Latest / MC Fireside Chats, an Outdoor Hospitality Podcast / MC Fireside Chats - September 16th, 2026

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MC Fireside Chats - September 16th, 2026 · MC Fireside Chats, an Outdoor Hospitality Podcast

0:46
Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
0:48
Brian Searl: My name's Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground.
0:50
Brian Searl: I'm doing the show standing up today for a little bit, till my feet hurt anyway, 'cause it's a little chilly out here in BC, so I gotta walk around with my sweatshirt.
0:57
Brian Searl: It's not super cold.
0:58
Brian Searl: It's about 19, 20 degrees out here.
1:00
Brian Searl: So excited to be here with you guys again for another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
1:04
Brian Searl: We got a recurring guest here Casey Cochran, Robert Preston Jeff Hoffman, and then we got some insurance experts, John McMahon, one of our newest recurring guests here that's gonna be on the show once a month with us.
1:14
Brian Searl: So let's let everybody go around the room and briefly introduce themselves, and then we'll kinda kick it off here.
1:18
Brian Searl: Robert, you wanna start?
1:18
Robert Preston: Good afternoon.
1:20
Robert Preston: Thank you.
1:21
Robert Preston: Rob Preston, CEO of Unhitched and Climb Capital based out of Pensacola, Florida.
1:26
Robert Preston: We own and operate RV parks
1:30
Brian Searl: Feels like you're underselling yourself, Robert, but okay.
1:33
Robert Preston: That's all I got today, man.
1:35
Brian Searl: All right.
1:35
Brian Searl: Casey?
1:37
Casey Cochran: Yeah.
1:37
Casey Cochran: Casey Cochran, our VP of partnerships and business development at Campspot.
1:41
Casey Cochran: We're a campground specific PMS and a marketplace for campgrounds.
1:48
Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Casey.
1:49
Brian Searl: Ro- John?
1:51
John McMahon: Yeah, John McMahon vice president of operations for Camp Door County.
1:55
John McMahon: We're a high-end glamping type resort focused on nature.
2:00
Brian Searl: Welcome back, John, glad to have you here.
2:01
Brian Searl: Jeff Hoffman.
2:03
Jeff Hoffman: Jeff Hoffman from Camp Strategy.
2:05
Jeff Hoffman: We're located in Sandusky, Ohio, and we pretty much have years of experience in the campground business and would love to work with all campgrounds.
2:18
Brian Searl: And you're rocking social media too, Jeff.
2:19
Brian Searl: You got some good content you're putting out there.
2:22
Jeff Hoffman: I'm trying, if I don't move forward, I just get old, and you keep reminding me how old I am.
2:27
Brian Searl: I don't know how you...
2:28
Brian Searl: I still, I get old whether I move forward or not, so I don't know how you figured that out, but and to our insurance guys, who would like to go first?
2:36
Peter Lovering: I'll go first.
2:37
Peter Lovering: I my name's Peter Lovering.
2:38
Peter Lovering: I'm head of business development for Signa- Signature Park, and we specialize specifically in customized insurance for RV parks, campgrounds, glamping resorts, and lodges.
2:52
James Grant: And my name is James Grant.
2:53
James Grant: I'm the president and CEO of Signature Risk Partners.
2:56
James Grant: We are based in Toronto, Ontario and a specialist in the commercial insurance space.
3:02
James Grant: We insure golf courses craft breweries, wineries, city social athletic clubs, and of course RV parks and campgrounds right across Canada.
3:10
James Grant: And I have the pleasure of working with Pete Lovering every day.
3:15
Brian Searl: Awesome.
3:15
Brian Searl: Welcome, guys.
3:15
Brian Searl: Appreciate you all being here.
3:17
Brian Searl: So we were having a good discussion, I think backstage before the show started about talking about, a little about the insurance market, and I think where I wanna start here is maybe from the perspective of Robert or Jeff
3:28
Brian Searl: or even Casey, who talks to a lot of people, or John for his glamping resort, whoever wants to start, like what is your view of, as an owner/operator or as someone who's talking to these properties, the current state
3:37
Brian Searl: of the insurance market?
3:39
Brian Searl: Is it hurting you?
3:40
Brian Searl: Is it worse than it was a few years ago?
3:41
Brian Searl: Is it better?
3:42
Brian Searl: Is it different?
3:42
Brian Searl: What's changed?
3:43
Brian Searl: The perspective of that before we get into the tangible behind it.
3:48
Brian Searl: So is there anybody who wants to volunteer to start?
3:54
Robert Preston: Sure, I'll jump in there.
3:55
Robert Preston: So certainly we still have some multi-family assets as well that we looked at.
3:59
Robert Preston: And we, in the Gulf Coast, Florida, a lot of the hurricane-affected states, we got crushed, from an insurance premium perspective.
4:08
Robert Preston: '23, '24, and you see a lot of the, the global, more of the global commercial real estate issues that are happening right now, insurance is a big driver of the credit crunch on a much larger level than RV
4:24
Robert Preston: parks.
4:25
Robert Preston: So certainly we saw the same type of rates that came in there.
4:28
Robert Preston: And then last year, frankly, '25 was, It felt it felt good because the rates came down a decent amount.
4:34
Robert Preston: 10, 15% generally across the board from what we saw in the portfolio.
4:38
Robert Preston: And '26 held with even for most of our parks actually, a slight discount from '25 to '26.
4:45
Robert Preston: And now of course we're in the process of looking at renewals and stuff across the board.
4:49
Robert Preston: So certainly it's, we're, my opinion is holding our breath to see when the rates will start going up again, the premiums will start going up again, which we're hoping it doesn't.
4:59
Robert Preston: It's becoming more challenging to find carriers from our perspective that are willing to be in this space.
5:06
Robert Preston: So that in itself, I think is causing some pricing.
5:10
Robert Preston: And the other part is, when the policies come with a lot more exclusions that are a lot more, I hate to say the word tricky, right?
5:21
Robert Preston: But essentially you're paying more and there's a lot less coverage that's being offered unless you're really thorough in digging into those, those policies.
5:32
Brian Searl: Do we have a sense of why the insurance rates dropped so much over the last two years?
5:37
Brian Searl: Because I wouldn't have thought that.
5:38
Brian Searl: That kind of surprised me when you said that.
5:40
Jeff Hoffman: My my theory is insurance companies make some of their revenue off of our rates and insuring us, but a good majority of their income comes from holding lots of cash and investing that cash.
5:57
Jeff Hoffman: They've done pretty well over the last couple of years, and that has afforded them to maybe discount rates a little bit.
6:06
Brian Searl: Because of the market, you're talking about their investments?
6:08
Jeff Hoffman: Yes.
6:09
Brian Searl: Okay.
6:09
Jeff Hoffman: Yep.
6:10
Jeff Hoffman: But what makes me worried is- what's coming in the markets could affect our longer term insurance rates going forward a couple years.
6:22
Jeff Hoffman: So we may have to-
6:23
Brian Searl: What's coming, Jeff?
6:23
Brian Searl: I can trade with one hand while I'm in the show.
6:27
James Grant: Can I jump in here?
6:28
James Grant: I think-
6:28
Brian Searl: Yeah, please
6:28
James Grant: you make a great point, Jeff, you're right.
6:29
James Grant: But at the end of the day insurers are always working towards, an underwriting profit.
6:34
James Grant: They don't look for a lot, but you're right, there's a lot of volume there.
6:37
James Grant: And so excess premium while we're waiting for a claim, waiting for that phone call to find out that a park got blown away or there was a fire or a theft they invest those assets.
6:46
James Grant: Yeah.
6:46
James Grant: And the markets have been very strong.
6:48
James Grant: That's helped.
6:48
James Grant: I think what's happened recently though is more of is the hangover from COVID.
6:53
James Grant: Recall a couple of years ago everybody panicked.
6:57
James Grant: We didn't know what COVID was gonna look like.
6:58
James Grant: We didn't know what it meant to the travel and hospitality industry.
7:02
James Grant: We didn't know if people were ever gonna leave their homes again.
7:05
James Grant: And so a lot of insurers raised rates or they just simply exited places where they didn't f- feel like they had a particular expertise.
7:13
James Grant: If your if your bread and butter was writing home and auto policies, you were focused on that during COVID and maybe pulling away from dabbling in a campground or dabbling in an RV park policy or a golf course.
7:25
James Grant: And so as a result, rates went up for a, a number of different factors as I just mentioned through COVID.
7:30
James Grant: And then as we came out of COVID and realized that hey that that really was just a giant psyop and we're back to normal again there's room in there for rates to come back down.
7:39
James Grant: So there's, part of that has been that repricing as that risk has been eliminated from the exposure.
7:45
James Grant: The other part I think in w- in, in this sort of lower rate environment that we're in today, they call it a soft market, has to do with just a flood of excess capital.
7:54
James Grant: People are looking for alternatives to just buying one of the big six stocks, they, there's only so much Amazon or OpenAI or whatever that you can own, and so as they look to diversify, insurance has been an interesting
8:07
James Grant: place for a lot of people who typically wouldn't invest in that space.
8:10
James Grant: So we've seen a lot of new capacity come into the marketplace which I think is a little bit dangerous.
8:15
James Grant: I think that's really a, it's a red flag for all of you guys because it's easy to get lured in by a discounted offer on your insurance renewal- only to find out a year from now that the people
8:26
James Grant: that, put the money up just have decided they don't like that space and they're leaving and you gotta go somewhere else.
8:32
James Grant: I think th- there are a lot of topics to touch on here.
8:35
James Grant: But largely, I think, the market is finding a, sort of a new floor, a new balance in here.
8:41
James Grant: Fortunately, there haven't been any cat losses in North America over the last 16 months or so, maybe even longer than that.
8:49
James Grant: So that's gonna work in everybody's favor as well.
8:54
Brian Searl: John, any perspective from your side?
8:59
John McMahon: Yeah.
9:00
John McMahon: Being a newer campground, one of the issues that we faced when we were building was the, the insurance cost and how is that gonna affect our ability to be competitive and- What amenities we could offer.
9:11
John McMahon: And one of the biggest examples is something as simple as a swimming pool.
9:15
John McMahon: What it would take just to have liability on that pool made it nonsensical.
9:20
John McMahon: We just immediately said, "No we can't do that," because of the risk and the high cost.
9:25
John McMahon: And for us to remain competitive, even though we are a higher end, we still have to remain competitive, and with the initial cost being so high, we really worried about what the future costs were gonna be, and so
9:36
John McMahon: we decided that we wouldn't touch the swimming pool side of it.
9:40
James Grant: Yeah.
9:41
John McMahon: Even minor things.
9:42
John McMahon: We have Swedish saunas, and that's really jacked our rates up, and it's just seems like the insurance industry is getting more sensitive to these kind of amenities that, have a very minor influence on people's health and safety.
9:56
James Grant: Again, can I jump in here again?
9:58
James Grant: Y- you raise another excellent point, and and it points back not to the insurance industry, but to personal injury lawyers and where these lawsuits are going.
10:07
James Grant: You cannot drive by a bus shelter or a billboard today without seeing an advertisement for a personal injury lawyer.
10:15
James Grant: And basically the, what they're telling the world is that there's no such thing as bad luck anymore.
10:20
James Grant: If you get hurt, it's someone else's fault, and they're gonna pay for it.
10:23
James Grant: And we've seen massive settlements.
10:25
James Grant: I could take you through dozens that Pete and I have seen just in our portfolio of parks across Canada where a, a seasonal guest jumps in the pool, they land in the middle of the pool and the shallow
10:39
James Grant: end's marked and the deep end's marked, but there's no marking at the middle of the pool, and therefore it's the park operator's fault that this person hurt their leg when they jumped into the, it was only five feet
10:49
James Grant: deep and it, and there wasn't a five-foot sign there.
10:51
James Grant: Whatever.
10:52
James Grant: And so we're seeing a massive increase in those slip and fall claims, and of course, those have to be absorbed by everybody.
10:59
James Grant: And so there's two ways to do it.
11:01
James Grant: One, you can raise rates with the anticipation that there's a claim coming or you can just exclude that activity.
11:08
James Grant: And a lot of the insurers have fallen on the latter side and decided we don't really understand what a steam sauna is.
11:14
James Grant: It sounds dangerous.
11:15
James Grant: It's probably hot in there.
11:17
James Grant: What if there's someone gets, a kid gets locked inside, right?
11:20
James Grant: What's that gonna look like?
11:21
James Grant: Is that a $5 million lawsuit?
11:23
James Grant: Is it $10 million?
11:24
James Grant: And so the easiest, the path of least resistance for insurers is just to exclude the activities
11:30
John McMahon: Yeah, that's exactly what we've seen
11:34
Casey Cochran: Is there, I guess my, my question I guess maybe probably to, to James in this is- At scale and understanding the campground space, I feel like we've been, we've had a thing on the software side where there's so
11:47
Casey Cochran: many people from either storage or the hotel space kind of coming into the campground space and for good reason, and for all the right reasons, and we've always explained some of the main differences between a campground and a
11:59
Casey Cochran: hotel, and a lot of it's just just industry understanding and whatnot.
12:05
Casey Cochran: It seems like from an insurance side of things, understanding the industry and understanding the risk is the most important-
12:11
James Grant: Paramount
12:12
Casey Cochran: at scale, right?
12:13
Casey Cochran: And but then there's also, is that a double-edged sword?
12:15
Casey Cochran: Because the more you understand some of that risk, you might understand the, the, the industry better than anybody, but that might make your rates more because you do understand.
12:23
Casey Cochran: Or is, is there a lack of understanding that is, hindering because y- does that make sense?
12:29
Casey Cochran: What, what-
12:30
James Grant: Yeah, it, it-
12:30
Casey Cochran: What side-
12:31
James Grant: That's exactly what we're going through right now in this soft market, right?
12:34
James Grant: There are a bunch of new entrants who are like, "How do we grow our insurance business overall?
12:37
James Grant: Oh, campgrounds, those, they're growing across the country.
12:40
James Grant: Maybe we should start insuring them."
12:42
James Grant: And of course, they're going into them blind.
12:44
James Grant: They don't really know how to rate them, and they may be taking on risk that they're not pricing properly.
12:50
James Grant: And so yeah, you get a good deal on your renewal.
12:52
James Grant: But then when one of your guests trips playing volleyball out on a grass field and the claim comes in and the, the claim is based on the fact that there was a divot in the grass that they weren't
13:03
James Grant: aware of, or that you didn't mark off, and there's a, a $250,000 claim, that insurer is gonna walk away.
13:10
James Grant: We've seen enough of them and we work with, hundreds of them across the country, and so I think we have a fairly good understanding of where the risk needs to be priced.
13:19
James Grant: From an owner's perspective, if a broker shows up with a quote from a new insurance company that you've never heard of, but it's 15% less than you're currently paying, you're probably gonna take that 15% discount at least for
13:31
James Grant: the year and hope everything goes right.
13:34
James Grant: And that's something that the industry, all industries are always up against.
13:38
James Grant: But you're right it's, you wanna make sure that you're working with a company who has experience in the space so that hopefully those kind of wild price swings can be smoothed out a little bit and you see a
13:49
James Grant: 2 or 3% increase assuming you haven't got got any claims.
13:54
Jeff Hoffman: Hmm
13:56
Brian Searl: Is there
13:56
James Grant: I think the, the other part, I think, Brian, sorry to interrupt you is,
13:59
Brian Searl: no go ahead
13:59
James Grant: is the use of waivers and the risk management piece, right?
14:02
James Grant: At the end of the day nobody's gonna be protected if they were negligent, right?
14:07
James Grant: If the lights are burned out by the staircase, if the railing fall, has fallen off if there isn't a sign that there's no lifeguard by the pool and something happens, then you're gonna get hit with a claim, with
14:16
James Grant: a loss.
14:17
James Grant: But if you're keeping up with all of those things in the park, and particularly there's a very powerful tool called a waiver, and I think every owner and operator should be using waivers making sure that every single person
14:29
James Grant: that steps on the property has signed a waiver because there are inherent risks that come along with staying at an RV park, right?
14:36
James Grant: Even if it is just a friendly volleyball game out on the, on a piece of grass in between sites or it's a swimming pool, or it's a canoe or a paddle boat or whatever, I think it's a really
14:47
James Grant: important process for all of the guests to go through, to read through that waiver, to be reminded that they are taking some risks by camping in the out- outdoors.
14:57
James Grant: And that has worked to really protect a lot of owners against some of these frivolous claims
15:05
Robert Preston: That's a great point
15:06
Brian Searl: So kind of the, the acknowledgement that there's risk in what they're doing around the campground helps.
15:11
James Grant: That's exactly right.
15:12
James Grant: And a reminder that we are, I am bringing my kids out into the wild, and I do need to be extra careful, and I do need to keep my wits about me out here.
15:19
James Grant: And things can go wrong sometimes.
15:22
James Grant: And the first question, I'll tell you, the first question that a personal injury lawyer asks anytime the phone rings, the very first question is, "Did you sign a waiver?"
15:31
James Grant: And if the answer is yes, they're gonna think twice about even taking the case on because they've gotta be out of pocket for all the expenses until there's a, until there's a settlement, if there is a settlement.
15:41
James Grant: And so they'll go with someone who didn't have a waiver versus someone who did.
15:45
Brian Searl: So the way out of this long-term- is for like us all to have humanoid robots that stop the guests at the door.
15:51
Brian Searl: Say "Please confirm verbally for me on video-
15:53
James Grant: Yeah
15:54
Brian Searl: you understand there could be a divot in the volleyball court before you-"
15:57
James Grant: That, that's it.
15:58
James Grant: Unfortunately we've gotten to that point in society now where, as I said, there is no such thing as bad luck anymore.
16:04
James Grant: If I fall down, someone else is gonna pay for it
16:08
Robert Preston: Yeah.
16:08
Robert Preston: But Brian, in es- in essence that's where you know this and Casey knows this, right?
16:12
Robert Preston: You build a lot of that into the reservation itself.
16:16
Robert Preston: There's a lot of automation that already exists that helps us preempt this by it's in your booking essentially.
16:22
Robert Preston: That is your waiver.
16:23
James Grant: Yeah.
16:23
Robert Preston: So-
16:24
Peter Lovering: We hear that one all the time too from owners is that, "Oh no, my seasonals.
16:28
Peter Lovering: We, it's in our wa- it's in our booking system."
16:30
Peter Lovering: But it's all the, it's all the son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws and their three, and the three grandchildren that are coming on site for the visitor's day.
16:39
Peter Lovering: Those are the ones you really have to worry about as well 'cause yeah, the booking person, but they bring five guests on every week for the whole summer.
16:46
Peter Lovering: Yeah.
16:46
Peter Lovering: And guess what?
16:47
Peter Lovering: They've brought probably 30, 40 people on the property with no waiver whatsoever.
16:52
Peter Lovering: So having something at the front desk that visitors, or at the gate that visitors can QR code scan as a waiver is a very useful tool.
17:02
James Grant: I think the other-
17:02
Brian Searl: There was something we used to use...
17:04
Brian Searl: sorry, just one second.
17:05
James Grant: Yeah.
17:05
Brian Searl: There's something we used to use a long time ago we used to recommend to people.
17:07
Brian Searl: We didn't really use it at our company, but called Smart Waiver.
17:10
James Grant: Yeah.
17:10
Brian Searl: It was electronic and you could, sign it as the guest but then also say, "I'm adding a dependent and three people," and enter their age and then they, the parent would sign for that.
17:18
Brian Searl: And so yeah, there's a place for that.
17:21
James Grant: Yeah, absolutely.
17:22
James Grant: I think the other problem or the other challenge that a lot of owners have these days is that they feel like their regular seasonal renters are their family, right?
17:30
James Grant: That we all know each other, and Joe on site number 22, he'd never sue me.
17:35
James Grant: He's a little crazy, but he'd never sue me.
17:37
James Grant: And unfortunately in this environment, Joe probably will, and it's heartbreaking to the owner and the operator because they take it personally, as they probably should.
17:46
James Grant: But the reality of the environment again, is that you gotta get a waiver signed by absolutely everybody
17:52
Brian Searl: So are there other ways that an owner can, like unorthodox ways-
17:57
James Grant: Yeah
17:57
Brian Searl: besides like adding the jumping pillow, right?
18:00
Brian Searl: Are there other ways that owners and operators outside of waivers can look to lower their insurance costs?
18:04
Brian Searl: Like twofold, like one, that, that question, and then two, on the back of it-
18:08
James Grant: Yeah
18:08
Brian Searl: is there data that people in the industry could collect for insurance companies like you?
18:14
Brian Searl: Yeah.
18:14
Brian Searl: Like maybe on a scale of KC with Campspot or something.
18:16
Brian Searl: I'm not saying Campspot wants to go get KC.
18:18
James Grant: Yeah.
18:18
Brian Searl: I'm just saying like on the level of that many parks, that would help you understand and price risk better to help lower premiums.
18:24
James Grant: Yeah.
18:24
James Grant: The, the pro- there's an old saying in the industry that a risk is only properly priced until there's a loss, right?
18:30
James Grant: So if I charge you five grand for the year and you don't make a claim, then maybe I overcharged you by $4,999.
18:38
James Grant: But if I charged you five grand for the year and someone fell down or something was stolen or something burned down, heaven forbid, and there's a 30 or $40,000 loss, then all of a sudden I gotta adjust my
18:48
James Grant: rate.
18:48
James Grant: And so the, the number one thing of course any owner or operator can do is really be focused on that risk management piece, which includes more than just a waiver, which includes probably getting outside eyes on the park,
19:00
James Grant: having a health and safety specialist come through once every three or five years.
19:04
James Grant: These, those are the people...
19:05
James Grant: You gotta be outside the box to see what's in it, right?
19:08
James Grant: You drive into your park the same way every day.
19:10
James Grant: You park in the same spot.
19:12
James Grant: Your office is in the same location.
19:14
James Grant: You might walk around a little bit, but until you bring in an outside health and safety specialist to do a, an informal kinda audit for you, you may not realize that the fire extinguisher behind building number four has
19:26
James Grant: been expired for two years, or that a light's burned out on a pathway that you never walk down, et cetera.
19:32
James Grant: So I think there are, a bunch of things that you need to be vigilint- vigilant on in terms of day-to-day operations.
19:38
James Grant: And then most importantly, it's your track record.
19:41
James Grant: Every insurer on the planet will offer you a discount the longer you go claims free.
19:46
James Grant: So the longer you can protect yourself and protect everybody else, the bigger that decrease is as you go through your renewals.
19:55
Brian Searl: Is there a place for technology here?
19:58
Brian Searl: And here's why I ask.
19:59
Brian Searl: I'll give you an example, right?
20:00
Brian Searl: We're, we're building we're big into data research at Insider Perks, but one of the products we're building right now is something we call, we're gonna call Photo Intelligence, that looks at all the campground photos on their website, social
20:10
Brian Searl: media reviews, user-generated photos from guests, analyzes it, gives a ton of stuff back.
20:15
Brian Searl: But one of the things that we noticed it was doing unprompted when we were building this is it was saying like, "Hey, there's a picture of your pool.
20:22
Brian Searl: We notice that you don't have a life raft," or whatever that thing is, right?
20:25
James Grant: Yes.
20:25
Brian Searl: Whatever you call it.
20:26
James Grant: Yeah, a life ring.
20:27
James Grant: That ring.
20:27
James Grant: Sure.
20:27
Brian Searl: Yeah.
20:33
Brian Searl: Is there a place for that to, like-
20:34
James Grant: Absolutely
20:34
Brian Searl: have AI do more audits that independently verify things that would help you lower premiums?
20:36
James Grant: I think it works twofold, right?
20:37
James Grant: It works in advance of your renewal as part of the submission to your insurance company to show that everything's there, and it probably works to protect you if you've got that kind of video evidence in the event that
20:48
James Grant: something does go wrong and you can actually prove that, here's a photo with a date stamp and the time showing that there was a ring or there was a sign there, or there, the light was on.
20:58
James Grant: It's, it...
20:58
James Grant: you can't argue with video.
20:59
James Grant: It's absolutely the best protection.
21:02
Brian Searl: Yet, you can't.
21:04
James Grant: Yeah, true.
21:05
Peter Lovering: It's funny you say that, but I can't tell you how many websites and social media sites I've been on where there's a guy, Christmas in July- With a bottle of liquor-
21:16
James Grant: Yeah
21:16
Peter Lovering: driving his,
21:17
James Grant: And a campfire in the-
21:18
Peter Lovering: driving his golf cart-
21:19
James Grant: in the bucket of the...
21:19
Peter Lovering: with a Santa hat on.
21:21
James Grant: Yeah.
21:21
Peter Lovering: And kids all sitting off the back of the of the golf cart, and it's on their, it's on their social media page.
21:27
Peter Lovering: It, it- And guess what if guess what if there's a claim?
21:29
James Grant: Yeah.
21:29
Peter Lovering: If something goes wrong, it's like look, you clearly, so it, it works also in reverse, is-
21:33
James Grant: We had a large one.
21:34
James Grant: We had a large submission from a park in Quebec, and and on paper the application looked great.
21:40
James Grant: They were, they had been claims free, et cetera, et cetera, and it was a very thorough application.
21:45
James Grant: And because of the size of it, we had to send it off to our insurance partners to get their participation and their okay.
21:51
James Grant: And one of them, to our surprise, came back really quickly and said, "No way.
21:55
James Grant: Not going near this thing.
21:57
James Grant: I'm out."
21:58
James Grant: And we said what's the problem?"
21:59
James Grant: And they said these guys are offering helicopter rides."
22:03
James Grant: It turned out that they had one of the guys who was a seasonal renter was also a helicopter pilot, and on Canada Day brought his helicopter to the park.
22:13
James Grant: I'm not sure if he gave a ride to anybody or not, but of course the park proudly posted photos of the helicopter sitting on the site.
22:21
James Grant: And so when the insurers were doing their, their 30,000-foot view risk assessment based on Google searches, they just decided that this park was giving helicopter rides and said no 'cause it wasn't disclosed.
22:35
James Grant: So yeah, it's, it's a really good point that parks, you're constantly trying to show how much fun it is and to post photos about all the great events and all the great things that happen at the park without
22:46
James Grant: probably ever thinking that an insurance underwriter from downtown Toronto might start combing through your website and uncover a photo like that and decide that either they don't wanna write it or that you need to pay a premium because
22:59
James Grant: of all these crazy activities.
23:01
Peter Lovering: Even on the s- most more simple one is the big water park, the water park bouncy type features that people have in their ponds and whatever.
23:10
Peter Lovering: The pictures on the website, nobody wears a life jacket.
23:13
James Grant: Yeah.
23:13
Peter Lovering: But the, in the stipulation of the underwriters, they've said, "Oh life jackets are required."
23:19
James Grant: Yeah.
23:19
Peter Lovering: Are life jackets required?
23:21
Peter Lovering: Yes they're required.
23:22
James Grant: Yeah.
23:22
Peter Lovering: That's what they'll say, but they ha- th- they c- they have that on their website with, oh, kids flying off from 15 feet in the air with no life jacket.
23:30
Peter Lovering: So what you put out there is what people see.
23:35
James Grant: Yeah.
23:35
James Grant: Exactly.
23:36
Brian Searl: I wanna change subjects just for a second slightly, because we already have enough trouble, 15 years as a marketing agency, getting people to send us pictures for their website, and you're just gonna make it even more difficult for
23:46
Brian Searl: us to do that thing.
23:47
Brian Searl: But I know Casey has to go here in a few minutes.
23:49
Brian Searl: So Casey, is there anything you wanted to add maybe...
23:51
Brian Searl: I know Campspot has a partnership with Sensible, for example, which isn't technically insurance, but a similar product.
23:56
Brian Searl: Is there anything that...
23:57
Brian Searl: or take it in any direction you want.
23:59
Casey Cochran: Yeah.
23:59
Brian Searl: Just to give you the floor.
24:00
Casey Cochran: No the insurance thing is such a, it's a wild space.
24:02
Casey Cochran: We did a pretty big deep dive into insurance at one point as something just to observe or to wonder if we wanted to touch on and we decided no, a resounding no.
24:11
Casey Cochran: But no, I think the, the, the weather guarantee, the weather insurance aspect of things-
24:15
James Grant: Yeah
24:15
Casey Cochran: We've had really good success with it, to be honest.
24:17
Casey Cochran: It's helped cancellation rates go down because people know that they have that.
24:22
Casey Cochran: If it does end up raining a certain amount of time they'll get the refund.
24:25
Casey Cochran: The park isn't responsible for it.
24:27
James Grant: Yeah.
24:27
Casey Cochran: But again, some people view it as, tacking on an additional fee, but s- some people view it as we're gonna book.
24:32
Casey Cochran: It might rain.
24:33
Casey Cochran: If it does, we get our money back.
24:34
Casey Cochran: If it doesn't, we enjoy our time."
24:35
Casey Cochran: So I think parks are protecting themselves well, better now with better cancellation policies and better rules to avoid the- the un- unavoidable world of weather.
24:46
Casey Cochran: But as we know, the, the weather people get it wrong a lot, and so it's better to just show up and see what happens.
24:52
Casey Cochran: And if you have a, a $15, $20 policy that's gonna protect your, four or five, $600 weekend or whatnot or whatever that is we've seen good success with that, little weather insurance policy.
25:03
Casey Cochran: And again, that's all metrics.
25:04
Casey Cochran: I think that's, a much easier game to tackle than-
25:07
James Grant: Yeah
25:08
Casey Cochran: than the one where you can have, multimillion dollar claims on a property where there's, it's just hard to, it's hard to come, it's hard to come back from those, right?
25:15
Casey Cochran: It's hard to have those that ma- make any sense.
25:17
Casey Cochran: It's the same thing with here.
25:18
Casey Cochran: We just had a hail damage come, came through here a couple months ago and, every single house down the, the block is just getting their roof replaced, and you're- and you're going...
25:29
Casey Cochran: and it's the same roofing company saying, "Hey, I just need to see five dents.
25:32
Casey Cochran: If you c- if I can find five dents on these shingles, you get a whole new roof," and that's their pitch.
25:37
Casey Cochran: And you're going this is fundamentally gonna cost everybody more money."
25:40
Casey Cochran: I had a, an ethical dilemma with it 'cause I'm like I don't think our roof has any issues.
25:44
Casey Cochran: If there are singles, if there are shingles off of it or if it actually needs it, otherwise, I it just doesn't feel right to just take a, a claim on a new roof.
25:52
Casey Cochran: So I think we're probably one of two houses on the whole street that didn't get a new roof, but but then you think of how much that costs from, a, a storm that went through that wasn't crazy.
26:01
Casey Cochran: It was, there was a little bit of hail but, everyone's cars are fine.
26:04
Casey Cochran: No, no one's getting hurt.
26:05
Casey Cochran: There's no broken windows.
26:06
Casey Cochran: But I can't imagine how many, in the hundreds of millions of dollars of roofs that got replaced just because a claim area took advantage of it.
26:14
Casey Cochran: So the insurance game is it's an interesting one.
26:17
Casey Cochran: That's all I got s- that's all I got to say about that.
26:21
Brian Searl: Yeah, and we'll kinda get into the nitty-gritty behind it, and thanks, Casey.
26:24
Brian Searl: I know you need to jump off in a second.
26:25
Brian Searl: Appreciate you being here for the first half.
26:27
Casey Cochran: Yeah, cheers.
26:27
Brian Searl: I, I think it's interesting, Jeff, like when you're working with Camp Strategy, when you're consulting on properties either to develop or renovate or all the different things that you do, what comes into your mind is the first question
26:38
Brian Searl: to you, and then but what comes into your mind as you're consulting on them, advising on them what to do, how to do it, how to build, how to prepare, that kinda thing?
26:45
Brian Searl: And then after you're done, Robert when you're going in to acquire a property or manage a property, what goes through your team's mind and processes as you're looking at is this too much risk, too little risk?
26:56
Brian Searl: Would I adjust this when I take over?
26:58
Brian Searl: Would I not?
26:58
Brian Searl: Those kinds of things.
26:59
Brian Searl: So Jeff first.
27:01
Jeff Hoffman: Okay.
27:02
Jeff Hoffman: When we walk an existing park, we'll go through and analyze what we think are liabilities that could be issues on, one, operations, and two, getting insurance.
27:18
Jeff Hoffman: A lot of little stupid things that you wouldn't think of are things that are gonna pop up if they send out an actual inspector to your property to walk around.
27:40
Jeff Hoffman: Whether you ha- you know, you gotta make sure that your covers are on your electric boxes, you don't have trip hazards, your lights are all working.
27:41
Jeff Hoffman: Very simple stuff.
27:41
Jeff Hoffman: But then when you get into the pools, you wanna make sure that everything is up to code, your numbering on depths you have all the safety equipment.
27:47
Jeff Hoffman: All of that is needed.
27:50
Jeff Hoffman: What we've actually started doing is we're going, we're working with a retired insurance person, and we'll be bringing them on to audit insurance policies and risk before we ask for, send it out for policies.
28:12
Jeff Hoffman: We kinda wanna do a deep dive to see where we had, may have some liabilities.
28:17
Jeff Hoffman: And then when we get the policies back, we have this guy re- review to compare apples to apples so that we make sure all coverages are the same.
28:29
Jeff Hoffman: Because if you go just by price- you, I d- I don't think in the 40 years I've been in business I've ever actually read an insurance policy.
28:40
Jeff Hoffman: That's where the trust factor comes in-
28:42
James Grant: Yeah
28:42
Jeff Hoffman: on your agent.
28:44
Jeff Hoffman: But not all agents are trustworthy There are some goofy little things in campground insurance policies, like if you don't have your individual boxes listed and you have a lightning strike that melts the wire, that's not covered on all
29:06
Jeff Hoffman: the boxes unless it's spec- specified in the policy.
29:13
Jeff Hoffman: There fire damage, one of my friends found out through the California wildfires that a lot of the stuff in the ground, his pool, a lot of things were not covered for fire damage.
29:26
Jeff Hoffman: It came as a very big shock to him- Because he was thinking he was covered.
29:31
Jeff Hoffman: That shock was to the tune of 1.5 million that wasn't covered.
29:36
Jeff Hoffman: It I'm not an expert in insurance.
29:39
Jeff Hoffman: Never have been, never will be.
29:41
Jeff Hoffman: I know that you have to have certain coverages, but I'm not, as I say, an expert, and I think when it comes to looking at insurance to make sure you're covered, you're, you should at least once in a
29:56
Jeff Hoffman: lifetime have somebody review your policies.
30:01
Jeff Hoffman: As- attorneys are good, but if you go by them, you'll never get insurance- because they'll look at every, every issue in that policy.
30:12
Brian Searl: And at the bare, at the very bare minimum-
30:14
Jeff Hoffman: My son-in-law works for an insurance company, so I know how he thinks.
30:18
Brian Searl: And at a very bare minimum, you as a campground owner, everything's getting more expensive, right?
30:22
Brian Searl: But at the very least, this does not replace a lawyer, as you're saying, right?
30:26
Brian Searl: But at the very least, just upload your insurance policy to ChatGPT and say, "How is this gonna me or something, right?
30:32
Brian Searl: Like I mean- at the very least, then you have a direction to take and ask the lawyer, and that's all kind of-
30:37
Jeff Hoffman: Yeah, and-
30:39
Brian Searl: at the very minimum
30:39
Jeff Hoffman: you have to- Also you would have to train ChatGPT on the specifics of the campground industry or the RV industry, travel, your games, your inflatables.
30:51
Jeff Hoffman: But-
30:51
Brian Searl: Right, which is why- a lawyer ultimately, like a Christine Taylor, is better, but at least it gives you a starting point where ChatGPT's like maybe you wanna consider this type thing," right?
30:59
Jeff Hoffman: And that's the same thing we look at with an insurance consultant is-
31:03
James Grant: Yeah
31:03
Jeff Hoffman: they're gonna be doing the same thing, only we're, our rate is a lot less than your attorney.
31:09
James Grant: That's right.
31:10
Peter Lovering: That's generally the role of your broker though, right?
31:12
Jeff Hoffman: It, it- So- I agree it should be Brokers miss stuff.
31:18
Jeff Hoffman: I've, and I've found that over the years.
31:21
Jeff Hoffman: The first one was when my wife got pregnant, and back in the day, pregnancy coverage in an insurance policy was optional.
31:30
Jeff Hoffman: And we did not have it.
31:32
James Grant: Yeah.
31:33
James Grant: Yeah.
31:34
James Grant: I think you raise a couple of great points there.
31:35
James Grant: One, you probably wanna find an insurance broker who has experience with other RV parks.
31:41
Jeff Hoffman: Yes.
31:41
James Grant: Not just your neighbor, not the local guy, not the guy that rents a site from you, but someone who's actually worked with other parks before and knows what to look for.
31:49
James Grant: The, the policy wordings are very difficult.
31:51
James Grant: They're 110 to 150 pages.
31:54
James Grant: And typically, the first 75 pages talk about all the great things they're gonna cover, and then the last 75 pages take out coverage for most of those things they've advertised in the beginning.
32:05
James Grant: And that, that also comes with buying from a generalist.
32:08
James Grant: Because if you go to an Intact in Canada or an Aviva they will try and tack on, they'll try and bolt on some extensions to a general commercial policy to make it fit your risk profile, and essentially they're
32:21
James Grant: just smashing a square peg through a round hole.
32:24
James Grant: And a lot of those endorsements are not gonna cover things, as you mentioned the hydro lines that are buried, the, all of those good things that cost real money and are gonna be expensive to repair.
32:35
James Grant: So I think the other lesson is that you wanna find a policy that's been written from scratch specifically for your industry, because they will have addressed all of those things very clearly in writing and not, you don't have
32:46
James Grant: to look for some sort of bolt-on endorsement.
32:50
Jeff Hoffman: To that point for the first time in, 30, 40 years, we split our insurance coverages between different agent, not agencies, but different policies to cover specific risk instead of getting a full package-
33:08
James Grant: Yeah
33:08
Jeff Hoffman: from one company.
33:10
Jeff Hoffman: And it saved us a ton of money because some companies were willing to write insurance on a jump pad, some weren't.
33:19
Jeff Hoffman: We took our, general liability and that to a different company.
33:24
Jeff Hoffman: And our what is it?
33:28
Jeff Hoffman: I can't think of the name of the insurance that's over top of everything else.
33:31
Jeff Hoffman: Our umbrella.
33:32
James Grant: Umbrella.
33:32
James Grant: Umbrella.
33:33
Jeff Hoffman: Yeah.
33:34
Jeff Hoffman: Yeah, we farmed that out to a different company.
33:36
Jeff Hoffman: So- We're trying to mitigate the risk across companies, but also find the best insurer for each one of those specific categories.
33:44
James Grant: Yeah, and that's a s- that's a, it's a very s-
33:47
Jeff Hoffman: You know that.
33:48
James Grant: Sorry.
33:50
James Grant: It's a very smart approach.
33:51
James Grant: We've built a policy for RV parks and campgrounds, but we don't know a lot about the marina side of operations.
33:57
James Grant: And so for someone who's got a lot of boats with motors on the back, and they may have water taxis, et cetera, that's not something that we understand properly, so we can't quote it properly for you.
34:08
James Grant: And in those cases, we'll ask the broker to go find a marine specialist, and you can pull, and then you're, then you can be sure that you've properly protected both components to your park, and that's absolutely the right
34:19
James Grant: way to do it.
34:20
Jeff Hoffman: Yeah.
34:21
Brian Searl: Rob-
34:25
Robert Preston: Yeah.
34:25
Robert Preston: So as we're looking at a new property, on the due diligence side, it's pretty simple.
34:30
Robert Preston: Get the loss runs for at least the typically five years.
34:34
Robert Preston: We look at those loss runs and see what's on there.
34:36
Robert Preston: We look at the P&L and see what their interest premiums have been.
34:40
Robert Preston: You can correlate the two there and get a backstory and history of it.
34:44
Robert Preston: And then for us then, there's the decision tree matrix is based off those loss runs and the property and, general assessment.
34:52
Robert Preston: Do we want to add that to our master policy or do we set up a new, a new policy for this property?
34:58
Robert Preston: Typically, we were leaning towards a defaulting to a new policy for the first couple years to protect the master policy premiums and stuff that's in place.
35:07
Robert Preston: Our agencies and brokers, they, as you guys mentioned, they provide those services, so they'll come out, do a walkthrough, give us suggestions.
35:15
Robert Preston: Some things are not suggestions to fix and work through that.
35:19
Robert Preston: And then almost all the providers now have some type of online training portal too that has, training for your team and staff.
35:26
Robert Preston: I think that's an important part of this too, is like training and teaching the onsite staff of things to look for and/or just general, don't stand on top of ladders, right?
35:37
Robert Preston: So there's the insurance side of it that, that comes in from the workman's comp and the actual team member getting hurt as well, where that's probably more of the larger amount of the risk in, in there 'cause they're
35:54
Robert Preston: there all the time and they're doing stuff and they wanna, make the pro-proper there.
35:57
Robert Preston: So we've started to really put an emphasis on at least getting the training available and saying, "Hey here's how here's how you trim the bushes," type of stuff.
36:03
Robert Preston: So inevitably someone unfortunately gets hurt, but at least going back to being like the, the waiver, at least you've got something to point back to and say, "No, we did have training.
36:14
Robert Preston: We do have a policy for that."
36:16
Robert Preston: Accidents do actually happen despite what attorneys think.
36:20
Robert Preston: And so there's at least a, a case there.
36:22
Robert Preston: I think I rambled a little bit on how we look at it but initially, basically we're seeing, what claims have happened at this property, obviously assessing the property itself, which risks might be there, and then we gotta decide
36:35
Robert Preston: whether we wanna quarantine this property for the first couple years to see how it goes before we roll it into the larger risk of the portfolio
36:47
Brian Searl: Is there ever a situation where you would look at a property and say, "This is too risky or too much has to change here and I want to walk away?"
36:56
Robert Preston: Oh, for sure.
36:57
Robert Preston: Yeah, so I'll try not to give too much information because it's not hard to figure out this property.
37:02
Robert Preston: Sure.
37:03
Robert Preston: There's a property in the southeast that has a private well system, and unfortunately in the past, five years, they've had some serious major claims with I think it's E.
37:15
Robert Preston: coli or something, right?
37:17
Robert Preston: I don't think there's a death.
37:19
Robert Preston: There may have been a death, but something significant.
37:22
Robert Preston: Their premiums are running like $600,000 $700,000 for one property for the premium, because of the loss run there, which is significant, and the severity of the, the risk that's possible and the frequency.
37:35
Robert Preston: There was two, two outbreaks of this over a period of three or four years, and the probability that it will happen again.
37:41
Robert Preston: Okay.
37:41
Robert Preston: And from an investment perspective, they were effectively given the property away, but there still is no...
37:48
Robert Preston: It's either no insurance or it just was not feasible from an investment perspective.
37:54
James Grant: Nothing scares an insurance company more than frequency, right?
37:59
James Grant: Yeah.
37:59
James Grant: L- losses happen and that's a f- that's a part of life for sure.
38:03
James Grant: But when the same thing happens again and again, everybody runs for the hills.
38:08
Robert Preston: Yeah.
38:09
Robert Preston: And from my perspective as an owner people, it's always com- one of the major risks is the utilities, the water and the sewage, and typically the risk on the sewage side is more of a maintenance, upkeep costs, that's
38:21
Robert Preston: a CapEx thing.
38:23
Robert Preston: But the water coming in is something that almost probably very few owners think about from a risk mitigation if it's not on city water.
38:31
Robert Preston: Because that's something 100% of your guests and staff will use every day, all day.
38:36
Robert Preston: And so if something were to happen there, then you're also affecting not only frequency, but you're affecting, you know- What's the word?
38:43
Robert Preston: Scale, scope, right?
38:44
Robert Preston: Sure.
38:44
Robert Preston: You're affecting a lot of people.
38:45
Robert Preston: And so that's one of the things that from an ownership perspective that we are very cautious about, anything that's not on city water.
38:57
Brian Searl: John, does building a new resort or, even Jeff considering renovating it, how do you...
39:04
Brian Searl: are there things that you wanna do that you can't do because of insurance, is the question I wanna ask.
39:08
John McMahon: Yeah.
39:09
John McMahon: Just like I mentioned before we had planned on a pool.
39:13
John McMahon: We had planned on renting kayaks and SUPs.
39:17
John McMahon: And the SUPs and the kayaks would have to be taken off property to be used, and so we don't have any control over the usage, whether they put on their life vest or they've done something without one of
39:32
John McMahon: our guides around them.
39:34
John McMahon: And it just eliminated the opportunity for us to offer those offerings because the risk that was involved.
39:40
John McMahon: And to me those are basics.
39:43
John McMahon: Those are basic offerings.
39:44
John McMahon: Yeah.
39:44
John McMahon: Those aren't high-end offerings.
39:46
John McMahon: They're low-end offerings, yet the cost benefits just, they just aren't there because of the liability.
39:56
Brian Searl: Is, to the insurance guys, is this the way it has to work?
40:00
Brian Searl: W- we've seen how this has changed societally, right?
40:03
Brian Searl: I'm not saying it's an insurance company fault.
40:05
Brian Searl: As we've talked about on this show we, we, how claims have increased and how everything is people's faults and how society goes, and if you trip and you jump in the middle of the pool, and- all the stuff
40:13
Brian Searl: that probably didn't exist, I don't know for sure, but didn't exist 20, 40 years ago.
40:19
Brian Searl: Feels like it's stacking on top of owners as we keep moving forward for various reasons.
40:24
Brian Searl: So is this the only thing that we have to look forward to?
40:27
Brian Searl: Is there another model that works better or differently, or is insurance just gonna keep going up every single year and there's nothing we can do about it because that's the way society is gonna allow people to make frivolous
40:40
Brian Searl: claims and all that stuff?
40:43
Brian Searl: Is there hope?
40:47
James Grant: I sure hope so.
40:48
James Grant: I sure hope so, but I, it doesn't seem like it these days.
40:51
Robert Preston: Brian, sorry to jump in there.
40:53
Robert Preston: There is some hope, right?
40:54
Robert Preston: So it's legislative at some point, so the state of Florida has put some great legislation in over the last couple years to, in general, cut back on the frivolous lawsuit side of it.
41:06
Robert Preston: But also, there's initiatives in place where an equestrian center in Florida, by default, is essentially, outside of, absolute negligence, unsuable.
41:17
Robert Preston: That's part of the Florida component of an equestrian center.
41:20
Robert Preston: Now, it has to be marked, and it has to be an equestrian center, but the nature of riding horses is inherently dangerous, and so the state of Florida says, "Sorry, you don't get to use that excuse anymore."
41:29
Robert Preston: Yeah.
41:30
Robert Preston: And so there is, there's some efforts and we're making some progress, I think, at the, some of the state level to say camping and RVing is a recreation activity," and so that is hopeful and probably one of the
41:41
Robert Preston: better solutions that I've seen out there to help get us to where we need to be.
41:45
James Grant: But I think you're right, though-
41:47
Brian Searl: But in the meantime, you can just have guests you can escort guests to their site on a horse, and that solves the problem.
41:54
Robert Preston: Now you're getting creative.
41:55
Robert Preston: I like it.
41:56
James Grant: But you're right, Robert.
41:57
James Grant: Unfortunately we're now at the point where the government has to step in and has to put some sort of guardrails around these personal injury lawyers that the, the, if we just, to take a step back, the personal injury
42:09
James Grant: law piece was developed to protect workers during the Industrial Revolution, and the, the thinking at the time was that, these, these industrial tycoons were taking advantage of people and making them work for, pennies an hour and exposing them
42:25
James Grant: to horrible fumes and chemicals and all of these things, and these poor people-
42:29
Brian Searl: Which, to be fair, they were probably doing.
42:32
James Grant: But thank you.
42:32
James Grant: 1,000%.
42:33
James Grant: I, absolutely.
42:33
James Grant: Yeah.
42:33
James Grant: Absolutely, 1,000%.
42:35
James Grant: And so they carved out this kinda little niche in the law where if it's a, if you're l- seeking representation because you're, you've been taken advantage of, you don't have to pay a retainer It's the only segment of
42:48
James Grant: the law where it looks like that.
42:50
James Grant: If you, unfortunately, if you go to get divorced or you wanna sue your neighbor, the first thing your lawyer's gonna ask for is a retainer, and you gotta write them a big check for 10,000 bucks, and then you
42:59
James Grant: get going, and everybody makes statements, and you gotta show up in court.
43:03
James Grant: For, on the personal injury side, you don't have to do that, which is why all of those advertisements say, "You don't pay if we don't win."
43:11
James Grant: And so I think, if you had to, if an accident did happen while you were at an RV park and you did have to pay a retainer first, you might think twice before you actually went ahead with it.
43:21
James Grant: And they've found that, the lawyers have found this loophole, and they know...
43:24
James Grant: the, the reality for us is that it costs us between 80 and $100,000 to defend a slip and fall claim if we decide we wanna challenge it.
43:35
James Grant: The alternative, of course, is from the lawyer, the lawyers always offer for 40 or $50,000, we can make this go away."
43:43
James Grant: And so the insurers have always been inclined, the thinking is if I'd rather pay the 40 grand now, see if we can get them down to 38, and be done with it."
43:51
James Grant: And then the law firm keeps half of it, and 15,000 goes to the claimant, and away everybody goes.
43:57
James Grant: And so the question now is how many of those $40,000 checks do you wanna write?
44:02
James Grant: Because we've really just trained, the industry has trained the personal injury lawyers that it's a free lunch.
44:08
James Grant: And but without some sort of change or legislation, it's gonna continue like this forever.
44:13
James Grant: These guys are onto a gravy train here and we need someone to protect, Well- the small business owners who are truly are the victims 'cause at the, the thinking always was it's a victimless crime.
44:22
James Grant: The big insurance company who has billions of dollars in the bank, they're the ones writing the check.
44:26
James Grant: It's no big deal.
44:28
James Grant: No harm, no foul.
44:29
James Grant: But the reality is that those, those settlements get reflected in the insurance premiums, and they keep, rates keep going up, which is why we're having this conversation today.
44:37
James Grant: So I think, without being able to lobby the government and get them to put some sort of guardrails in there it's just gonna continue the way it is.
44:45
Robert Preston: Yeah, James, you're right.
44:46
Robert Preston: And then, the first couple steps that happen before that cycle, which is now a negative cycle that's never going to stop is then on the debt side if you want to borrow money, then you have...
44:57
Robert Preston: The bank requires you to carry insurance.
44:59
Robert Preston: Of course.
44:59
Robert Preston: So therefore you have to have insurance, so therefore most, if not almost all places have insurance.
45:06
Robert Preston: So if I'm an attorney, I know that they're going to settle whether I'm right or wrong, so there's zero risk of filing a claim.
45:13
Robert Preston: So it's a perpetual-
45:14
James Grant: Yep
45:14
Robert Preston: opponent.
45:15
Robert Preston: And then of course, lenders get more stringent in the coverage they would like to- us to carry because they want to feel more protected, which then of course increases the payout possible.
45:27
James Grant: Yep.
45:27
Robert Preston: Or the...
45:27
Robert Preston: So it's this ridiculous cycle.
45:29
Robert Preston: I know, I know certain wealthy individuals who their insurance policy is to have no insurance, and they're almost guaranteed to never get a lawsuit unless there's-
45:37
James Grant: Right
45:38
Robert Preston: something catastrophic.
45:39
Robert Preston: But if you don't have insurance, you won't get sued for the most part.
45:44
Brian Searl: All right, so two things I wanted to wrap up the kind of show.
45:46
Brian Searl: We've got about 10 minutes left.
45:48
Brian Searl: One is we started the conversation backstage before we came on here about other reasons that insurance might go up in the future.
45:54
Brian Searl: So can you guys- just touch briefly on that for the owners and operators?
45:57
Brian Searl: Because it feels like everything is going up for reasons-
46:01
James Grant: Yeah
46:01
Brian Searl: that we could probably speculate on, but might be political, so we'll stay away from those.
46:05
Brian Searl: But, so e- everything in the grocery store is going up.
46:08
Brian Searl: Everything from nails to roof repair to paint to...
46:11
Brian Searl: A- and so at what point, we already covered personal injury, but at what point does that impact the cost of your insurance?
46:18
James Grant: Now.
46:19
James Grant: Right now.
46:19
James Grant: That's a, it's a great point, Brian and and again, post-COVID, inflation has been rising at almost double-digit rates annually.
46:26
James Grant: And so what that means is if you have a claim, if a building gets blown over and it was worth $20,000 on your property schedule, on your insurance policy because you...
46:36
James Grant: It was always valued at $20,000.
46:38
James Grant: That's just like what it costs, and every year I just keep the same numbers.
46:42
James Grant: The reality is now that your...
46:44
James Grant: the cost of the materials to rebuild that structure and the labor costs have all gone up by 2 or 300%.
46:53
James Grant: So that $20,000 claim now is probably 50 to replace that building.
46:57
James Grant: And owners and operators need to be doing fresh evaluations every year on the limits of all of their buildings to make sure that they do have proper coverage
47:09
Brian Searl: So can they can we as an industry expect insurance rates generally to go up in 2027?
47:16
Brian Searl: And is the inflationary pressures a reason why, or we don't know yet, or?
47:21
James Grant: Look, the, the reality is that everything's more expensive, as you said.
47:24
James Grant: So when something goes wrong or burns down or blows over, it costs everybody a lot more money to replace it, and so that's gonna get worked into the calculation at renewal.
47:34
James Grant: The important thing from the owner or the operator perspective is to make sure they've got the right limits on all of their buildings and all of their equipment.
47:41
James Grant: I think, you know-
47:41
Brian Searl: The reason, the reason I ask, just for clarity, is like because we- Yeah we talked about, like Robert talked about how insurance went down for a couple years.
47:48
James Grant: Yeah.
47:48
Brian Searl: But that was also after they printed all the money in 2021 and we had all the inflation that was crazy skyrocketing.
47:54
James Grant: Yeah.
47:54
Brian Searl: And it...
47:54
Brian Searl: That's why I'm asking.
47:55
Brian Searl: Is it always a con- consequence of cause and effect, or can it be other?
47:57
James Grant: It's- it, yeah, I was gonna s- insurers tend to be very myopic, right?
48:02
James Grant: If there was a hailstorm in Ontario two weeks ago, and so that will be top of mind for everybody as they're quoting new risk and renewing new policies, right?
48:11
James Grant: They're gonna think.
48:11
James Grant: "Oh no, there's another hailstorm coming."
48:13
James Grant: And when we go through a long period where there haven't been big weather events, then everybody thinks, "Oh I don't have to worry about weather again."
48:19
James Grant: Earthquake is probably the best example of that.
48:22
James Grant: There hasn't been a meaningful tremor anywhere in North America for a very long time, and as a result, earthquake rates have trended down to where they're almost negligible.
48:32
James Grant: You get full earthquake coverage for nothing these days.
48:35
James Grant: I can tell you, as soon as there's a big earthquake, all of those numbers are gonna go through the roof again and they're gonna restart.
48:41
James Grant: So you know, unfortunately, there, there are those kinds of ebbs and flows that are a reality of the market environment that we live in.
48:48
James Grant: The best thing, again that any owner or operator can do to try and keep a handle on it is just to be super focused on risk management, to use waivers, to use outside consultants, to make sure they're doing
49:00
James Grant: everything in their power to avoid something happening before it does.
49:05
Brian Searl: So if you have a, if you have a property and let's say you're just, pretend you're Robert and you've acquired a new property, right?
49:11
Brian Searl: Or anybody who bought a new property or you've just been, you're paying high insurance rates for a while.
49:16
Brian Searl: We talked about waivers.
49:17
James Grant: Yeah.
49:17
Brian Searl: If you deploy waivers and the best practices that we've talked about on this show today, what could you reasonably expect a percentage-wise decrease in your previous year insurance if you d- went from doing nothing to doing-
49:29
James Grant: Yeah
49:30
Brian Searl: all the things that we've talked about?
49:31
James Grant: I think probably the best thing you could hope for is that your insurance rates remain stable.
49:36
James Grant: I think that's the best win you could hope for.
49:38
Brian Searl: Okay.
49:39
James Grant: Because the flip side is that you didn't have a waiver, someone did trip playing volleyball, and they do sue you for a million bucks and it is settled beyond your control and then that will, that loss, as Robert
49:51
James Grant: mentioned earlier, hangs on to your profile for at least the next five to seven years and it's factored into all of your insurance renewals going forward.
49:59
James Grant: It really-
49:59
Brian Searl: Is it just you though?
50:00
Brian Searl: Because if we look at we talked about how the-
50:02
James Grant: Yeah
50:02
Brian Searl: the number of companies that are willing to insure campgrounds-
50:05
James Grant: Yeah
50:05
Brian Searl: is going down.
50:06
Brian Searl: So if the campground next, in the state over or the next street down isn't doing what you're doing, doesn't that also impact your rate?
50:14
James Grant: I think, yeah.
50:14
James Grant: I think the other lesson in there, and good for you for pushing it is that the campground owner and operator, they have a, their broker at least is incumbent to go out to market and what that means is
50:25
James Grant: that every couple of years they canvas the marketplace.
50:28
James Grant: Are there any new providers?
50:30
James Grant: Are there any new programs out there?
50:32
James Grant: And they submit your details around to three or four different insurance companies to make sure that you are paying a super competitive rate at the time.
50:41
James Grant: So many people get trapped in this thinking that once they've got insurance, if they haven't made a claim they better not get a quote from somebody else 'cause their rates might go up and that's the wrong way to
50:50
James Grant: think about it, 'cause the landscape is always changing.
50:54
James Grant: So I think that's one more thing that they probably should add to the list, that they are out canvassing the market.
50:59
James Grant: Not every year but every couple for sure.
51:04
Brian Searl: All right.
51:04
Brian Searl: Let's spend the last few minutes asking questions of each other.
51:06
Brian Searl: Robert, do you have any questions for anybody?
51:11
Robert Preston: Yeah.
51:11
Robert Preston: Wow.
51:12
Robert Preston: Maybe.
51:13
Robert Preston: I'm sure I do.
51:15
Robert Preston: I always get stumped on this.
51:17
Robert Preston: The insurance industry is heavily influenced by investments, therefore they are supply and demand, capitalists.
51:26
Robert Preston: So I guess for the insurance guys' questions, we see-- we saw it come down for the last couple years, which is because of the massive rates that we were paying and obviously it would seem to me that then...
51:40
Robert Preston: I guess the question is that when we-- those premiums doubled, then providers said, "Hey, here's an opportunity.
51:47
Robert Preston: Let's cut in there," and that's why our competition is driving us down.
51:51
Robert Preston: To some extent, competition is driving us back down, right?
51:57
Robert Preston: I guess that's the question.
51:58
Robert Preston: So d- how much does competition play this?
52:01
Peter Lovering: I, I spend, I spend most of my day talking to owners and operators and literally I can't tell them what they should insure or how much they can insure just by certain laws 'cause we're not the broker.
52:12
Peter Lovering: But we talk to them all the time about having options.
52:15
Peter Lovering: And so to your point about, yeah, the prices came down, other people come in with other options that...
52:21
Peter Lovering: And then guess what happens when you've had a broker for 40 years who who's been writing the same policy for 40 years and rolling it over?
52:29
Peter Lovering: He sits up straight and starts sharpening his pencil a little more, and it gets- it gets your- Gets your...
52:35
Peter Lovering: Getting everybody competing is is healthy, I do think.
52:38
Peter Lovering: It doesn't mean less coverage
52:42
Brian Searl: Jeff, any questions?
52:45
Jeff Hoffman: And it's hard for them to predict the future as far as where rates are going.
52:51
Jeff Hoffman: But I would guess that if nothing else, they're gonna start following inflation.
52:56
Jeff Hoffman: We've knocked out what happened with COVID, all of that, so now it's just basically you're gonna have to look at building in the expense models for replacement cost if you have events, and somewhat what's going on with financial
53:14
Jeff Hoffman: markets to bring that revenue either up or down.
53:18
Jeff Hoffman: 'Cause, if markets bank, insurance is gonna go up, I think
53:25
James Grant: It won't help, that's for sure.
53:26
Jeff Hoffman: Yeah.
53:30
John McMahon: I've got a question.
53:33
John McMahon: What is what do you look at as a healthy percentage of revenue or expenses should go to insurance in the overall budget?
53:41
John McMahon: So that you can determine if you're in line or out of line or, it's just, it's a decision.
53:48
John McMahon: It's a point you have to make decisions
53:53
James Grant: That's a tough one because the risk profile is so varied.
53:57
James Grant: Some parks refill propane tanks and rent fishing boats, and others have bouncy castles and playgrounds and other, and swim- so it's a re- it's a tough one.
54:08
James Grant: I think the most important thing is that you're making sure that you're keeping everybody honest by, again, going to market, getting quotes from two or three different providers or programs every couple of years.
54:19
James Grant: And then, keeping track in where those, those prices tend to be trending
54:26
Brian Searl: All right to the insurance guys.
54:27
Brian Searl: Do you guys have any questions for Jeff or John before we wrap up the show?
54:31
James Grant: I wanna know where you are, Brian.
54:33
Brian Searl: Right now, or-
54:34
James Grant: Yeah.
54:36
Brian Searl: I'm in British Columbia on Lake Shuswap.
54:38
James Grant: It looks beautiful.
54:40
Brian Searl: It is.
54:40
Brian Searl: I'm definitely spoiled.
54:42
Peter Lovering: No fires?
54:44
Brian Searl: No.
54:44
Brian Searl: Nah, not, not-
54:45
Peter Lovering: Oh, good.
54:46
Brian Searl: There have been, like quite a bit across the town-
54:47
Peter Lovering: I know.
54:48
Peter Lovering: We know.
54:49
Peter Lovering: Yeah.
54:49
Peter Lovering: Oh, we know.
54:51
Peter Lovering: No I think I think it's been great, so thank you very much and it was nice to meet everybody.
54:55
Peter Lovering: Sorry I didn't get to say...
54:56
Peter Lovering: I'll send a note to everybody separately, but but I think it was We're happy to come back any time if you wanna keep keep us on the roster.
55:06
Brian Searl: All right, and where can they learn more about your insurance offerings for tho- those who are in Canada?
55:11
Peter Lovering: It would be at signaturerisk.com.
55:14
Brian Searl: And is there somebody that you partner with in the United States that you'd recommend?
55:18
James Grant: S- signaturespecialty.com.
55:22
James Grant: Sigspecialty.com.
55:23
Peter Lovering: Okay.
55:25
Brian Searl: Jeff, any final thoughts?
55:27
Brian Searl: Or, sorry, I guess I didn't ask the insurance k- both of you.
55:30
Brian Searl: Is there any final thoughts you guys have, and then we'll go to Jeff.
55:32
James Grant: From my perspective, we always welcome participating in these kinds of events, 'cause it's great to be able to speak with the actual insureds and understand, what your frustrations are and what your challenges are.
55:44
James Grant: And I think also to be able to explain more about the mechanics of how the industry works and, how the underwriting process works and all of that good stuff.
55:51
James Grant: So I think it's all very, very positive.
55:54
James Grant: So thank you for the opportunity.
55:57
Brian Searl: Peter, anything to add?
55:58
Peter Lovering: No I've I've been a long-time viewer, first-time attendee, but, Caller.
56:03
Peter Lovering: So I've enjoyed being part of the celebrity, being a celebrity guest, so it's a treat for me.
56:08
Peter Lovering: Thank you.
56:09
Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, sir.
56:10
Brian Searl: Jeff, final thoughts, and where can they learn more about Camp Strategy?
56:13
Jeff Hoffman: You can go to Ca- campstrategy.com.
56:16
Jeff Hoffman: We've updated our website, and we'd like you to take a look at us and give us comments as to how it looks.
56:24
Brian Searl: Any final thoughts on the insurance discussion here?
56:27
Jeff Hoffman: I'm glad you invited the two guys t- today, Peter and James.
56:31
Jeff Hoffman: I think it was a very interesting discussion, and one that may, we may wanna carry on every once in a while.
56:37
Peter Lovering: It is, it, thank you, and it is one of the biggest, most influential long-term decisions you'll make at a park.
56:45
Peter Lovering: We spend a lot of time talking about marketing.
56:48
Peter Lovering: We spend a lot of time talking about dog parks and- eV hookups and things like that.
56:53
Peter Lovering: But insurance lasts a lifetime, so that's so I we'd be happy to join any other any other time.
57:00
Brian Searl: Okay.
57:01
Brian Searl: Last but not least, John, any final thoughts?
57:03
Brian Searl: And where can they learn more about what you got for your-
57:05
John McMahon: Yeah.
57:05
John McMahon: Camp-door.com is our website.
57:08
John McMahon: But I really appreciate having this as a topic, because it's really top of mind for us right now as we grow and look at the other amenities that we're considering adding.
57:18
John McMahon: And it's, this has just been really helpful to have that insight.
57:22
Brian Searl: Awesome.
57:23
Brian Searl: Thank you guys for being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
57:25
Brian Searl: If you're not sick and tired of hearing from me, I will be with the esteemed Scott Bahr in about an hour.
57:29
Brian Searl: We'll be doing another episode of Outwired.
57:32
Brian Searl: Otherwise, we will see you next week for another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
57:35
Brian Searl: Thanks, guys.
57:36
Brian Searl: I appreciate it.
57:37
Jeff Hoffman: Thank you, Brian.
57:37
James Grant: Thank you, guys.
57:38
James Grant: Thank you.
57:38
Peter Lovering: Thanks.
57:39
James Grant: Thanks, Brian.
57:39
John McMahon: All right, bye.