Camping and caravanning are popular activities in Canada. The landscape and the dramatic natural views make outdoor activities a real attraction to tourists both local and international.
Depending on your approach to the business, you could also provide affordable housing to long term tenants. Some of the most successful RV parks provide a mixture of short- and long-term leases.
Running an RV park could be the ideal business opportunity! No matter what kind of park you plan to run there are advantages to buying an RV park!
Holiday RV parks
Running an RV park that caters to shorter-term tenants that come for holidays will require a lot of organisational skills. You will have to keep on top of bookings, market your business on a regular basis and be around to help guests more often.
The advantages are, though, that you will have some downtime out of season. This is an advantage for people who are looking for that particular lifestyle.
This type of RV park can be very lucrative in season if you have marketed well. If you have the right location, you should never be short of visitors.
Your location is very important. Your business needs to be near something that would attract tourists- a national park or a lake, perhaps?
Before buying an RV park, you should get to know whether there is RV traffic in the area. You could be the ideal stopping point for holidaymakers on their way somewhere.
Long rental RV parks
If you are closer to a town than to a tourist destination, this kind of RV park may be far more suited to your business.
Running this kind of business will require finding long term tenants. Before buying the right business, you will need to look at the contracts with tenants that are already in existence.
If there are already a lot of tenants on long term contracts, you won’t have to find new tenants. However, make sure that there still available lots so that you can expand and grow your business
Infrastructure
One of the most important tasks that you will have to do is keeping the infrastructure up to standard. This will apply to power supplies and ablutions as well as general upkeep.
When you are planning your RV park, don’t forget about things like drainage. You don’t want your residents in a foot of water after a storm!
Being handy with DIY and such will go a long way to making sure you can run a good RV park.
You will also need to keep the roads in and out up to a good standard. A lot more RV owners are looking for more than just the very basics. You can put yourself ahead of the competition by catering to this.
In order to provide superior service, you will also need to consider the other service you will provide
your guests. Will you have a communal area with access to kitchens and a dining area?
You could also have a bar and a shop on site that will give you the chance to make extra income. You will, however, need to have the correct permits and licences if you are going to do this- in particular the selling of alcohol.
Find out how others do it
The best way to know how you should do it is to visit other parks and see what you like and dislike about what they offer.
Make a note of what works and what doesn’t and make the necessary changes at your own park. Keep this in mind when you are looking for the right RV park to buy!
If you offer your customers a service that they love, you will find that people will return year after year. And, with an ageing population, there are plenty of retirees that will be traversing Canada in their golden years that you can appeal to!
