Your campground is always looking for ways to stand out from the competition. One surefire way to win over guests is to make them feel special.

In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, Epsilon research indicates. That same research found that 87% would be more likely to do business with hospitality businesses if they offered personalized experiences— while only 64% of travel websites/apps are currently delivering personalized experiences very or somewhat well.

Here are a few ways to help you personalize your guest’s stay and make their campground experience even easier!

1. Give guests their own online portal.

After booking a reservation at your campground, a guest will probably receive a follow-up email confirming their booking. But this confirmation message is just that: a reminder of the information they already entered at booking. If a guest wants to make a change to their experience, they likely have to get in direct contact with the campground. But what if changing a date or adding an upgrade to their site/experience was easy for the guest to their account and adding the change themselves? 

It can be. Allow guests ownership over their travel experience by granting them access to a personalized, specific portal. Imagine if they could adjust their check-in/out time, add upgrades for their stay, view payment history, and more, all without having to call your front desk. At RMS, we believe in giving guests the freedom to manage their own reservations through a private portal, where they can also access Guest Portal Messaging to chat directly with your team for quick answers. Learn more about the power of streamlining communications in a guest portal here.

2. Personalize their web experience.

Wouldn't it be nice if your guests were served unique content to answer their questions when they visited your website? Instead of having to hunt for answers, the words on the page change based on the information they’re looking for. No, this isn't magic— although it might seem that way to your web visitors… It's something called smart content and is a feature that you can enable when you have a dynamic website. 

It could be something as simple as having your homepage greet the visitor by their first name in the header copy or changing your call-to-action based on a conversion the guest made the last time they were on your website. Curious to learn more about personalizing your website to your unique online personas and visitors? Read our post 5 Ways to Improve Your Hospitality Website, Inspired By Traveler Trends. 

3. Customize guest communications. 

We all hate getting an unsolicited email or an SMS message that’s not relevant to us— as if you were just some name on a contact list. You’re not alone in that frustration. Only one in four people think brands communicate with them appropriately.

To truly capture your guest’s attention, you need to say the right thing, at the right time, in the way they want to hear it! That often means using data about your guests to personalize their experience. 

Did you learn in a pre-stay survey that a guest is coming to your campground or RV park for a special occasion? If so, consider including a handwritten note mentioning it at their check-in, or sending an email with suggested ways to celebrate on your grounds. Small gestures go a long way.

We understand that sometimes with larger park systems, it's not always possible or scalable to leave small notes for every traveler. Don’t worry, there are other ways you can customize your communications in your marketing, guest services, and more. Here are some more great tips for improving your guest communication

4. Keep learning about your customers.

The more you know about your travelers, the more personalized and preference-driven experience you can offer. That's why it's so important to know who exactly is visiting your campground, for what, and how they are using your property when they stay. By understanding what your guests like and dislike, you can focus on improving areas that your visitors love while changing the things that they don’t. 

There are two prominent ways that you can learn more in-depth details about your travelers. The first is through surveys. Asking your customers directly for their feedback shows that you were interested in their experience and in improving it moving forward. Think of a few ways that you could automate your feedback experience, such as setting up a trigger to automatically send a “how did you enjoy your stay?” email after a guest checks out.

Other sources of data you can use to learn about your guest’s behaviors and preferences are campground property management system reports and other tools. For instance, if you noticed that a guest consistently checks in year after year to your campground in August, there might be a way that you can sweeten the pot for next year's stay. Automate your seasonal campaign to email them a few weeks prior to their anticipated stay about local events happening later in the summer, or send them a nice room upgrade for being loyal guests every August.

5. Trust an all-in-one campground reservation management system.

In many ways, personalization is only truly scalable through the use of a campground reservation management system. By leveraging a system that automatically collects data about your guests, you can enable automated communications with your guest. In a perfect world, a system like that takes the hard work out of personalizing experiences for past and future guests, so you and your team can focus exclusively on your current guests. 

But not just any reservation management system will do! You need one that will communicate with other important tools to keep all your guests' data organized and highly actionable. For example, you want a reservation management system that speaks to your customer relationship management (CRM) tool, in order to market to your website visitors, as well as your booking systems, in order to understand your guests’ lodging activity.

Thinking about upgrading your current campground reservation software? Here are six features every park management system should have.

Best Practices for Your Campground’s Marketing Strategy

One of the most strategic ways to enhance your guest experience is to personalize your marketing around your specific audience and their needs. 

In our Campground Marketing Best Practices webinar, Mark Koep, CEO and Founder of CampgroundViews.com, is here to explain all the ways you could be utilizing your marketing to create a unique experience for your guests.

He’ll discuss the importance of using quality media in your marketing, where to distribute your marketing assets, the best channels for communicating with your audience, tools for creating a seamless marketing plan, and so much more. Request your copy of the free webinar, today!