Technology: Who, Me?

In some areas of my life I consider myself to be “old school” by today’s standards. I get up at 4 a.m., put on the coffee pot and then proceed up my driveway to retrieve my morning newspaper which arrives about the same time. This time, however, the newspaper wasn’t there! My immediate solution: I didn’t even hesitate to power up my laptop to access the newspaper online.

Already 12 years into the twenty first century, things sure have changed. Now, no matter where I’m at, I can read my daily local newspaper online and when I travel I don’t have to worry about all those newspapers piled up that I wanted to read but could never find the time. Old news is just that, old news.

I hate to admit, but in many ways while I was in business I fought technology kicking and screaming. I always wanted my business to be “personable” and felt like technology was encroaching on that. After some real soul searching however, I finally realized that my lack of embracement for technology was due to my resistance to change. I don’t think I am unlike many people, we are uncomfortable with change. The problem though was my customer had changed and I’m sure I wasn’t setting the pace, or even catching up at times with their needs.

When I finally got honest with myself, I realized that I was intimidated by all the new technology. That has changed and I can explain it something like this: It’s a lot like driving a car. You don’t have to know all the workings of an internal combustion engine to drive a car. You have to learn the rules of the road, make sure there is fuel in the tank, turn the key on, put it in gear and away you go. Of course brakes are important as well. Think about when you learned to drive compared to now and all the things that have just become second nature to you. Embracing technology works the same way.

To give you a few examples of how my perspective has changed, I had professional people design my website, just like it’s better to have a real mechanic work on my vehicle. That’s not to say I can’t do a few things myself, some things are better left to professionals. Not updating your website periodically is like cleaning your restrooms and thinking you don’t have to do that again until next year.

Another example of how my technology perspective has evolved is my support for online reservations. I never wanted to do a reservation system at my park, I wanted to take each reservation by phone and make it personal. Times have changed. Example: I had to go out of town and wanted to book a room. I got online and my first choice hotel didn’t take online reservations. I could have called them but instead went to the next location and was able to book online and in short order I had my confirmation number. It was quick & efficient. It probably doesn’t take many potential guests to make a big difference to your bottom line.

In an article “The Evolution of Online Travel,” Feb. 21, 2012, by Lauren Hockenson states, “this year, there will be 117.6 million online travel researchers in the U.S. — that’s 61 percent of America’s users. Of these, 98.3 million actually will book online.” While not industry specific for the RV Park & Campground industry, it tells me there is some real potential for our industry.

I was at a meeting recently and relaying a joke about this new all-inclusive website that you could go to solve all your social media needs called “You Twit Face” (referencing You Tube, Twitter & Facebook). It was a joke but somebody started writing it down.

Okay, social media is not as simple as that but it grieves me when I hear someone say, “I don’t have the time!” What are you saying? You don’t have time for your business? Look, times have changed whether we like it or not and the way our customers communicate have changed as well. The retired segment of our customer base took to the internet like a duck to water but social media is a staple of the next generations.

Performance monitoring service, Pingdom, has done another one of its mammoth social media studies that shows the average ages of social media users and it holds no surprises … more than half are between 25 and 44 years old, with only 5 percent under 17 and only 1 percent over 65. The absolute average across all social networks is 36.9 years old.

Find a way to develop a presence. There are numerous tools and strategies out there, including one that arvc provides. We launched the new GoCampingAmerica website in August and it is very user friendly for consumers. More importantly, it’s very easy for you to update your profile in real time, add photos and connect your social media. There are even tutorials available to assist you through the process. If you have questions please contact Jake Poterbin at jpoterbin@arvc.org.

I believe each of you will do one of two things. You will either find a reason or make up an excuse why you are not going to embrace technology or you will strive to utilize the many opportunities available to you and mold and shape them to fit your successful business plan. I have visited thousands of parks and never saw two that were exactly alike. That’s the beauty of technology and the web: it’s adaptable to a park’s character, showing consumers the character of the park and making the experience surprisingly personable.