Below is a contribution from GMPT Member Lake Byllesby Park. For more information, please visit goodhuecountymn.gov/parks/byllesby_park/.…
Member Highlight: Lake Washington Regional Park & Campground
Below is a contribution from GMPT Member Le Sueur County, authored by Parks Director Tyler Luethje (tluethje@co.le-sueur.mn.us). For more information, please visit www.co.le-sueur.mn.us/Facilities/Facility/Details/Lake-Washington-Regional-Park-Campground-12
Lake Washington Regional Park and Campground is a 172-acre regionally designated park and campground owned by Le Sueur County on the shores of Lake Washington, about 15 miles north of Mankato. Within our campground, we have 28 electric RV sites, an electric group RV site that can hold 4 vehicles, and 3 primitive tent sites.
Audience:
Most campgrounds offer seasonal camping spots, so there are fewer and fewer spots for weekenders to camp at. At Lake Washington Regional Park and Campground, we have a seven-day maximum stay limit, and most of our guests only travel a short distance to camp. Last year, we had guests from 112 different cities in Minnesota and 12 different states. The average distance traveled was only 35 miles, with 50% of our guests traveling 0-25 miles.
Most campgrounds offer seasonal camping spots, so there are fewer and fewer spots for weekenders to camp at. At Lake Washington Regional Park and Campground, we have a seven-day maximum stay limit, and most of our guests only travel a short distance to camp. Last year, we had guests from 112 different cities in Minnesota and 12 different states. The average distance traveled was only 35 miles, with 50% of our guests traveling 0-25 miles.
By knowing our audience, we can spend the off-season months developing a marketing plan, designing outdoor recreation programs, and working with other groups, associations, and food vendors for our campground that fit the demographics of our guests. Both local businesses and associations enjoy partnering with our campground, knowing that they are also reaching a potential new customer right in their backyard. Since we only offer short-term camping and not seasonal, our weekends are nearly fully booked, but our weekdays often have openings. Rather than focusing on expanding our campground to fit additional weekend guests, we decided to focus on developing our park and creating additional outdoor recreation opportunities that will entice guests to stay with us for longer than a two-day weekend—arriving on Wednesday or Thursday instead.
This approach has helped increase weekday bookings, drastically increase day-use park visitors, and develop a better relationship with neighboring households and families. The locals in the immediate area have become a lot more receptive to our park and campground after we took an approach to developing our park rather than expanding our campground.
Reservations:
We want the reservation process to be as easy as possible for our campground guests and staff. From 2012–2021, guests had to call our campground host, who would record their reservation in a book. We would then need to trust that guests would get their check in the mail for their reservation, and once we received and recorded their payment, we would then have to generate receipts for it all. In 2022, we switched to an online reservation system, which has allowed our guests to make bookings at their convenience, eliminating a majority of our campground phone calls and simplifying our revenue stream to credit cards. It has also allowed us to collect email addresses so we can easily communicate with our guests prior to their stay.
The off-season is the time for parks and trails professionals to make changes like we went through between 2021 and 2022. We now spend the off-season making a few technical adjustments and discovering other underutilized areas of our software.
On April 1 of each year, we begin taking reservations at 8:00 am. In our early years, we would get 100 phone calls at 8:00 am and only be able to take one at a time, then spend the rest of the week returning all of the phone calls and writing down the reservations. With our online reservations, we now have 100 reservations made within minutes after 8:00 am, securing the money via credit card payments rather than hoping a check arrives in the mail. By 10:00 am, it is almost back to a normal workday rather than spending the remainder of the week making reservations.
Campground & Facilities:
Campground guests can start to camp with us, weather pending, at the beginning of April in self-contained units. As we get to the end of April, the real work for our campground staff begins as we turn on the water within our shower house, clean the facility, and make sure that everything is ready for an influx of guests over the next several months of our camping season. In our early years as a campground, we referred to our “campground season” as Memorial Day to Labor Day. As we have increased in popularity and returning guests, we now refer to our season as Mother’s Day in May through MEA in October.
As you are getting into the camping season, I would encourage you to take notes, receive guest feedback, solicit ideas from your staff, and think of other areas in which you could make slight adjustments for improvement within your campground. Reservations, guest management, customer service, facilities, camp and park amenities, programming, marketing, additional revenue streams—an endless list. This way, you can focus on being the best you can be for your guests in the current season and come into the off-season with the time, tools, and resources needed to properly implement changes for 2025.
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