This is a difficult question to answer. Why? Because I can see reasons for both sides to be right. My personal feeling is... No, additional fees should not be charged for visitors. However, additional fees should be charged for guests. What's the difference? Time. Visitors are people who may need to enter the park to pick up their dinner guests or maybe just see their friends RV, while guests stay and use the parks facilities. If the person places no additional burden on the park, then they are a visitor. If they utilize the c/g's amenities, then they are a guest. The problem is... how to police this. I know I have had situations where we have traveled great distances with our RV to stay in an area close to friends. However, if we wanted to go out to dinner with them, then they would have had to pick us up. I have felt very embarrassed to find that our friends have had to pay for the our convenience of picking us up. This may have been only 10 minutes in the park, but the gestapo at the front desk demanded payment. On the other hand, what do we do? Those who are paid campers wear blue bracelets, guest wear red and visitors wear yellow? I hope not! However, with hundreds of thousands of c/g's in the world and RVing being as popular as it is today, you'd think someone could come up with an acceptable answer.
drmcleod, I like your take on this situation and your definitions of visitor and guest. I could see both sides of the question also, but had never really thought about the difference between visitor and guest. I have always thought that if someone comes to pick you up or "visit" for an hour or two, they should not be charged. But so many times that visitor is really a guest who uses the cg facilities, and that is not fair to the cg owner. As I read your post I was already thinking about how visitors/guests could be policed. I guess it all boils down to honesty on the camper's part. If there is a charge for "guests" then the camper should be honest enough to pay the fee. And I'm sure the majority of campers would do so. But as we all know there will always be some jerk who will try to cheat the cg and get as much as he can. I've said before I'll bet that many cg owners that charge for all visitors/guests have been burned at sometime in the past. I can understand their feelings, but it is too bad that all of us get punished because of the bad behavior of a few.
If the additional guest fees would keep away some of the visitors at some parks I have stayed at I would suggest ALL campgrounds adopt the policy. The fact that they are only there "a couple of hours" may not seem significant to you, but it was a nightmare for us. There is nothing worse than having plans for a nice barbeque and have the neighbors host their entire family reunion on their adjacent site. These "guests" descended like a swarm of locusts. Kids bikes, footballs and frisbees where everywhere, including bouncing off our RV. The fact that someone rents an RV site shouldn't give them the right to pack every square inch with people. This particular group had no less than 30 people in a 75 x 25 RV site. True, they only stayed 4 hours, but it seemed like an eternity as objects kept thumping our rig. Park management told us that their policy allowed siteholders to have guests provided they did not stay overnight. The park graciously refunded us for the night. However, we are only able to take a two week vacation once a year. This meant that one of our 14 days or relaxation was taken from us. The money really wasn't as important as the lost day. We didn't even feel we could leave the RV and travel in the toad, we were so concerned about what would hit the RV next. The point of this long diatribe is that there is a third party involved when RVers have guests. It is not only a matter of concern to the siteholder and the RV Park.
kcmoedoe, You prove my point. Whether they are "visitors" or "guests" some people are jerks and take unfair advantage of the situation.
I can tell you from a RV park owners view that every time a guest flushes a toilet weather in your rig or in our restroom it costs money. Paper towels, toilet tissue, hand soap all cost money. Also parking spaces, insurance exposure if a guest were to fall or slip on something has to be considered as well. So there are reasons to charge for guests. I can tell you we do not but we do charge if they stay over night. So we eat the cost of daytime guests but is does bother us. Our rates are based on 2 persons per rig. We do not charge for pets and never understood this before we bought a park as we always cleaned after our pets. Everyone claims to clean up but our daily walk of the park tells us this is not true.
