By Dennis Macready This week I attended the first two days of the Pennsylvania RV & Camping show held at Hershey. The first couple of days are the "Trade days" where vendors set up their booths in anticipation of selling their wares to campground owners and in particular the traveling RV enthusiast. Starting today the show will be open to the public when all the action will start. RV dealers are quietly optimistic on the success of the show and can see some positive trends toward the end of the year going into 2010.
One of the first speakers at the conference was Linda Profaizer from ARVC along with Bill Garpow representing RPTIA who gave a very informal discussion on "Park Trailers as part of your Campground Inventory" to a small but very enthusiastic audience. Bill opened the discussion relating to where the Park Model and Park Trailer concept in campgrounds was heading citing the incredible acceptance overseas and in particular Australia where overnight cabins were accepted by the traveling public over hotel and motel rooms.
As the writer was involved in marketing the park industry and cabin accommodation in Australia I can vouch for Bill's comments. The overnight cabins in Australia offer full utilities, linen, cutlery along with televisions, not unlike any hotel or motel room. "Every day 20000 baby boomers are turning 60, those people want to travel and overnight cabin rentals are becoming extremely popular, this is a fast growing trend for that age group. The national average for overnight rentals is 5-6 nights" Linda said. Continued Page 2
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