RVIA Committees, Go RVing Coalition, Hold Meetings in D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C. – Committee meetings, which essentially set the agenda for the RV Industry Association (RVIA) going forward, and a keynote presentation on the health of the nation’s economy helped RVs Move America Week get off to a productive start Monday at The Mayflower Hotel in the Washington D.C. Hosted by the RVIA and with approximately 215 RV industry insiders in attendance, RVs Move America Week continues today with additional committee meetings before culminating Wednesday with Advocacy Day, when participants will lobby Congress on matters of importance to the RV industry.

The Go RVing Coalition heard presentations from its partner agencies on the evolving demographics of its audience and the marketing methods to target those would-be RV owners.

Bob Wheeler

“One of the great opportunities of this coalition meeting is to go through some of the survey information and data that are driving the decision making within the industry and some really remarkable stats, which I had never seen before,” said Airstream President Bob Wheeler, who serves as the Go RVing Coalition co-chair along with Dan Pearson of PleasureLand RV.

“The average age of an RV buyer is 32, down 10 years in the last three years. I mean, that’s staggering and that speaks to both the dynamics of the pandemic, but also the work that Go RVing and others have been doing.

Wheeler also pointed to other demographic data, such as the country’s diversity that’s becoming more prevalent as well as the remote worker trend that is showing no signs of slowing.

“The strong desire for people to want to be able to work from anywhere certainly was sparked during the pandemic, but has continued on – especially with Millennials and Gen Z – to the point where it’s never going to go away for many workers. And it doesn’t need to go away. They want to be able to travel with their families and work from anywhere,” Wheeler told RVBusiness.

“All of these trends point to opportunities to the industry. We just have to get the product and the message right,” he continued. “We also had great feedback from the PR group about their marketing efforts, some of the media hits they’ve had, the way they’re messaging, the cost of an RV vacation is being so competitive compared to airlines and hotels and restaurants …

“So, just a great and finely tuned message there that’s very well produced and distributed. We’re hitting all the right talking points about the RV lifestyle and it really shows. There’s a lot of good momentum,” Wheeler added.

Other committee meetings were held by Standards Steering, Public Relations, Membership & Supplier, Emerging Leaders, Market Information and Park Models.

Winnebago’s Chad Reece, chair of the Public Relations Committee, said the group celebrated the many successes of the past year such as the recent Media Summit which was able to garner national coverage of RVing when invited journalists went RVing outside of New Orleans.

“Activities like that are just terrific,” Reece told RVBusiness. “But it’s also the other wins that we’ve had, from a perspective of national media attention and localized media attention, that have also been terrific.

“It’s great to get everybody back together,” Reece, added. “There’s so much talent on that team, both from a staff perspective and the committee itself. And it’s great to bring those minds together. And the committee work is so important because it allows us to gauge what’s going on, where we think we may want to spend our time and efforts moving forward so that we’re best prepared from a PR perspective. And it’s actually a fun process and very vital to the future of the organization.”

John Soard

John Soard of Woodland Park, the chair of the Park Model committee, said his group is more or less in “maintenance mode” after having successfully dealt with more hard-hitting issues in recent years, such as removing park models from HUD oversight.

“So, right now, our committee meetings are just basically what I would call a maintenance meeting, where we’re looking at any of the new proposals for code changes and things like that,” Soard explained. “If there’s an issue that pops up, we’ll discuss it.

“It’s a great group of guys. It always is,” he continued. “We always get along, and we usually discuss everything pretty thoroughly. So that’s kind of what it was today. Nothing really earth-shattering or anything really coming out of it, but just a good meeting with everybody here.”

For the first time, the Supplier and Membership committees held a joint meeting, which “actually worked out well,” said Mary Pouilot of Thetford, who chaired the meeting.

She said the membership discussion touched on dues including updating the categories and how frequently they should be revisited.

“And then, on the supplier side, we talked about data and what type of data is available to suppliers and how much research RVIA has done and that availability,” she said. “We talked a little bit about retail data and the future of that, and whether we’ll be able to work more on that.

“And then, lastly, we really covered the RV Aftermarket Conference in August, and just talked through what’s going to be happening during those days. So, it was a great committee meeting,” she concluded.

The opening day also featured an informative keynote presentation by Chief Global Economist Bernard Baumohl of The Economic Outlook Group.

In a far-reaching presentation, Baumohl suggested there was insufficient data to indicate the country would not descend into a recession through the rest of this year. Among other things, he pointed to a robust job market, the likely plateau of interest rate hikes, historically high levels of disposable income, historically low levels of household debt service and increasing willingness by consumers to gamble, which he said is the strongest indicator of discretionary spending.

Baumohl did acknowledge a drop in consumer sentiment in May, but assigned that to the uncertainty regarding the national debt relief negotiations.

There is a “generational change underway” with regard to consumers attitude toward travel, he said, as people who were incarcerated at home during the pandemic are now working remotely from home. They are looking for a change of scenery, and RVing and camping are an attractive option. In fact, he pointed out that, at $2.13 billion, RV parks and campgrounds enjoyed their best year ever in 2022.

Source: https://rvbusiness.com/rvia-committees-go-rving-coalition-hold-meetings-in-d-c/