Campground Management Blog

Hi folks,

I was recently in Colorado at the ARVC Business forum meeting. We meet twice a year and make recommendations to the ARVC Board. We, as outside vendors, bring a different view to some of the issues facing ARVC. The ARVC board does not have to take our recommendations or indeed even respond to them however lots of ideas and policies we have suggested have gone on to be adopted by the board.

It is a very loose group of mostly vendors and corporate suppliers and it can be very informative. Recently the most interesting thing I took out of the meeting centered around the discussion of A Class motor homes. With 4 out of the top 5 A Class manufacturers no longer in business there was some discourse as to whether the A Class segment of RV’s would ever return. Is the A Class segment dead? And of so why? These are the reasons we discussed:

• They are not on the top of the list environmentally. They are very large, use a lot of fuel and have a huge carbon footprint.
• They take up a lot of square footage in campgrounds.
• 30 amp used to be the standard but now 50 amp is and soon will be a 100 amp for some of these big machines. That is a lot of energy usage.
• They are not easy to drive and maneuver.
• In some cases people require off-season storage as the home owner as no room in the driveway. Whereas you can put a pop-up or tent in your garage.
• Some municipalities do not allow driveway storage (could be said of all RV’s).
• The society wide trend of stripping away the decadence in a time of recession, does not bode well with the A Class segment.