Author Archives: Team Campspot

The day is finally here! We’re so excited to announce the 2023 Campspot Award winners. This year, we’ve announced winners in 12 categories to celebrate as many campgrounds as possible and help campers discover new adventures of every variety. Using proprietary platform data and input from the camping community itself, we’re proud to share that the winners of this year’s awards are shining examples of campground excellence.

See the 2023 Campspot Award Winners

The Best Campgrounds in America

Indian River RV Resort – Indian River, Michigan

Unlike our 11 other categories, the title of “best campgrounds in America” were awarded to campgrounds by camper popular vote! Using proprietary platform data for all bookings, reviews, and internal data, we created a shortlist that campers used to vote for their favorite campgrounds. At the top of the list? Indian River RV Resort!

See the Full List of the 2023 Campspot Award Winners – Best Campgrounds in America 

Best RV Campgrounds

Carolina Pines RV Resort – Conway, South Carolina

To determine the best RV campgrounds, we looked at reservation data, reviews, the quality of the campground listing, and also leveraged expert insight to make selections.

See the Full List of the Best RV Campgrounds 

Best Campgrounds in Canada

Moonlight Bay Tent & Trailer Park – Wilberforce, Ontario

To determine the awards for the best campgrounds in Canada, we reviewed reservation, sentiment, and survey data.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds in Canada

Best Tent Campgrounds

Lake Siskiyou Camp Resort – Mt. Shasta City, California

When it came to considering which campgrounds were the best tent campgrounds in North America, we looked at reservation data, the quality of the overall listing, as well as reviews. We also leveraged expert input to make the final selection.

See the Full List of the Best Tent Campgrounds

Best Glamping Campgrounds

Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park™ Camp-Resort: Golden Valley – Bostic, North Carolina

For the best glamping campgrounds in North America (or should we say, glampgrounds?) We considered reservation data, the quality of the overall listing, and also camper reviews. Expert insight was the final determining factor.

See the Full List of the Best Glamping Campgrounds

Best Campgrounds for Spontaneous Campers

Bonelli Bluffs RV Resort & Campground – San Dimas, California

To determine which campgrounds are the best for spontaneous campers, we looked at mobile app reservation data for reservations made “on the fly.” We provided our experts with a list of parks with super high same day reservations and they selected the final winners using listing information and camper reviews.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for Spontaneous Campers

Best Campgrounds for Families

Carolina Pines RV Resort – Conway, South Carolina

To find the most family-friendly campgrounds, we reviewed campgrounds with the most reservations with kiddos listed on the reservations. We also considered the park’s number of kid-pleasing amenities like pools and playgrounds. Combined with expert insight and a review of the quality of the listing page, we were able to surface the campgrounds sure to delight the entire family.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for Families 

Best Campgrounds for Couples

Lake Siskiyou Camp Resort – Mt. Shasta City, California

When it came to campgrounds for couples we checked our data for campgrounds with the most reservations for two adults. We then reviewed campground photography, the quality of the overall listing, and our experts weighed in to make the final calls.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for Couples 

Best Campgrounds for National Park Lovers

Aloha Beach RV Resort – Port Aransas, TX

To determine campgrounds most ideal for national park lovers, we reviewed campgrounds with the highest number of reservations near national parks. Top campgrounds had to have at least a 70% average occupancy and a minimum of a 4-star overall rating. Our experts then reviewed the overall quality of the campground’s listing to help make the final determination.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for National Park Lovers

Best Campgrounds for Weekenders

Sun Outdoors Paso Robles – Paso Robles, California

Campgrounds with the most Friday and Saturday reservations were the leading indicator for this category. Photography and overall listing information were also considered. Our experts then weighed in to help make the final selection of winners.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for Weekenders

Best Campgrounds for Pet Lovers

Canyon View RV Resort – Grand Junction, Colorado

Pets need award-winning campgrounds, too! For this category, we reviewed reservations made with pets and also considered if campgrounds had dog parks. Experts weighed in and helped us review photography, and the overall quality of the listing information as well.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for Pet Lovers

Best Campgrounds for 55+ Adventurers

Sun Outdoors Sarasota – Sarasota, Florida

To find the best campgrounds for 55+ campers, we started by reviewing our proprietary data for campgrounds with the most reservations made at parks that are 55+ only. We also considered each campground’s photography, quality of the overall listing information, and then asked our experts to weigh in to help make the final decisions.

See the Full List of the Best Campgrounds for 55+ Adventurers 

We hope you’ll take a moment to join us as we celebrate the 2023  Campspot Award winners and acknowledge the hard work of all of these campgrounds leading the industry. Congratulations to all! Thank you for all that you do to provide campers with exemplary experiences. Your campgrounds provide access to not only the outdoors, but to the camping community that we all hold so dear.

Online marketplaces are an important discovery channel for campgrounds, and Campspot continues to make it easy for customers to market themselves on the travel sites that are most important to their parks. Campspot’s latest integration with two of the top travel OTAs expands those opportunities.

Campspot customers now have a variety of options when it comes to choosing an online travel agency (OTA) as part of their larger business and marketing strategy. In addition to exposure on our own camping-specific OTA, Campspot Marketplace, customers can choose from three of the most highly trafficked traditional travel marketplaces—Booking.com, Airbnb, and Vrbo—to list their lodging inventory.

“Online marketplaces are an important piece of the pie when it comes to marketing your campground,” says Campspot CEO Michael Scheinman. “Having a presence on OTAs can help you reach new customers that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. But, we know the real pain for a campground comes from the time and effort required to learn each platform and manage inventory from different places. Our goal at Campspot is not only to help campgrounds sell more site nights, but to also enable parks to manage their distribution channels with ease.”

As with all things, the right strategy is a balance of choosing the right marketing channels for your brand and aiming for a certain percentage of traffic to come from each one, without any one of them carrying too much of the weight.

How are the Airbnb and Vrbo Integrations Different From Booking.com?

Booking.com is a self-service integration where all reservations and communication with guests is handled by the campground. The Airbnb and Vrbo connections are managed by BnBerry—a concierge service that handles the listings for you, from content updates and optimizations to guest inquiries. They manage communication with the guest up until they arrive on-site.

How are Travel OTAs Different From Campspot.com?

Campspot.com is the largest camping-specific OTA with users who are intentional about finding and booking a campground. Marketplace listings are a direct reflection of what’s on the campground listings and can be managed within Campspot.

Travel OTAs will list your lodging sites alongside other more traditional lodging options and therefore can give you access to new campers who might not have specifically been looking for a campground but are open to new and unique travel experiences. In fact, Booking.com notes that “42% of nights booked are for properties other than hotels.”

Searchers are looking for unique experiences, or even just a place to stay near their preferred destination, but they might not have had a campground in mind when they started their research. Appearing on one of these OTAs can open up your campground to a new segment of guests.

Whether it’s a camping-specific or travel-focused, OTAs can help campgrounds reach new customers where they are already looking and planning their trips

How to Choose an OTA

Business strategy, marketing opportunity, and brand alignment are some of the things to consider when choosing an OTA. Think about which platform attracts the type of customer you are looking for, and how you want to leverage OTAs for your business. Are you looking to fill last-minute vacancies? Are you hoping to attract a new kind of guest?

In the end, however, the OTA should be a reflection of your brand, regardless of marketing channel. This includes the listing itself but also all the backend rules you have in place on your own website.

You can learn more about this in our blog titled How to Make OTAs a Part of Your Business Strategy.

And if you’d like to learn more about this latest travel OTAs integration, visit our support center where you can find answers to frequently asked questions and information about how to get started. Or contact our sales team directly to discuss this, along with other revenue-generating integrations.

Get Growing with Campspot

Learn how to identify areas of growth opportunity for your campground like travel OTAs and more in our free ebook below.

Campspot’s new revenue-driving feature is live for U.S.-based Campgrounds. With Campspot Accelerator, third-party ancillary products (like insurance) and offers from premier partners across the outdoor industry will appear on the campgrounds’ Consumer Booking sites. Campgrounds can sign up and get paid, as a portion of the revenue generated from these placements will be automatically returned to the campground. Or there is always the option to opt out if they don’t want to participate.

What it Means for Your Campground

Campspot Accelerator placements on Campspot are intentionally selective and thoughtfully designed to create the most value for the consumer while maximizing the potential for the campground. We are launching with two high-value partners: RVshare, an RV rental website, and Sensible Weather—whose Weather Guarantee, an insurance-like product, reimburses campers’ reservation costs when rain impacts their experience. According to a recent survey, weather is the most stressful part of planning a camping trip. Campspot Accelerator will now put this offer, available for purchase, directly on your booking site to help increase camper confidence and enhance the overall experience.

About RVshare

For campers who may be looking to rent an RV for their upcoming trip, this RV rental website connects RV owners and renters. With Accelerator, display ads will appear in relevant sections of campground consumer booking sites that link to the RVshare site.

About Sensible Weather

This climate tech and insurance company can help campers alleviate the number one worry they have when it comes to booking a campaign trip—poor weather! With Accelerator, campers can add, for a small fee, a Weather Guarantee which will reimburse them if it rains during their trip.

Learn More About Campspot Accelerator

Visit our support site to find answers to common questions, including how to sign up to get paid or how to opt out of the program if you do not wish to have these placements appear on your Consumer Booking site. You can also see examples of what these placements will look like.

With Campspot Accelerator, campers get access to offers from relevant outdoor brands that help increase confidence when planning and booking, and add value to the trip itself. Here’s to making your happy campers even happier!

Get Growing With Campspot

 

In an online world, marketing tactics seem both endless and endlessly evolving. One tactic that remains a staple in any business owner’s toolkit, however, is email. Hubspot, a software provider for marketing tools, collected some telling email stats that demonstrate its power and reach as a communication channel. They found, for example, that “there are 4 billion daily email users, and that number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025.” They also discovered that “77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.” In other words, email is not going away!

Campspot users know the power of this marketing and communication channel well. In fact, an integration with Mailchimp—one of the most popular email marketing platforms—has been a top requested feature from Campspot users. Now it’s a reality.

What the Integration Means for Parks

Prior to the integration, Mailchimp users could not easily sync their Campspot data, which required them to export guest reports to a CSV file, and then upload the file to Mailchimp in order to create marketing audiences. As of today, this integration will automate the import of customer data into Mailchimp by syncing with your customer/reservation data in Campspot.

It also unlocks a whole world of capabilities through more than 300 third-party Mailchimp integrations.

Email Use Cases for Campgrounds

In their State of Marketing Trends Report, Hubspot shared the top reasons companies use email marketing: to improve customer loyalty and retention; increase revenue/sales; and generate leads. These types of insights can help you identify strategies for reaching out to your audience.

The integration between Campspot and Mailchimp makes it that much easier to send targeted messages to certain groups of campers. You could, for example, send an email to guests who are currently on-site to share reminders about campground policies or events happening during their stay. Or, maybe you want to email upcoming reservation holders to share add-ons they can purchase from your store in advance of their trip or to provide more information about things they can do nearby. Now you can with ease! You can also email past campers or loyal visitors with special offers and promotions.

However you communicate with your guests, email provides a reliable and consistent way to get your messages out, and the integration between Campspot and Mailchimp means it’s easier than ever to get those messages to the right people.

What if I don’t use Mailchimp but want to?

The integration is here for you whenever you want to get started. Simply start by creating an account with Mailchimp. If you already have a Mailchimp account and want to connect to Campspot, visit our support article for step-by-step instructions on how to get set up.

To learn more about how to use email as an effective marketing channel, read Email Marketing Strategies for Campgrounds.

Campspot’s on a mission to make happy campers—which is why we’re committed to providing a secure solution for our campground owners and managers so that they can focus on delighting their guests. When it comes to prioritizing security for our customers (and their customers!), we believe in making the right investments, such as employing Campspot team members dedicated entirely to governance and compliance, and securing trusted third-party industry certifications for our product and services. We strive to follow industry best practices and select and build tools that adhere to industry guidelines in an effort to continuously improve our security. That’s where SOC 2 comes in!

What is SOC 2?

Pronounced “sock two,” SOC 2 stands for “service organization control 2.” Which might still sound a little confusing….Essentially, it is a voluntary compliance standard that’s used to evaluate software as a service organizations such as Campspot. The standards were formed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) to help organizations manage customer data. The compliance standards assess five key areas:

• Security
• Availability 
• Processing integrity 
• Confidentiality
• Privacy 

Why Is SOC 2 Important for my Campground Business?

To obtain SOC 2 Compliance, it means that a company has demonstrated that it maintains a high level of information security. This means that Campspot has rigorous controls and policies in place to protect our customers (and their customers) information.

What’s the Difference Between SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2?

According to the AICPA, a type 1 report includes “management’s description of a service organization’s system and the suitability of the design of controls,” and type 2 reports “on management’s description of a service organization’s system and the suitability of the design and operating effectiveness of controls.”

Our VP of Finance & Governance, Jill Mast breaks it down in layperson’s terms:

SOC 2 Type 1

This is confirmation that we have controls and policies in place that adhere to the AICPA’s guidelines.

SOC 2 Type 2

This goes one step further where they audit the effectiveness of these controls and policies and tests to ensure that what is in place is being followed and is performing as intended.

What About SOC 1? What’s the Difference Between SOC 1 and SOC 2?

SOC 1 reports are more focused on financial controls, whereas SOC 2 focuses more on organizational areas related to operations and compliance.

Which Types of Certification Does Campspot Have?

SOC certification is a long and rigorous process. As of June 30, 2022, Campspot is SOC 2 Type 1 certified. We also maintain compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX Compliance).

What Does Campspot Do to Maintain that Certification?

Our dedication to safety and security doesn’t stop at certification. We’ll be reviewing our processes annually in order to ensure continued compliance.

“Campspot monitors, corrects, and improves its internal processes that we have put into place during the SOC 2 Type 1 audit. These processes include code reviews for production changes, auditing workflows from when code is committed to Campspot’s repositories until it goes live on our production servers, and ensuring only authorized, authenticated personnel have access to customer data.  We’re also performing additional disaster recovery and business continuity operations in order to validate that all our customer data is accurate and correct across our backups and data centers.  Additionally, we have stronger policies in place around removing customer data, both upon request and for those customers who no longer do business with Campspot.” – Aaren Twedt, Governance and Compliance Lead

What’s Next for Campspot’s Security?

Campspot’s next step is to be SOC 2 Type 2 certified. We are actively working toward SOC 2 Type 2 certification and are eager to let our community know when we reach that milestone.

 

Want to learn more about how Campspot prioritizes security and makes happy campers? Request a demo below to chat with a campground reservations software expert. To request our SOC 2 Type 1 Compliance report for the full nitty-gritty details, reach out today!

Learning a new tool is never easy; becoming a super-user is even harder. Add to that the time it takes to train new employees every season. Enter the Campspot Certification program! It’s a self-guided training course that’s designed to help users (old and new alike) navigate the software.

We know how much easier it is to use a system that you know well. It saves time on tasks that might otherwise be time consuming. This course is meant to help you learn how to use Campspot, and all its time-saving, revenue-generating features with ease, no matter what you need to do. From logging in and resetting your password, to editing reservation details, invoice amounts, and guest profiles, to creating rules for pricing, occupancy, and more, this program covers it all.

Become a Campspot Wizard

Each module contains written and video content. Trainees will also receive access to the Campspot demo environment where they can practice the workflows covered in the course material.

The Campspot Certification program contains a series of modules, and each of those modules contains a group of lessons, most of which take anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes to complete. The entire course is estimated to take about 4 to 5 hours.

It’s Not Just for Campspot Users

You don’t have to be employed at a campground  using Campspot to take this course. If you’re a Workcamper or seasonal employee and you want to add eye-catching skills and certifications to your resume, this course is for you, too!

Upon completion of each level you’ll receive a certificate and a digital badge that you can put on your resume or add to your LinkedIn profile.

How to Get Started

Sign up for the self-guided course.

Click “sign up” in the upper right hand corner.

And if you are new to talentLMS, the system we’re using to host the course, and need help navigating that tool, this support article can help.

Get Started

Tracking performance and measuring the growth of your business shouldn’t be rocket science, which is why we are excited to introduce Campspot Analytics, our new reporting tool that does the time-consuming math for you.

With Campspot Analytics, Campgrounds can access valuable data in visualized dashboards dedicated to tracking performance, and quickly answer core business questions without needing to download a CSV. Spend less time in spreadsheets and more time making data-driven decisions!

 

How Campspot Analytics Works

As part of the early access program, campgrounds will receive an email to set up their Campspot Analytics account. Every park gets a FREE seat with the option to buy additional seats. The same applies for groups with multiple parks—there will be one free seat allotted for each park.

Users will have access to a collection of standard dashboards which include:

• Park Overview – An overview of recent booking trends and active feature statuses 
• YoY Metric Comparison – An easy view of your park’s Occupancy, Site nights, Revenue, ADR, and RevPAR over the previous year 
• Operations Summary – An overview of today’s activities at your park including arrivals, departures, and add-ons
• Campspot Value – A summary of Campspot’s revenue-driving features and the impact they have on your park
• Occupancy Pace Report – An overview of your park’s occupancy on future dates to help with revenue optimization
• Portfolio Overview (for businesses with more than one park) – An overview at the organization level of what is happening across your portfolio

New dashboards will be added on a regular basis.

Features and Benefits 

To access the dashboards, all you need to do is log into Campspot Analytics by clicking on the “Campspot Analytics” button on the Reports page within the app. Through these dashboards, parks can track daily activity, compare year-over-year activity on key metrics, watch reservation growth, measure revenue generated by Campspot features, and more. There is even an aggregate report called Portfolio Overview for larger multi-park organizations that want a collective view of the business.

You can also schedule reports to be sent to your inbox on a regular basis or have them sent directly to investors or analysts.

Pulling and analyzing data is often a manual process that takes math, pivot tables, and mental gymnastics to complete. We want to empower Campspot users with the metrics that matter so you can make meaningful and impactful decisions for your business.

Campspot Analytics gives you access to the most important information in a visual and interactive way, which allows you to keep an eye on business trends and core metrics on a regular basis.

And if you ever find yourself missing Monday morning math or wanting to dig deeper into raw data from the spreadsheets, you can still access raw data for download via our comprehensive catalog of CSV reports.

Campspot Analytics Resources

You can find all supporting documentation for Campspot Analytics in our support center.

What to Expect Next

Campspot customers will receive an email invitation for their free seat. If you don’t receive the invite, or if you want to add additional seats, reach out to our customer success team at customersuccess@campspot.com.

If you are interested in learning more about Campspot and whether it’s right for your campground business, contact our sales team.