Campground Website Photos

I understand where you are coming from westernrvparkowner. And yet you just told me something that would probably keep us from staying at one of your parks even tho you still haven't said where they are located? Dirt and gravel roads will usually stop us from staying for more than just a night's stopover as we own a fairly nice Class A and one of my personal pet peeves is dirt and dust in a park. We keep our coach spotless as much as we can other than for the bug spatters and when we are in areas of course where it's raining, etc. We are by no means RV snobs, we simply like traveling in a clean RV. I am thinking that other than for that one thing we would for sure book a reservation at one of your parks if we were in the area and knew which one it was. Perhaps we are in the minority when it comes to dirt, gravel and dust but we did all that years ago when we camped with a tent or camper shell, etc. Now we enjoy being clean and tidy in our senior years and we leave the dirt, gravel and dust to those that still enjoy that experience..................

If there isn't some rule you would be breaking by letting me know where your parks are located I would still like to know. Who knows, one day down the road we may just park outside your entrance and come in to shake a hand and say hi to a fellow RVPR's member.........

All the best to you, BankShot...............(aka Terry)

 

Then I wouldn't suggest you ever travel out west. The odds of you finding a park with paved roads and paved sites is practically nil. Understand where you are coming from, but it is totally cost prohibitive for parks in our areas to pave the roads and sites. To pave the sites and roads would cost me well over $1,000,000, not counting any other infrastructure changes that would be necessary (i.e plumbing and electrical lines that would be impacted by paving such as needing to be re-routed to provide access for maintance etc.). Using a rough figure of 10000 camper night (100 site park, 5 month season with three months peak) I would need to raise rates by more than $16.00 per night to pay off such an investment over 6 years, which would be my investment timeline. That means paving the roads and sites would result in rates rising nearly 25% . Not an option, in my opinion.

 

Either I don't express myself too well or you aren't reading my posts as I mean for them to say. You said that, "Then I wouldn't suggest you ever travel out west". Well sir, I happen to live out west and as I also mentioned when I told you to send me the locations of your various parks, that we would try to stop and possibly even stay a night or three. I don't know what parks or types of parks you stay at when you travel but we find the greatpercentage of the ones we stay at to have either cement, blacktop or nicely packed gravel pads with little to no dirt. Yes we have stayed at few that were all gravel interior roads and gravel or grass/dirt pads, etc. but not unless we have to due to certain circumstances. I am going to bow out at this time as I don't care to get into the pissing contest with you that I initially said I was hoping this thread wouldn't lead to. I think you are perhaps being a tad short sighted on this subject and yet I thought one of your prior posts was very well said and posted that comment below it. The best of business and good times ahead to you and if I do ever find out where your parks at located I will stop by if time permits and shake your hand. And if you don't care to shake hands then we'll move on and not bother you................

Regards, BankShot.................(aka Terry)

PS: If by chance I'm out of line here anyone that cares to can jump in and tell me I am. I listen well and I also learn well and won't take offense...........

 

I was too broad with the "outwest" comment. I need to narrow that to the mountain west areas of Montana/Wyoming etc. I am unaware of any park near Glacier, Yellowstone or Grand Teton that would have paved roads and paved sites. As for other western areas, I am certainly not up to snuff as to how they are configured. As for no dust or dirt, only concrete or asphalt would be dirt free, packed gravel will have an element of dust and dirt, no way around it. We use dust control products annually, but they only work so well, no where near 100% dust control.

 

ForestWalker said: ↑
I'm most interested in this now so let me rephrase the original question, "If this were NOT your park...Would you stay there and would you find it inviting, comfortable, safe, and above all, clean?"

westernrvparkowner replied

Yes, my parks are all of the above with two exceptions..
One, what works for me, and 99% of my guests, does not work for the other 1%. Some examples:

I read with interest the negatives that you had listed about your parks. For the most part they fall into "one of" situations that pretty much every park is subjected to. Hardly anything is listed that I would lose sleep over. As I stated earlier....there is that 1% that will not be satisfied. We are stuck with them.

If your list is accurate and honest, I fail to see why you would harbour such a negative reaction to folks adding pictures to their reviews.

If you advertise your park as having graveled roads and grassy sites, then that's what people are expecting. Water and mowing are know to be part of the picture. If you wanted to be proactive, I suggest that your customers be pre-warned the day before mowing takes place. (That would be an attempt to pacify the 1%.)

The fence that is in place to protect people from falling over a cliff, I hope is strong enough. Are their any warning signs letting folks know of the danger looming on the other side? (Again, there is that 1% that will never be held back no matter how tall or strong.) Is the view shown on your web site and advertising? If so, then you have nothing to worry about.

I have one serious concern and I would have no problem picturing or reporting as an issue. Having grown up in Griz country, I can tell you I'm not at all that comfortable with your park NOT having Bear Proof garbage containers. Garbage conditioned bears are dangerous. Having a park in bear country is an attraction but most folks are not aware of how dangerous they can be. Failing to minimize a potential deadly encounter needs to be corrected. Other than that, I can't see why I would not be able to give your parks high ratings. It sounds like they are well maintained and pleasing to the eye.

Darrell

 

We tried bear proof containers, they were completely unworkable. Many people task their children with taking the trash out. Often the kids couldn't manipulate the trash cans and therefore just set the trash on the ground. Once one bag of trash is on the ground, everyone assumes the containers are full and they just set their bags next to the others. Now the trash isn't in a container at all. Bears are a very rare presence in the park, usually only very early or very late in the season. If they want in, they are going to get in. When their presence is noted in the area, we take additional precautions, but to be completely bear proof is impractical to impossible.
As for alerting to mowing schedules, warning about cliffs etc. etc. People only take in so much information. We could spend an hour per guest at check-in and still not cover every possible issue they might encounter. We cannot hold everyone's hand all the time.
My objection to photos is there is no recourse to a photo posted by someone with an ax to grind, or as I posted about earlier, no way to correct an erroneous photo. A quick scan of feedback from any review site will show that people are skeptical of written reviews, and rightly so. A review too positive or too negative is often looked at with a grain of salt. I don't think photos take on that same level skepticism. "Seeing is believing" is deeply ingrained in our culture. The impact of a photo is much greater than the impact of the written review. In other words, to make this completely benign subject into a hotly contested political comparison at very sensitive time, photos are the automatic weapons with large capacity magazines of reviews. Misused, they can cause an incredible amount of damage very quickly.

 

[QUOTE="westernrvparkowner, post: 55028, member: 25612
My objection to photos is there is no recourse to a photo posted by someone with an ax to grind, or as I posted about earlier, no way to correct an erroneous photo. A quick scan of feedback from any review site will show that people are skeptical of written reviews, and rightly so. A review too positive or too negative is often looked at with a grain of salt. I don't think photos take on that same level skepticism. "Seeing is believing" is deeply ingrained in our culture. The impact of a photo is much greater than the impact of the written review. In other words, to make this completely benign subject into a hotly contested political comparison at very sensitive time, photos are the automatic weapons with large capacity magazines of reviews. Misused, they can cause an incredible amount of damage very quickly.[/QUOTE]

We will just have to agree to disagree and move on.


Darrell

 

We will just have to agree to disagree and move on.


Agreed. It appears that the lines have been drawn on this discussion and that shots are beginning to be fired over the opposing bows. Time to let this one end before a shot hits a target of the opposed and does some damage....................

Moving right along...........BankShot.............(aka Terry )

 

Right and I have closed this thread to further posts.