Campground owners put a lot of effort into the guest experience. Often, the details of how information is shared before and during a stay shape that experience.
During a recent CampLife webinar, Joe Duemig from App My Community shared how communication gaps can affect a guest’s stay. He noted that guests often lack the information they need to fully enjoy a park.
Many of those information gaps are easier to fix than you might think.
Helpful communication starts before guests pull into the park. Clear check-in instructions, after-hours procedures, activity schedules, and local recommendations all help guests arrive feeling more prepared. Joe Duemig suggested that timing is especially important when it comes to pre-arrival emails.
“Reaching out a week before the stay is typically a good time,” Joe said. “If you send communications right when they book, they are already getting other emails and might ignore it. If you do it a day before, it’s not enough time to plan their stay.”
Joe encouraged parks to help guests plan ahead by sharing information about activities, nearby restaurants, local events, and things to do before arrival. Giving guests that information early helps them feel more prepared and more excited about their stay.
Guests don’t automatically know where trash pickup happens, how to reserve the spa, where activities are located, or which information matters most during their stay. Parks live with these systems every day. Guests are seeing them for the first time.
Joe shared that the idea for App My Community actually came after his family missed important information during a camping trip. He recalled seeing a little train pass by and realizing his children had missed an activity simply because they didn’t know where to find the schedule.
“I had no idea that we were supposed to walk over to a bulletin board that’s 20 sites away from us to go check to see what the activities were,” Joe explained.
That experience highlighted a common challenge in outdoor hospitality: guests cannot act on information they never received.
Joe also pointed out that guests generally appreciate communication, especially when it’s useful and relevant to their stay.
“As long as communication is valuable to the guest, it’s not intrusive,” Joe said. “When they’re on site, they want as much information as you can provide them that’s going to make their stay great.”
Good communication also helps your park operations. On busy Fridays, check-in lines are often slowed down by repetitive questions.
“You have a couple hundred check-ins coming in, and three or four people want to know the best restaurant to go to,” he explained.
Questions about towels, trash pickup, activities, gate access, and local recommendations all take time away from the check-in process.
Giving guests a central place to access that information, through tools like App My Community, can reduce interruptions and shorten lines during busy arrival windows. It also gives staff more time to focus on actual guest interactions instead of repeating the same answers throughout the day.
Another theme from the webinar was activity turnout. Parks often put a lot of work into events, but still struggle with participation because guests miss announcements or can’t find the activity location.
Joe recalled one camping trip where his family arrived late to an activity because of confusing directions.
“The word they used in their activity printout was different from the word they actually used on their map for where the location was,” Joe recalled. “We missed the first 10 minutes of the activity looking for the place.”
Clear maps, reminders, and easy access to activity information help guests stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
Communication should not stop at checkout.
Joe shared several examples of parks keeping guests engaged during the off-season through small, creative touchpoints. One campground created an interactive Advent calendar for guests during December. Another used trivia and simple promotions around Thanksgiving to encourage engagement.
The goal is to stay in the minds of your guests between visits. These touch points can encourage future bookings, increase gift card sales, and help guests continue feeling connected to your park community.
One of the most practical ideas discussed was proactive guest feedback. Joe encouraged parks to ask for feedback shortly after checkout so they can identify issues early.
“When a customer does run into an issue, when a guest sees a problem, they can report it, and the park can fix it while they're on site,” Joe explained.
This gives your team a chance to turn a frustrating moment into a positive interaction before the guest heads home. Joe noted that this simple habit allows a park to “fix the negatives” while also giving them a chance to “dwell on the positives.”
Good guest communication doesn’t have to be complicated. Often, the biggest improvements come from helping guests find the right information at the right time.
The easier it is for guests to feel informed and prepared, the easier it becomes for them to relax and enjoy their stay. For campground teams, that can make a busy season feel much more manageable.
That’s part of the reason CampLife now integrates with App My Community. The integration gives parks another way to share updates, activities, forms, and guest information in one centralized place so guests can easily access what they need throughout their stay.
If you’d like to learn more about the integration or how other parks are using it, reach out to the CampLife team anytime.
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