Spotlight: Beachfront RV Resort's Marketing Tools

By Brynne Adamson

Although some recreational vehicle resorts are struggling this year due to COVID-19, general manager Laurie Wiley with the Beachfront RV Park & Resort shares how she's been using ResNexus marketing tools to keep growing and decluttering the business.

Wiley talked with ResNexus' Nathan Gawlik via telephone.

empty RV sites with hookups and seating areas

About the RV resort:

Located in Surfside Beach, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico, the Beachfront RV Resort has 400 feet of beach frontage that is great for sun tanning, swimming, kayaking, bodyboarding and camping. You can also rent a golf cart or Jet Ski directly from the resort.

The park and resort first opened in 2012 but was fully expanded in 2014. Ever since its opening, the large Beachfront Park has remained the only RV resort available in the Village of Surfside Beach. All of the resort's 58 sites are 66 feet long and come with full-service 30 or 50 amp hookups. Additionally, the resort has free WiFi and 24-hour security cameras for your convenience and safety.

How have the last couple of months been?

We've been busy. From the numbers, you can see it's been better than ever. I would like to think it's due to some changes we've made around the property. Of course, we're beachfront, which always helps, but our social media and our marketing have helped, too.

What specifically would you say you've done? What has worked and what hasn't?

We've used FaceBook quite a bit. Though, this year, we used the ResNexus marketing tools more than ever because I had more time. We were able to hire more people in the office (I was the only one there for the past few years), which gave me time to look into the marketing ResNexus offers.

I was able to get some of those promotional emails, and we implemented the text message feature you offer. That has been a big help. We just utilized some of those things you already had that we didn't look into before... All of those things helped.

Regarding those promotional emails that you've had over the past few years, how has that been working for you?

That text messaging where it sends out the automatic text after they leave, and they rate us one through five... The link to Facebook and the link to Google Reviews... All of that has been phenomenal. We've had it at our fingertips, but we never utilized it before.

With text, it looks like you started in June. What made you decide that now is the time to start utilizing the unlimited text messaging feature?

Up until May or so, I've been the only person operating our phone system, which operates on one cell phone. The phone had been ringing non stop; you couldn't talk on the phone too long. That prompted us to get some landline phones.

I really liked the text messaging through the cell phone. I liked being able to send messages through text and have that pop up in ResNexus. We hired more girls. One person can be answering the phone calls, and one person can be responding to text messages. That really helped us to manage the influx of calls.

Did your calls decrease when you started text messaging?

No, our guests on the property at that time would use the texting feature for themselves.

We have two companies: an RV resort and a golf cart rental company. If somebody calls about a golf cart rental and wants to know about pricing, we just text them over a picture of our flier that has our hourly and daily rates. This frees up our time on the phones.

Instead of spending 15 minutes on the phone with a customer and answering all their questions, we can just shoot them a quick text and correspond with them that way.

With your occupancy going up 12.5 percent over the past few months, has this timesaving helped out?

Yes sir, tremendously.

Key Findings

Average RevPar Increase Since using ResNexus: 23.62%
RevPar Increase from 2019: 67.34%

Average Occupancy Increase from 2019: 12.50%

Over 8500 text messages sent.

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