The campground business captures people’s imaginations like no other business.
Many, in fact, leave positions in the corporate world and other occupations for the opportunity to own and operate their own campground or RV park.
Even as the economy changes and institutional investors make headlines with their purchases of existing parks, it’s still possible for husband and wife teams to purchase and operate existing campgrounds and to develop new campgrounds from the ground up.
But as James and Yara Guest, of Kingtown RV Park in Nacogdoches, Texas have discovered, trying to develop a campground from the ground up is no easy task, particularly when both husband and wife already have demanding, full-time jobs. At 48, James works 60 hours a week as a property tax attorney for eight school districts, eight counties and 18 cities and water districts throughout East Texas.
Yara, 46, works full-time as a consultant for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston and Stages Theatre, her latest assignments in a 20-plus-year career in nonprofit management that has included stints as president and CEO of the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the Texas Gulf Coast and Louisiana and several senior management positions with the American Heart Association.
“I have expertise in everything from development and fundraising to board management and engagement, operations and finance,” Yara said, adding, “I can manage and run an entire nonprofit.”
Despite their busy work schedules, the Guests managed to design and build the first phase of Kingtown RV Park on a 13-acre site on the forested northern shore of Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas this year. They opened their park with 31 RV sites and one rental cabin in September.
James is in charge of park design, managing their contractors, and their park host, who lives at the park. He also troubleshoots issues and focuses on developing relationships with experts who can help the Guests continue to develop their park. Yara oversees marketing, promotion and park bookings in addition to establishing relationships with chambers of commerce and visitors bureaus.
“I’m hoping to retire in the next five to 10 years,” James said, adding, “My future is to work at the RV park.”
Yara, for her part, said their park’s location is beautiful and that Lake Sam Rayburn is one of the best white bass fishing lakes in the country. But developing a campground while already working a full-time job is no easy task, she said.
“I’m not going to lie. It’s been tough,” Yara said. “This is a work in progress as we try to navigate. Our work/life balance is off, but communication is key. We haven’t perfected the art of communication. So the best advice is communicate regularly so that we don’t have too many misunderstandings, but that’s going to happen. So (one has to have) a lot of grace and patience. For us, it also means putting God at the center of it all. We are only blessed by Him.”
Yara said both she and James have very strong entrepreneurial spirits, which have led them to pursue different career opportunities and to develop a variety of different skill sets over the years. In fact, before they built the first phase of Kingtown RV Park, James and Yara guest lived their own unique odysseys that took each of them around the world.
James, 48, was born and raised in Houston, served four years in the Marine Corps, earned several certifications in information technology (IT) and landed lucrative assignments as a civilian contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he lived and worked for five-and-a-half years, from July of 2004 to January of 2011.
“At first I was working for companies that supported the U.S. military and the State Department,” James said. He later built Internet cafes for U.S. troops who were fighting in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, including Fallujah and Ramadi. But while working as a civilian contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan was exceedingly dangerous, the lucrative assignments also gave James the financial resources he would later use to put himself through the University of Houston Law School upon his return to the U.S.
Yara, for her part, was born in Cairo, Egypt and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents at age 4. Her father worked as an entomologist for the Egyptian Department of Agriculture but decided to relocate the family to the U.S. after making a trip to visit family members who settled in Lawrence, Kan. Her father was subsequently hired as a researcher for the University of Missouri in Columbia, which became Yara’s hometown, and later the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
But even though she grew up in the Midwest, Yara’s parents ensured that she never lost her native fluency in Arabic, sending her to Arabic school on Saturdays and Sundays in Columbia as she worked her way through the U.S. school system.
Yara earned a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia and worked as a reporter for KOMU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia, and later for a magazine company before discovering her interest in nonprofit work.
But while both James and Yara have developed successful careers in a variety of demanding professions, learning how to develop and operate a campground has proven to be more challenging than they thought it would be.
“The biggest surprise for me was the buildout,” James said. “I located all the contractors. I even dug trenches and water lines. That’s not my specialty. But I had to learn about trenches and building roadways and water remediation. How do you maximize the number of 35-by-60-foot spaces in a three-acre area? There were a lot of challenges with the design and the cost and working with contractors.”
Yara said she has been surprised by the amount of work required not only to build but to operate a campground.
“It’s more work than we anticipated, and we don’t even have that many people there,” Yara said, adding, “I didn’t realize the importance of things like Wi-Fi and what’s involved with that. I didn’t realize how important some of the amenities are or how different amenities attract different types of people. I also didn’t realize how much is involved in marketing an RV park. It takes a lot of time, just promoting the park.”
Yara said they initially thought they would be successful simply building the park in an attractive area.
“If you build it they will come,” Yara thought, but she later realized that developers of campgrounds need to create a vision for their park and think hard about the kinds of guests they want to serve and the amenities those guests will require.
“It’s not just, ‘If you build it they will come.’ It’s ‘What does your RV park offer to the RVer?’ ‘What does it bring to the community?’ We still have to determine who we are and what we want to be,” Yara added. “We ultimately do want to attract snowbirds. We also want to appeal to local, long-term campers.”
The Guests are attracted by the prospect of using their park as a way of economically revitalizing part of Nacogdoches County. Kingtown RV Park is located on a densely forested section of Lake Sam Rayburn. A boat ramp and a small convenience store are just a hundred feet away from the campground. Several hiking trails are also nearby, along with the beauty of nature. The park is midway between Houston and Dallas, and two hours from Shreveport, La.
“The ‘wow factor’ for us is the boat ramp,” Yara said. “Our park is also in a peaceful place. It’s where people can hear nothing but the birds chirping. People want the peace and tranquility that a campground offers.”
The Guests recently attended the Campground Owners Expo (COE) in Branson, where they took in seminars and networked with other park operators, who are giving them ideas on things to consider as they continue to develop their park.
Despite their steep learning curve, James and Yara already have important words of wisdom for others starting out in the campground business, which they base on their own experiences developing Kingtown RV Park:
Have a mentor: “I had three mentors that I used,” James said. “They all are current, existing or former county commissioners. They were kind enough to give me a recipe of how to build a park.”
Figure out your vision for your park: “I would advise people to sit down and decide what your vision is, who you want to be, and chart out a three- to five-year vision for your park. Based on what is happening in the community and with the economy, map out who you want to target, and then based on that, what types of amenities you will need to provide.”
Start small, especially if you are homegrown: “It’s OK to start small,” Yara said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Start with fewer RV sites and more rentals: “Rentals bring in more revenue than RV sites,” Yara said. “They are more popular. A lot of people don’t own RVs.”
Of course, there are consultants who specialize in developing market analyses and feasibility studies for aspiring campground operators. These consultants, who are often cited in Woodall’s Campground Magazine (WCM), can also provide input on developing a vision. But the Guests are new to the private park business, and like so many others who enter the campground industry after developing successful careers in other industries, they are learning as much as they can, as fast as they can.
In the meantime, the Guests are mapping out the next steps in developing their park in a place where bald eagles can be seen flying overhead.
“It’s so beautiful, so magical there,” James said. “With a last name like Guest, I guess it’s in my DNA to be a host.”
