RV Industry Leaves Tampa Feeling Positive About 2025 – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
TAMPA, Fla. – The 2025 edition of the Florida RV SuperShow is in the books. North America’s largest retail RV show, the event celebrated its 40th anniversary this year and despite chilly temps and a rainy Sunday, the overall vibe among organizers, OEMs and suppliers was clearly positive.
Dave Kelly, executive director of the Florida RV Trade Association, organizer of the event held annually at the Florida State Fairgrounds east of Tampa, said the show, while smaller than recent editions, was still a hit among those in the industry.
“It was fantastic for four days and it was an absolute monsoon yesterday,” Kelly said this morning. “I don’t remember having a day where it rained that much. There would be a heavy, heavy wave. Then it would let up. Then it would sprinkle. Then we had the second and third waves that came through. When people wake up in the morning and its rainy out their plans change completely.”
Other than Sunday, however, the numbers were “just incredible. Saturday had 20,000-plus people. It was wall-to-wall. We had just about maxed out the public parking.” He surmised consumers, anticipating rain on Sunday, changed their plans and decided to visit the show on Saturday.
Overall, attedance this year was down from last year’s 75,123 with 68,612 passing through the turnstiles this year. In 2023, there were 79,813 attendees.
Even so, “From what I’m hearing, dealers and manufacturers were really happy with everything they got,” Kelly said. “It didn’t set any records or anything, but everyone I’ve talked to said they did very well.”
Kelly’s observations were mirrored by most dealers and manufacturers.
Ben Hirsch, COO of Campers Inn RV, a privately held 36 store-dealer network based in Jacksonville, Fla., had worked shows over the previous week in Pittsburgh, Tampa and Boston. And that said, his view of the U.S. RV market is clearly positive on the doorstep of 2025.
“So, for the shows that I’ve been to, it’s been pretty good,” Hirsch told RVB Sunday from the Boston RV & Camping Expo held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. “The customers are honestly very interested and some of the objections that they’ve had over the last few years aren’t as big of a deal right now, including interest rates. It seems like customers are well aware of the interest rates that they’re going to be quoted.
“And while they may have gotten a decent amount for their previous trade-in, they seem to realize that they might have bought during inflated pandemic pricing. So, most of them are aware that they might have some negative equity in their RVs.
“Bottom line, it feels more normal than the last couple show seasons, and that’s good. And as far as traffic goes, Tampa’s an outside show and it was very cold there, so they saw some slight decreases year over year from some of the numbers I saw, but with the weather that didn’t surprise me.”
Ron Fleming, the interim CEO of Tampa-based Lazydays RV, says traffic at his publicly held company’s Tampa Show display was off somewhat, a fact that he largely attributes to inclement weather, especially on the last day of the popular retail venue.
Also contributing to the 45-year-old, publicly held dealership’s Tampa performance, he told RVB, was the fact that a couple of his key OEM’s had limited display space based on the luck of the draw.
“Well, the attendance seems off a little bit,” said Fleming on Saturday (1/18), who’s dealership currently has 22 stores, seven of which are under contract to be sold to Camping World. “The numbers show a very slight difference from last year. We saw solid sales for the first four days. Sunday’s weather was unfortunate, but we’re fairly pleased with the products, presence and results that we had. We’re cautiously optimistic about the results going forward and as far as the kind of action and interest that we’ll see generated from the show.”
Another dealership with a hand in the Tampa Show was Nokomis, Fla.-based Gerzeny’s RV World, a family-held retailer that also owns Class B motorhome builder Coach House Inc. And Coach House Vice President Steve Gerzeny, who remembers warmly the post-pandemic spike in sales, says he could sense a positive change in outlook among showgoers due to the new presidential administration.
“Well, with the new administration coming in with the whole hope of the United States of America becoming a better country and being like it was,” he maintained, “it certainly has people more excited than they have been the past four years. So, I think that there’s going to be a lot more common sense in our industry as a whole.”
Inclement weather aside, General RV Center CEO Loren Baidas sees things going “very well” thus far this year with “lots of positive customer interaction and continued interest in the RV lifestyle and new products” for his 21 stores nationwide – seven in Florida – and the U.S. RV marketplace in general.
“I think customers, again, are actively looking, whether they’re new to the RV business or are trading in current RVs and looking for the next model up or the trade-in to get exactly what they want,” said Baidas, who attended the Tampa Show on behalf of his 63-year-old, Wixom, Mich.-based dealership.
“So, we did see a lot of activity on that, and I think between lending institutions and banks staying active and aggressive and customers still willing to put money down, those two factors are going to push the industry forward hopefully here in 2025.”
Baidas, overall, sees the industry as “flat or slightly up this year.”
Giving the Tampa Show exceptional grades was Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Blue Compass RV, which, according to Founder, CEO and President Jon Ferrando, “blew away” its all-time 2022 Tampa record by an impressive 20%.
“We were up 24% from 2024 even though attendance was down this year at the show,” said Ferrando, who appeared during the show in a Fox Business interview and felt there were several reasons for his 100-store dealership’s impressive showing.
“This year, we brought the most talented sales team we’ve ever had from across Blue Compass RV,” said Ferrando. “We doubled down to make sure all the displays were staffed up with Blue Compass talent and we also had strong support from our OEM partners, which always makes a difference. And the preparation, professionalism and sales energy from our teams from start to finish was equally impressive.
“Could have been even better if we didn’t have a monsoon on Sunday, but our teams in Blue Compass fashion hung in there and finished strong.
“We also had customers buying and willing to spend,” noted Ferrando, adding that the 175 products shown at eight displays covered a wide spectrum. “In fact, we sold 12 $1 million luxury Foretravels (Class A’s), which was a bright spot. But the real story was customers looking for great product at good values. So, we had excellent product that was at very good price points, and that equaled the magic formula.”
So, all things considered, it’s no surprise that Ferrando’s optimistic about the year ahead.
“I think there’s a lot of pent-up demand,” he maintained. “RV customers have confidence about the future, which is important when stepping into a large RV purchase, so we saw that in Tampa. And we’re also confident about our plan with our product lineup and the level of inventory that we’ll be stocking to drive sales increases in 2025 regardless of whether the industry is flat or up 10%. And I’m on the more optimistic side that the overall industry will be up in 2025.”
Manufacturers’ impressions of the show were mixed, but for the most part, they came away with a positive outlook for 2025.
Brian Clemens, general manager of Forest River’s motorized divisions, said despite the lower attendance and weather issues, “I felt pretty good about the traffic that was there. These were buyers. They came in asking all the right questions. We had people with lists trying to narrow down exactly what they were looking for. It wasn’t a matter of if they were going to buy. It was simply coming to the show to figure out what they were going to buy.”
He said the sense of urgency that encompassed the show during the COVID surge was gone, adding that several buyers came to check out units at the show that they planned to buy from their local dealers.
“They weren’t going to buy at the show. And obviously Forest River encourages buying locally and I think people feel good about that because they want service and they know buying locally gets them that,” Clemens said.
Class A gas sales were up significantly, he said, with Class Cs about the same as last year despite the lower atendance. Super Cs were down a bit, “but again, we had a lot of those buyers who wanted to go and buy local. But we had a lot of great conversations and we saw a lot of buyers who were there to narrow down their options and buy. All-in-all I was very happy with the show, the traffic and the actual conversations we were having.”
Ashley Bontrager Lehman, founder and CEO of Bristol, Ind.-based Ember RV, was pleased with results from the show and noted that even amid the torrents of rain on Sunday, “We had soe people out yesterday that bought, believe it or not. But mostly it was a ghost town,” she said.
Generally, she believed the traffic was a little lower that the past couple of years, but felt good about consumer confidence, which “seemed higher than last year, so that’s a positive. I felt we experienced an increased interest in our larger bunkhouses and our specialty bunk product enjoyed incredibly high interest, with our patent-pending EmberTrack reconfigurable sleeping storage system.”
She said consumers seemed to be looking for versatility and flexibility.
“That seemed to be another theme this year that customers were looking for, flexibility in their RVs, which was great for us, and I felt like they were particularly interested in special uses, for instance, like robust off-grid solar packages, and then the ability to obviously camp away from a traditional campground seemed to be still pretty popular, if not more popular than years past for us. And overall, I feel like for 2025, I’m feeling optimistic and upbeat, so I think we’re off to a decent start.”
Bob Cira, directory of sales and product development at Syracuse, Ind.-based. Travel Lite RV said his numbers were higher than last year’s at the show.
“We sold more this year that we did last year, and regarding the upcoming model year, we’re really confident we’re in the right segment, because the consumer seems to continually want smaller, lighter-weight, more affordable travel trailers,” he said. “We’re increasingly confident we’re in the right segment now.”
The show offered mixed results for Earl Williams, founder of Modern Buggy RV based in Edwardsburg, Mich., who said the show, from his perspective, seemed more suited to people who already own RVs and those looking for larger units.
He said he was “a little disappointed” in the show. It was Modern Buggy’s first Tampa show and he felt like overall traffic at regional shows like Minneapolis, Pittsburg or Charlotte, N.C., worked better for his smaller, adventure-segment units.
“Tampa is so spread out, you can have double the amount of people there and not even realize it,” he said. “Even talking to some of the other OEMs, I think some of them were disappointed in the number of units they retailed. I wish I had more exciting newsk to report that man, Tampa just absolutely just killed it. We sold units, we got units out. That was great, but Tampa felt like to me like more of a full-time camper show.”
He said many of the consumers he saw before the weekend were older and were in the market for larger units like fifth-wheels and motorized. Our units are smaller, aimed at “weekend warriers” and “we didn’t see a lot of those customers down there,” he said,
“We sold units, We got out as many as units as do at many shows, so I was happy with that. I ended up leaving there feeling good, but my expectation was, ‘Oh, it’s Tampa. It’s the SuperShow.”
Despite the mild disappointment, Williams said he sold units and got good feedback from consumers, so it set the stage for model year and allows him to “take notes from all those customers and potential customers and say, ‘OK, how do we make the product better. How do I turn next Tampa into triple the success?’”
