49 Days, 9 States, 15 Campgrounds: Our Summer Pulse Check on the Outdoor Hospitality Industry
We are home. After 49 days on the road, our driveway has never looked so good, and our laundry pile has never looked so scary. There is a lot to unpack from this trip, literally and figuratively, and over the next few weeks we will be digesting everything we saw and turning it into strategies you can actually use at your park. But before the lessons, let me tell you about the trip, because the trip itself is the data that helps us fuel and understand the state of the campground industry 2026.
Tracing Our 49-Day Journey Across America’s Campgrounds
This summer we camped in 9 states across 15 parks and campgrounds, plus one Loves travel stop, one moochdocking stay in a family member’s driveway, and two Walmart parking lots when the miles got long. Using our fourth grader’s Every Kid Outdoors pass, we visited Lake of the Ozarks, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Dinosaur Ridge, Twin Lakes Recreation Area, Moab’s Mill Creek Park and Arches National Park, Zion National Park, Mt. Charleston, Kaibab Lake, and Grand Canyon National Park. If your fourth grader has not gotten their pass yet, stop reading and go get it. It is free, and it made this trip possible for our family.
We stayed at state parks, national parks, KOA franchised parks, small family owned campgrounds, larger resort style parks, and everything in between. That mix was intentional. When you experience the industry at every level, from a boondocking night under the stars to a full amenity resort, you get something no market report can give you: a real pulse on outdoor hospitality, taken one campsite at a time.
Riding the Mother Road During Her Centennial
On the way home we drove Route 66, and the timing could not have been more special. Route 66 officially turns 100 on November 11, 2026, and the celebrations have been rolling across all eight Route 66 states since the official kickoff this spring. The nostalgia along the way was off the charts. Vintage signage, historical markers, restored neon, small towns leaning proudly into their history. Being on the Mother Road during her Centennial year felt like being part of American history, and judging by the traffic, a whole lot of families felt the same way.
There is a marketing lesson hiding in all that neon, by the way. Nostalgia works because it connects a place to a story people already carry in their hearts. Your park has its own version of that story. More on this in a future post.
Watching America Turn 250 From a Campground Dog Park
Route 66 was not our only brush with history this trip. On the Fourth of July, we stood in our campground’s dog park outside Las Vegas and watched the America250 celebration light up the Strip: a fully synchronized, eight minute fireworks display fired from nine resort rooftops at once, all choreographed by Fireworks by Grucci for the country’s 250th birthday. Watching the entire skyline erupt in sync, from a campground, with our neighbors and their dogs and half the park gathered around us, was one of those moments we will be telling stories about for years. This is a big mile marker for our country, and being live at a campground for it just felt right.
And here is the takeaway for park owners: your campground is a front row seat. Guests were not just staying at that park on July 4. They were experiencing a once in a lifetime national moment from it, together. If your park sits near a fireworks display, a festival, an eclipse path, or any shared moment worth witnessing, that view is an amenity. Market it like one, build community moments around it, and your park becomes part of the memory itself.
What We Saw: The West Is Strong
Here is the observation that matters most for park owners as we think about the state of the campground industry 2026. Almost every single park we stayed at, with the exception of one in Utah, was nearly or completely full. Weeknights included. At least across the Western United States, demand for camping right now looks strong, and it looked strong at every tier of the market we experienced, from state parks to resorts.
The industry data backs up what we saw from the driver’s seat. KOA’s 2026 Camping and Outdoor Hospitality Report counts 52 million North American households camping in 2025, and the RV Industry Association is forecasting about 349,000 RV shipments in 2026, up 2.8 percent over last year. This is not a pandemic sugar high. This is a maturing industry with steady, real demand.
The Rental Wave Is the Story of the Summer
Big rigs are still everywhere on the road. But the thing we could not stop noticing was the sheer number of rental units. Cruise America was expected, but we also kept passing rigs from newer players like Indie Campers and Roadsurfer, brands we had never seen in the wild before this trip. And the data says this is exactly what it looks like: in KOA’s 2026 report, 48 percent of campers said they are very likely to rent an RV in 2026.
You know what a rental rig means? It means a family is test driving this lifestyle, many of them for the very first time. They are deciding, right now, whether camping becomes their thing or a one time experiment. We have been here before. During the 2020 and 2021 camping surge, our industry welcomed a flood of first timers and, if we are honest with ourselves, we did not do nearly enough to keep them. Many parks treated the surge like a windfall instead of a relationship. This time we know better.
“The fleet is anchored by a pandemic-era surge. Nearly half of all listings are model years 2020-2023.” altCamp.com
Every first time renter who pulls into your park this summer is a potential decade long guest. The parks that capture their contact information, welcome them warmly before arrival, coach them gently through the stuff first timers do not know, and follow up after checkout are the parks that will still be reaping this wave in 2036. If you want the step by step playbook for that, we just published our guide to campground email automation, and it pairs perfectly with this moment.
A Reality Check: Camping Is Stressful, and Your Guests Are Carrying It
Now for the part of the trip the highlight reel never shows. We spent roughly 75 percent of this trip in temperatures around 110 degrees. We had to evacuate from wildfires in the West. We got a flat tire outside Alamosa that turned into four new truck tires and new brakes. Part of our slide broke, thankfully internally. And there were the usual nonstop questions of sewer connections, water lines, and what that new noise might be. Add in the endless cycle of packing up, breaking down, and setting up again, and you understand why that meme about RV travel being “relaxing” is doing numbers on the internet right now.
Here is why this matters for you. When a guest rolls into your park, there is a decent chance their day looked something like ours. Hot, tired, stressed, maybe nursing a repair bill, maybe herding overtired kids. The guest experience you provide is not competing with a perfect day. It is competing with a hard one. Every friction point you remove, before, during, and after their stay, makes it more likely they remember the campfire and forget the flat tire. That is the heart of our Hook, Heart, Hospitality™ approach: hook them with your story, win their heart with how you make them feel, and deliver hospitality so smooth the stress melts off.
The before and after parts of that equation are exactly where email earns its keep. A pre arrival note that answers the questions they did not know to ask. A mid stay check in. A post stay thank you that lands while the marshmallow is still warm in their memory. None of that requires you to work more hours. It requires a system, set up once, working quietly in the background.
The Highlight: Visiting Our Clients in Real Life
The absolute best part of this trip was pulling into our clients’ parks, experiencing the stay the way their guests do, and seeing their operations with our own eyes. Our clients loved it, and honestly, we loved it more. There is no substitute for walking a property, sitting at the campfire, and understanding firsthand what makes a park special. It is the whole reason Martrek Digital exists as campground marketing by campers, and it is something we will keep doing every time we are on the road. This is also the spirit behind our Roasted Marshmallow Method™: every park has a unique story, and you cannot tell that story well from behind a desk.
What We Observed at the Pump: The State of the Campground Industry 2026
One practical note for anyone advising guests on trip budgets this summer: fuel costs varied wildly on our route. The cheapest regular gasoline we personally paid was 3.89 dollars per gallon in Texas, the most was 5.35 dollars per gallon in Arizona, and across the whole trip we averaged around 4.75 dollars. Those are our receipts, not a national statistic, but they square with what guests kept telling us at the campfire. Fuel is a real line item for traveling families right now, which makes the value of a great stay matter even more once they arrive.
What Happens Next
We will be turning the lessons from these 49 days into content, mastermind sessions, and client strategy all season long. If you take one thing from this recap, take this: the guests are coming, many of them for the first time, and the parks that treat this summer as the beginning of a relationship instead of a transaction will own the next decade of this industry.
Want help making sure the first timers who find you this summer come back next summer? Explore our campground marketing services or reach out and let’s talk about your park. And if you have not yet, join us at the free Roasted Marshmallow Method™ Mastermind on July 23 for Inbox to Campsite: Email Strategies that Drive Repeat Bookings.
