RVshare’s Campground Partnership Program Off to Good Start

RVshare, an online community connecting RV renters and owners, reports a very successful kickstart to its Campground Partnership Program that launched in March of 2022. This program has already resulted in 200 campground partners being added since its launch.

“We offer delivery for our RV rentals and we were seeing an increase in that business,” said RVshare Senior Marketing Partnership Manager Steve Manes. “So, with this partnership program we are working directly with campgrounds. A renter can now book an RV through our platform and also find and book a campground, then work with the owner to have it delivered onsite to the renter.”

Once the renter gets to the campground, the owner meets them there, sets up and goes over all the functions of the RV. The owner then comes back at the end of the rental term, picks up the RV, cleans it and removes it from the campground property.

“It’s sort of a ‘glamping’ type of delivery business,” said Manes. “It’s approximately half of our business now. As we were experiencing this growth, we wanted to see if we could align better with campgrounds across the country and see how we can work hand-in-hand in trying to increase rentals, drive more campground bookings and convert some tent campers into RV campers at the same time.”

Mane said the goal was also to streamline the process and make it easier for the end user to make a campground booking and an RV booking.

“If you see an ad for renting an RV on a campground site, you can easily go over to RVshare and take care of your booking for an RV,” he said. “Or Vice versa, if you’re on RVshare and you come to one of the campground pages on our site and there’s a link to that specific campground, you can book an RV on our site and then you’re able to go over and book the spot with one of our partner campgrounds.”

The program is set up as a reciprocal partnership. “We provide free marketing to the campground and have created all this infrastructure at RVshare.com of campground pages across our site,” said Manes. “Every partner that joins our program, we create a listing for them on our site. We drive traffic to that listing through paid and SEO searches. We also include that listing in some of our other content on our site for every major market in every state.”

In return, RVshare asks the campground to promote RVshare with banners or badges on their websites that are embedded with a tracking link. When a user clicks through on that link and books an RV,  a commission is paid to the campground for the lead. Not only is this a free program for campgrounds, but it’s an opportunity for them to make some additional incremental income and grow their bookings.

“A lot of campground owners and operators are looking for opportunities to expand their user base,” said Manes. “This program allows them to do that and it also allows them to engage with our users.”

RVshare offers multiple types of rentals, from Class A, B and C to towables (towables led the list for the company at 68 percent of total rentals in 2022). Users range from beginners to experienced RVers. Similar to other peer-to-peer rental services, there can be cleaning and delivery fees on top of rental expenses. Rates may differ between weekdays and weekends, helping campground owners to fill midweek openings. This model has performed well in its inaugural year, and Manes predicts that the program will continue to grow.

“I think we have an opportunity to easily double the number of campgrounds we’re working with next year,” said Manes. “We’re also expanding our partnerships with state campground associations.” RVshare now has agreements with the Florida & Alabama RV Parks & Campground Association, Texas Association of Campground Owners, Campground Owners of New York, Colorado Campground & Lodging Owners Association, South Dakota Campground Owners Association, Arizona Association of RV Parks & Campgrounds, and Georgia Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds.

Source: https://rvbusiness.com/rvshares-campground-partnership-program-off-to-good-start/