Bates International RV Blog

A leading privately owned chain of RV parks and campgrounds is branching out into the amusement park sector as part of its drive to become a major regional destination for families.

Morgan RV Resorts LLC, based in Queensbury, N.Y., in February purchased the Indiana beach amusement park and adjacent Indiana beach Camp Resort and Yogi bear Jellystone Park Camp-Resort near Monticello, Ind., from the Spackman family.  The two west-central Indiana parks contain a total of 1,000 camping sites, while Indiana Beach features a giant water park, sand beach, six roller coaster, shopping and restaurants.

The purchase gives Morgan 36 RV parks and campgrounds, four of which are Yogi bear camp-resorts.  The Company’s other Yogi Bear parks are in Mays Landing, N.J., Aurora, Ohio, and Grand Have, MI.

Morgan added seven parks in 2007 including Westward Ho Camp Resort in Greenbush, WS., Seaport campground in Old Mystic, CT, and Camp Coldbrook RV Resort in Barre, MS, and had contracts at the end of February to purchase five additional parks within the next five years,: said bob Moser, a partner with Bob Morgan in Morgan RV Resorts.

In an interview with RVBusiness, Moser acknowledged that the firm has been operating “under the radar” since it began acquiring RV parks in 2000 and especially over the past five years as it quietly built its RV resort business.

Morgan holdings are now located in Maine, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.  The company says it will be adding a resort in Colorado, its first park west of the Mississippi River, this year. 

Moser said he was surprised by the attention his firm received for the Indian Beach purchase:  The announcement was carried in at least 28 newspapers and countless electronic media outlets.  Now, the cats out of the bag, so to speak, and the partners welcome the recognition.  “We want to become the best managed RV park company in the country,” Moser said.

To that end, Morgan RV Resorts, which maintains a central call center for reservations at its parks and has adopted campground Manager software, hosted the manager of all its parks for a week-long training session in late February at its office in Queensbury.

Morgan, meanwhile, is coming off its “best year yet in terms of occupancy and revenues,” Moser said, and looks forward to another good year in 2008.

Moser said his company will make a multimillion investment in adding a new roller coaster to Indiana beach and will seek to acquire additional amusement parks.

For his part, Rob Schutter Jr., president of Leisure Systems Inc. (LSI), franchisor of the Yogi Bear parks, welcomed the latest Morgan acquisition.  “Morgan management appears to be very interested in getting into the various components of the outdoor recreation industry,” Schutter told RVBusiness.  “They are very committed to not only the camping industry but other recreation venues.  This fits into their long-range business plans.  We wish them well with their acquisition.”

The deal has been in the works since December when representative of Morgan learned about Indiana Beach through the campground industry and contacted the Spackman family, according to the Monticello Herald Journal.

At this point few immediate changes are in store for the Indiana Beach operation, according to Spackman family spokesman Tom Spackman Jr. “I feel this is a very nice fir for Indiana Beach because of their strength in the camping industry,” Spackman told the newspaper.

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Bates offers a wide variety of RV rentals, from plush Class A diesel pushers to Class C mini-motor-home.  Good Sam members will receive a 12% to 15% discount on RV rentals at all Bates’ locations in North America and online at www.batesintl.com.  For more details, visit the Bates online listing at www.goodsamclub.com/save.

If you’re ready to purchase a new motor home, consider participating in Bates’ revenue-sharing program.  Good Sam Club members can purchase a new RV factory-direct from a variety of RV manufacturers at a substantial discount saving approximately $5,000 to $15,000, depending on the RV class.  One of the fun benefits of the revenue-sharing program is that you can use your new motor home when you want in and place it in the Bates’ fleet when you don’t need it so you can earn rental income, tax advantages and business write-offs.  As a Bates’ RV fleet owner, you’ll have access to qualified RV renters and receive 50% of the rental and mileage revenue, and bates manages the details, which include mechanical upkeep, housecleaning and storage of your RV.

Bates was recently name by Entrepreneur magazine as on the of he Top 500 Franchises in the Unites States and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, on CNN television news and in numerous RV industry publications.

Our federal bureaucracy is finally coming to the end of a three-year process to decide what those little “RV Friendly” logos on highway signs will look like – and it doesn’t appear that the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) is going to please the 15 states that have started up their own logo program while the feds dithered.

The existing logos – 12-inch yellow circles with the black letters “RV” inside them – appear along with logos for retailers and the blue highway signs that you see as you approach Interstate exits to indicate they can accommodate RVs in terms of parking, turning radius and vertical clearance. 

Fifteen states, including Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, California and Tennessee, have adopted the RV Friendly program while waiting for the FHwA to make a decision on where the logo should be placed on signs and how large it should be.

A number of clubs and organizations, including the Good Sam Club, Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA), the Escapees RV club and the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA), don’t like that the federal highway folks want to make the logo two inches smaller – and want to move it a few inches to be inside the box with the business advertising rather than more visibly overlapping its border.  That will require the retail logo inside the frame to be smaller.

It’s all very arcane, but RVIA has set up a “grassroots” website (www.ract.com) to engage RVers with the federal government in hopes consumers will use it to fire off e-mails to the FHwA objecting to the new placement.  “The hope is that we’ll get tens of thousands of RVers to do that,” said Matt Wald, RVIA director of government affairs.

And even if the FHwA’s proposed placement becomes final, it’s not likely that the signs already in place will be changed any time soon.  States will have 15 years to comply.

If you’d like to rent an RV this summer for your big vacation, first take these questions for a spin:

How’s the gas mileage? It depends on the size of the RV and the driving conditions, but you can expect between 7 and 13 miles per gallon. (Additionally, some companies charge a fee per mile or offer mileage packages.) So a 652-mile trip between Tulsa and Albuquerque will run $522 round trip (fuel only), assuming 10 miles a gallon with gas at $4 a gallon.

What is the rent? In Tulsa, for instance, Cruise America charges around $721 for a one-week August rental of a standard-size RV that sleeps five people.

Do I need a special driver’s license? No, but for most rentals you must be 25 or older and hold a valid license.

Where can I go with an RV? Virtually anywhere. Tracks & Trails offers complete RV trip planning for the West, including rentals, reservations and itineraries.

Where can I rent one? Cruise America, Bates International Motor Home Rental Systems and El Monte RV have dealers throughout the country.