Renting Dirt
An Unfertilized (no BS) Look at What it Takes to Run a Campground and RV Park
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Renting Dirt
An Unfertilized (no BS) Look at What it Takes to Run a Campground and RV Park
About This Book
The average length of time before an RV campground is put up for sale is just seven years---and as it turns out, there's a good reason for that. While campers are out to experience fresh air, bucolic surroundings and the easy-going camaraderie of fellow travelers, the people who create that environment are often over-worked, under-paid and stressed out. And to make matters worse, their efforts are too readily dismissed as just "renting dirt."
This first-hand narrative describes one couple's journey from wide-eyed occasional campers to full-time owners of a medium-sized RV campground in the Shenandoah Valley. Buying in early 2013, as the campground industry was just regaining its feet after the Great Recession, the Zipser family soon realized that their biggest challenge wasn't managing the property---it was managing the people involved with it: campers with diverse and often unrealistic expectations, a franchise system led by a brain trust with minimal boots-on-the-ground experience, and a transient workforce with employees stuck on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
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Table of contents
- Dedication
- Glossary
- Introduction
- CHAPTER 1: Oh captain, my captain
- CHAPTER 2: A little slice of heaven
- CHAPTER 3: Sometimes, it is skin deep
- CHAPTER 4: The customer is not always right
- CHAPTER 5: A walk on the dark side
- CHAPTER 6: One big, happy family
- CHAPTER 7: Spitting out the yellow Kool Aid
- CHAPTER 8: It takes a village
- CHAPTER 9: The Disney-fication of camping
- CHAPTER 10: Whip-sawed by the pandemic
- CHAPTER 11: Throwing in the towel
- Afterword
- On a personal note
- Sign up for Andy Zipser's Mailing List
- About the Author