This post will cover what you can expect as a subscriber.

Estimated time to read: 4 minutes

TL;DR:

Who am I? An operator of a growing portfolio of campgrounds and outdoor hospitality.
What is “Outdoor Hospitality”? Private tent and RV camping, glamping, marinas, and outdoor-focused landscape resorts/hotels.
What can subscribers to this newsletter expect? Weekly updates and insights from my outdoor hospitality business, as well as news and updates from around the industry.

1. Introduction to the Author

My name is Matt Whitermore and I live in Upstate New York with my wife and son. Over the last dozen years, my career has followed a winding path through commercial real estate finance and investments.

(My son Charlie and I outside one of our rustic camping cabins in NY.)

I started off working in acquisitions of small apartment buildings around Boston, MA. After doing that for a few years, I worked my way into an analyst role, supporting teams that financed debt and equity on all types of commercial real estate.

My journey as an investor started in 2019, with small apartment buildings in Upstate New York. I made a brief pit-stop in mobile home parks, flipping one deal (and inadvertently reaching out to some seasonal campground owners from leads I unknowingly scraped off of mobilehomeparkstore.com).

(The first house and real estate investment my wife and I purchased - in snowy Upstate New York!)

In 2019 and 2020, I found myself getting responses from seasonal campground owners on my mobile home park outreach. I had never considered campgrounds as a career path until then, but was intrigued. “Why not?”, I asked, and off I went to meet some of these owners and look at their campgrounds.

I was hooked! I loved the idea of traveling the country, visiting beautiful outdoor locations, and managing a portfolio of campgrounds.

A year later, in mid-2021, I closed on my first campground acquisition in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

(My wife, Cary, outside the tiny home on wheels we lived in at the campground for 3+ months)

Little did I know, I was SEVERELY underestimating the amount of work that would go into operating a campground. Luckily, I found myself in a business that I enjoyed and was able to adjust my expectations and recalibrate my path.

Since then, I have acquired 2 more campgrounds in NY and MA and joined forces with another campground operator to build a national brand and portfolio of campgrounds in beautiful, natural settings.

I hope you’ll stay tuned as I share my progress and learnings along the way!

2. What is “Outdoor Hospitality”?

The answer to this question is an evolving one.

My loose definition includes:

Private campgrounds - tent & RV camping
Glamping sites and resorts - one-off sites through professionally developed and managed resorts with glamping tents, yurts, domes, cabins, park models, etc.
Marinas - short- or long-term boat slip rental, potentially with add-on services like boat rental, fuel or repair service
Outdoor-focused “landscape hotels and resorts” - this is a relatively new category, and bridges the gap between glamping and traditional resorts.

There is some gray area here as far as what is a campground vs. glamping vs. a landscape hotel or resort. Many campgrounds now feature glamping sites. Some properties that are marketed as glamping probably rise to the level of a landscape hotel or resort.

Here are three important distinctions for people who aren’t intimately familiar with the campground or RV park industries:

Not all RV parks are campgrounds and not all campgrounds are RV parks.
RVs are recreational vehicles, not designed for full-time residential living. They are vastly different from mobile homes or manufactured housing, which are designed for full-time residential living.
Thus, mobile home parks are different from RV parks.

3. What can subscribers expect from Outdoor Hospitality Weekly?

(This is a repost from my weekly newsletter on Substack called Outdoor Hospitality Weekly, please subscribe at ohweekly.substack.com)

My goal for this newsletter is to share my experiences and learnings as I continue to build my business, with the newsletter hitting your inbox each weekend. I’ll share my frameworks, some “behind-the-scenes” updates from my projects, and interesting news and updates from around the industry.

Here is a sneak peek at some things I’m working on for the coming weeks and months:

The economics of RV parks, campgrounds, and outdoor hospitality.
Who are the top (and up-and-coming) players in campgrounds, RV parks, and glamping?
Deep dives on portfolios and recent years’ investment activity for top players in the industry (Sun Communities/Sun Outdoors, Equity Lifestyle Properties, Kampgrounds of America, Inc. and more)
Insights into the operational challenges and best practices within the outdoor hospitality industry (hiring, management, marketing, technology, budgeting, capital improvements, etc.)

That's all for this week! Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

Welcome to Outdoor Hospitality Weekly!

This post serves as an intro to the author and will cover what you can expect as a subscriber.

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