Kampgrounds of America said that in the past four years, it has seen an explosion of new construction campgrounds. This dramatic increase points to the health of KOA and the camping industry as a whole, the company said.
Between 2000-2006, the Kampgrounds of America system didn’t add any new construction parks. But things began to change during from 2007-2009, when seven new campgrounds were added. New construction again ground to a halt when the Great Recession dried up capital and put plans on hold. KOA didn’t see another newly built park until 2016.
But in the past four years, the interest in new-build campgrounds has increased dramatically. KOA franchisees have opened eight new-construction campgrounds since 2017 and KOA currently has 12 parks either in the planning or construction stages. That’s the most since the early days of KOA in the 1960s and 1970s, when hundreds of campgrounds rose practically overnight across North America, the organization said.
“We really turned the corner four years ago,” said Larry Brownfield, KOA’s senior director of franchise development. “We started to receive a lot of inquiries from very qualified folks. Prior to that, I think I spent most of my time trying to talk people out of building a new campground and steered them toward buying an existing campground just due to the expense and the other challenges brought by permitting delays.”