Your campground or RV park staff are the lifeblood of your operations: ensuring your guests have an amazing experience at your property time and time again.
That’s exactly why your team deserves extra support. While you’re always looking for new ways to make the guest experience better and better, you can’t forget about your team who makes it all possible.
One of the best ways you can empower your property staff is by offering them learning opportunities to continuously grow within your company and in their careers. But supporting your team with additional education isn’t just a win for your employees: it also benefits your guests and your campground or RV brand at large. Here’s how:
Before we dig into all the ways you can support your campground or RV staff with additional learning, let’s talk about why creating a culture of continuous education benefits everyone.
Let’s start with you. By empowering your team with continuous education, you are helping your staff learn new skills that could help your campground or RV park stand out from the competition. For example, you may decide to adopt a reservation and property management system that streamlines your communication channels, so your team isn’t wasting time finding and replying to messages on various booking websites. This continued learning of a new tool saves your team valuable time and stress, reduces the chance of missed inquiries, and makes life easier for visitors and staff alike.
Your team is the face of your business, supporting your guests during every step of their journey with your campground or RV park. From when a potential visitor reaches out about booking all the way through to their checkout, your staff is primarily responsible for maintaining a superior customer experience. With continued learning and support, you’re allowing your staff to develop leadership, communication, and operational skills that can help to instantly improve the guest experience.
During the training process, you’ll often see your team member’s talents shine through. Here you can see who has the drive, passion, and skill to excel at your campground or RV park and look for opportunities to further support their growth. Not only will promoting them through your company ranks be an obvious career advancement for your staff, but it’ll also help you to recognize and leverage top-tier talent to improve your operations.
Investing in your team’s growth is another big way to build loyalty with your team. When your staff feels valued and supported in their career paths, they are more likely to stay with your company for longer. Employees are more likely to become advocates and promoters of your campground or RV park when they see you investing in them, giving them fuel to authentically vouch for your culture and depth of care.
Seeing the value of continuous learning for your staff? Here are a few ways you could give them the further education they deserve:
There’s nothing like bringing a few members of your team to an exciting conference dedicated to outdoor hospitality. The National Association of RV Parks & Campgrounds (ARVC), for instance, hosts an annual conference and expo in November. Industry-leading experts share their insights at booths and in breakout educational sessions — and it’s a highly acknowledged event all across the nation.
Individual states also celebrate their own expos during various times of the year. While some are specific to campground or RV park owners, consider sharing what you’ve learned with your team after the event by hosting a one-day learning recap of the most important highlights!
There are many online classes relevant to the hospitality industry that could empower your team to improve the guest experience and operations. Modern instructors understand that your staff members are busy, so they develop micro-lessons lasting under 10 minutes a module to keep your team both engaged in learning and productive at work. Even more lengthy courses can easily be spaced out over a few-week period. From management courses or specific classes around teamwork or guest services, treat your team to class!
Don’t underestimate the power of once-and-done workshops either, where your team can ask industry experts questions, discuss topics of interest, and more. Here’s a workshop hosted by the ARVC as just one example!
Encourage your team to subscribe to relevant industry authorities to stay up to date on the latest RV park or campground discussions. For example, The National Association of RV Parks & Campgrounds is a great source for catching important webinars, news on tradeshows and expos, etc. Remind your team to bookmark the ARVC Events Calendar or join their email list. Their blog is also a hub for best practices and news. Remember that ARVC is just one example of a leading source in the industry; share your favorite newsletters with your whole team so they can follow all of the action.
Trends within the campground and RV industry are always changing. Help your team stay on top of the latest changes by purchasing and sharing important industry insights and reports. ARVC publishes an annual Industry Trends & Insights Report as well as a RoundTable Report — as just a few examples of informative data sheets to share with your whole team. Don’t miss The National Park Service’s Campground Industry Trends Report or KOA’s Camping Report either.
Your property leverages important tools to make operations efficient and streamlined. But oftentimes, teams learn the basics of their RV or campground software without understanding the full capabilities it has to offer. You may adopt RMS’s reservation management system and elect to remind your team of all the ways they could learn more about the software — including self-guided online resources, free continuous support and training, webinars, ebooks, blogs, and more. Reach out to your software providers and ask them to share their learning resources with you and never miss an opportunity to help your staff grow.
The right reservation management system and provider should offer a world of resources to help your campground or RV park improve the guest experience and your staff’s day-to-day operations equally.
Ready to discover how the right reservation and property management system could take you the distance and help your team continually learn? Learn more about supporting your staff to transform your property operations in our How to Achieve Operational Excellence with a Reservation Management System ebook.