This weekend’s news from the campgrounds, the A.R.V.C. report of the 2022’s trends and insights, is now out. If you have not seen this and are an A.R.V.C. member, I encourage you to log into their website and download it. It has got some exciting things in there that will show you the trends of where the industry is going.

You probably already have a good idea, but it is always good to see the numbers behind it. So let us see if they are steady on what they did on profits. So they asked, in comparison to 2020, do you anticipate that your 2021 profits will be up down or about the same? So, very interesting here, we do not expect that we would not have many people who said it was up, but only 64% said the revenue was up, for their profits. I am sorry.

So what does that mean? First off, let us dive a little deeper first off, 22% said about the same. Well, two cases for this, either, they have no clue what their numbers are, and it is challenging to manage a business. If you do not know your dashboard, how fast you are going, how slow you are going, and what you need to do to improve.

Alternatively, the second effect is that they have not raised prices or have not raised enough. Prices need to go up every year. The cost of living goes up, and we know right now from inflation that you have to increase those prices. Yes, I know that two or three people will be unhappy about it. Most will not say anything at all. Okay? So let us get out of that fear factor of making one person upset. You have got to run a business, and you have got to run it properly. Furthermore, that includes raising your prices.

So the other exciting thing is we have 9% who said no answer. Moreover, those again are probably people who do not know. So between the two of these, we have 31% who are either stagnant or have no clue what is going on in their business. That is a sad state of the industry. We have a fix, and worse yet, the 4% were down. Let us hope they are down because they had some repairs to make or something like that. To be down in the highest time of our industry will be a tricky thing to combat. You have to be able to make a profit. Okay.

So taking a look at the people who were up, it would be interesting to know how much they were up, but we do not have that data. This is based on about 288 respondents in their survey. So you can take a look at where they are located in the regions across the country. Again, the south of the Midwest was the two biggest ones who were up, and the two biggest who are about the same were in the Northeast and the south. That is not very clear, but this survey did include independent campground owners, corporate-owned and franchise with several different variables, either little campgrounds or big campgrounds. They are all-inclusive.

So pretty good representation of the industry. If you cannot answer this question in this off-the-column, I would love to chat with you if you were doing the survey. There is no reason you should not have income and increasing profits right now, especially at the point we are at in our industry.

I am Donna Bordeaux with CampgroundAccounting.com.

I am Donna Bordeaux from CampgroundAccounting.com. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Make sure you check out our blog and our website from the link below. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when we post. To contact me, email me at donna@campgroundaccounting.com.

Donna Bordeaux, CPA with Campground Accounting

What happens when you send two C.P.A’s out into the relaxing outdoors to camp? You get CampgroundAccounting.com.  Donna and Chad have over 50 years of combined experience as entrepreneurial C.P.A’s.  They’ve owned businesses and helped business owners exceed their wildest dreams. They camp and travel across the country every chance they get, so it’s just a natural fit that they focus their CPA skills on helping campground owners throughout the USA grow their businesses and minimize the impact of taxes.  They understand the key performance indicators and specialized issues that face RV park owners every day. </i

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