KOA September (2024) Promotion

[Neal]

At least someone is taking action to help with struggling business:

https://rvbusiness.com/koa-announces-launch-of-fall-camping-promotion

 

[MemoriesByTheMile]

The beginning of changes that may result in better pricing?

 

[redbaron]

This year in Glacier has been a real kick in the pants for the community. Overall traffic numbers are down over 50% from pre-covid. Most parks are running at 50% capacity on weekdays, with weekend traffic 70-100% for the larger parks (KOA/West Glacier). Other parks have never exceeded 70%. 5 major restaurants have closed in the West Glacier area and the remaining ones are not seeing enough traffic to support the extra staff.

The tour companies reduced staffing at the start of the season due to lack of reservations.

Locals are blaming the NPS for the ticket reservation system, and the constant changing, but I think this is representative of the entire USA, as most parks, including Disney World, are seeing dramatic reduction in attendance.

My guess is the dollar is being spent on other things, like grocery and utilities.

 

[team bradfield]

I'm hoping they will honor my reservations for sept through nov, for the points, unfortunately I booked them all this spring. sounds like they only offer to people who book last minute

 

[MemoriesByTheMile]

We were just in Glacier and saw this slow down. Campground was maybe 75% on weekends and weekdays maybe 35-40%.
The west glacier KOA is just down the street and they seemed be the same as @redbaron mentioned.

The vehicle reservation system is a pain and I could see how that would change people wanting to visit. A co-worker was at Glacier a month ago and made his reservations at a campground a month in advance, but was not able to get vehicle passes. So they did all their park visiting/activity after 3pm (when you can enter without a vehicle pass).

Totally agree that inflation is a large impact. Groceries, transportation, insurance, utilities, etc are making a huge dent in the household expenditures. This coupled with the relatively high costs of campsites in Glacier area moves Glacier down the list of places people will pay to visit.
The cost of those 2 weeks camping in Glacier is more than we typically spend for a whole month elsewhere, but we wanted to take advantage of the lower crowds and check another item off our bucket list.

Bringing this back around to the original post - hope that KOA can help out the park owners with these promotions and keep businesses afloat.