🌟EXPERIENTIAL HOSPITALITY EXPERTS 🌟The Experiential Experts Alliance Series: Revolutionizing Camping with Campspot

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Talk About TV, where we talk about all things experiential hospitality. I'm your host, michelle Oliver, and today's conversation is part of a series with the members of the Experiential Experts Alliance. This alliance is made up of individuals who have spent many, many decades working in hospitality from every angle everything from purchasing RV resorts, from boutique hotels, marinas, people who work in lending management companies the list goes on and on. I know that you are going to gain a lot of insight and information from these remarkable individuals and I welcome you to this entire series of the Experiential Experts Alliance. So I'm here today with Kasey Cochran from Campspot, and, kasey, you are part of the Experiential Experts Alliance and I'm just delighted to have this opportunity to get to know you a little bit better. Would you mind just sharing a little bit about who you are and tell us a little bit about what you do with Campspot?

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, so I've been with Campspot now just over four years and so really when Campspot was getting to the point where, you know, had a viable product and was really looking to expand it right, so initially Campspot really started with a few of the large multi-part groups in this space and then got to a point that says, hey, let's kind of bring this to the entire industry. That was kind of when I came in, so kind of came in to start running kind of the entire business side of things, everything from marketing strategy to our sales strategy to our support strategy, onboarding all that good stuff. And so we've been very blessed, very fortunate to have really good growth in this space. There was a really good opportunity for software and technology to kind of immerse with the campground space and so you know, from fast forward to now we're working with, I think, 2,300 plus campgrounds. My focus right now is solely I'm our VP of sales and business development so really looking at new verticals and continue to expand and grow across North America and eventually beyond.

Speaker 1: 2:24

Well, congratulations on your rapid growth. It's really really exciting. We have no idea who might come across this video, so let's share a little bit about what Campspot is. They may not. There are a few people who don't even know that yet and a lot of people who are looking to get into this trending, booming experiential hospitality industry, right. So what is Campspot?

Speaker 2: 2:51

Yeah. So Campspot really was two-fold right. We're a campground reservation management software, right. So, you know, big and small enterprise or RobinPop, whatever the scenario is, we're a software that's gonna help your business take online reservations, manage your backend, your backend reservations, your point of sale, your reporting, your meter reading, your housekeeping. So, really, it's a campground reservation software platform that's built specifically for this space.

Speaker 2: 3:18

So one of the unique things with Campspot is this is all it's for. We're not a hotel-based software. We're not, you know, dobbling in different industries. We're laser focused on this industry, and every development resource, every resource in general, goes towards improving the space. And so, really, what Campspot's set out to do and our North Star is driving revenue. So what we're aiming to do, everything that we build, starts with can this make a campground more money? And in some campgrounds that's what their focus is and some campgrounds it's not right. Sometimes there's different things for different people, and that's why there's a lot of great products out there. Our focus is typically how can we streamline processes? When it makes sense for a campground to automate something, how do we use technology to do so? And then, at the core of it it's coming back to, can we make a clean, easy software for people to use and learn quickly, but robust enough to handle the biggest parks and the biggest groups. But at the end of the day it comes down to which is something we've been fortunate to guarantee now for three plus years is to guarantee an increase in the parks revenue by using Campspot. So that's where we started. That's still where we are today.

Speaker 2: 4:32

An extension of that that we've added in the last couple of years is our Campspot marketplace, and so we built. We felt there was a need or a gap in the space for people that were looking to go camping but didn't know where they wanna stay, and traditional OTAs in this space just didn't really do a good job of embracing camping or RVs or slide outs or rules or terms and conditions and packages and things of that sort, and they're add-ons and they're. So we grew to a size where we felt we had a viable product in terms of availability across the parks, that we're using our software to help bridge the gap to the consumer that says, hey, I wanna go camping in this area, I don't know where I wanna stay. I wish I could just find a place that would just show me anything that had availability on the weekend or the week that we're looking to go. And so we bridge that gap essentially by saying, hey, we wanna, first and foremost, we wanna make our campgrounds more money. One way that you can help campgrounds make more money is by getting more eyeballs in the park, getting the more reservations and increasing their occupancy.

Speaker 2: 5:33

And so, really, the Campspot marketplace is an extension of our software that's gonna help get more eyeballs, more exposure, more marketing spend to some extent towards people that don't know those parks exist, and so our goal is never to compete directly with the parks. Reservations with people that have been coming there they're gonna book directly, right, and we want that they're using our software to do that right. But there are a lot of people that say, hey, I wanna find something new, or I wanna find a new area, or we're looking to go camping here. How can we bridge that camper with that campground and how can we do it seamlessly? And how can we embrace that campground's rules, how can we embrace that campground's pricing, their packages, their terms of conditions, their add-ons, their amenities, their images? We did that with a seamless API with parks that are using our software, and that bridges the gap to the marketplace. So really, it's one of many levers that we've used in terms of technology to help parks make more money, get more exposure, get higher occupancy.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Yes, great, it's tremendous, because this is what matters, right? This is why people are doing this and you make more money by serving more people and serving them better, and that's what you're helping people do. Are there, so I don't know how many other people there are. I know you're completely unique, so I don't want to say like you but other reservation software that I know that people pop up with things all the time and sometimes they are bright, shiny objects that sound really great, and then you get into them and you're like, wow, this wasn't really developed properly or complete or whatever. So how would you say that you are unique and different and why would I, as a campground owner, choose you over what else is available out there?

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah, it's a great question and, first and foremost, we've always taken the stance that there's a lot of great companies out there, right, there's a lot of good companies doing a lot of great things, and and that the goal is to serve this industry, right. And so, for a campground owner, they want to learn which of these companies are going to serve my business the best. Right, and sometimes that's a point, sometimes that's a specific feature, sometimes it's the support, sometimes it's hey, I want to use what the most successful parks in the country are using. What are they using? We should use that too, right? So, depending on kind of what the mindset of each owner is and there's a big opportunity in this space right now right, there's a lot of parks that still aren't taking online reservations or the platform that they're using is fairly dated, and there is some opportunity to enhance that. So, you know who should use Campspot.

Speaker 2: 8:16

We would always start with we feel we provide the best online booking experience for gas. We always start with that. How can we get the most amount of reservations being taken online by providing a very good user experience for their guests, and then, along the way, how can we enhance revenue, and so, and that's kind of what our focus is. And so, you know, we initially started working with most of your large multi-part groups because in theory, they were focused on revenue as well. Right, that's what their focus was, and so we were able to serve that need very well. But since then, you know, we've really found and embraced that all parks of all shapes and sizes deserve whether it's us or anyone else to be able to embrace that technology. And so I think one of the things that helped Campspot is we didn't put a barrier in place to use Campspot, right, it's always been, you know, really free to come on to Campspot to start very minimal things going and then and then from there, once you start taking revenue and you start taking new reservations, we went with a per reservation fee model to essentially allow the campgrounds to pass that through and essentially not make them pay anything for the software. Right, because they can pass those fee structures through.

Speaker 2: 9:37

So that was an important aspect for us to learn in this space was that there was a lot of hesitancy based on cost. Hey, we've always been doing it this way. It works, we're busy, why would I pay for something that's already working? So there's a lot of education that happened there. And then there's a lot of things that's saying, hey, you don't. I mean it's, how do you rearrange that to say, well, if you're not necessarily paying for it, the guests may be paying for it, but you're gonna, you know, lower this amount of hours or you're gonna be able to increase revenue this way or occupancy this way. That's what really kind of took shape for us and it's been a blessing for us to be able to serve all walks of campgrounds, right, I mean it's.

Speaker 2: 10:18

You know it's be one thing to say, hey, we're only focused on large enterprise parks, but that doesn't embrace the entire industry, right, you can't. You couldn't have a marketplace if it was just large. You know parks with water slide, but you also couldn't have a good heartbeat on the industry and in what to build and how to build it and what the needs are and which can be. It can be confusing, it can be frustrating at times because you still have to figure out where to dial in and what to build.

Speaker 2: 10:45

But having that full picture, we think, puts us in a good spot to continue to invest in this space for all campgrounds, right, and so that's something that we're proud of, is saying we want to embrace the entire industry and so and that's something we've been fortunate to be able to do since we kind of got started and I mean add a little bit of I mean, it's been eight years. We've been building this specifically for eight years with no growing as far as our investment resources into it. So we love the product that we have today of, you know, the March 16, 2023, right, we love where it's at today, but we're just getting started with it. Right, we're just scratching the surface on what we can do for this space, and it's exciting to be part of a company that is the goal to continue to serve this space. And so we're know we're not the right fit for every park, and that's okay. That's where there's lots of other options out there that do a great job or one piece of the puzzle, and are fortunate to be one.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Yeah, so you want to embrace the entire industry. I really really like that. The other thing that happens is things are so fluid. You never know what's going to happen with a smaller mom and pop campground. They may want to expand, they may I mean people and things are changing all the time. But from a consumer standpoint, you think it's really simple to just go camping, right. Well, that was like back when I was a kid, like in the 70s or whatever you know. And I remember when, when reservations began to be required and it didn't. It wasn't even a thing.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So, then, a few years ago, I was helping a software company as a business consultant and they were taking all of these ancillary services for camp grounds like could be rafting or fly fishing or hiking guides or whatever, and as I was contacting those people, I was astonished, Casey, at how many people were taking reservations on yellow legal paths.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Yeah, we still see it. We still see it all the time where it's just a paper or it's, you know, kind of their own customized Excel sheet, and it works. I mean, at the end of the day, one of the things we always say when we're talking with with, with parks that are, you know, a little bit leery of it. It's like, hey, what you're doing works right, like there's no doubt with their it's. Just how much of your time is it taking, right? Yes, is there for air? How much you know, and so in it. And what is it that you want to do as a business owner, right? I mean, if you enjoy the customer interaction through the phone, then keep doing it. Right. But if there's other things that you'd rather do when the guest arrives that's already booked and you want to embrace that customer experience, then yes maybe that makes more sense.

Speaker 2: 13:45

Or maybe you want to be able to go through the park and communicate with the guests and you know whether you're on a golf cart or on foot and you want to spend the time that way and you're not worried about having to answer the phone 24 seven in order to, you know, to potentially lose that revenue. Those are just some of the basic things that it's fun understanding and parks can pick and choose. That's one thing that's always been nice with us is that you don't have a campsite, it's fine. Don't use the point of sale, right. If you don't have cabins, you don't need to use the housekeeping. If you don't want to put all of your sites online, just put a couple of them online, right, you can.

Speaker 2: 14:17

You can kind of pick and choose what you know, level of, you know the technology you kind of want to embrace and keep running your business the way you want to run it. At the end of the day, that's the. You run it the way you want to, right. We're here to help and in some cases, parks want the help and they want the automation. In some cases they want to keep things the way that they were and that's.

Speaker 1: 14:37

That's perfectly fine, you know well, that kind of flexibility is imperative and the fact that you're just embracing who they are and enhancing it is that says a lot about who you are as a company.

Speaker 1: 14:51

You know just that kind of respect, and it's not a do it all or do nothing. The other thing that I would with my company Expatality this is what we focus on and why we encourage systems is because just what you said, when you start asking these business owners well, what do you really want? And they have to stop and think about it, because most of the time they're in the weeds and they're like, oh, someone's asking me and I have a choice, and often they do want that interaction, but they don't realize how much more impactful it can be when it's strategically designed for that customer journey, and then the systems just become tools that facilitate what you really want. At the end of the day, you just don't know what you want and you're busy like going fire to fire, to fire. So I really I think that is a really beautiful thing that you guys just take the person as they are and then give them what they need. What a novel concept.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Yeah, right, yeah, I mean it's. It kind of goes back to the one of the your, your kind of business concepts of you know, as an owner or even as a manager in some capacity. I mean it's amazing in some of the large parks, I mean, the managers are the ones that are truly kind of making those decisions and then they're the ones kind of controlling the narrative there. And even for the managers, a lot of times we'll communicate like are you, are you working in the business or you're working on it? Right, because it's very easy to get pulled into working in the business because the phone is going to keep ringing unless you make a change. Right, unless there's another alternative for the guest to be able to book or cancel the reservation using technology, or edit the reservation using technology. You are going to be working in the business that way, which isn't a bad thing, right? There's nothing negative to that. You're still providing a good experience and you're still providing a good service. But at some point you know removing yourself from okay, if I didn't have to work in the business, at least in all these areas, and I was able to think okay, what if I just want to work on the business? What does that change? And that's super eye-opening for owners or managers to say you know, I got into this space because I love people and I love being outside and I love just talking with new people. That's the part that I enjoy. Well, how do we embrace that? How do we get you doing those things again?

Speaker 2: 17:12

And that might not be talking on the phone, that might not be, you know, having waivers get signed manually, that might not be. You know, telling someone once they arrive hey, we have these golf carts, you want them. Like. You can do all that ahead of time and then you can go out and just, you know, whatever it is that you want to do. It's funny. We have some owners that are like I want to be outside, I want to be doing the maintenance, I want to be doing the grass, I want to be like that's what I want to do, that's what I'm good at. I don't want to be on the phone. You know, taking reservations, I'm forced to because that's how we have money or that's going to get our money, but that's not what I want to be doing. So, yeah, it's. There's so many fun conversations in there.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Yes, before we started recording the actual interview, we were talking about the coaching aspect of all business, and people are just people. It doesn't matter how many campgrounds you own or how successful or not you are. Everybody has that sense. I think. When they start a business, they know what makes them feel good and they kind of cling to that, you know. So maybe I want to do the maintenance, but there will come a time or a moment where you would like the option to step away. So what we give them with their software is really well, you can do whatever you want, but this gives you an option and it opens up the opportunity. Maybe there's a bigger, better way for you to be doing what you love. And let this take this piece of it, so a lot of it. It really does come back to just what do you want and how do we help you get there. You know what is the vision.

Speaker 2: 18:48

It is. It's funny because there's so many parks that there's just this season of grind, right, they've never even a million years thinking of leaving during the season, because there's just so much weight on as things are going on. And that's why you see so many parks that when they close they're like I'm closing, we're leaving a voice message that we're not picking this up for three months. We're heading to Florida, we're going away and they need it, they need that break, they need that release, and rightfully so. But even just subtle things of saying, okay, well, you don't need to be there those three months when you're closed, but you could still be bringing in revenue with reservations and you, you know, or just subtle things in terms of you are able.

Speaker 2: 19:29

So one thing that we just released that we're really excited about is it's called like a certification program, because some of the biggest challenges that owners and managers had with Parks, big and Small, was, say I understand how to use everything, but if I had someone new come in, it's going to take them a long time to learn this and learn how to do everything. And it says, well, no, it shouldn't like you're pricing your rules, that we can streamline that. But what if we took the training aspect of things off of your plate, right? What if we can create a program where anyone can come in and, on their own time, they can come in and they can understand how to do most of the basics within CampSpot, and so you can have the confidence and see, hey, this person passed this, this, this and this. So I know that they're confident to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 20:12

And then you can take a few days or a week or something along those lines because, again, you know that the staff is coherent enough to be able to facilitate some of these things, and so having those stories is just it's fun, right. It's enjoyable to say I haven't left our park during the season in 15 years and we're going to go away this weekend and I think everything's good to go right. We're still going to check in and the fact that we have a cloud-based system and I can see our numbers on my phone and I can see our reports and I can see your data. We're going to step away for a little bit and that's just awesome, right, like that's, that's, that's that's the quality of life.

Speaker 1: 20:46

I used to live in Estes Park, colorado. You know, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, and we used to.

Speaker 1: 20:53

I had a tourist experience up there and we would joke that during the season because it is like a tight season three and maybe four months and we would joke how everyone was always grumpy there because there was either two much too much business or it was dead and shopkeepers were always just kind of on edge about everything. What this does is it gives you a quality of life where you can. You can choose and make decisions. I really, really like that. And everything is marketing right. If you're not marketing to potential clients or guests and you're not marketing to your staff. You have to keep everyone engaged at all times. That's the beauty of technology.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:46

People engage and then you get to be a better human right.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Wow, I have really enjoyed this conversation. I had no idea how you're impacting people's lives at such an incredible level, so is there anything else that you would like to share with people, like about you personally? Well, how did you get into hospitality, of all things, or camping?

Speaker 2: 22:13

Yeah, no, it's an interesting journey for me. I kind of came from the electronic space. So I used to own a bunch of computer and phone repair stores locally here in town and then got an opportunity to sell. That moved into more of like a volume thing where we were doing a high volume of laptops and MacBooks and phones and kind of sourcing and moving those throughout the world. Actually was a really interesting role and got an opportunity to sell that.

Speaker 2: 22:41

And then through a fluke, through a fluke of meeting the right people, friend of a friend said, hey, we got this. You know, we have this camping software and we're really looking to expand on it and we think we've got a really good thing going here. And you know we'd love to have you come in and see kind of where it goes. And so it was a huge leap of faith. You know I camped, you know, as a kid, but minimally. I've never had an RV. You know, have been in one multiple times since, you know, to learn and just to enjoy them. But we've always kind of been. You know we'd stay at cabins or lodging or hotels and so kind of coming into the space was a learning curve but it was very humbling right, because you couldn't come in and start saying we should do this, do this.

Speaker 2: 23:25

I just had to listen. I mean, for the first six months I just had to listen and absorb, right, absorb as far as what the industry wants, where the needs are. And it was again. I'm never afraid to talk per se, but there was a long period of time where I needed to force myself to not talk, maybe ask questions, but I just needed to listen. I needed to learn the space so that we could be set up and fortunately again we had a software to where the focus was on design and on revenue.

Speaker 2: 23:56

And you pair that with the timing of the industry, you pair that with the idea that the industry needed something like this. Right, that's where things were moving. And then you add in a random crazy pandemic where all of a sudden camping was the only thing legally that people could do but realize, ok, this is an insane amount of things to try to handle on our own. We maybe can use technology to assist with that, and so even just adopting through there and understanding the dynamics there and how we could assist with some of those things. So it's just been a really fun four years. I'm looking for the next four years. There's still lots to learn, there's still lots for us to evolve in, but, yeah, my passion has always been in business. It's always been with people, it's always been with relationships, and so every business that I've owned or ran, those are kind of the common things. I like the idea of business, I like the idea of growing it and I like the idea of creating relationships, and so, yeah, and that's still what I'm doing today.

Speaker 1: 24:57

Yeah, that's great. I love the passion that you have for people, and humility is something that, if you're not aware that you need it, somehow life shows you that you're going to be there.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Right.

Speaker 1: 25:15

But it means you're growing and changing and I think the more quickly people I mean all of us have been forced to do that over the last few years right, the more rapidly we can embrace that humility to just change and grow, the more we can see what's possible. It sounds like that's what you guys are doing in this industry, so maybe you could share how people can reach you, what the next steps would be if they want to experience or just take a look at your software, and who the ideal candidate might be for you.

Speaker 2: 25:50

Yeah, no, those are great questions. So softwarecamspotcom is our website. Camspotcom is the main marketplace website. Obviously, you can go and check things out there. Sales at camspotcom that comes through to me and my entire team here, so we're happy to chat with you. I mean, for us, we still think that we still do a tailored demo for everyone, we don't do a generic one. More so because there's a learning process.

Speaker 2: 26:16

We want to learn what your business needs, what's important to you. I don't want to talk about a point of sale and housekeeping when you don't have lodging and you don't have a camp store, right? So we want to understand what's important for each park, each campground and for the individual, right, like, what is it that you want? What are some problems that you're looking to solve? To your point early about humility, it's an interesting thing because there's been this long period of time where it's like we're the right fit for every single campground. Every campground should be using Camspot, and that could be further from the truth, right? There's certain products out there where we could make it work, but it isn't the ideal fit for what they want right now with where their business is or what solutions that they're looking for, and so even learning. That has been an evolution, where it's saying of course, we like every campground to work with us, right, we like to build a product where eventually it is the right solution. We also recognize that that isn't the case all the time. So for us you'd say, like what is the right client?

Speaker 2: 27:15

Again, everyone the cliche thing to be saying is like, hey, if you're a large transient park, if you're operating a large business, that's what initially Camspot was built for. That's what we thrive on right. We thrive on large parks, processing a lot of reservations and streamlining and automating that and generating revenue. But in that same process, parks that are 15 and 20 sites get a ton of value from Camspot and they do phenomenal on it because they don't have to use everything. But it's at a price point that they can afford and embrace all the same technology and all the same enhancements that your largest groups and parks are using, and we love that. There shouldn't be an advantage, just because you can't afford $25,000 a year, that you can't get to use the same technology and the same platform that some of the larger parks that can afford that. And so that's important to us because, again, we want to embrace the entire industry.

Speaker 2: 28:09

And that doesn't mean just large transient parks, right, it means small parks, it means an eight-part group and sometimes it means an 18-site park that's just getting started out and they don't know what they're doing and they're looking for us for advice and we can say, hey, these are some best practices. And then there's everything in between. Right, there's every park that's in between there. But we fundamentally also recognize that there's more parks under 150 sites and there are parks that are above 150. Yeah, yeah, and so that's a very relevant piece of this space and it's a part of the space that we don't want to lose sight of, because it embraces the entire industry. So a lot of those parks that are at 30, 40 sites, they're going to get to those 150 sites, but they needed a partner to kind of get to those little check marks, to get to the point of being able to expand, and so and we want to partner with them along the way- it's so important to have someone like you to grow with because you can eliminate.

Speaker 1: 29:15

I mean, I'm thinking, if I owned a small campground, like the first thing you want is someone that knows more than you do.

Speaker 2: 29:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some truth there, right?

Speaker 2: 29:24

I mean, that's one thing that we definitely have an advantage with in terms of not necessarily over other people, and just an advantage for campgrounds is that we've literally we're working with 2,300 campgrounds currently and there's a couple hundred more. In this We've been through this a lot right, like we've seen, like whether it's a certain size park or we've seen location based, or hey, we want to be a primary long term, primary, short term. So there's a lot of just I don't want to say consulting, but it's more so just best practice. This is what works and you can go, let this off yourself, call these owners, call these people, and not all the time, that's just that connecting people, exactly what we're doing here Right, attacking people to get solutions, get answers and get peace of mind to know, hey, I'm making the right decision or, you know, this is what's right for my business.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Yeah, so helpful. Well, thank you so much, and obviously anyone who is watching this is invited to reach out, and it really is about just that's what this whole alliance with the experiential experts is about really sharing best practices, sharing information if and we are all so open so if we are not the right fit for you, we probably most likely know someone that is, so you're welcome to just reach out and we're here to support you and Casey. This has been absolutely delightful for me. Thank you so much for your time, and you can go back out and save the campground world, and we'll do our best to let everyone know about you.

Speaker 2: 30:59

Thank you Great chatting.

Speaker 1: 31:01

Yeah, you have a wonderful upcoming St Patty's Day.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Yeah, enjoy the weekend.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Stay safe, stay great, stay lucky, whatever it is, whatever you're supposed to do, okay, thank, you. Bye, bye.