It never fails: the minute you sit down with a cuppa to sort out the marketing, Site 18 trips the power.
Or the boom gate jams. Or someone rocks up in an 8-metre rig swearing blind they booked a drive-through site, even though your screen says they booked an unpowered tent patch behind the amenities block.
By late afternoon, you haven’t opened the website. The Facebook draft is still sitting half-finished. Three Google reviews need answers, and the email you meant to send about filling quiet cabins next month gets pushed back again.
That mental checklist doesn’t go away, it just nags at you while you’re scrubbing down the camp kitchen barbecues.
The reality is simple: you don’t have to tackle everything. Running a park means putting out the nearest fire first. You don’t need an extra ten hours a week to pretend to be an ad agency. You just need to cut out the busywork and stick to a few straightforward tasks that actually put vans on slabs and heads in beds.
If you’ve only got 20 minutes between check-ins this week, here are five things actually worth doing:
1. Fix the Mobile Booking Headaches
Most guests book on a phone, whether they’re sitting on the sofa after work or pulling into a rest stop along the highway. If your booking screen makes them squint, pinch-zoom, or fill in five pages of details, they’ll back out and go somewhere else.
You don’t need a whole new site to sort this out:
• Test it on your own phone: Turn off the office Wi-Fi, pull up your booking page, and try reserving a powered site. If it takes more than a minute, ask your booking system provider (Newbook, RMS, Seekom) to clean up the mobile view.
• Put site lengths front and centre: Add the maximum van length and slab size straight into the site name. It stops guests abandoning the page just to ring reception and ask if their rig fits.
• Give them a reason to skip the OTAs (Online Travel Agency): Put a clear note at the top of the booking screen: “Book direct for best rates and your pick of sites.”
2.Treat Google Maps as Your Front Window
Travellers on the road aren’t browsing travel blogs. They’re typing things like “dog-friendly caravan park near me with a pool” straight into Google Maps.
Your Google Business Profile will always do more heavy lifting for passing trade than your website’s home page ever will:
• Tick off your basic features: Open your profile and check that simple tags like Pet-Friendly, Dump Point, Laundry, and Wheelchair Accessible are actually turned on.
• Upload quick, unedited photos: You don’t need a photographer. Take a photo of the green lawns on a clear morning or the new gravel on the driveways straight from your phone. Google favours active profiles that look like real places, not brochures.
• Answer the usual questions publicly: Use the Q&A box on your listing to answer the stuff people always ask: gate lock-up times, big-rig access, and where to go if arriving after hours.
3. Answer Reviews Without the Headaches
Online reviews are just word-of-mouth with a star rating attached. Most people read them for two things: to check if the amenities are clean, and to see how management acts when something goes wrong.
You’ll always get the odd head-scratcher:
“Lovely park, but the seagulls stole our hot chips by the pool. Two stars.”
• Step away before replying: Getting annoyed online never changes the reviewer’s mind, and it puts off every normal person reading the reply later.
• Keep it brief and friendly: Say thanks for stopping by, keep your answer light, and leave it at that.
• Set up an automatic prompt: Let your booking system do the chasing. Have it text guests the morning after they pack up: “Thanks for staying with us at [Park Name]! If you had a good run, we’d love a quick review on Google.” A steady trickle of solid 5-star notes keeps the odd bad review right down the bottom where it belongs.
4. Post Real Moments, Not Stiff Ads
A lot of park owners spend hours trying to make polished promotional graphics for social media that end up getting zero traction anyway.
Campers don’t want glossy corporate posts. They want to see what a weekend at your place actually feels like: dogs on leads, blue skies, and kids riding bikes down the internal roads.
• Keep it rough and ready: A ten-second clip of snags sizzling on the camp kitchen barbecue or the sun setting behind the trees will do better than an edited flyer every single time.
• Share practical local tips: Post about the bakery down the road with the best meat pies, the local boat ramp conditions, or where to grab dry firewood in town. It shows you know the area and gives people a reason to follow you.
5. Send Short, Straightforward Emails for the Quiet Months
When the peak holiday rush winds down, past guests are your best bet for filling empty slabs midweek.
Sending a massive newsletter to everyone at once usually falls flat, but short, relevant messages get bookings:
• Split your contacts: Keep a list for young families and another for couples and grey nomads. Don’t send school holiday craft schedules to retirees, and don’t send winter midweek discount slabs to families tied to term dates.
• Ditch the fancy email templates: Plain text always works best. Keep it simple:
“G’day from the team at [Park Name]. Travelling through our way this month? The weather is cooling down and the fire pits are ready to go.
Book three nights midweek on any powered site and the fourth is on us.“
Pick Just One This Month
Trying to fix your entire digital setup while running reception, coordinating cleaners, and fixing water leaks will just burn you out.
Forget the long list. Pick one small job from this guide to tackle this week, whether that’s updating your Google details or clearing the clutter off your booking screen. Getting just one thing running smoothly will do far more for your bookings than a to-do list that never gets touched.
