For luxury RV Resort managers, it's important to stand out against the competition to attract more guests and reservations. Once you have an RV guest stay at your resort, how do you keep them coming back for more stays? Be sure to attract new customers and keep your current customers coming back over time.

1) Online Booking

Online bookings are becoming the norm in today's world, but for some campgrounds; it is a question of whether or not to take the leap and adapt. It has been estimated that less than 50% of all campgrounds offer online reservations, with this number growing every year. Online booking will bring more guests into your park as well as make life easier for yourself by increasing efficiency because the reservations calendar will be more easily managed.

Will it bring more business? Will it make life easier? Will it even be a good experience for guests? According to campground owners, yes.

2) Have Great Photos and Descriptions for Each RV Space and the Resort

You might only have 20 seconds to capture an audience’s attention before they leave your site and go to the next park or next listing on a channel booking platform. Photos should be inviting and visually engaging to genuinely capture your potential guest's attention in a short time. The best way to do this? Use strong images that highlight the community amenities, as well as picturesque shots highlighting what you have available at your destination! Hearthside Grove, a luxury resort in Petoskey, MI has a full carousel of professional photos for rv spots, and descriptions that help the guest envision a relaxing stay.

When photographing your resort, make sure to follow these steps to maximize your exposure for new bookings while producing high-quality images. 

• Take photos that provide visual context for the viewer. A good rule of thumb is to snap photos of the four corners of the outside of your property. Capture the entire building in a photo if you can. Inside your property, take many different views and angles of each room.
• Take at least 3 photos of the individual rv space, and 25 or more of the extra features, and even share a site map if available.
• Use as much natural lighting as possible, avoiding a flash for indoor photos, such as a game room, laundry area or kitchen. Turn on lights if needed.

3) Highlight all the activities at the RV Resort

The number one aim of your resort description is to entice potential visitors and excite them about staying at your property. As each resort is different, so are their descriptions, but the best way to ensure that they make a reservation with you instead of someone else or just keep looking around for other options on sites like Good Sam or  Campspot while completely forgetting where your resort was located in the first place (or even what it looked like). Would be highlighting all those things that make yours stand out from everyone else's: pool size? Putting green? Kids activities? Unique features guests have been searching for lately online! 

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for how to craft the best description, but you can play to your own strengths in order to provide guests with the most authentic version of your resort. This includes using the most relevant keywords for SEO purposes, so more visitors will come across your site higher in the search results. Tiger Run Resort, shares amenities and a photo gallery designed to showcase the options for the guest and differentiate from the local competition.

4) Highlight the Activities in your Market Area

RV owners traveling to resorts are definitely looking to you for the amenities and offerings of your resort, however, most guests are also excited to explore the area. Providing information on your website will show guests what to expect, and give the feeling of knowing the local secrets (and is great for SEO). With a broad perspective of the community, start listing the things in your area that will appeal to visitors, including:

• Beautiful or intriguing scenes in nature, including geology and wildlife;
• Fun things to do outdoors;
• Places to get to know local history and culture;
• Chances to see and interact with local art and artists;
• Festivals and events that celebrate local history, culture, harvest time, foods, music, or celebrities;
• Built attractions, such as monuments, amusement parks, zoos, or theme parks; and
• Local businesses and retail stores where visitors can shop or be pampered.

5) Once you have a Guest at your Resort Keep them Coming Back

In marketing, we say it is 7 times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to create a repeat customer. This is the same for guests at your resort! It’s very important to have a CRM for managing your guests throughout the booking process, but also to drive repeat visits.

First off, emails DO work for RV resorts. Most email campaigns to past guests get a 30-40% open rate. That is way higher than most industries that are lucky to get a 20% open rate. Depending on the offer, or “click incentive”, most resort emails generate a click-through rate of 15-25%.

Based on those numbers, here is a sample calculation:

• Email List: 5,000
• Opens: 1,750 (35%)
• Clicks: 350 (20% of the opens)
• That’s 350 visits to your website from people that have stayed at your resort in the past

Conclusion

As a resort manager or owner, it is critical to embrace marketing strategies such as these, just as all hospitality competitors will be doing. Taking steps to enhance your website, market to guests through images and compelling copywriting will have the added bonus of creating better SEO for your site, and thereby increasing potential guest visits. If you are looking for ways to start on the marketing journey for your RV Resort, set up a demo with our LiveRez team, we’d love to show you how to build an amazing and bookable website with our software, and then keep those guests coming back again!