It looks like there will be a transition from “Building a Small RV Park” to “Running a Small RV Park”. ? The funny thing is, I got so involved in the build that I missed the part that I have never actually “run” an RV Park. And without any previous experience in that area, I don’t know what I don’t know. Turns out, there are some interesting things that happen, almost daily.
For instance, last week Trish and I returned from town to find an older, hard ridden Hurricane backed into one of the sites. We had no scheduled guests, so I walked over to see what was up. There was a large metal sunflower welded over the passenger front wheel opening, but I have to admit, it was very nicely painted. (The sunflower that is.) There was a house door, complete with a house screen door, installed on the entrance where the original door had once been. A nice lady came to the door and said that she hopes I don’t mind her backing in but there was no one to talk to and that she would move if I wanted her to.
We talked a bit, and it turns out she was a stage 4 cancer survivor. As she was beating the cancer, the drugs she was taking gave her a skin disease and she had to stay wrapped up when she is outside. She had been staying at the campground up the road, but the people there were mean to her and kept asking her to leave. I thought she was going to cry.
Long story short, we told her she could stay a few days and asked her to move into one of the sites that were not on the rent list yet. We dropped the normal fees and charged her enough to cover the power. I have to admit, the condition of the motor home had concerned me, and I kept wondering what I was going to do if the slides refused to come back in or the awning acted up. I have no experience with that kind of repair, and I had these images of the RV sitting there for a month while we looked for someone to fix it. But everything worked as it should, and on the agreed upon day, she thanked us and headed out.
Anyhow, it all ended well, and we feel we paid it forward a bit that day.
Remember the adage of “be careful what you ask for?” Well we have several ads running and we've been watching for new reservations, kind of like when you first invest in the stock market and spend every day watching to see what it does. There was an occasional booking, mostly in the distant future, but we were getting a bit discouraged that nothing was happening for the 4th. Trish had spent a bunch of time decorating the park with lots of 4 of July stuff but nobody was showing up to see it. Understandably, she was disappointed.
And then this morning, all hell broke loose. People who were hoping to find a campsite up the road found that everything was booked, and they showed up here. The phone started ringing and the booking gods started throwing reservations at us. We quickly realized we were not prepared as well as we thought, and we were scrambling. Case in point, one fellow called, and I booked him over the phone. I normally refer people to book online from our website, and let the booking software monitor the number of guests, children, pets, etc. But when this guy called, he was not able to get to the website, so I handled it over the phone.
I count on the website to qualify the guests and calculate the fees but doing it on phone I forgot to ask about the total number of guests, assuming it was just he and his wife. Nope, far from it. They have 8 kids as well. EIGHT! To late to change it now. They are nice enough people but I kind of feel he took advantage by not disclosing this little fact. It was humorous in a way, Trish went over to say Hi, and the kids started coming out, one at a time, until there was a small village standing around.
So yeah, building one and running one are two completely different animals.
