ARVC CEO Discusses Journey & New Progression Of Issues At National Convention In Fort Worth, Texas
The growing texture and market structure of the RV industry continues the widespread expansion of the outdoor hospitality industry. Paul Bambei, the current CEO of ARVC (National Association Of RV Parks & Campground, understands the need to stay ahead of the curve, innovate but also address the needs and concerns of park owners from tiny houses to wi-fi. Bambei sat down with The Buzz at the national ARVC convention in Fort Worth, Texas to discuss operational issue, the balance between national and state and his continuing journey.
The Buzz: Can you speak about what is currently the most important issues to you concerning ARVC and its continued growth?
Paul Bambei: My answer to your question of what's important to me should be important to everybody which is industry unity. Unity is a word that gets tossed around a lot especially in the election cycle that we just went through. America might not seem very unified right now but that is a whole different conversation. But our industry I think is unifying around ARVC and I know having been a camper for the last 15 years myself and going to small campgrounds, whether they are out and rural [or not], it is really easy to say "I am kind of disconnected from big city life. I don't really care to be connected to them anyway. I run my business out of here for a reason. I really want to get away". But in a stand of community, these people need to feel connected. What I try to do is give them a reason to feel connected. It can be a dollars and cents reason...and the benefit portfolio of our suppliers is a great way to start doing that. If you're a small park and you offer propane, and if you're not taking advantage of our propane discount…I just talked to a park up in Maine that has about 160 sites...he didn't realize that he needed the ARVC discount for propane and yet once he signed up for Suburban, which is the name of the provider, he realized that he saved $10,000 a year so it is really easy to discern that "Hey...I'm small and I have to pay 3 or 4 hundred dollars in ARVC dues and it is just not worth it to me"...you have to be able to discern what the other side of that looks like which is "I can save a lot of money through the ARVC programs". And it just goes on and on with regards to how you can save.
The Buzz: Can you talk interaction between the state and national level associations?
PB: We call them partnering states when they have dual membership that is at least 75%. Most of them are at 100% but in the last year we cleared it at a layer in the middle that allowed that 75 to 99% dual membership level to exist. And that is done just to breed flexibility really. The states that always had that one or two member group who said "I just don't have the money to spread around everybody so I am going to pick or choose one or the other,” they can do that now. But the relationship with the partnering states is good. I get along with all of them individually. They know they can call me. I will give them a call back immediately on whatever their issue is. We'll work with them. JoAnn from New Jersey is a great example. We had a few ripples in the relationship over the past year and they weren't sure at what level they wanted to remain a partner state. And I think the more they thought about it, especially as a board, they realized unity was important and they stayed as a partnering state.
The Buzz: Can you speak on the awareness of the RV power pedestal issue which was very important and crucial to the membership in the last year?
PB: The pedestal issue is simply the national electric code which our industry is needing to understand better than it probably does. It affects our businesses....all things electricity related sooner or later are governed by the national electric code...and so there is this thing called Panel 19. We sit on that panel and represent our views. Again it is another advocacy role of ARVC. You have to take a position when you see something that is going to negatively impact our members. And this particular issue was brought up by someone else on the panel who said "I think there needs to be, for safety reasons, a main breaker on every pedestal". Of course, we already have the 50, 30 and 20 amp breakers built into the pedestals. So when this new thing came up, it started gaining momentum. We did the math of it and there are about 6 to 7 hundred thousand pedestals in the parks we represent and we figured this was going to cost about 100 bucks each to install. Do the math on that. That is about 60 million dollars of impact that could really hurt the pocketbooks of our members. So we went to battle and successfully put that issue off in this cycle. Doesn't mean it can't come back and it probably will.
The Buzz: Can you talk about the evolution of your journey as CEO of ARVC?
PB: Obviously when you come from the private sector, speaking for myself here, I dealt with dollars and cents, profit and loss issues constantly, and what I have tried to impact in any campground owner or manager out there is that they are a small business person first and foremost. And it is an onerous position to be in this country right now because so many of our government laws and regulations don't make that an easy road to hold. It is just tough. Part of the evolution for me has been trying to find a way to relate to the campground owner whether it be small, medium or large...that they have a PNO responsibility…and I think this is something they already intuitively know. But through their relationship with ARVC, we can improve that posture. We can improve their bottom line.
The Buzz: Standards and expectations have also risen...
PB: Jumping back to our discussion about public affairs work, we used to have this thing called the "model code" and it was a homegrown document that helped our members understand what could be important when they interacted with local authorities as far as operating issues...water quality being an example. We realized pretty quickly about 2 years ago, that home brewed code wasn't working real well because the guy on the other side...the authority that had the jurisdiction would say "Well...the statute-standard...you guys invented it!" What we ended up doing was linking into this thing called NFPA...the National Fire Protection Association...because it is the recognized code for not just things that involve fire protection in your park but many many other things. Our logic was very sound: if we could get into that code things that were important to us, we had a nationally recognized standard that anybody out there...a fire marshal...a tax assessor...that we could point to and say "It's been accepted nationally therefore you should accept it as well. So that's a standard that was important to us…but it doesn't just happen automatically...you have to have people that are on the NFPA standards boards and we do. This is stuff the common campground owner probably doesn't understand exists. It is all going on behind the scenes. But it is important that they understand it because someday they may have to use it and ARVC is there to protect them with it.
Tim Wassberg
A graduate of New York University's Tisch School Of The Arts with degrees in Film/TV Production & Film Criticism, Tim has written for magazines such as Moviemaker, Moving Pictures, Conde Nast Traveler UK and Casino Player. He enjoys traveling and distinct craft beers among other things.
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ARVC [National Association Of RV Parks & Campgrounds), the leader in outdoor hospitality, is the only national association exclusively representing the interests of private RV parks and campgrounds in the U.S. We are deeply committed to serving the needs of our 3,100 members