Campground Management Blog

Hi Folks,

As is my daily routine, this morning I was up early riding the recumbent bike. I was getting my exercise and watching the doom and gloom news. I try not to watch the news as I feel like any other industry they need to sell product and they can’t do it with good news. However with all the turmoil on Wall Street I felt it was best to check it out in between sports highlights. So after seeing the details of the market slump and figuring out that I now have to work till I am 93 years old, I decided to channel surf as all males do. And what do I come across? The movie Wall Street at 6 am in the morning. What a brilliant piece of TV scheduling!

That got me thinking about Michael Milken and his x-shaped desk. I was also pondering the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” speech in light of the market turmoil. These last two days have been this generation’s Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken stock market upheaval. (Reminds me of how old I am).

I am wondering how this upheaval will affect the campground business or even the normal man on the street. Is this problem mainly confined to the guys on Wall Street? Indeed the economy is still in a period of growth albeit at glacial speed. The harried family man is more concerned about the price of gasoline then he his is about the financial ABCP default derivatives market. I am sure there will be some fallout at street level and the Chapter 11 lawyers will be able to buy another house to add to the 3 they already have, but for the life of me I cannot see it really impacting our business to a great degree in the rv and campground business.

Peter Drucker said one time , “Business is about building things and selling them”. Fairly simple and straight ahead. So my question is why didn’t these  brilliant minds at that top of these firms take step back and do that? Instead of creating a bunch of hopelessly complex financial instruments that brokers pushed out to the street without any idea of how they worked or the risk involved. As my buddy Harry says,” I am beginning to think that Wall Street is the only sector affected, by the mess they created for themselves.  Somebody at the top needs to get these huge financial institutions back to the basics (i.e for banks lending money to individuals and businesses, and for insurance companies to insure ordinary course stuff).”

People still need to take holidays. What better way to get back to the basics then go camping?Those are my thoughts for today. Your comments are welcome.