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\nIn what may be the first comprehensive effort to inventory the nation\u2019s supply of campgrounds and campsites, the RV Industry Association (RVIA) released a survey on May 18th in which the number one finding\u2014ta-da!\u2014is that campgrounds during peak season are basically full.<\/p>\n
No surprise, right? Yet, while the study\u2019s conclusions are unremarkable, what\u2019s interesting are their underlying data and the fact that it\u2019s taken this long to assemble them. KOA (Kampgrounds of America), The Dyrt and others have been taking the pulse of campground demand, and ARVC (the National Association of RV Parks & Campgrouds) periodically samples the universe of private campgrounds. But an overall understanding of the supply side of the equation has been so primitive that the industry hasn\u2019t been able to agree on even how many privately-owned campgrounds there are. (CHM Government Services, the Massachusetts-based consulting firm that did the RVIA\u2019s legwork, cited four sources that had a 40% spread in campground census numbers.)<\/p>\n
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Private campgrounds: The numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n CHM eventually settled on 12,290 private campgrounds, of which 12,118 have RV sites. Those campgrounds, it further concluded, have 1.4 million RV sites, yielding an average of 116 each. Yet apparently more than a third of the private RV sites can be considered \u201cprimitive,\u201d since only 63% have water and electric hookups; roughly half (51%) also have sewer connections.<\/p>\n Public campgrounds: The numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n Public campgrounds\u2014comprising federal, state, county and municipal facilities\u2014meanwhile, outnumber their private counterparts, at 15,119. But because on average they\u2019re significantly smaller, they have a total of only 607,014 campsites. More to the point, fewer than half of the public campsites\u2014264,861\u2014can accommodate RVs. Of those, only 30% have water hookups and a mere 8% have sewer connections. That latter statistic is especially telling at federal campgrounds, among which just 11.3% have dump stations.<\/p>\n The numbers combined<\/strong><\/p>\n Smushing all those numbers together and contrasting them with camper demand in 2020, the RVIA report concludes that overall campground occupancy during the summer was 76%, and 54% for the year overall. Keeping in mind that these occupancy figures are an aggregate that doesn\u2019t distinguish between weekends and mid-week, summer and winter (for the annual rate), or by region, that suggests that, yes, RVers overall would have had a helluva time finding a camping spot\u2014and even more so if they needed utilities, especially sewer hookups.<\/p>\n Boondocking by default<\/strong><\/p>\n The space crunch, according to Margaret Bailey, CHM\u2019s project manager for the survey, has been a significant factor behind the recent explosion of boondocking. Dispersed camping, she said, \u201cis partly a choice but partly a default\u201d because of a lack of alternatives. And while some significant amount of funding has recently been devoted to public campgrounds, that money \u201cis going to fix what\u2019s broken\u201d and not to expansion. Any growth in RV sites, she added, \u201chas to come on the private side.\u201d<\/p>\n An RVIA spokesman said he hoped the report will further encourage investors to view campgrounds as more than just a niche market. Campgrounds, he noted, are just another segment of the hospitality industry, comparable to hotels. Indeed, one of the study\u2019s more telling observations is that the national hotel industry had a peak season occupancy of approximately 70% and annual occupancy of 66% in 2019, the most recent year of normal operating conditions.<\/p>\n