Spotlight: Bonnie Brae Campground

Learning How to Run a Campground as You Go

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By Nathan Gawlik

Nathan Gawlik's experience includes being a General Manager of a Hampton Inn and other front line roles such as a Banquet Captain, Front Desk Agent, Housekeeper, Catering Event Manager, and Director of Sales.

We all have our comfort zones and for many people they wouldn't dream of changing everything and starting a new Campground. But that is what Dan Weaver has done. Dan Weaver shares his insights and challenges that he faced when operating a campground for the first time.

Dan joined me via phone for this interview in March of 2021.

About the Campground

The Bonnie Brae Campground is located in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and features 28 RV sites, 6 cabins and 19 tent sites (53 sites in total). Dan Weaver has been the owner and operator of the campground since 2019.

He entered the industry after considering the purchase of a bed and breakfast. In fact, he prides himself in his customer service practices and compares them to those that you might find at an upscale B&B.

Dan's background is in product development and merchandising; he worked for various companies in this space for the last fifteen years. Because of this background, Dan turned a few rooms on the property's house into a convenience store, where he sells RV supplies, sunscreen, souvenirs, s'more kits and more.

While the campground itself is just off a residential neighborhood, it's surrounded by trees that make visitors feel secluded in nature. The property is open seasonally from May 1 through October 15.

Do you have any advice for people that might want to start their own accommodation business?

Find out who your local Small Business Administration contact office is. I worked with a professor who taught business; he helped me with my business and taught me who to call. Before then, I was blindly calling banks when I was trying to get an SBA specific mortgage loan.

There's lots of tools with the SBA to help you. I still get on their webinars to see what's happening.

The other thing that really helped our business was joining various organizations and associations. I joined the Massachusetts Camping Association, which automatically makes you a part of the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds. Then I joined the New England Camping Association. The networking and learning that goes on with these organizations is priceless.

What are your marketing strategies? Where do you get your exposure from?

Just before COVID-19 shut the world down, I did a trade show in February, at the New England RV show, which isn't too far from our campground. I handed out about 2,000 brochures to people who had never heard of Bonnie Brae Campground, and they all lived less than an hour away.

To me, not having name recognition for a campground that has existed for almost 100 years seemed odd. So the marketing effort was worth my investment because I just introduced the campground to 2,000 people.

What other marketing efforts have you made?

I became a part of Good Sam and their network and expanded on that in 2020. I'm probably going to pull back on that in 2021, however. You pay for the marketing a year in advance with Good Sam, so I've already paid through 2021. Going into 2022, if I have another strong year, I'll probably pull back to just a basic membership with them because their marketing is not inexpensive.

Would you recommend Good Sam to somebody else who is just starting a campground?

I think being part of their network is worth the membership fee. I don't think it's worth the amount that they want for some of their bigger advertising asks, however. I don't know if it's because I'm a smaller campground, but most people are finding me because they're searching the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts looking for a campground.

There are many other marketing tools that are less expensive.

I'm doing some local, simple advertising, like putting an ad in a high school's playbill. For example, I'll go out in my work shirt in the summer, and people will see the logo and not know that I'm right around the corner. So again, just trying to get the word out locally.

What about retail items? Do you sell T-shirts, sweatshirts and other things with your logo on it in your store?

I do, yes. That didn't exist when I took over, but that's part of my background. The store was one of the first things I felt we needed here; even though we are a small campground, having a store is a great opportunity for revenue.

A huge, four-bedroom house came with the campground. I carved out what was a family room and expanded it so I have now an office and general store off the side of the house.

One of the benefits of being part of Good Sam is that I'm able to buy items from Camping World Wholesale to put in my store. I got a bunch of RV supplies from them. I also noticed that people like the grab-and-go snacks and memorabilia with the campground logo on it, so I've purchased more of those.

When someone comes, they want firewood, but, because of the COVID-19 restrictions, I delivered firewood to people's sites. I would dump it out, and, maybe 10 minutes later, I would get a call from them saying, "Hey thanks for the firewood. Now what do I do?" They didn't know how to start a fire. This happened all the time.

So I quickly learned that my best-selling item is a fire starter.

What strategy do you think will serve you well as you go into this next season?

Because I'm an outsider, I'm doing things my way, which may differ from what is standard. However, I still work based on hospitality and customer service. I like to think of my campground as a bed and breakfast, but everyone's staying in my backyard instead of in my house, and I'm not giving guests breakfast. While my backyard and swimming pool are still owned by me, they're for the guests to use. I treat everybody as if they're part of the family.

Everybody wants to know, "How did you come to buy this campground? Was it something you had always dreamed of?" That's not the case. I used to camp here, and I was looking for a bridge to retirement.

As you considered your bridge to retirement and investment opportunities, why did you settle on a campground over a B&B?

My choice really came down to knowledge or lack of knowledge. When I was exploring a bed and breakfast I wanted to buy, it was an established business with a good model. The B&B was small enough that I could manage it myself, and it had everything it needed.

However, I didn't know how to buy it. The banks I talked to said you can't get a mortgage if you don't show a salary. I was on a self-imposed sabbatical; I took a year off when the company I work for in Texas went out of business.

I knew enough about merchandising, product development, marketing and customer service that I felt confident I could breathe new life into a campground I found. Both the B&B and the campground were businesses that I could have picked up right away and ran with. Though, the banks and my realtor were treating the B&B as a standard house mortgage instead of a business.

While I was employed when I bought the campground, the local bank never asked about my salary when I got my loans. It just needed to see a business plan and numbers on the campground, which led me to be able to get the money I needed to buy it.

Because the campground had some history as far as projected revenues, it had enough to qualify. The former owner had an appraisal done. The other documents he had were based on his occupancy of 2018 and previous years, so that helped me get the loan.

Are there any big surprises or things that may have challenged assumptions that you held before getting into the campground industry?

My biggest surprise was the homelessness situation. I don't know if this is inherent in campgrounds, but that was unknown to me.

I didn't expect to get calls for people looking to put a tent in for the summer. I'm in a city. We have a problem here like most cities do with homelessness across the country, but that wasn't a challenge I was expecting. I knew, similar to the local parks and other campgrounds, that there was a limit on how long someone could stay tent camping.

I had a lovely young couple my very first season ask if they could pay month to month for a spot. I didn't think anything of it. I was so ignorant to what was happening that I said, "Sure, if you want to camp all summer long, that's fine." They had credit cards, they paid their bills. However, I found out not long after they had nowhere else to live — they were homeless.

I had an older couple for a while. They came into the office at the beginning of the season looking for a place they can go month to month. The older couple wasn't disruptive, but, not long after they came, I had a younger gentleman that needed a place for a couple of weeks until he found an apartment.

Well, a couple of weeks turned into the entire summer. He was disruptive only because, while he was always courteous with me, he would have very loud screaming matches in his tent with no respect for others.

He worked, but he had a rough life, and it showed. I got a lot of complaints when I wasn't watching. Plus, you have one tent in the same spot, month after month, your campground doesn't look very good.

I didn't experience that last summer because we were so busy. I also changed my policy and went along with the rest of the local parks and said no long term tent camping. I raised my rates on tent camping to dissuade it.

There's still a part of me that wishes I can provide everybody with a place to live. Unfortunately, it just affected the other campers' experience. The environment I've built today is very welcoming, clean, family friendly.

Some campground owners complain that there are so many new campers brought on by the pandemic that proper etiquette has been a challenge recently. Are you experiencing etiquette issues at your property as well?

Oh definitely! If year one was a learning experience about homelessness, year two was a learning experience about etiquette. As the industry knows and has written about, we had an influx of new campers in 2020; as a matter of fact, the Massachusetts Campers Association shared a poster about camp etiquette because there were so many complaints.

For me, I would say the lack of etiquette was less of an RV issue then it was with my tent and cabin sites. The only concerns we had with new RVs is if people came here for the first time, many would ask, "How do I back in?" because I don't have any pull through sites.

I had to tell people that they are on their own, or they can ask another camper because my liability would prevent me from helping with that. Truthfully, I've never backed in a camper myself.

There were many people coming here who had never camped. Having campers who are knowledgeable about etiquette was a tremendous challenge, even after I posted signs illustrating proper etiquette.

I still had people complaining about noise after hours. In fact, that's probably my biggest pet peeve about running a campground. People don't realize how much their voice carries outside. Even if you are just talking amongst yourselves, if I can hear you, you're probably too loud.

Walking through other people's sites was a big deal too. As a matter of fact, I'm investing in fencing this year to try to curb some of that.

Another thing I had an issue with was people taking lumber to burn from the surrounding trees. Even though I have signs, I saw someone try to burn through a tree trunk with a 13-inch diameter. The newbies just don't know.

Is there a particular skill you need to run a campground?

I would say customer service. People aren't going to stay here unless they have a good experience. Part of their experience is me. This is like running any other hospitality business. Everything else can be learned on the job.

Generally, the majority of this business is keeping people happy and making sure they have a good time. That could be by making sure that their campsite is ready for them when they arrive by cleaning the cigarette butts out of the firepit or helping them with things they need once they are here. The job is about problem solving in a professional manner.

I also try to make their stay memorable and special. I'll give you a couple examples. For the 4th of July, I went around to each of the sites and handed out miniature American flags to all the children. This gesture didn't cost me very much, and everyone really enjoyed it.

Another thing I started doing as a welcome amenity for people coming to check in was giving out freeze pops. I have a sign just behind the front desk, "Ask me about my free freeze pop." I think each freeze pop costs me a penny or two a piece. I kept them in a freezer right by the office desk.

What that did was allow mom and dad to focus on checking in and keep the kid(s) distracted. I didn't do it for that reason originally, but it was certainly an added benefit.

I learned a lot on the job, because I would make a mistake, and I would have to correct my mistake. So I learned the hard way. If I don't know something, I figure it out.

Conclusion

The Bonnie Brae Campground in western Massachusetts is a great destination for families looking to get away from it all. Dan, the owner, takes pride in his property and puts the customer above all else. He is eager to serve and excited to welcome new guests. Guests often leave with positive reviews regarding the clean bathrooms and how much the campground has improved with the new owner.

The surrounding area features many outdoor attractions like Mount Greylock, the Appalachian Trail and the Old Sturbridge Village.

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