There are many ways to attract more customers to your RV facility, from having great showers to providing fun events. Here are just 5 community collaborations to attract more customers. If you’re looking to expand, or try something new, there’s another simple way to bring more people to your park: community collaborations.
The idea is that you connect with local businesses to provide a special deal for your campers. The benefit is twofold: you can provide this value-add to anyone who stays with you, while promoting the local businesses who are working with you.
Here are a few ways to get started with community collaborations in your area.
Regional Restaurants
Eating local food is one of the best ways to get to know an area. Yet, few things are more annoying than spending 30 minutes on Yelp trying to find a great place to eat. Even worse is when you arrive to find that the food isn’t nearly as good as the photos looked. Don’t make your customers deal with this time-consuming task. Instead, be Yelp for them and partner with the best local restaurants. Provide every customer with a list of great restaurants where they can get a discount by staying at your park. This is just one of the 5 community collaborations to attract more customers.
If you don’t have a lot of options nearby, branch out—and if you do, look for a community collaboration with a local cab company or shuttle service who can offer discounted rates as well. If your customers are towing a car, and don’t want to drive their RV, they can still enjoy a delicious meal away from the park.
Nearby Laundry
Being on the road for days at a time means laundry piles up—and if you don’t have a laundry facility at your park, working with a local wash-and-fold business or laundromat is the next best thing. While you can work with a local laundromat, where customers go to do their laundry for a discounted rate, laundry is time-consuming. Campers who are visiting for just one day or night will lose all the time they have to explore.
Instead, it may be wise to work with a local wash-and-fold company that offers same-day turnaround. According to CD One Price Cleaners, this means your customers drop off their clothes in the morning and pick them up in the evening. Not only is this convenient, it even eliminates the work of folding, plus customers may also be able to get an email text when their laundry is done—it’s even easier than doing laundry at home. Which is why it is one of the 5 community collaborations to attract more customers.
Local Town Favorites
Make it easy for your visitors to learn more about the town by offering discounted rates for local town favorites—think: museums and attractions. Like your restaurant guide, you can turn this into a fun map that every customer gets when they drive into your park. Annotate the map with the best spots to check out along with the deal being offered so they know where they’ll get the best savings and the experience most interesting to them. Making this one of the 5 community collaborations to attract more customers.
Not only is this a value-add, but the map acts as a souvenir that helps them remember the great time they had at your facility.
Unique Experiences
RVers love their rig, but getting time outside the vehicle can keep them from going stir-crazy, especially during the cooler months, when it’s too cold to spend time around the campfire. One way to attract more customers is by providing them discounted opportunities to get out of their RV and have some fun around town. While eating out or see monuments is always a good time, consider the more unique experiences you can provide for them.
According to the RV Industry Organization, “RV travelers seeking a resort atmosphere are attracted to the growing number of luxury RV resorts with facilities such as tennis courts, golf courses, gourmet restaurants and health spas.” If you can’t provide your customers with these services at your park, you can still make it possible with these community collaborations.
Here are a few ideas:
- Discounted day passes to local spa
- Discounted day passes to a local gym or recreation facility
- Discounted sign-up for paint and sip
- Discounted offer for pottery making class
- Discounted fishing lessons
What you can and can’t offer will be different for every region, so find the experiences most unique to you and focus on those.
Well-Known Monuments
You may not be able to offer any discounts for state and national monuments since they’re owned by the government. You can, however, develop a simple guide to help visitors figure out the best times of week and day to visit. For example, your guide might include:
- Discounted days (such as holidays or annual discount days)
- Busiest time of day
- Busiest days of the week
- Slowest time of day
- Slowest time of the week
- Top attraction
- Nearby restaurants and must-see spots
Again, this serves as a great souvenir and provides so much value to those who are new to the area.
Create Community Collaborations
You don’t need to provide all of these resources and opportunities to provide value to your visitors. Instead, pick and choose the one or two options that best suit your location and deliver an even better experience for every RVer who comes through your gates.