitting by the phone all day isn’t viable (they have to be on the grounds), or it’s a waste of resources when the phones are slow. You’re either investing in double the payroll, or the office chair is occupied while the rest of the park isn’t, or vice-versa.

Here’s the split that changes the math:

Remote coverage for the office layer. Campground Support provides 15-16 hours of daily office coverage, 7 days a week, with US-based agents — most parks around $1,000 a month. They handle incoming calls, email responses, reputation management, grid management, past-due invoices, and on-site coordination for maintenance issues. Everything that doesn’t require a physical presence.

A camp host for the on-site layer. Free site in exchange for 20 hours of work per week. No payroll, or at least a site credit and less payroll. The host handles arrivals, minor issues, and anything that needs boots on the ground. Obviously, be familiar with your labor laws and don’t do anything illegal or unethical.

The comparison: one full-time office hire runs $35,000-45,000 a year before benefits. The split model comes in under $12,000 annually. Same coverage window. Labor line drops from 20-25% of gross toward something that actually pencils.

It won’t work without systems underneath it — a PMS the remote team can access, documented SOPs, and a camp host who knows when to escalate. But if those three things exist, this might be a real path to making the small park numbers work.

Reply “REMOTE” and I’ll share more on how to evaluate whether this fits your operation.

Field Notes

There are 4+ "buyers" for every park in the US

I manage admissions for a Facebook group called RV Parks And Campgrounds For Sale. 38,000 members. When I took over, I started noticing a pattern.

The number of “nationwide buyers” who join claiming they’ll buy a park of any type, size, or location is staggering. ELS estimates that 8,700 privately owned RV parks exist in America. In our group alone, that’s north of a 4:1 ratio of buyers to inventory. Except most aren’t actually buyers. They’re disciples of one guru who sold them a course and a dream.

And this isn’t newbie shaming. Anybody who knows me knows I am willing to share anything I’ve learned in the last 5 years in this business with just about anyone.

A professional wholesaler is a great resource. But most of these folks never intend to close or operate and aren’t upfront about it. They’re bird dogs and cold callers pitching zero-down creative finance deals on parks they’ve never visited (and probably never will), hoping to flip a contract or charge a finder’s fee.

The problem is they’re loud. And sellers mistake noise for demand. They reject serious offers because “so many people are interested.” They wait for the unicorn who’ll hit their now-inflated ask. Meanwhile, the operators with actual capital walk away frustrated. Deals die. Properties sit. The bid-ask spread widens.

If you’re selling, vet ruthlessly. Proof of funds. Operating experience. Skin in the game. If you’re buying, expect to compete with noise — and prove you’re different.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

Share Outdoor Hospitality Weekly

We’d also love your input on making Outdoor Hospitality Weekly even more useful for you! So please leave a comment with:

• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we break down one of the biggest shifts in the industry: major hotel brands entering the campground space and converting traditional properties into higher-end lodging experiences.

We discuss recent development case studies, the growing role of loyalty programs from brands like Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott, and what this means for independent operators navigating a more competitive landscape.

We also dive into early January 2026 RV sales data showing a sharp year-over-year decline, rising gas prices, and what those macro trends could mean for demand this season.

Finally, we touch on guest experience strategy from themed properties and “world-building” concepts to simple ways operators can stand out, as well as how AI is beginning to reshape everything from data analysis to day-to-day operations.

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TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Hotel brands are converting family campgrounds into branded, loyalty-integrated resorts — and all three majors entered outdoor hospitality within 10 months of each other.

Trail Map:

The three-ingredient formula behind a desert outpost running 90% occupancy with no front desk — and how to score your own property against it.

Field Notes:

We pulled the EPA’s national water system database. 99% of campgrounds are on wells. Only 70 in the entire country buy water from a utility.

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The One Big Thing

Hotel brands are coming for your favorite rustic campground

A 27-year Asheville campground is now a $300+/night Airstream resort. A Big Sur campground from 1953 is losing all 130 RV sites. All three major hotel brands moved into outdoor hospitality within 10 months of each other.

We featured AutoCamp as a company to watch in 2025 (and will be featuring them in our upcoming Industry Player Report). Last week, they opened their Asheville property — on the site of a campground that operated for 27 years.

The former French Broad River Campground was run by the Crockett family on 16 acres along the river. They retired and sold in 2021. AutoCamp bought it and began converting: 67 Airstream suites, cabins, and luxury tents. Rates start at around $200 per night for a “Bambi Suite” (tiny Airstream) — or 70,000 Hilton Honors points.

The development took 5 years. Permit delays, septic complications on non-municipal sewer, and Hurricane Helene, which devastated western North Carolina in September 2024 before AutoCamp had even opened, pushed the timeline from a mid-2023 target to this month (March 2026).

In Big Sur, a similar pattern. EOS Investors (also to be featured in our upcoming Industry Player Report releases) — a $1.8 billion New York firm whose portfolio includes top-of-the-line resorts like Wequasset Resort in Cape Cod, L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, and LakeHouse Spa at Lake Austin — acquired two family campgrounds on Highway 1.

Big Sur Campground has operated since 1953. Riverside Campground has been in the same family since 1964, when it sold for $67,000.

EOS’s proposal: eliminate all 130 bring-your-own-RV sites and replace them with 107 park model units — permanent structures classified as RVs. The local advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend approval on March 10. The opposition, Keep Big Sur Wild, framed it directly: “Are we going to allow investment firms to come in and buy up all our campgrounds and convert them into high-end resorts that most of us can’t afford?”

All three major hotel brands now have active outdoor hospitality platforms — all entering within 10 months of each other in 2024.

Hilton partnered with AutoCamp. Hyatt integrated Under Canvas into World of Hyatt (their Camp Unwritten literary glamping weekends return this summer at $1,200 per person, with 2,000 bonus Hyatt points per night). Marriott acquired Postcard Cabins and signed Trailborn. Combined loyalty membership across the three programs: nearly 500 million.

Development in outdoor hospitality is brutally hard — we covered that last week with LOGE. AutoCamp’s 5-year slog reinforces the point. The difference is what’s on the other side: a Hilton reservation system, a loyalty program with 210 million members, and a guest who never searched for “glamping near Asheville.” They searched Hilton.com.

If you’re an independent operator in a high-demand market, the competitive math just changed. Are you seeing this in your area? Hit reply.

The Trail Map

The three-ingredient formula for a property guests can’t stop sharing

I was recently reflecting on conversations with Travis Chambers, whom we had on the podcast. He built a desert outpost with art cars, a sauna you light yourself, and no front desk. 90% occupancy. Sold out 6 months in advance.

Every traditional hotel metric says the property should fail — it’s remote, it’s rugged, there’s no concierge. It didn’t fail. His formula comes down to three ingredients.

A one-sentence theme. Can a guest describe your property to a friend in one sentence? “The desert camp with the art cars” works. “Nice campground near the national park” doesn’t. The theme doesn’t need to be elaborate. It needs to be specific enough to repeat.

Topography. Not elevation — distinctiveness. Desert hardpan, river frontage, old-growth canopy, rock formations. The land itself has to be worth photographing without anything built on it. Evaluate what you already have — what makes your setting impossible to replicate?

A viral amenity. One thing guests photograph before they experience it. A floating sauna. A vintage Airstream lounge. A fire pit overlooking a valley. It doesn’t need to cost $100,000. It needs to be the thing someone posts without being asked.

The math: at $300 ADR and 70% occupancy, 20 premium units generate $1.5M in gross revenue with a fraction of the operational complexity of a 200-site park.

The operator caps every property at 30-40 units. Scarcity drives pricing power, and pricing power beats occupancy every time.

Score your property 1-5 on each ingredient. Below 3 on any one — that’s your constraint. Start there.

Want a deeper breakdown of the viral amenity formula? Reply and I’ll send you the full framework.

Field Notes

About 99% of campgrounds are on private water

I’ve always wondered how many campgrounds are actually on public water. The sub-metering pitch — “cut your water bill 30-40%” — assumes you have a water bill to cut. Most of us don’t.

And the gurus preach buying parks with public utilities. That never made sense to me based on how many parks we see with public utilities, proportionately.

So I got with my new friend Claude and pulled the data. The EPA tracks every public water system in the country through a database called SDWIS — the Safe Drinking Water Information System. Campgrounds mostly fall under “transient non-community water systems.” I filtered 6,287 campground and RV park water systems out of the national dataset.

The result: 98.9% are on wells. It’s not a perfect analysis, but it’s representative.

The top states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, California — are almost entirely well water. Even Utah, the highest municipal percentage, is 87% wells.

Here’s what that means operationally. Most campground operators are a de facto water utility — responsible for well maintenance, water quality testing, EPA compliance, and infrastructure replacement. When a well pump fails at 2 AM on a holiday weekend, there’s no utility company to call. When your well runs low in August, that’s a capacity problem only you can solve.

For investors doing due diligence, the water system might be the most underexamined line item on the property. Age of the well, condition of the pump, quality of the casing, depth of the water table — these aren’t maintenance items. They’re infrastructure assets worth tens of thousands to replace.

If you’re buying a campground, you’re buying a water utility. Underwrite it like one.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

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• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

LOGE Camps raised $38.8M and had 17 locations in various stages of development/acquisition. Most are now closed. What the public reporting shows — and what it says about scaling in outdoor hospitality.

The Trail Map:

A 32-year hotel veteran’s hiring rule and the 5-question checklist he uses to screen for hospitality instinct.

Field Notes:

How one operator used an agritourism law to get glamping approved in a county that had no idea what he was proposing.

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The One Big Thing

What happened to LOGE Camps?

We featured them as a company to watch in 2025 14 months ago. They raised $38.8 million and listed 17 locations. Most are now closed.

We named LOGE Camps — “Live Outside, Go Explore” — 1 of 25 outdoor hospitality players to watch in 2025. They had a compelling thesis: buy forgotten motels near adventure towns, add hostel bunks, van hookups, fire pits, and gear demos, and build a community-driven outdoor brand at a price point the industry hadn’t served well.

I came across this while updating our Industry Player Report. Local outlets in Montana and Oregon have been reporting on closures for months, but it hasn’t been covered in the broader outdoor hospitality space.

Here’s what we know from public reporting. LOGE started in 2016 in the Pacific Northwest with a handful of properties. After raising $38.8 million from outside investors, they scaled to 17 locations — a mix of acquisitions, leases, and announced sites — over roughly 2 years of aggressive expansion.

The expansion outpaced the execution. Announced openings and planned renovations seem to have stalled completely. 5 East Coast properties announced for first-half 2024 never materialized.

A restructuring officer and insolvency counsel have been brought in. In January 2025, LOGE announced a management partnership with Schulte Hospitality Group — but properties have continued to close across the portfolio.

As of this week, 2 or 3 locations still appear to be taking bookings out of the 17 they once listed.

This is a genuinely difficult business to execute, operate, and scale. I’ve failed at converting a rundown, blighted outdoor hospitality into an attainable, boutique outdoor lodging experience, myself. I can only imagine the pressure of development and carrying costs across 17 projects. They don’t wait for renovations to finish or occupancy to ramp.

The thesis seems to have been well-received, and I believe in it. There is a real gap at attainable price points in outdoor hospitality — and it’s a hard outcome to watch.

Developing a rural, operationally intensive boutique hospitality property is hard enough on its own. Doing it while simultaneously launching a brand and building an operating company behind it — across 17 locations — compounds every risk. That’s the part of outdoor hospitality that doesn’t show up in a pitch deck.

Are you seeing similar patterns elsewhere in the industry? Hit reply.

The Trail Map

The hospitality hiring checklist

One operator’s approach to building a hospitality-first team — and the screening questions behind it.

Alex and I talked to Steve Turk on the podcast about his glamping project in South Florida.

He spent his career in hotels before moving into boutique hospitality and now glamping. His hiring rule: only hire hotel people. “That’s one of our core values. If you want to join the team, you have to have a hotel background.”

His logic is simple. You can teach someone your reservation system and your operating procedures in 30 days. You can’t teach hospitality instinct in a year.

If you're hiring with that philosophy, here are the questions worth asking:

Have they managed 50+ guest interactions in a day? Front desk, F&B, concierge — any high-volume role that forces systems thinking.

Can they describe a service recovery they initiated? Not responded to. Initiated. Anticipating problems before the guest complains is trained, not innate.

Do they think in guest journeys, not tasks? Ask them to walk you through a guest’s first 30 minutes at your property. If they describe tasks, keep looking. If they describe an experience, keep talking.

Have they been held to measurable standards? NPS scores, review response times, and brand audits. No measurement history means no accountability history.

Can they train on standards, not just procedures? Your next GM doesn’t just follow the playbook — they write it.

The objection: “They won’t understand campgrounds.” True — for about 30 days. Site hookups, dump stations, and seasonal staffing are learnable. Hospitality instinct isn’t.

Field Notes

How one operator used an agritourism law to get glamping approved in Miami-Dade

Another reason the Steve Turk podcast conversation stuck with me was how he used agritourism legislation as both a regulatory pathway and a demand driver.

Steve found a 25-acre tropical fruit farm in Miami-Dade. 20 minutes from the Keys, 10 minutes from the Everglades, Miami in the backyard. He pitched the farmer a rent-plus-percentage-of-nightly-revenue deal. Guests come to reconnect with nature, learn about the farm, and the farmer gets a new income stream without selling the land. The farm isn’t just the setting — it’s the experience.

But when he went to zoning and planning, they had no framework for it. No category, no precedent, no idea what he was proposing.

His move: he found an agritourism bill that had already passed in Florida. Instead of asking the county to create a new zoning category, he built his case under existing agricultural legislation. It took a year and a half and a land use attorney who “kept fighting for us all the way through.” The first meeting with planning: “This is an absolute no until you can prove why it’s a yes.”

The project — now called Baya — is still in development, with Ben Wolff’s Oasi team involved on the brand and operations side. It’s one to watch.

If you’re trying to develop in a market where zoning doesn’t have a category for outdoor hospitality, look at what’s already on the books.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

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• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we break down the rise and potential fall of LOGE Camps, a lifestyle outdoor lodging brand that once scaled to 17 locations and positioned itself as the future of outdoor hospitality.

We explore how the brand grew quickly during the outdoor travel boom, raised nearly $40 million in capital, and built a portfolio of properties across the country before recent developments suggested significant financial and operational challenges.

The conversation looks at what might have happened behind the scenes: development delays, the complexity of scaling hospitality brands, investor expectations, and the realities of raising capital in a difficult financing environment. We also discuss broader lessons for operators and investors about growth, discipline, and the operational challenges that come with building multi-location outdoor lodging brands.

This episode isn’t about criticizing a company, it’s about understanding the realities of building and scaling businesses in outdoor hospitality, and what the industry can learn from stories like this.

To subscribe and see all of our content for free, join our Substack: ohweekly.substack.com

TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Magna Hospitality Group — the firm that flipped $500M in Manhattan hotels — just acquired an outdoor hotel in Moab from a notable brand. Here’s what distressed-hotel capital entering outdoor hospitality means for operators and investors.

Trail Map:

Four DD items that have caught illegal septic, untreated well water, and phantom campsites — plus how to get the full 55-item checklist.

Field Notes:

Amir Harpaz sold more RV condo lots than anyone in America. Now he says the model is dying — and he’s betting on underground sewer instead.

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The One Big Thing

Manhattan hotel vultures just landed in Moab — with a Hilton flag

The firm that scooped up distressed Manhattan hotels during the pandemic just made its first outdoor hospitality play.

Property records show Slackline Moab — one of the first hotels in Hilton’s new Outset Collection brand — is now held by an LLC with ties to Magna Hospitality Group, a Rhode Island-based hotel investment firm. The Real Deal dubbed Magna “hotel vultures” after they scooped up hundreds of Manhattan rooms at deep discounts during the pandemic.

In October 2025, Magna sold a portfolio of 4 Manhattan Hilton hotels for nearly $500 million.

Manhattan’s hotel vultures just landed in Moab.

The 138-room property sits minutes from Arches National Park. It started life as a Super 8, was reimagined as Field Station Moab by AutoCamp in 2023, and now carries a Hilton flag under the new Outset Collection brand. The rooms have gear storage. There’s an on-site gear shop with rentals and guiding services.

AutoCamp, notably, is also a Hilton partner — their glamping properties became bookable through Hilton Honors in 2024.

AutoCamp repositioned Field Station Moab as the inaugural property of its affordable sister brand — a Super 8 conversion backed by $115M in PE capital. It opened in May 2023. By November 2025, it carried a Hilton flag under new ownership. That’s roughly 2.5 years. TripAdvisor reviews from the final months describe deferred maintenance and scaled-back amenities.

Whether the property was distressed when Magna acquired it is unknowable from the outside — but a firm known for buying distressed hotels doesn’t typically pay retail.

So what’s happening here? A distressed-asset investment firm known for acquiring urban hotels at deep discounts is now deploying capital into outdoor hospitality. The playbook: acquire, rebrand under a major flag, and either hold for cash flow or flip to institutional buyers.

Outset Collection has 60+ properties in development. I’ll be watching to see how many follow the Slackline Moab pattern — and whether Magna or other urban hotel investors continue venturing outdoors.

If distressed hotel capital is landing in Moab, where else is it looking?

If you’re seeing traditional hotel investors sniff around campground, RV park, or other outdoor listings, I want to hear about it — reply and tell me what you’re seeing.

The Trail Map

The DD requests that caught illegal septic, phantom sites, and untreated well water

Most due diligence checklists are built for apartments and office buildings. They’ll catch title issues and tax returns. They won’t catch cess pools or the water treatment equipment that hasn’t been turned on in three years, or the fact that the park has 120 sites on the listing and 95 in reality.

Step one: send your full document request list before you ever visit the property. What comes back — and what doesn’t — tells you more than the documents themselves.

The list I send has 24 items. Here are the ones most buyers miss:

Sewer/septic plant records and readings. Not “do you have septic?” — the actual inspection records, pump schedules, and compliance documentation. On one deal, we discovered the septic system was essentially illegal. No permits, no inspections, no records. The seller marked this line “N/A.” That was the most informative answer on the entire list.

Water well tests and compliance records. Private wells require treatment and testing to meet Department of Health standards. We’ve walked properties where the chlorination equipment existed but wasn’t running. The water was untreated. That’s a health violation and a potential deal killer you won’t find in any financial document.

Detailed site list — space numbers, site types, amperage, and hookups. On one property, campsites had no markers. You literally couldn’t tell which site was which. On another, the seller claimed 120 sites. We counted and came up short. If they can’t produce a site-by-site inventory, that’s a red flag — not a detail to sort out after closing.

Current infrastructure problems — self-reported by the seller. Most sellers won’t lie on this one. They’ll just leave things off. Walk the property with their list in hand. What’s missing is your inspection priority.

But the request list is just step one. It feeds into a 55-item due diligence checklist that covers financial analysis, regulatory, physical inspections, and market evaluation — built over years of deals, and still growing every time a property throws something we haven’t seen before.

Reply “DD” and I’ll send you the full checklist.

Field Notes

The king of RV condo lot sales says the model is dying

Amir Harpaz has sold more RV condo lots than anyone in the United States — over 1,600 across his career. His father pioneered the model 30 years ago: sell the lot, require owners to put unused lots into a rental program, and take a management fee. Ongoing revenue. Loyal owners. Cash upfront. For decades, it was the playbook in Florida.

When Amir joined us on the podcast, he said something I didn’t expect from the guy who built his empire on this model: “I just feel that for sale RV lots are a thing of the past for the most part.” He’s watching three or four brand-new condo lot projects launch in Florida right now. His assessment: “I’m not so convinced they will [succeed].”

His reasoning: the snowbird era that made the model work — people staying in one place for months, pre-smartphone, pre-mobile — is fading. Today’s RV owners want flexibility, not a deed. The operators still launching condo lot communities are building for a customer base that’s shrinking.

Amir’s not slowing down — his portfolio spans 1,500+ sites across Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, with expansions underway at Torrey Trails and Cherokee Outdoor Resort. He also just launched Dunn Infrastructure Group, an underground utilities company specializing in sewer work.

His take: “Shit is the best business model. It’s recession-proof.” When the guy who dominated a model for three decades says the real money is in the pipes underneath, that’s worth paying attention to.

Catch the full conversation on the podcast. Amir doesn’t hold back.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

Share Outdoor Hospitality Weekly

We’d also love your input on making Outdoor Hospitality Weekly even more useful for you! So please leave a comment with:

• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, Matt and Alex break down Blue Metric Group’s $97 million acquisition of a seven-park RV resort portfolio and what it signals for the outdoor hospitality market.

We discuss portfolio sourcing, off-market deal flow, branding strategy, and what today’s consolidation wave means for independent operators. Matt also shares insight from Unhitched’s transition from third-party management into acquisition.

In the second half, we dive into how AI is transforming our own workflows and campground operations from automation and reporting to AI call agents and workflow systems. If you’re an owner, operator, or investor, this episode explores where the industry is headed and how to stay ahead of it.

To subscribe and see all of our content for free, join our Substack: ohweekly.substack.com

TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Blue Metric Group’s $97M off-market portfolio deal — what the brokers told us, what the comps reveal, and why the pool of institutional-grade assets keeps shrinking

The Trail Map:

The “Know Every Park” acquisitions database — a 4-step framework for building your deal universe, now powered by AI

Field Notes:

The reservation system said $76K. The bank said $35K. One SOP fixed it.

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The One Big Thing

$97 Million, 7 Parks, and a Shrinking Market

Blue Metric Group’s portfolio acquisition removes one of the few institutional-grade portfolios from the board — and the brokers behind it say it’s just the start.

Blue Metric Group just closed on a 7-property RV resort portfolio for $97 million. The deal — codenamed “Project Echo” — spans 5 states, totals more than 1,500 sites averaging ~225 sites per property, and includes resort-quality assets from Virginia Beach to Indio, California. Streamside RV Parks, Blue Metric’s in-house RV operation, will operate the properties.

Park Brokerage’s Andrew Dohogne and John Sheedy represented the buyer and sourced the seller off-market — their third major transaction together, bringing the cumulative relationship to 9 assets acquired across 7 states. The seller, RV Management Services, operates 9 resorts total. 2 did not transact.

This deal is worth studying for a few reasons.

The institutional signal. “Institutional allocation toward outdoor hospitality is accelerating,” explained Dohogne and Sheedy. “As yield compression continues in saturated asset classes like multifamily and manufactured housing, institutional capital is increasingly seeking alternatives. The RV sector has emerged as the logical beneficiary of this shift.”

The pricing benchmark. At roughly $62,000 per site for resort-quality product, this is one of the clearest comps in a market that’s been starved for them. Park Brokerage called it “a realistic benchmark for the RV sector” after a multi-year “price discovery phase” following the record-low cap rates of 2021-2022. They see the bid-ask spread tightening, though a gap persists.

The valuation spectrum. Compare this to the Beyonder portfolio that Climb Capital acquired and is now operating through Unhitched Management — similar site count, similar number of parks, roughly a quarter of the dollar amount in basis. Same industry. Wildly different economics. Product type, market position, revenue mix, and operational sophistication drive massive valuation divergence. No 2 campgrounds are the same.

The off-market pipeline. 7 of 9 properties traded. Seller financing was a factor in establishing the cap rate. And Park Brokerage says this deal is already acting as a catalyst — they’re navigating several off-market opportunities of comparable scale right now.

For investors watching this space: the resort-quality assets are getting scooped by buyers with existing broker relationships and the capital to move. If you’re not building those relationships now, you’re not in the game when the next one surfaces.

Trying to break into off-market deal flow? I've got some thoughts on where to start—reply, and I'll share what's worked for us.

The Trail Map

The “Know Every Park” Acquisitions Database (And Why AI Makes It Possible)

Most investors source deals reactively — a broker sends a listing, they scramble to underwrite it, and they’re competing against buyers who already knew the property existed.

Here’s the fix: build the universe before the deal hits.

As the Blue Metric deal shows, the best opportunities trade off-market to buyers who already know the assets. And the addressable market is small enough to actually know. We’re talking fewer than 1,000 properties that fit most institutional buy boxes. That’s not a database you need a team to manage. It’s a database one person can own.

Step 1: Define your buy box. Site count floor, revenue minimum, geography, customer mix (transient vs. long-term), product type. Be specific — “parks in the Southeast” isn’t a buy box. “150+ site parks with 60%+ monthly revenue south of the Mason-Dixon” is.

Step 2: Build the universe. Google Maps, RVLife, AllStays, Campendium or the like for discovery. Reonomy, PropStream, Crexi, or public records for ownership data. Similar searches for anything that’s traded recently. This used to take weeks or months. AI tools can now search, enrich, and cross-reference these sources in minutes.

Step 3: Enrich and maintain. Build a system to pull site counts from satellite imagery, estimate revenue from the booking system, website, and competitor rental rates, flag ownership changes, and monitor listing activity. What used to be a quarterly manual refresh becomes a living, breathing watchlist.

Step 4: Run the binary test. When a deal surfaces — on-market or off — check the list. Is it there or isn’t it? If you already know the park, you move faster than every buyer who’s seeing it for the first time.

Cold outreach built on this kind of preparation is how real deals happen at scale. Think about how quickly you can move if you build and learn the database faster, so you can learn the property, the owner situation, and the market before you start running numbers on a deal.

Already built a version of this database? Trying to? Reply and tell me what's working—or what's not. I’ll do my best to help.

Field Notes

Your Reservation System Isn't Your Bank Account

We run monthly financial reviews across every property in our management portfolio. Reservation system reports, bank statements, budget variances — the whole thing. On one property last year, our reservation system showed $76,000 in August revenue. The bank account showed $35,000.

That’s a $41,000 gap. Not fraud or theft. Not a software glitch. The on-site manager was depositing checks once a month because that was their process. They’d gone to the bank on July 10th and August 12th — and that was it. So when we pulled the August numbers, we were looking at revenue that technically existed but hadn’t actually landed in August. We fixed that, but cash flow still felt tight at the property, and we wondered where the money was going.

It was going nowhere. It was sitting in a drawer.

We added a tighter deposit cadence SOP the next week: minimum twice-weekly bank deposits, reservations-to-bank reconciliation every Monday, and an automatic flag if deposits fall more than 5 days behind. Took 20 minutes to implement, and now it helps us avoid a week or 2 of confusion and headache.

If you’re running a property (or evaluating one in due diligence), ask the question: how often does money physically move from guest payments to the bank account? The reservation system tells you what was earned. The bank account tells you what is really there.

It might sound obvious, but if you create a workflow where those 2 numbers always match within a few days, you’ll avoid wondering if you have a revenue or theft problem.

Run into your own version of a cash-handling problem? I'd bet most operators have one they haven't caught yet—let me know.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

Share Outdoor Hospitality Weekly

We’d also love your input on making Outdoor Hospitality Weekly even more useful for you! So please leave a comment with:

• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, we sit down with Ben Uyeda, founder of HomeMade Modern, to unpack the development story behind RESET Hotel in Twentynine Palms, California.

Ben shares how the concept came together—from early site planning and zoning considerations to shaping a modern desert hospitality concept that balances design, function, and guest experience. We explore how the property responds to its environment, the trade-offs made during development, and the realities of building a boutique hotel from the ground up.

This conversation offers a candid look at the development process, including lessons learned, design decisions, and how intentional planning can simplify operations while elevating the end experience. Whether you’re developing a hotel, glamping project, or outdoor hospitality concept, this episode provides practical insight into turning an idea into a finished destination.

To subscribe and see all of our content for free, join our Substack: ohweekly.substack.com

TL;DR:

The One Big Thing:

Most campgrounds compete by adding amenities, discounting rates, and copying competitors. That’s Red Ocean thinking. The real opportunity is to stop competing for the same guest and instead magnetize a specific one—by deliberately choosing who you’re for, what you stand for, and what you eliminate, reduce, raise, or create.

The Trail Map:

Blue Ocean strategy isn’t theoretical—it’s operational. Use the Strategy Canvas to strip away non-essential offerings, reduce cost-heavy features guests don’t truly value, and reinvest into a few differentiated experiences that matter deeply to your ideal guest. Segmentation, messaging, and channels must align or none of it works.

Field Notes:

Parks that win long-term don’t try to appeal to everyone. They call out their audience clearly, design an experience worth talking about, and compound returns through loyalty and retention. Memorability beats margin pressure every time.

Subscribe now

The One Big Thing

Stop Competing. Start Magnetizing.

I couple of months ago, I read the book Blue Ocean Strategy, and the whole time I kept thinking, this is campground strategy disguised as a business book.

The core idea is simple but uncomfortable: most businesses compete in crowded “red oceans” where everyone offers the same things, fights over the same guests, and slowly squeezes their margins. Sound familiar?

In outdoor hospitality, it shows up as amenity creep, price matching, and the constant pressure to add just one more thing because the park down the road has it. More features. More events. More complexity. Meanwhile, operations get heavier, payroll rises, and the guest experience often gets blurrier instead of better.

From the GM seat, this message lands harder than ever right now. Parks are getting busier, expectations are rising, and the industry is more saturated than it was even a few years ago. When demand was overflowing, being “pretty good for everyone” could carry you. Today, that same approach creates operational strain, inconsistent reviews, and teams stretched thin trying to be everything to everyone.

The “Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean” idea is simply a way to describe two paths:

• Red Ocean = crowded markets, similar offerings, price and feature wars

• Blue Ocean = clear differentiation, fewer direct comparisons, stronger margins

Most campground operators are stuck in Red Ocean competition, with crowded markets where everyone offers the same amenities, matches pricing, and hopes demand shows up.

That shift is where operations actually get easier, not harder. It’s where CapEx becomes more focused, marketing gets clearer, and the guest experience starts to feel intentional instead of accidental.

That’s what this week’s issue is about.

The Trail Map

From Strategy to Real Decisions

The Strategy Canvas is where this becomes actionable.

It forces one uncomfortable but critical question:

Are we adding things because guests value them—or because competitors have them?

The goal is not to do more.
The goal is to break the value–cost tradeoff.

Use the ERRC framework:

• Eliminate what adds cost but little buyer value

• Reduce features that are overbuilt or underused

• Raise the few things your ideal guest truly cares about

• Create experiences competitors aren’t offering at all

This is how parks win without bloating payroll or Capex.

A wellness-focused park doesn’t need a massive arcade.
An adventurer-focused park doesn’t need luxury finishes everywhere.
A first-time camper park needs clarity, confidence, and simplicity. Not 47 amenities.

Differentiation is subtraction before it’s addition.

Finding Untapped Segments

Once you understand what you’re eliminating and creating, segmentation becomes obvious.

Most parks target “campers.” That’s not a segment.

Real segments look like:

• First-time campers intimidated by RV culture

• Urban guests seeking nature without roughing it

• Wellness-focused travelers (yoga, digital detox, slow travel)

• Hobbyist or fandom-driven groups

• Storytellers, creators, and experience-seekers

These guests already exist. They just aren’t being spoken to clearly.

Blue Ocean parks don’t ask, “Who will book us?”
They ask, “Who will feel like this place was built for them?”

Messaging That Resonates

Effective messaging has three parts:

1. Experience Design – what it actually feels like to stay

2. Story – why this place exists and who it’s for

3. Clarity – calling out the guest directly

“A Michigan campground” is invisible.

“Hike the trails and explore wildlife from an adventurers’ campground” gets heads to turn.

If someone calls your name in a crowd, you look.
Your messaging should do the same.

If your guest doesn’t immediately recognize themselves in your copy, photos, and offers—you’re just another option in the giant Red Ocean.

Field Notes

Lessons From the Operator’s Seat

Running a park day-to-day forces clarity in a way strategy decks never will. From the GM chair, the biggest mistake I see—both in our own decisions and across the industry—is trying to be broadly appealing instead of operationally aligned.

When we’re clear on who we’re for, everything downstream gets easier. Staffing decisions make more sense. Capex becomes more focused. Marketing stops feeling like a guessing game. When we’re not clear, we feel it immediately in labor inefficiencies, guest confusion, and inconsistent reviews.

A few hard-earned observations from operating the business:

• Clarity reduces complexity. When the target guest is well-defined, we stop building systems for edge cases. SOPs get simpler. Front desk conversations get shorter. Fewer exceptions means fewer mistakes.

• Memorability beats amenity count. Guests don’t talk about everything you offer—they talk about the one or two things that felt intentional. From an operator’s standpoint, that’s a gift. It means fewer things to maintain and more impact per dollar spent.

• Calling out your guest filters demand. Clear messaging doesn’t reduce bookings, it improves booking quality. We see fewer mismatches, fewer complaints rooted in expectations, and better overall guest satisfaction when we’re explicit about what kind of stay we offer.

• Retention is operational leverage. Repeat guests know the rules, respect the property, and require less hand-holding. That lowers labor strain, reduces friction at the front desk, and stabilizes revenue in ways marketing alone can’t.

• Saying no is a management skill. Every new feature, segment, or promotion adds operational weight. As a GM, the discipline to not chase every trend is often more valuable than saying yes to the next big idea.

From the operator side, Blue Ocean strategy isn’t about creativity. The more intentionally we design the experience for a specific guest, the easier it is to run a clean operation that delivers consistently. That’s focus.

The parks that feel “effortless” to guests usually aren’t working harder. They’re working narrower and better, and that makes all the difference.

That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!

PS… If you’re enjoying Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, will you take a moment to send this newsletter to a friend? It goes a long way in helping us grow the newsletter (and hopefully help people who want to learn about Outdoor Hospitality).

Share Outdoor Hospitality Weekly

We’d also love your input on making Outdoor Hospitality Weekly even more useful for you! So please leave a comment with:

• Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

• Your biggest takeaway from this edition

We read & reply to every single one of them!

We’re back! In this episode of Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, break down the biggest signals shaping the RV park and campground industry right now: from professional third-party management entering the space to accelerating acquisitions and changing guest demographics.

We unpack why a major self-storage operator launching RV park management matters, what recent campground acquisitions reveal about buyer strategy, and how regional density and amenity escalation are becoming competitive necessities. We also dig into new REIT data showing younger, wealthier RV travelers—and why that shift validates higher-end upgrades across the industry.

To subscribe and see all of our content for free, join our Substack: ohweekly.substack.com