Your RV park occupancy rate is probably the first number you give when someone asks how your park is performing. We were at 85 percent last summer. We ran 70 percent for the season. And maybe that was true. But occupancy as a standalone number tells you less than you think, and in some cases it actively misleads you about the financial health of your park.
Here is why.
Occupancy rate does not tell you what you charged
A park running at 90 percent occupancy at $35 per night is generating less revenue than a park running at 70 percent occupancy at $60 per night. The math is not complicated, but the implication gets missed constantly.
Owners who track their RV park occupancy rate without tracking average daily rate alongside it are looking at half the picture. You can have a full park and still be leaving significant money on the table if your rates are below market. You can have a park that looks less full than your competitor and be outperforming them on revenue per available site because your rate discipline is better.
Your RV Park occupancy rate is a volume metric. It tells you how many sites were sold. It does not tell you anything about what those sites were worth.
Your RV park occupancy rate does not tell you what kind of guests filled those sites
Not all occupied sites are equal. A transient nightly guest at full rate generates very different revenue from a long-term monthly tenant at a flat rate that has not been adjusted in three years. A seasonal camper who booked a package deal at a discount fills a site on paper but may be contributing significantly less to your bottom line than the occupancy number suggests.
When you blend all of those guest types into a single occupancy figure, you lose the ability to see what is actually driving your revenue. A park that is 80 percent occupied with a heavy mix of below-market long-term tenants looks identical to a park that is 80 percent occupied with transient guests at premium rates. They are not the same park. The financial reality is completely different.
Your RV Park occupancy rate does not account for seasonality
An annual occupancy figure smooths over the peaks and valleys that actually determine whether your cash flow is manageable. A park that runs 95 percent occupancy in July and 15 percent in January has a very different operational and financial reality than a park with steady 55 percent occupancy year-round, even if the annual average works out similarly on paper.
The number that matters is not your average RV park occupancy rate. It is your occupancy by month, tracked against the revenue each of those months actually produced, so you can see clearly where your cash flow is being generated and where it is not. That monthly picture is what tells you whether your reserves are adequate, whether your slow season strategy is working, and whether your peak season pricing is capturing the revenue available to you.
The number you should be tracking instead of RV park occupancy rate
Revenue per available site night, sometimes called RevPAS, is the metric that actually tells you how your park is performing. It combines occupancy and rate into a single number that reflects real financial output rather than just volume.
If your RevPAS is growing, your park is improving. If your occupancy is growing but your RevPAS is flat or declining, you are filling more sites but not getting paid more for them, which usually means your rates are not keeping up with your actual demand. That is a revenue management problem, not a success story.
Track RevPAS monthly. Compare it to the same month in the prior year. Watch the trend. That number will tell you things about your park’s performance that the RV park occupancy rate alone never will.
What this means if you are buying a park
If you are evaluating an acquisition and the seller leads with the RV park occupancy rate as the primary performance metric, slow down. Ask for the monthly revenue breakdown. Ask for the average daily rate by site type and guest category. Ask for the revenue mix between transient, seasonal, and long-term tenants.
A seller who can give you those numbers has a park that is being run with financial discipline. A seller who can only tell you occupancy is either not tracking the right metrics or does not want you looking too closely at the ones that would tell a more complicated story.
Occupancy is not a vanity metric exactly, but it is an incomplete one. The park that wins is not the one with the most sites filled. It is the one generating the most revenue per available site with a cost structure that lets that revenue flow to the bottom line.
Those are two very different parks. Make sure you know which one you are buying, or building.
Read this next: The Three Numbers That Expose Every Problem in Your RV Park Before It Costs You Money
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