We’re Back on the Road— Trade Show Season Is Here
There’s something that happens the moment you…
By Rachel Godbout, COO — Advanced Outdoor Management
There’s a version of this story that plays out quietly, and you don’t realize it’s happening until you’re staring at a slow July trying to figure out where your summer went.
A park that was booked solid two years ago starts seeing softer weekends. The phone still rings. Reservations still come in. But something is slightly off — occupancy is down a few points, average length of stay has ticked shorter, and the mix of guests looks a little different than it used to. You chalk it up to weather, the economy, a competitor down the road. You wait for it to sort itself out.
It doesn’t sort itself out. Because the problem isn’t any of those things.
The problem is that your guests changed, and you didn’t know until they were already gone.
Consumer behavior in outdoor hospitality is splitting in two directions at once — and if you’re managing both transient and long-term guests, you’re dealing with two entirely different markets right now, each responding to the same economic pressure in completely different ways.
Transient guests are shopping harder than they ever have. Inflation, interest rates, and general economic anxiety have made discretionary travel spending feel heavier — and that shows up in the data. Booking windows are compressing. Price comparison is up. Guests are checking your rates against three other parks before they commit, and they’re faster to cancel when something cheaper appears. The transient traveler who used to book and forget is now watching, waiting, and occasionally walking. That’s not a guest problem. That’s a market condition — and it requires a completely different response than what worked two years ago.
Long-term demand, meanwhile, is doing something almost opposite. Housing costs, economic instability, and the normalization of full-time RV living have created a growing population of guests who aren’t looking for a weekend escape — they’re looking for a place to land. Monthly and extended-stay inquiries are up across the industry. But these guests are shopping differently too. They’re not impulse-booking. They’re vetting parks more carefully — amenities, community, connectivity, stability of management, overall value for their dollar. The revenue profile of a well-managed long-term mix is one of the most stable things in this business right now. The question is whether you’re positioned to capture it — and whether you’ll know if you are.
Most park operators review their numbers in arrears. End of month. End of season. Year over year. That cadence made sense when the market moved slowly. It doesn’t anymore.
When you’re only looking backwards, you’re always managing yesterday’s problem. By the time slow occupancy shows up in your annual report, the window to do something about it has been closed for months. You’ve already lost the shoulder season. You’ve already missed the marketing cycle. You’ve already ceded ground to a competitor who was watching more closely.
The parks that are winning right now aren’t necessarily bigger or better-located. They’re faster. They read the signals earlier, adjust sooner, and compound those small advantages over time.
That speed comes from data — and more specifically, from having the right data at the right cadence and actually knowing what to do with it.
Most operators think they don’t have enough data. In reality, most operators are sitting on more information than they realize — it’s just not segmented in a way that separates what’s happening with transient guests from what’s happening with long-term residents. Right now, that distinction matters more than ever.
Here’s what we look at when we’re trying to read consumer trends at a property level:
Booking window compression or extension. When guests start booking shorter in advance, that’s not just a demand signal anymore — in the current climate, it’s often a price-sensitivity signal. Economically stressed transient guests are waiting longer to commit because they’re watching for deals, comparing options, or simply uncertain about whether the trip will happen. If your booking window is compressing and your lead time is shrinking, you may be chasing a guest who hasn’t decided to stay yet. That changes how you price, how you communicate, and how much flexibility you build into your cancellation policy.
Length of stay drift. A half-night drop in average transient stay is significant revenue — but average length of stay across your whole property can be misleading if your long-term mix is growing. An overall number that looks stable might actually be masking a drop in transient nights offset by more monthly guests. That’s a fundamentally different business than it was a year ago — different rate structure, different amenity demands, different community dynamics. You need to see the two segments separately before you can manage either one intelligently.
Lead source shifts. Where are your bookings coming from — and what type of stay are they driving? Transient guests are increasingly coming through OTAs and comparison platforms, which means your direct booking rate may be eroding even as total reservations look fine. Long-term inquiries are coming through different channels entirely — Facebook groups, word of mouth, community forums, direct phone calls. If you’re not tracking where your monthly inquiries originate, you don’t know which marketing is working for which guest, and you can’t invest accordingly.
Rate sensitivity by segment. Transient guests are more rate-sensitive than they’ve been in years. The guests who used to book without hesitation at your weekend rate are now comparing, waiting, or choosing a competitor whose price is $12 less. That doesn’t mean you lower your rates — it means you need to understand which rate tiers are converting and which are creating friction. Long-term guests are running a different calculation entirely: they’re comparing your monthly rate against rent, utility costs, and stability. If you haven’t revisited your extended-stay pricing structure recently, there’s a real chance you’re either leaving revenue on the table or pricing yourself out of a demand wave that’s actively looking for you.
Cancellation patterns. In a normal market, a spike in cancellations is a leading indicator of softness four to six weeks out. In the current environment, it’s also a price signal — guests who cancel and rebook at a lower rate, or cancel and go elsewhere, are telling you something specific about their economic headspace. Tracking cancellation rate alongside re-booking rate gives you a much sharper picture of whether you have a demand problem or a price-positioning problem. Those require very different responses.
None of this requires sophisticated technology. It requires consistent collection, consistent review, and the discipline to look at your transient and long-term numbers as two separate stories — because right now, they are.
It’s not getting it at all.
The operators I worry about aren’t the ones who are misreading their numbers. They’re the ones who aren’t reading them at a cadence that allows for course correction. Monthly reviews are a starting point. Weekly pulse checks on key metrics — bookings pace, cancellation rate, channel mix — are what give you the lead time to act.
Because here’s the thing about consumer patterns: they don’t send a press release. There’s no announcement that your core guest is starting to look for something your property doesn’t offer. There’s no alert when your weekend demographic starts skewing older or younger or more price-sensitive. There’s no warning when a new competitor has figured out exactly what your guests wanted that you weren’t providing.
There’s just a quiet shift in the numbers, followed — if you’re not watching — by a louder one.
The market isn’t slowing down — it’s splitting. The parks that thrive in the next three years will be the ones who saw both shifts happening, understood which one applied to their property, and built the data habits to respond before the numbers got loud.
You can’t respond to what you can’t see. Start looking.
About the Author
Rachel Godbout is the COO of Advanced Outdoor Management and has 18+ years of experience in the outdoor hospitality industry. AOM provides full-service third-party management for RV resorts, campgrounds, and glamping properties across the U.S. and Canada.
advancedoutdoormgmt.com · 1-800-579-9796
