Latest / MC Fireside Chats, an Outdoor Hospitality Podcast / MC Fireside Chats - September 9th, 2026

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MC Fireside Chats - September 9th, 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.
• 0:51
  Brian Searl: Excited to be here with you.
• 0:51
  Brian Searl: I just realized I sat down on my outside furniture and it's rained for three days here in Calgary straight, so we'll find out if there's anything left in the cushions that I'm not aware of.
• 0:59
  Brian Searl: But in the meantime, we're here today to do a show.
• 1:02
  Brian Searl: We- welcome back for our second ep- or our second week episode of the month.
• 1:05
  Brian Searl: We're here with some of our recurring guests, Zachary Stoltenberg Tom Mason, Jayne Cohen, couple special guests here, so let's just briefly go around the room and introduce everybody.
• 1:13
  Brian Searl: Jayne, you wanna start?
• 1:15
  Jayne Cohen: Hi, I'm Jayne Cohen, and I am from Campground Consulting Group
• 1:22
  Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Jayne.
• 1:22
  Brian Searl: Tom?
• 1:24
  Tom Mason: My name is Head up the management group, and looking forward to a great hour.
• 1:32
  Brian Searl: Now there's all kinds of pressure on us, Tom.
• 1:34
  Brian Searl: Thank you.
• 1:34
  Brian Searl: I appreciate that, man.
• 1:35
  Brian Searl: We were gonna have a mediocre hour, but now we've gotta reach for it.
• 1:38
  Brian Searl: Zach?
• 1:39
  Zach Stoltenberg: I'm Zachary Stoltenberg.
• 1:43
  Zach Stoltenberg: I'm associate principal leading the architectural division at LJA, Inc.
• 1:50
  Brian Searl: And our two special guests, whoever wants to go first.
• 1:53
  Joe Knihnitski: My name's Joe Knihnitski.
• 1:54
  Joe Knihnitski: I'm the owner/operator at Prairie Junction out here in Stettler, Alberta.
• 1:59
  Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Joe.
• 2:00
  Veronika Knihnitski: And if you haven't seen our last names, my name's Veronika Knihnitski.
• 2:03
  Veronika Knihnitski: I'm Joe's wife.
• 2:03
  Veronika Knihnitski: I'm one of the co-owners as well at Prairie Junction, Stettler, Alberta.
• 2:07
  Veronika Knihnitski: Pleasure to meet you.
• 2:07
  Brian Searl: Oh, you guys have tricked us.
• 2:08
  Brian Searl: You're both from the same place, and you guys do own the same show.
• 2:11
  Brian Searl: Good try.
• 2:13
  Brian Searl: Welcome, guys, and gals.
• 2:15
  Brian Searl: Everybody.
• 2:16
  Brian Searl: All right.
• 2:16
  Brian Searl: So as we typically do in the beginning of every show maybe if you I don't know.
• 2:20
  Brian Searl: Do I look better like this with my dog here?
• 2:21
  Brian Searl: I think I do.
• 2:22
  Brian Searl: You can't see my face.
• 2:23
  Jayne Cohen: Yeah, what is what's- she's pretty what is your dog's name, Brian?
• 2:25
  Brian Searl: Riley.
• 2:27
  Jayne Cohen: Riley.
• 2:27
  Jayne Cohen: Hi, Riley.
• 2:29
  Brian Searl: She's a lap dog, as you can tell, so sometimes she just doesn't leave.
• 2:35
  Brian Searl: But as we typically go to our recurring guests here at the beginning of every show, is there anything that we've haven't talked about or should talk about since the last time we've been together you guys think we should
• 2:43
  Brian Searl: be discussing?
• 2:45
  Zach Stoltenberg: So I've got a topic for us this week.
• 2:48
  Zach Stoltenberg: All right, cool.
• 2:48
  Zach Stoltenberg: O- one of our big focus areas always on this podcast is a focus on guest experience, right?
• 2:54
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've been talking about that.
• 2:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've been preaching that in outdoor hospitality for a couple of years now kinda trying to get people to view that what we're marketing, what we're selling is actually a guest experience, not an accommodation, right?
• 3:07
  Zach Stoltenberg: And that's what drives the popularity, the demand, the ADRs.
• 3:11
  Zach Stoltenberg: All of that is driven by guest experience.
• 3:14
  Zach Stoltenberg: And two big things kinda came across, my, my feeds and things this week.
• 3:20
  Zach Stoltenberg: One of those Travis Chambers, i- if you know who that is, he's been a, a guest on the podcast.
• 3:26
  Zach Stoltenberg: He is sharing some of what they are building down in Costa Rica right now, and it is absolutely all experience driven.
• 3:36
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's really incredible some of the stuff that they're doing.
• 3:39
  Zach Stoltenberg: And so I think we've been focused on it in outdoor hospitality, but I saw a commercial this week for Airbnb that now Airbnb is allowing you to book experiences alongside of your stays.
• 3:52
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yep.
• 3:52
  Zach Stoltenberg: And so it's like we've been saying this for years now.
• 3:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've had that focus in outdoor hospitality of why that's so important and now we're seeing, these big institutional groups even people like Airbnb, that are finally figuring it out after we've been preaching it all these years.
• 4:08
  Zach Stoltenberg: So I thought that was interesting that, if you wanna take a cooking class, if you wanna go pet goats, if you wanna do yoga, if you want, whatever, maybe cooking while doing goat yoga, I don't know whatever those
• 4:19
  Zach Stoltenberg: experiences are.
• 4:21
  Zach Stoltenberg: But seeing, a, a big player like Airbnb finally jumping into that yeah I think that's really significant and it should be something everybody in our industry, e- even though we talk about it, I think people are finally getting
• 4:34
  Zach Stoltenberg: it
• 4:36
  Brian Searl: Yeah, I don't know how new that is.
• 4:37
  Brian Searl: It is new, but I don't know if it's recent, 'cause I remember Airbnb had an experiences place when we were in Ireland, like last year probably, end of last year.
• 4:46
  Brian Searl: But I don't know how prominent it was, whether they folded it more into the booking space and surfaced it more during the checkout to add experiences to your stay.
• 4:53
  Brian Searl: It seems like that's a low-hanging fruit that, like I didn't notice it as part of the booking flow in Airbnb when we were in Ireland.
• 4:59
  Brian Searl: I just...
• 5:00
  Brian Searl: It was a separate thing, right?
• 5:01
  Brian Searl: But we were looking at some of those experiences to try to do.
• 5:03
  Brian Searl: Never really booked anything, but...
• 5:05
  Brian Searl: And the other thing that was interesting to me too, just to...
• 5:08
  Brian Searl: And we can take the discussion wherever we want.
• 5:11
  Brian Searl: The other thing that was interesting I was thinking about the other day was whether the distance that you travel from home impacts the experience that you wanna have.
• 5:19
  Brian Searl: And I don't know that we have any good data.
• 5:20
  Brian Searl: It's all really just speculation on that, right?
• 5:22
  Brian Searl: But I wonder if you are going, going 30 miles or less from your house, that just because that's your neighborhood and it's already what you expect to see, and then they...
• 5:31
  Brian Searl: it's like I lived 45 minutes from Disney World and nine minutes from the beach in Florida for a couple years.
• 5:37
  Brian Searl: And we, and when we moved down there, we're like, "We're gonna go to Disney World all the time.
• 5:40
  Brian Searl: We're gonna go to the beach all the time."
• 5:41
  Brian Searl: And then we never went to the beach.
• 5:42
  Brian Searl: And then everybody who lives in wants to go to Disney World.
• 5:44
  Brian Searl: You're like, "Oh, you wanna go there again?
• 5:46
  Brian Searl: If you really wanna go there."
• 5:48
  Brian Searl: It...
• 5:48
  Brian Searl: But so it's everybody's local area.
• 5:49
  Brian Searl: I wonder if as you get further outside of your own, let's call it a comfort zone, if your expectations of experience matter more.
• 5:56
  Brian Searl: And I thought about that when you were saying Travis Chambers in Costa Rica, because I think if I paid for a flight to Costa Rica, my expectations would be higher than they would be in Alberta.
• 6:07
  Brian Searl: I don't know if that makes sense, but anyway.
• 6:09
  Zach Stoltenberg: I think it probably parallels or mirrors traditional hospitality.
• 6:13
  Zach Stoltenberg: If I'm looking for a place to stay in
• 6:19
  Brian Searl: I think you were just lagging, Tom, for a second.
• 6:21
  Brian Searl: So hold on one second.
• 6:22
  Brian Searl: Go ahead, Zach
• 6:24
  Zach Stoltenberg: I think, if you're going to Chicago for a weekend you're gonna do all the Chicago things, right?
• 6:28
  Zach Stoltenberg: You're gonna do the, the boat tour in the harbor, you're gonna see some tall buildings, you're gonna visit some museums.
• 6:34
  Zach Stoltenberg: You're gonna do the typical stuff versus like an all-inclusive destination type resort.
• 6:41
  Zach Stoltenberg: And I think that's probably the difference is, when you're stateside or when you're closer to home or local, you're gonna do the regional things that are in that area.
• 6:51
  Zach Stoltenberg: And I think you're right, but that's the parallel I would draw from it is it's more like a all-inclusive destination type resort.
• 7:00
  Zach Stoltenberg: Just like you'd stay at a, a Hilton in Jamaica
• 7:04
  Brian Searl: Maybe that's the difference.
• 7:05
  Brian Searl: Maybe and it...
• 7:06
  Brian Searl: And there's no right or wrong way to do this, is I don't think is where I'm at least not g- going with this, right?
• 7:10
  Brian Searl: But maybe there's a difference between are you curating an experience for the guest nearby or are you doing it on property?
• 7:17
  Brian Searl: And neither one is better than the other.
• 7:19
  Brian Searl: It just depends on who your target audience is and who you're going after.
• 7:22
  Brian Searl: But maybe that's the difference in expectations, too.
• 7:25
  Brian Searl: Because I think we've been trying to drive more people to do, not to the extent that Travis is doing it, although that's amazing and one, right?
• 7:32
  Brian Searl: Not everybody needs to duplicate that.
• 7:34
  Brian Searl: But I think we've been trying to drive, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but we've been trying to drive more people, as you said, away from thinking the accommodation is the experience.
• 7:42
  Brian Searl: And the way that you really do that, and curation has a place in that, but the way you really do that is to build the experience around the accommodation, right?
• 7:52
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah, I think it, it goes back to that question of authenticity.
• 7:56
  Zach Stoltenberg: People wanting something that's real.
• 7:58
  Zach Stoltenberg: If you're going to Costa Rica to a destination type resort you wanna feel like you're in Costa Rica.
• 8:04
  Zach Stoltenberg: You wanna walk through the jungle, you wanna have, a, a tree house.
• 8:07
  Zach Stoltenberg: You want that fully immersive experience.
• 8:09
  Zach Stoltenberg: So I think, Travis is probably one of the best in the industry at blurring those lines of really combining accommodation and experience together.
• 8:20
  Brian Searl: It's interesting how that takes on a life of its own too, because I...
• 8:23
  Brian Searl: you're right.
• 8:24
  Brian Searl: If I go to Costa Rica, then I want the Costa Ri- like how I perceive from the outside looking in what the Costa Rican experience should be, which is a reflection of tourism marketing and what everybody else has
• 8:34
  Brian Searl: told me when they've gone there and stuff like that.
• 8:37
  Brian Searl: I don't know how do you create a glamping experience that reflects Chicago?
• 8:41
  Brian Searl: That would be an interesting thing.
• 8:43
  Brian Searl: You could put it on top of a high rise building, right?
• 8:45
  Brian Searl: But that would be an interesting challenge.
• 8:48
  Brian Searl: Not that there's anything with Chicago, to be clear, like Chicago's a great city.
• 8:51
  Zach Stoltenberg: No.
• 8:52
  Zach Stoltenberg: I think it's just, it's a lot of what we talk about on the design side.
• 8:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's knowing your area, it's knowing the brand, knowing what it is that you wanna convey.
• 9:01
  Zach Stoltenberg: You can't be everything, but you need to be authentic.
• 9:04
  Zach Stoltenberg: And if part of your appeal is your location and where you're at, lean into that.
• 9:09
  Zach Stoltenberg: You can be urban, you can be, on the prairie and if you're on the prairie, lean into that.
• 9:15
  Zach Stoltenberg: Be a prairie style, resort
• 9:20
  Brian Searl: Tom, what do you think?
• 9:21
  Brian Searl: Do we have you back?
• 9:22
  Brian Searl: Are you still lagging or?
• 9:23
  Tom Mason: No.
• 9:23
  Tom Mason: Can you hear me?
• 9:24
  Brian Searl: Yep.
• 9:25
  Brian Searl: We got you.
• 9:25
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.
• 9:26
  Tom Mason: So no, I agree and, glamping in Chicago probably would not be successful.
• 9:32
  Brian Searl: Maybe.
• 9:32
  Brian Searl: It depends.
• 9:33
  Tom Mason: Certainly.
• 9:33
  Brian Searl: But the way we do glamping, I 100% agree with you.
• 9:36
  Brian Searl: But I think there's a lot of room for it to grow and maneuver still.
• 9:40
  Tom Mason: Yeah.
• 9:41
  Tom Mason: And I guess that would be, or Vrbo in Chicago to some extent.
• 9:46
  Tom Mason: But the other thing, as we talked about offering experiences, as a resort you can't afford to develop all these experiences.
• 9:57
  Tom Mason: So that's where you gotta partner with local people who are just focused on whether it's canoeing or the horseback riding or, something unique to the area.
• 10:11
  Tom Mason: You are still focused on your accommodations and there's an experience you want to create when they come back from their travels for the day.
• 10:22
  Tom Mason: But you're lean- to Zach's point, you gotta lean into what the area offers and hopefully partner with the right individuals to provide the right-
• 10:36
  Brian Searl: Let me play devil's advocate
• 10:37
  Tom Mason: There's
• 10:38
  Brian Searl: Let me play devil's advocate for a second.
• 10:40
  Brian Searl: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
• 10:41
  Brian Searl: We were just lagging.
• 10:42
  Brian Searl: But let me play devil's advocate for a second and say I think that you're right and you're wrong, i- in my opinion, doesn't mean you're actually are, right?
• 10:49
  Brian Searl: In that I think the experience defines more than building what Travis is doing, or putting in a water park, or spending millions of dollars.
• 10:56
  Brian Searl: I think there's tons of little things that Zach can probably speak to, that he's put touches on in architecture and in the resorts that he's helped shape, that really make the definition of an experience different for everyone.
• 11:09
  Brian Searl: Is that fair?
• 11:11
  Brian Searl: Zach, what do you think?
• 11:12
  Zach Stoltenberg: No, I, I- Yeah.
• 11:13
  Zach Stoltenberg: Fine with.
• 11:13
  Zach Stoltenberg: I don't think it's any one big thing.
• 11:15
  Zach Stoltenberg: I, I think it really is that holistic approach of looking at every little thing.
• 11:20
  Zach Stoltenberg: That when a guest stays with you, when they...
• 11:22
  Zach Stoltenberg: From the time they drive onto your property until they lay their head down in bed at night, that they feel like you've thought about them, you've anticipated their needs.
• 11:32
  Zach Stoltenberg: You've, taken care of all those little things that, that add up.
• 11:36
  Zach Stoltenberg: And I think it's about delivering something that's a little bit different too, right?
• 11:40
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's something out of the box, something that's unique.
• 11:43
  Zach Stoltenberg: I was actually looking at the website for Veronika Joe, and one of their announcements from earlier this year with their themed units.
• 11:50
  Zach Stoltenberg: That, that's I think, maybe this is a good segue for you guys to, to talk a little bit about what you're doing at Prairie Junction.
• 11:56
  Zach Stoltenberg: But, I think that's a really good example
• 12:00
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, I'll let the mind behind this- talk on it, but we're big travel bugs, so to be able to give an experience in the prairies that kinda is its own little world, I'll have Veronika talk on it a
• 12:12
  Joe Knihnitski: bit more, but it's, it is very exciting.
• 12:13
  Joe Knihnitski: We just broke ground on it this week, so we're very excited.
• 12:16
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah, so I don't know what you guys know about Stettler, Alberta but it is the heart of Alberta.
• 12:22
  Veronika Knihnitski: That's how it's advertised, so to speak.
• 12:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: Small town Alberta, right?
• 12:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: Kind of a dead center between Edmonton and Calgary.
• 12:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: A, a lot of what you guys were talking about, I was nodding my head.
• 12:32
  Veronika Knihnitski: I was like, "You want Chicago?
• 12:33
  Veronika Knihnitski: Come to Prairie Junction.
• 12:34
  Veronika Knihnitski: Maybe I'll change up one of the rooms for you and we can call it Little Chicago," right?
• 12:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: So Joe was saying we're huge travel bugs.
• 12:40
  Veronika Knihnitski: We love to travel.
• 12:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're our best selves when we're on vacation.
• 12:43
  Veronika Knihnitski: We both live extremely busy lives.
• 12:45
  Veronika Knihnitski: Joe's in Calgary, I'm in Fort Saskatchewan.
• 12:47
  Veronika Knihnitski: We have full-time jobs and we love to travel.
• 12:49
  Veronika Knihnitski: Any sort of chance we get to escape our busy lives our regular corporate jobs, and just go on vacation, we're our best selves, and in many of the cases, we've been very fortunate to travel around the world, whether
• 12:58
  Veronika Knihnitski: that's Spain, whether that's Italy.
• 13:00
  Veronika Knihnitski: And we wanted to bring kinda what you were talking about an experience for people to enjoy it too.
• 13:06
  Veronika Knihnitski: If you can't go jump on a plane to Barcelona, why not spend the weekend feeling like you're in it by creating those rooms, right?
• 13:13
  Veronika Knihnitski: You wanna go to Turkey?
• 13:14
  Veronika Knihnitski: Come, come hang out in our glamping dome, right?
• 13:17
  Veronika Knihnitski: We'll have a, a, a Moroccan-inspired room for you, right?
• 13:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got a, a lot of very niche things in Stettler and the surrounding areas, right?
• 13:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's a very small town.
• 13:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got rodeo grounds right next to our facility.
• 13:29
  Veronika Knihnitski: So that's not every weekend, but that comes around, and so we do obviously tell our folks go check out the rodeo grounds."
• 13:34
  Veronika Knihnitski: So we also have a petting zoo in and around.
• 13:36
  Veronika Knihnitski: Go check that out."
• 13:37
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got a, a lake that needs a little bit of work, but if you wanna hang out by a body of water, go to Buffalo Lake, right?
• 13:43
  Veronika Knihnitski: So creating those experiences in and around the park we do that every day.
• 13:48
  Veronika Knihnitski: But for some folks, t- to your point, th- they don't wanna leave.
• 13:52
  Veronika Knihnitski: They want an experience within the facility, and that's exactly what we're trying to create with this expansion project.
• 13:58
  Veronika Knihnitski: But since we've taken on the business, we've also done a- actually, we, Joe, has done a ton of actual work in terms of the amenities.
• 14:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got hillbilly hot tubs.
• 14:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: N- never made one of those before, but yet somehow Joe figured out to do it.
• 14:13
  Veronika Knihnitski: So we've got a whole bunch of hillbilly hot tubs.
• 14:16
  Veronika Knihnitski: That's bringing in business.
• 14:17
  Veronika Knihnitski: Pe- people see your advertisements.
• 14:18
  Veronika Knihnitski: They're like, "What's that?
• 14:19
  Veronika Knihnitski: We can rent that and we can camp and look under the stars?"
• 14:22
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah, you can.
• 14:23
  Veronika Knihnitski: You can do that.
• 14:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: You can cook.
• 14:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: You can play games.
• 14:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got cold plunges.
• 14:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've even got a sauna.
• 14:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's been incredible for our business, and so to take it up a notch and take it to the next level where we're creating experiences within our ecosystem and what we have at the facility- We figured we wanted to
• 14:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: expand by creating basically universal, like almost like vacation packages at Prairie Junction by exporting, transporting people to some of their most favorite places, like the Parisian room.
• 14:48
  Veronika Knihnitski: I can't wait to show you guys some pictures of it.
• 14:50
  Veronika Knihnitski: A- already picking up all these really cool fancy items for it.
• 14:54
  Veronika Knihnitski: Again, we're creating an experience in a town where y- you won't have those experiences, and obviously utilizing what the town has to offer as well.
• 15:03
  Brian Searl: I think that's part of what I'm saying.
• 15:05
  Brian Searl: The, the experiences don't always have to cost millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars- Even tens of thousands of dollars.
• 15:10
  Brian Searl: And I think some of the...
• 15:11
  Brian Searl: honestly, the hardest part, and I'm not an owner of a property, I'm not brave enough, right?
• 15:16
  Brian Searl: I'm just a marketing and AI tech guy.
• 15:18
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 15:18
  Brian Searl: But like I think, I imagine that part of the h- the biggest issue is understanding your guest since the beginning, what they're going to look for or what they're going to, I don't know, identify with or resonate with
• 15:30
  Brian Searl: that they don't already think that they're looking for, if that's a Chicago room, if that's a Turkey room, if that's a Moroccan r- room, if it's what...
• 15:36
  Brian Searl: right?
• 15:37
  Brian Searl: And I think that understanding of the guest then leads you to the execution, and the execution is not, yes, you have to build things and it takes time, and that's hard in its own right.
• 15:46
  Brian Searl: But it's not as hard as understanding what the actual people will do or will spend their money on.
• 15:51
  Brian Searl: Is that fair, Zach?
• 15:52
  Brian Searl: Or you've done both sides.
• 15:53
  Veronika Knihnitski: And that, that's exactly what we saw too.
• 15:55
  Veronika Knihnitski: Like Joe, I think like our demographic shifted.
• 15:57
  Veronika Knihnitski: Traditionally, like our folks were passing by, maybe they're, driving around, snowbirds coming in and out and they would pop into our resort, right?
• 16:04
  Veronika Knihnitski: But i- in the past year, with a lot of advertising, marketing, targeted advertising, we see what works and we talk to our guests like, "Where are you coming from?
• 16:11
  Veronika Knihnitski: What do you like?"
• 16:12
  Veronika Knihnitski: We have such a blended demographic, and that's what's allowed us to shape our strategy and adopt a, a different model, to your point, Brian.
• 16:19
  Veronika Knihnitski: Like it's not like we came up with this wonderful idea and, we think it'll be successful.
• 16:23
  Veronika Knihnitski: We know it will be successful because we've already done things on a micro scale.
• 16:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: And as we're getting more folks coming in, we're asking the questions, "What do you like to do?
• 16:32
  Veronika Knihnitski: We see what you like to do.
• 16:33
  Veronika Knihnitski: Let's build on that.
• 16:34
  Veronika Knihnitski: Let's build on those experiences so we can do more of that."
• 16:37
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 16:37
  Joe Knihnitski: So just to touch on that point, we currently have 16 glamping units.
• 16:41
  Joe Knihnitski: So we have four cabins, two tents, five trailers, all with different themes, and everyone that stays with us loves the themes.
• 16:48
  Joe Knihnitski: And we have a wait list now with the Prairie Haven expansion underway with over 300 people already signed up that were picking which room they want to stay with.
• 16:56
  Joe Knihnitski: So we're already driving that, just building momentum and the experience.
• 16:59
  Joe Knihnitski: And we have articles written about us about being the fantasy land of the prairies.
• 17:04
  Joe Knihnitski: So Edmonton posted that out, and we just drove so much traction to our website and our business already.
• 17:10
  Joe Knihnitski: So people are already getting excited.
• 17:11
  Joe Knihnitski: So just kinda solidifies our decision to go down this route, and I think it's gonna be very unique.
• 17:17
  Brian Searl: Have you seen the guy-
• 17:18
  Zach Stoltenberg: No question
• 17:18
  Brian Searl: this is totally changing the subject for a second, and then we'll go back to Joe, but have you seen the Charmed guy in Alberta?
• 17:24
  Joe Knihnitski: I have not.
• 17:25
  Joe Knihnitski: It's a Charmed guy.
• 17:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: Charmed guy.
• 17:27
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 17:27
  Brian Searl: He's a-
• 17:28
  Zach Stoltenberg: Charmed.
• 17:28
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah
• 17:29
  Brian Searl: I can't remember his name off the top of my head.
• 17:30
  Brian Searl: He was, he used to be on the show a couple times.
• 17:33
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've had him as a guest before.
• 17:34
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.
• 17:34
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 17:34
  Brian Searl: He he does he used to do Playground Masters on TLC, and he builds these really custom Rapunzel cabins and huge ships, and it's really-
• 17:42
  Joe Knihnitski: I have seen him.
• 17:42
  Joe Knihnitski: I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 17:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: Look at this.
• 17:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: There we go.
• 17:45
  Joe Knihnitski: I know what you're talking about.
• 17:45
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 17:46
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.
• 17:46
  Zach Stoltenberg: Charmed Resorts.
• 17:47
  Brian Searl: Anyway, I'm just saying Alberta
• 17:49
  Zach Stoltenberg: is the home of invention It's a husband, it's a husband-wife couple
• 17:51
  Brian Searl: Yeah, I can't...
• 17:51
  Brian Searl: I'm so sorry.
• 17:51
  Brian Searl: I can't-
• 17:52
  Zach Stoltenberg: Le- Levitts.
• 17:53
  Zach Stoltenberg: Levitts.
• 17:53
  Brian Searl: Yes.
• 17:53
  Brian Searl: Tyson Levitt.
• 17:54
  Brian Searl: Yes.
• 17:54
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yes.
• 17:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: Tyson and Audey.
• 17:57
  Brian Searl: Yep.
• 17:57
  Brian Searl: Sorry.
• 17:58
  Brian Searl: We can go back to you guys' property, but I just want- I was just curious if you'd seen that 'cause you were talking about how you-
• 18:01
  Joe Knihnitski: No, I know exactly what you're talking about, and it's very unique.
• 18:03
  Joe Knihnitski: And there's actually full resorts that they've built for glamping in Alberta and in British Columbia.
• 18:08
  Joe Knihnitski: So I've seen this stuff pop up.
• 18:09
  Joe Knihnitski: And now that I've As soon as you said the Rapunzel castle, I'm like, "Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about."
• 18:13
  Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.
• 18:14
  Joe Knihnitski: It's very unique, very cool.
• 18:15
  Joe Knihnitski: But people love it, and the kids love it
• 18:19
  Zach Stoltenberg: So one, one question I have for you guys just a- about Prairie Junction.
• 18:23
  Zach Stoltenberg: 'Cause you mentioned, you acquired this property.
• 18:25
  Zach Stoltenberg: You've tested it, seen what worked, what's, w- what are your guests gravitating towards, what's had traction.
• 18:32
  Zach Stoltenberg: And o- obviously, you can kinda tell from some of your photos and things online that this was primarily just a campground when you acquired it.
• 18:41
  Joe Knihnitski: Absolutely.
• 18:41
  Zach Stoltenberg: I think industry-wide we're seeing a, a bit of a shift away from the RV, and we know that the RV market is a little soft right now.
• 18:50
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's a little down.
• 18:51
  Zach Stoltenberg: We know that comes and goes in cycles, and it will come back at some point.
• 18:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: But is that kind of similar to what you're seeing there?
• 18:59
  Zach Stoltenberg: Is that a reason for the focus shift to more accommodations, glamping units, unique structures, these themed stays instead of just campsites?
• 19:12
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:13
  Joe Knihnitski: I can touch on that.
• 19:14
  Joe Knihnitski: We see a lot of our guests, like we have five trailers that we rent out and it's just easier to like, to set up your trailer, to tow it.
• 19:21
  Joe Knihnitski: The fuel and the way the economy is right now, everything is extremely expensive.
• 19:24
  Joe Knihnitski: So to have everything that is there and set up for our guests, people show up, they set up, everything's there.
• 19:30
  Joe Knihnitski: It's such an ease.
• 19:31
  Joe Knihnitski: And then to have the themed stays, like we have four cabins on site, each with an individual theme.
• 19:36
  Joe Knihnitski: Everybody has a different niche and a- they all have their own little quirks to them, but we're booked solid all the time with it.
• 19:44
  Joe Knihnitski: So I would say the industry is still...
• 19:47
  Joe Knihnitski: The glamping is ex- is exploding right now.
• 19:50
  Joe Knihnitski: We've seen our glamping over double this summer compared to last summer, and we just played around with it last year.
• 19:56
  Joe Knihnitski: Couple things we see is we introduced those wood-burning hot tubs.
• 19:59
  Joe Knihnitski: We built two of them, put them in front of our cabins.
• 20:02
  Joe Knihnitski: They're very rustic, very unique.
• 20:04
  Joe Knihnitski: We watched our cabin bookings double literally within one month.
• 20:08
  Joe Knihnitski: And then we had RV guests walking past like, "Man, you guys should build some for us to rent."
• 20:12
  Joe Knihnitski: So we took that feedback.
• 20:13
  Joe Knihnitski: We built two more, and they literally rent themselves.
• 20:16
  Joe Knihnitski: You see somebody sitting in a hot tub out in front of their RV under the stars, they...
• 20:20
  Joe Knihnitski: We clean them out, the next person right beside them wants it.
• 20:23
  Joe Knihnitski: And we've had an ROI on that within the first two months of building them.
• 20:26
  Joe Knihnitski: So it's just little perks like that.
• 20:29
  Joe Knihnitski: This year we also introduced a mobile movie theater.
• 20:32
  Joe Knihnitski: So we have these 14-foot inflatable screens with a projector.
• 20:35
  Joe Knihnitski: It's all very cheap on Amazon, but people are willing to spend more than what they paid for their stay for these amenities, and it's just a great add-on.
• 20:42
  Joe Knihnitski: And to sit in like a hillbilly hot tub under the stars watching a 14-foot- screen watching the kids' favorite movie, you see our reviews the people love it and we have so many return customers because of these little
• 20:56
  Joe Knihnitski: amenities.
• 20:56
  Joe Knihnitski: Just out of the box thinking and we're like, "People just want something cool and something cool for the kids to do."
• 21:03
  Brian Searl: Yeah, they just want something different.
• 21:04
  Brian Searl: And we've talked on the show before, or we've had people talk on the show before about how maybe the glamping market is starting to get saturated.
• 21:10
  Brian Searl: I don't think it's anywhere close to saturated.
• 21:13
  Brian Searl: I think if you're doing the same thing as everybody else, either in RV or in glamping or in cabin rentals, then maybe you might be running into a saturation issue.
• 21:21
  Brian Searl: Maybe.
• 21:22
  Brian Searl: But if you're willing to differentiate yourself and think of new things like you're talking about, I think the sky's the limit.
• 21:27
  Brian Searl: It's gonna be for a long time.
• 21:29
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:30
  Zach Stoltenberg: 4.9 stars and over 200 ratings on Google, you guys are doing something really right.
• 21:37
  Tom Mason: Do you find-
• 21:38
  Joe Knihnitski: Oh thank,
• 21:38
  Tom Mason: your guests wanting to rotate through the different accommodation types you have?
• 21:44
  Joe Knihnitski: We do.
• 21:44
  Joe Knihnitski: So-
• 21:45
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah
• 21:45
  Joe Knihnitski: we have a lot of return customers.
• 21:47
  Zach Stoltenberg: You're getting return, yeah.
• 21:49
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, and they like to s- stay in the different themes, and it's always triggered, it seems to be, by the kids.
• 21:54
  Joe Knihnitski: Because we have an Ocean Breeze room, and then we have a Lumberjack, and we have a, a bunk house, which is very cowboy themed, and then we have a Bohemian room.
• 22:02
  Joe Knihnitski: So that's currently what we have for those, and then we have some yurts and stuff as well.
• 22:06
  Joe Knihnitski: But we have a lot of return customers, but a lot of it is from the customer service side of it.
• 22:11
  Joe Knihnitski: We have really good staff that really see the vision.
• 22:15
  Joe Knihnitski: They're bought in, they help me build things, they're fully engaged.
• 22:18
  Joe Knihnitski: One of them lives right on site, and you'll see them name-dropped in all of our reviews.
• 22:23
  Joe Knihnitski: They're reaching out to our guests as soon as they book, "Hey, is this an anniversary?
• 22:27
  Joe Knihnitski: Is this a birthday?
• 22:29
  Joe Knihnitski: How can we help?
• 22:29
  Joe Knihnitski: Can we go get personalized cake for you?
• 22:31
  Joe Knihnitski: Can we go get..."
• 22:32
  Joe Knihnitski: We treat ourselves like a resort, and our reviews don't lie.
• 22:36
  Joe Knihnitski: Our staff is our greatest asset.
• 22:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah and on, on the anniversaries, trust me we're not shy to pull out a YouTube video, try to figure out how to make a swan, a towel swan.
• 22:50
  Veronika Knihnitski: Trust me, we both spent endless hours trying to perfect a swan, and we're still not there, but we will try.
• 22:57
  Veronika Knihnitski: We will do whatever we can do.
• 22:59
  Veronika Knihnitski: If it's something that we would love and appreciate why not extend that to our guests?
• 23:03
  Veronika Knihnitski: We have a lot of fun with it.
• 23:05
  Veronika Knihnitski: Rose petals on your bed, couple chocolates from Dollarama, fold up some towels, call it a day, and people love it, right?
• 23:11
  Veronika Knihnitski: They appreciate that extra care.
• 23:13
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's a campground, it's a, it's an RV resort, but you don't see those sorts of, things in, in, in your traditional campgrounds, right?
• 23:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: So w- we, in anything that we do, Joe and I always like to take it an extra mile, and we just have fun with it.
• 23:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: We enjoy it.
• 23:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: We, we really do.
• 23:28
  Brian Searl: I think it'd be fascinating for somebody to try to offer turndown service at a RV.
• 23:32
  Brian Searl: Just walk up to the RV and knock on the door and have a warm chocolate chip cookie or something kind of turndown.
• 23:36
  Brian Searl: Not go in their rig-
• 23:37
  Veronika Knihnitski: Totally
• 23:37
  Brian Searl: touch their bed.
• 23:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: Totally.
• 23:39
  Brian Searl: But, yeah.
• 23:39
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 23:40
  Brian Searl: Jayne, what do you think?
• 23:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 23:41
  Brian Searl: You've been quiet
• 23:44
  Jayne Cohen: Hi.
• 23:45
  Jayne Cohen: I think I'm a little bit delayed, and Brian, I'm gonna have to leave in a- about five minutes, but I think that cabins and rentals and, I've been around for 50 years, and cabins were always the glamping.
• 24:00
  Jayne Cohen: I think glamping, while it is a level of accommodation, I see it as more of a marketing term, and I still do.
• 24:10
  Jayne Cohen: Typically at campgrounds, in all my career with campgrounds that have rentals, the rentals always book much faster than the sites, and there's reasons for that.
• 24:22
  Jayne Cohen: One is there's usually more sites than rentals, right?
• 24:27
  Jayne Cohen: And also, the rental market is much bigger than the RV m- than the site market.
• 24:34
  Jayne Cohen: Okay?
• 24:35
  Jayne Cohen: So there's reasons for that.
• 24:36
  Jayne Cohen: And honestly, after dealing with thousands of campgrounds, I've only ever had one that I've seen the reverse.
• 24:44
  Jayne Cohen: And this park in particular has 80 rentals and has, and is in an area that's very high competition with hotels.
• 24:55
  Jayne Cohen: So I think it's just got a little bit of a different demographic, but y- you're right.
• 24:59
  Jayne Cohen: It's always been about the experience, but also the experience is just getting in the outdoors, ha- sitting around a campfire listening to...
• 25:11
  Jayne Cohen: there are some very simple things about the experience.
• 25:14
  Jayne Cohen: Listening to the sound of water, right?
• 25:18
  Jayne Cohen: Whether it's rolling up on the beach or a stream going by.
• 25:24
  Jayne Cohen: And I think many campgrounds, glamping resorts, whatever you wanna call them have missed that.
• 25:32
  Jayne Cohen: They don't, they get so into what's the site have and what's the rental have.
• 25:37
  Jayne Cohen: Listen, the basics we all have to have, but after all those basics, it's all about creating that experience and the customer service behind it.
• 25:48
  Jayne Cohen: I think that is probably the most important And I do wanna say that y- your place is very impressive, and having a 4.9 Google rating is, with a couple hundred reviews, is very impressive.
• 26:05
  Joe Knihnitski: Thank you.
• 26:05
  Jayne Cohen: Keep it up.
• 26:07
  Joe Knihnitski: Thank you.
• 26:08
  Joe Knihnitski: We're very proud of it.
• 26:10
  Brian Searl: Anything else you wanna add, Jayne, since you have to leave us in five minutes?
• 26:13
  Brian Searl: I don't wanna miss anything huge.
• 26:14
  Jayne Cohen: Maybe they, maybe Joe and Veronika sh- could share how they are getting all those reviews because- that's sometimes very hard for folks.
• 26:25
  Jayne Cohen: Certain pe- people tend to wanna write a review, right?
• 26:31
  Jayne Cohen: It's either, it's one end of the spec- trum or the other.
• 26:35
  Jayne Cohen: If they've had a time and they wanna let everyone know that, they write, or it's the other end of the spectrum where they've had such a great time and they've made such a great connection with your staff.
• 26:47
  Jayne Cohen: I think that's, that they wanna tell everyone about it, right?
• 26:50
  Jayne Cohen: Because that's what they'll remember is the experience and the people, the staff, you know, that they met along the way.
• 26:59
  Joe Knihnitski: And I think that is I talked about it earlier, but that is the one key driver is our managers.
• 27:04
  Joe Knihnitski: They are those, they like, they will work 16 hours, and they'll be p- by people's- Sides stoking their fires to get their hot tub, help them set up the projector screens.
• 27:14
  Joe Knihnitski: We give the kid, the kids free perks all the time, candy and chocolate bars and it, it's a couple dollars here and there, or we'll even see the kids having such a good time with the projector screen, we'll
• 27:24
  Joe Knihnitski: let them have it for free for a night because they're enjoying it so much.
• 27:27
  Joe Knihnitski: And there's these little things that in the big grand scheme of things, it's just, we already own it.
• 27:32
  Joe Knihnitski: It's there.
• 27:33
  Joe Knihnitski: They're having such a good time.
• 27:34
  Joe Knihnitski: We let them have these little perks.
• 27:36
  Joe Knihnitski: Sometimes just throw it in there, and they are so happy to write us a review.
• 27:39
  Joe Knihnitski: And yeah, we just drive it honestly.
• 27:41
  Joe Knihnitski: No, it's,
• 27:41
  Jayne Cohen: what you're doing is you're setting-
• 27:45
  Joe Knihnitski: And there's so much po-
• 27:45
  Jayne Cohen: What you're doing is you're setting a guest expectation and then you're delivering way more.
• 27:52
  Jayne Cohen: And that, that always results, that's always positive, right?
• 27:57
  Jayne Cohen: And I think you guys-
• 27:58
  Joe Knihnitski: Another thing to touch on too
• 27:59
  Jayne Cohen: an example of that
• 28:00
  Joe Knihnitski: Sorry.
• 28:01
  Jayne Cohen: I'm sorry
• 28:02
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah
• 28:02
  Jayne Cohen: I have a delay here today, I don't know.
• 28:06
  Joe Knihnitski: So we have an event center.
• 28:07
  Joe Knihnitski: So we did 10, we did a bi- big renovation last year, opened up the rafters, did a big pergola, fire tables and we booked 10 weddings this year.
• 28:15
  Joe Knihnitski: And my wonderful wife, with her full-time job, thought she would be, and I- she loves weddings, let's get fully involved in helping these ladies plan their weddings.
• 28:24
  Joe Knihnitski: And they have wedding planners.
• 28:25
  Joe Knihnitski: And my wife-
• 28:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah
• 28:28
  Joe Knihnitski: spent, I'm telling you, like 60 hours with some of these ladies.
• 28:32
  Joe Knihnitski: We had a 220 person wedding, and my wife was answering her phone at 12 o'clock at night just to make sure that it was perfect.
• 28:38
  Joe Knihnitski: And she didn't listen to me, I said, "You're getting way too in deep with these people."
• 28:42
  Joe Knihnitski: But she rode it out and these people were over the moon.
• 28:46
  Joe Knihnitski: And then all their guests wrote us reviews.
• 28:47
  Joe Knihnitski: There was, they had wedding planners there that had no idea what the schedule was, what was happening, but my wife knew it, and we were there to support and we made sure that everything went out without a whim.
• 28:57
  Joe Knihnitski: We also love events.
• 28:58
  Joe Knihnitski: That's part of the reason we acquired this business.
• 29:01
  Joe Knihnitski: So we're happy to do it and we're just there to support.
• 29:03
  Joe Knihnitski: And that little bit of extra touch, yeah, we don't sleep much, especially with material, but it's important to us and our name's all over this, and we are so prideful that we have such a good customer retention, such
• 29:14
  Joe Knihnitski: good experiences, and obviously the reviews follow,
• 29:16
  Brian Searl: and I think that's one of the lessons about experiences that I've been and Zach and many other people in this industry have been trying to portray is like you can do the Travis thing.
• 29:25
  Brian Searl: You can also do something smaller like we've talked about that, that makes just as big of an impact, which both of you have done.
• 29:29
  Brian Searl: And I don't know that I'd call it smaller, but you understand what I mean.
• 29:31
  Brian Searl: There's difference between that and multimillion dollar chalets.
• 29:34
  Brian Searl: Absolutely.
• 29:35
  Brian Searl: A- and I think that's, for me that, for the RV park owners who are listening to this, the campground owners, the, the people who are adding glamping to their park or, just starting something from scratch, I think the
• 29:46
  Brian Searl: bar is set so low on a macro level in our industry.
• 29:50
  Brian Searl: There are certainly- Yeah lots of micro people doing it great.
• 29:53
  Brian Searl: But on a macro level, the bar is set so low because nothing's changed since the 1960s, that if you just give somebody a warm chocolate cookie or like a turndown service or like you can blow them away and
• 30:03
  Brian Searl: they'll leave you a review and they'll be like, "Wow, I've never had anything like this."
• 30:06
  Brian Searl: And they'll come back and wanna stay in the different cabins and everything else.
• 30:09
  Brian Searl: And certainly like above and beyond, like wedding is a special thing, right?
• 30:13
  Brian Searl: 60 hours.
• 30:14
  Brian Searl: Not saying that we're advocating for everybody to do that, although that's great, right?
• 30:18
  Brian Searl: But- Yeah but like there's just, there's little things that you can do that will really like just change somebody's entire perspective and make them really excited and they're...
• 30:27
  Brian Searl: And for now, I think- Oh the next five, 10, 15 years, they're gonna be pretty low hanging fruit
• 30:33
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, I agree.
• 30:33
  Joe Knihnitski: And in this industry, like I- when we onboard our staff, we have that conversation.
• 30:37
  Joe Knihnitski: It literally takes two seconds for somebody to have a good day.
• 30:40
  Joe Knihnitski: It's just how you treat them, how you are, and just listen to the little details, it goes miles.
• 30:45
  Joe Knihnitski: It's such a simple business to keep people happy.
• 30:49
  Joe Knihnitski: If they're already there, they're spending tons of money to come to your property, you might as well give them that five-star treatment and treat them how you wanna be treated, that's the biggest thing, and support them.
• 30:57
  Joe Knihnitski: It literally takes two seconds to make somebody have a good day, so we're happy to be in this business.
• 31:01
  Joe Knihnitski: We're both in oil and gas for full-time, and we don't make people happy all the time, and it's this is like therapy.
• 31:07
  Veronika Knihnitski: Not in our industries.
• 31:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's a little rough out here.
• 31:09
  Joe Knihnitski: So- Yeah so we quite enjoy it.
• 31:10
  Joe Knihnitski: I find it quite therapeutic and yeah, we're so happy to have this business.
• 31:15
  Veronika Knihnitski: And then the other thing that just comes to my mind in terms of going the extra mile it was so obvious, like when we acquired this campground like obviously, technology is such a huge thing and a huge part
• 31:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: of our lives, and of course, if you're going camping, you kinda wanna escape all of that.
• 31:29
  Veronika Knihnitski: But even from the point of booking, one of the very first things that we did is we looked at their existing booking system and their infrastructure, we're like, "Holy smokes, we absolutely need to elevate.
• 31:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: We need to elevate, we need to upgrade, we need to implement a new system, something that's user-friendly, get on board with all of the other booking companies," right?
• 31:46
  Veronika Knihnitski: 'Cause in many cases, w- what was happening previously was if you wanted to stay at the resort, you had to call in and somebody needed to be on the other line to book you in.
• 31:54
  Veronika Knihnitski: We don't have time for that.
• 31:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: Folks are driving around.
• 31:57
  Veronika Knihnitski: Get advertisements going, get on Airbnb, get on Expedia, get on booking.com, get on all these platforms, make it so that the guests can book themselves, or also have the option that they can have the support by your staff
• 32:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: to actually help them with the booking.
• 32:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: But where the game changer was from the very beginning was make sure that you have the right tools in place so people can book, they can see you, you've got the advertising, and also just- Not because we wanna
• 32:21
  Veronika Knihnitski: have any sort of really futuristic campground, but simple stuff, right?
• 32:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: We automated our showers, right?
• 32:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: Not everybody's...
• 32:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: I don't know about you guys, I don't have 20 loonies in my pocket at any given time, right?
• 32:32
  Veronika Knihnitski: And if I'm going camping in the middle of nowhere, that's not what I think about, is to go get a bunch of loonies.
• 32:36
  Brian Searl: Just to be clear for the Americans, she's not talking about crazy people.
• 32:40
  Brian Searl: So go ahead, sorry
• 32:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: Oh, yes.
• 32:42
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yes.
• 32:43
  Zach Stoltenberg: I know what a loonie is.
• 32:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: You guys have dollar bills.
• 32:46
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 32:46
  Veronika Knihnitski: Paper dollar bills.
• 32:47
  Veronika Knihnitski: Okay.
• 32:48
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got fancy,
• 32:49
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've got coins too
• 32:50
  Veronika Knihnitski: Okay.
• 32:51
  Veronika Knihnitski: So we got coin.
• 32:52
  Veronika Knihnitski: We got coin loonies, right?
• 32:54
  Veronika Knihnitski: And so if you're gonna come and have a shower with us, a, a year and a half ago, you had to have a bunch of loonies, the coin loonies, with you in order to do that.
• 33:02
  Veronika Knihnitski: And so that's not convenient.
• 33:04
  Veronika Knihnitski: I don't know who- who's got a whole bunch of coin loonies lying around.
• 33:07
  Veronika Knihnitski: They'd come to us we'd have no choice but to get them, but we automated, right?
• 33:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: So we've got NAX machines that you can use your credit card, you can tap in for a shower, right?
• 33:15
  Veronika Knihnitski: Simple stuff like that, that evolves with where we're at as a society, right?
• 33:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: We use our cards, we use our mobile devices for payment.
• 33:23
  Veronika Knihnitski: Integrate with that.
• 33:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: Don't make it so difficult for people to purchase those things, right?
• 33:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: A lot of them are very cash and carry, or bookings have to be done over the phone.
• 33:32
  Veronika Knihnitski: Simple stuff to automate and to ensure that we can attract a larger scale of people is one of the first things that we've done.
• 33:38
  Brian Searl: I think one of the-
• 33:39
  Veronika Knihnitski: And found it quite effective
• 33:40
  Brian Searl: I think one of the interesting things that I've learned just in what I do with, the AI technology we deploy is so we, I share the kind of mindset with you, is that AI is powerful technology is powerful,
• 33:50
  Brian Searl: where we're going is powerful.
• 33:52
  Brian Searl: Not everybody wants it front and center in their face.
• 33:54
  Brian Searl: But if you design it well-
• 33:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: That's right
• 33:56
  Brian Searl: then the undercurrent of that helps you deliver a better guest experience as we're talking about here.
• 34:01
  Brian Searl: And so I think what we've discovered probably over the last year is we've begun to not just continue to deploy our AI chat and call agents, but to build some of the features like abandoned cart recovery and things
• 34:11
  Brian Searl: like that, is that we've learned that the people are there, they're willing to spend the money, they just sometimes need a nudge toward your store or toward the abandoned cart or toward, some kind of add-on or experience they
• 34:23
  Brian Searl: can have either at your campground or in the local area.
• 34:27
  Brian Searl: And I think that tend, tends to hold true.
• 34:27
  Brian Searl: And so what was more, and maybe other people knew this and were just smarter than me all along, right?
• 34:31
  Brian Searl: What I think I've come to realize is that sometimes it's just more about that touchpoint than trying to go out and spend a bunch of money in advertising.
• 34:38
  Brian Searl: It's about who do I already have who's already willing to come here?
• 34:41
  Brian Searl: Who can I already take, not advantage of in a bad way but steer in the direction of "I have something that you want, let me give it to you."
• 34:50
  Zach Stoltenberg: I think a lot a- about some of the, the things that they talk about in the book on Unreasonable Hospitality.
• 34:57
  Zach Stoltenberg: I don't know if you guys have ever read that or heard about it.
• 34:59
  Zach Stoltenberg: I try to read it about once a year.
• 35:01
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's front of my mind because my boss is reading it right now.
• 35:04
  Zach Stoltenberg: That's one of the things that they talk about is, empowering your staff your onsite manager to, your maintenance guy, everybody, that they have the power when they see a need for a guest to just step in and do
• 35:16
  Zach Stoltenberg: that, whether that's giving them an extra night with the, the outdoor movie theater set up or whatever it is.
• 35:23
  Zach Stoltenberg: But I think the, the piece that's missing, and Brian, you hit on this, is when you look at what that costs, and Joe you mentioned this earlier, right?
• 35:32
  Zach Stoltenberg: Like we've already...
• 35:33
  Zach Stoltenberg: We already own the equipment.
• 35:34
  Zach Stoltenberg: Like nobody else has it booked.
• 35:35
  Zach Stoltenberg: Nobody e- there's nothing else there.
• 35:37
  Zach Stoltenberg: It doesn't cost us anything to do this, but it makes a huge difference to our guests.
• 35:42
  Zach Stoltenberg: And it's not so much the transaction piece of that because they're still paying for it.
• 35:46
  Zach Stoltenberg: They rented it, right?
• 35:47
  Zach Stoltenberg: They bought a service, you provided it.
• 35:49
  Tom Mason: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Zach Stoltenberg: But it's that extra step, that above and beyond, that shows that you're tuned into that guest, that you are paying attention, that you are sensitive to their needs or to their kids, to what their family, needed in order
• 36:03
  Zach Stoltenberg: to have a great experience with you.
• 36:06
  Zach Stoltenberg: And I think those are the things that sometimes an operator gets so distracted about.
• 36:13
  Zach Stoltenberg: We've got to do marketing, we've got to do advertising, we got to buy, Meta Ads and Google Ads, and we got to do all this when, doing something as simple as a free night on a movie rental.
• 36:24
  Zach Stoltenberg: Now you've made such a huge difference to that guest.
• 36:27
  Zach Stoltenberg: You've built that trust, that loyalty.
• 36:30
  Zach Stoltenberg: They're gonna come back.
• 36:30
  Zach Stoltenberg: They're gonna give you a five-star review.
• 36:33
  Zach Stoltenberg: That's marketing and advertising that you can't pay for.
• 36:36
  Zach Stoltenberg: You couldn't buy that if you wanted it.
• 36:38
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's got to be real.
• 36:39
  Zach Stoltenberg: It's got to be authentic.
• 36:40
  Zach Stoltenberg: And so I think the fact that you guys have tuned into that is, is awesome.
• 36:45
  Zach Stoltenberg: But maybe talk a little bit like- He said I know in the book he talks about his experience working at a hotel in New York, and they had some crazy high limit.
• 36:55
  Zach Stoltenberg: It was like $1,000.
• 36:57
  Zach Stoltenberg: If you saw a guest had a need for something and you could fix it for less than $1,000, you didn't even have to go to your manager.
• 37:05
  Zach Stoltenberg: You didn't have to go to your boss.
• 37:07
  Zach Stoltenberg: You didn't have to ask for permission to do it.
• 37:10
  Zach Stoltenberg: Just go do it.
• 37:11
  Zach Stoltenberg: Just take care of it.
• 37:12
  Zach Stoltenberg: I've heard stories about a, a guy that was in town for a job interview.
• 37:16
  Zach Stoltenberg: The hotel he was staying at, you had to valet your car, and he wasn't expecting that expense, and he was almost out of gas.
• 37:24
  Zach Stoltenberg: And as he checked in with the valet, he was like you don't take these very far, right?"
• 37:28
  Zach Stoltenberg: Because he was worried he wasn't gonna have enough gas to get to his job interview the next morning.
• 37:33
  Zach Stoltenberg: And the valet went and took his car and filled his car and brought it back and parked it.
• 37:38
  Zach Stoltenberg: And when he came down the next morning, like worried, "Am I gonna run out of gas on my way to my job interview?"
• 37:43
  Zach Stoltenberg: He got in his car and it had a full tank of gas.
• 37:45
  Zach Stoltenberg: That's great.
• 37:45
  Zach Stoltenberg: And he got the job, and he came back and he was like, "I need to repay whoever that was."
• 37:50
  Zach Stoltenberg: And they had to pull security footage to even find the valet attendant, and they found out he had done it out of his own pocket.
• 37:57
  Zach Stoltenberg: He had just heard the guy talking on the phone, telling whoever he was talking to, he was worried he was gonna run out of gas that, that next day.
• 38:05
  Zach Stoltenberg: And he just saw a need and he stepped up and did it.
• 38:08
  Zach Stoltenberg: So I don't know, y- you mentioned kind of your training with your staff and what you go through in that onboarding, but maybe talk a little bit more about that.
• 38:16
  Zach Stoltenberg: Like w- what have you done with your staff, with your managers to empower them to, one, to pay attention and be sensitive to those guest needs, and then two, to be able to act on it without, bureaucracy and
• 38:27
  Zach Stoltenberg: six levels of approval to be able to do it?
• 38:31
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, I can touch on that as well.
• 38:33
  Joe Knihnitski: We have a group chat, and I will literally every five-star review that we get a name drop, and they come in probably every two days.
• 38:40
  Joe Knihnitski: I share that with them, and I build them off that.
• 38:42
  Joe Knihnitski: They're also enticed with a little bit of commission, so any of the markups for the rental scooters, the bikes, the hot tubs, anything that they drive, they get a commission on that as well.
• 38:51
  Joe Knihnitski: So all these little things, like we give them perks.
• 38:54
  Joe Knihnitski: Some of our people live on site.
• 38:56
  Joe Knihnitski: They get to use all the amenities.
• 38:57
  Joe Knihnitski: They get to live there for free.
• 38:58
  Joe Knihnitski: They get to use it and we spend a lot of time on just showing them how to interact with the customers, how to talk, how to navigate through...
• 39:06
  Joe Knihnitski: 'Cause not everyone is as pleasant as the other person.
• 39:10
  Joe Knihnitski: We've had some Karens for sure at the park, and we've had people pull magnifying glasses out and look at a, a piece of fluff screaming that we have bedbugs, and we've had to navigate through all those.
• 39:21
  Joe Knihnitski: And we've never not been able to get through it, but it's just being able to teach them how to deescalate, and that's so important because these little small details, you don't think it's a big deal, but you're not
• 39:33
  Joe Knihnitski: in the same mind frame as the person that's dealing with it.
• 39:35
  Joe Knihnitski: So spending time with them, how to deal with customers, how to deescalate.
• 39:39
  Joe Knihnitski: Veronika has a huge background in HR, so she's been an adversary for all that training as well.
• 39:45
  Joe Knihnitski: But it's just spending time with them and showing up for your employees too and just recognizing the good feedback all the time
• 39:51
  Veronika Knihnitski: but beyond that too I think realistically the, the cliche is, y- your leadership is important, so ultimately any sort of time we're interviewing these folks, we're having sincere conversations.
• 40:02
  Veronika Knihnitski: No bullshit at home.
• 40:03
  Veronika Knihnitski: What is what you get.
• 40:04
  Veronika Knihnitski: If you come and join us, this is exactly what it is, right?
• 40:07
  Veronika Knihnitski: We want you to know us, you...
• 40:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: We want you to trust us, right?
• 40:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: We always say, "You're an extension of our family," and so is this business, right?
• 40:14
  Veronika Knihnitski: We wanna make sure that obviously we treat our staff very w- well.
• 40:17
  Veronika Knihnitski: We, we go above and beyond for them.
• 40:19
  Veronika Knihnitski: They need something, you've got it.
• 40:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: You wanna spend the night with your husband or your partner or your friends in a cabin?
• 40:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: Don't even ask.
• 40:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: Just book it, block it.
• 40:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: We wanna make sure that they're supported.
• 40:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: The other thing too is yes, of course we provide, a degree of training, but at the end of the day I can't teach someone to be kind.
• 40:34
  Veronika Knihnitski: I can't do that.
• 40:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: I can't teach someone to be authentic and sincere and genuine.
• 40:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: I cannot do those things, right?
• 40:40
  Veronika Knihnitski: You either maybe evolve to become more of those things with the examples that are around you, but for the most part, when we're hiring, I actually am absolutely looking for that.
• 40:49
  Veronika Knihnitski: I'm looking for someone who is sincere, someone that goes above and beyond.
• 40:53
  Veronika Knihnitski: Our current manager we couldn't be more proud of who we have, right?
• 40:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: Because that's just who they are, right?
• 40:58
  Veronika Knihnitski: If we have an exa- we have so many examples.
• 41:00
  Veronika Knihnitski: We have so many full circle moments.
• 41:02
  Veronika Knihnitski: Even Joe, like w- with this construction, I know you've got a wonderful story there with how the guy that's doing the construction, how we helped that guy and somehow he's coming in to help out, right?
• 41:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: But for example i- if a mom's out there, she's camping and she's got a baby.
• 41:14
  Veronika Knihnitski: Cold milk.
• 41:15
  Veronika Knihnitski: I got a microwave."
• 41:16
  Veronika Knihnitski: "Let me help you.
• 41:17
  Veronika Knihnitski: If you don't wanna use the microwave radiation, no problem.
• 41:19
  Veronika Knihnitski: I got a pot and I got a, a, a stove.
• 41:22
  Veronika Knihnitski: Just let us know.
• 41:22
  Veronika Knihnitski: Here's my number.
• 41:23
  Veronika Knihnitski: Shoot me a text.
• 41:24
  Veronika Knihnitski: I can help you out.
• 41:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: You've got some toddlers, I got a water table."
• 41:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: We don't even ask.
• 41:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: We just show up with it, right?
• 41:29
  Veronika Knihnitski: I- it's just, again, being an extension of our family to our guests, to our staff.
• 41:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's the example that we hope people follow by and ultimately we see it kinda come to life.
• 41:40
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's a full circle moment with our staff, with our guests, with ourselves and we just keep that standard going and ensure that, the folks that we bring in they have the same mentality.
• 41:48
  Veronika Knihnitski: I think that's very important
• 41:52
  Tom Mason: It sounds like I, I just wanna speak a little you...
• 41:56
  Tom Mason: The culture you two have developed over the year, it, years perpetuates itself.
• 42:03
  Tom Mason: So you hire-
• 42:04
  Joe Knihnitski: Sure
• 42:04
  Tom Mason: someone new and they know the group, the new person coming in is trained by the people who are there.
• 42:10
  Tom Mason: So you've created this foundation and culture which perpetuates itself, which is great.
• 42:16
  Tom Mason: It makes anyone newly employed, makes their onboarding much easier.
• 42:22
  Tom Mason: And just speaking to some of the conversation here, people generally wanna keep people happy.
• 42:29
  Tom Mason: If you hire right, they wanna make sure the experience is right.
• 42:33
  Tom Mason: And if they don't feel the burden of the policy or the procedure has to be followed, or I need approval, if they don't feel, they'll make the right decision 99% of the time.
• 42:44
  Joe Knihnitski: We totally agree.
• 42:45
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah.
• 42:46
  Joe Knihnitski: And it, to be honest, guys, it was not easy to get to this point.
• 42:48
  Joe Knihnitski: We, we-
• 42:49
  Veronika Knihnitski: No
• 42:50
  Joe Knihnitski: went through a lot of staff but we have kept on to our core four, and they're amazing.
• 42:55
  Joe Knihnitski: And hard work is contagious, and being kind is contagious.
• 42:58
  Joe Knihnitski: But we we know what our expectations are and our standards to make sure that we hold that resort name.
• 43:02
  Joe Knihnitski: It's in our name.
• 43:04
  Joe Knihnitski: We have the reviews, we have this, so it's really important to us to make sure that we have the right people, and I think that's important to any business, not just campgrounds and glamping RV parks.
• 43:14
  Joe Knihnitski: But yeah, finding the right people, you, it's number one for sure.
• 43:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: And they enjoy it.
• 43:21
  Veronika Knihnitski: We talked, like we, we slipped in there, some of our fo- folks, they work 16 hours.
• 43:25
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're not slave drivers.
• 43:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: We ask nobody to work 16 hours.
• 43:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: They do it willingly because they love it.
• 43:30
  Veronika Knihnitski: They enjoy it to be able to make someone's day and see what that extra mile does.
• 43:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's contagious.
• 43:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's infectious.
• 43:36
  Veronika Knihnitski: We want our staff to be rested, work eight-hour days and go home.
• 43:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: Go do, do what you want.
• 43:39
  Veronika Knihnitski: But they love to be there.
• 43:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: They love to be interacting with the guests.
• 43:42
  Veronika Knihnitski: That's where they like to be.
• 43:46
  Brian Searl: Tom, how do you think you can scale that at a, a larger resort?
• 43:49
  Brian Searl: 'Cause you manage a lot of them, right?
• 43:52
  Brian Searl: How do you think that...
• 43:52
  Brian Searl: is it possible?
• 43:53
  Brian Searl: Or I'm, it's possible, but how, it's harder, right?
• 43:56
  Tom Mason: Yeah, it's harder.
• 43:57
  Tom Mason: I, i- if to scale something along those lines, y- you probably need to have a dedicated person to make that visit to each park to work with the employees at that park, and there's gonna be some standard You
• 44:16
  Tom Mason: know, steps that you need to follow just because of scale.
• 44:20
  Tom Mason: Th- that over time you would hope you...
• 44:22
  Tom Mason: It would begin to take.
• 44:24
  Tom Mason: And like anything else, like all my GMs aren't AGMs.
• 44:29
  Tom Mason: I have As, Bs, and Cs.
• 44:32
  Tom Mason: And y- you need to focus on the Cs a little bit more than you need to focus on the As.
• 44:37
  Tom Mason: The same thing would probably happen in a park, and the size of the park would determine, if you have four employees there, that's much easier to create that culture than in a park where you have 30 employees.
• 44:50
  Tom Mason: Absolutely.
• 44:50
  Tom Mason: And we also know this turnover that exists, I may have 50 employees for the summer, but 20 during the winter.
• 45:00
  Tom Mason: And when that turnover, you've got to...
• 45:04
  Tom Mason: You wanna...
• 45:05
  Tom Mason: Ideally, you want a core of employees at each park that keep that culture alive, but that would be difficult.
• 45:13
  Tom Mason: It's dif- you know, it's not easy for the two...
• 45:16
  Tom Mason: you two to have done it in your park.
• 45:18
  Tom Mason: You said it was...
• 45:18
  Tom Mason: You had challenges.
• 45:20
  Tom Mason: Sure.
• 45:20
  Tom Mason: If you roll it out to 10 parks or 14 parks or whatever, you're gonna have challenges.
• 45:26
  Tom Mason: Absolutely.
• 45:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's true, and then just on a final note, like y- yes, we absolutely have gone through quite a bit of attrition, right?
• 45:33
  Veronika Knihnitski: But the thing is I think we're...
• 45:34
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's not that I'm proud of attrition, it's just if you have somebody that doesn't fit the mold or is a disruptor, is a toxic seed we're not gonna enable it.
• 45:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're very strict on that.
• 45:46
  Veronika Knihnitski: If you are disrupting the business, if you're, changing the culture and the dynamic that we've tr- worked so hard to cultivate, it's going to upset everyone else, right?
• 45:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've all worked with people that, you know how the heck does this guy still work here, right?
• 46:00
  Veronika Knihnitski: We have a zero tolerance for that sort of behavior of any kind that goes against the, the general wellbeing of our staff and how we operate.
• 46:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're a customer-centric business, the most service-oriented you can be, and we're trying to continue to lead in Alberta in that sector, and so we're very meticulous in hiring, and we certainly will provide chances.
• 46:20
  Veronika Knihnitski: We provide training, provide feedback and areas for growth and improvement, but we're quite firm on ensuring that any sort of misdemeanors, any sort of beyond what was reasonable is immediately dealt with.
• 46:33
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah we don't tolerate it, for sure.
• 46:36
  Tom Mason: As you should
• 46:39
  Brian Searl: All right.
• 46:40
  Brian Searl: Let's spend the last few minutes asking each other questions.
• 46:42
  Brian Searl: I'll turn over the hosting duties.
• 46:43
  Brian Searl: So Zach, do you have a question for any of our guests that are left?
• 46:47
  Brian Searl: We lost Jayne.
• 46:49
  Brian Searl: Be awkward if you ask her a question, but I'm just saying, I'm trying.
• 46:53
  Zach Stoltenberg: I don't care either Joe or Veronika, you can take this one.
• 46:57
  Zach Stoltenberg: On the heels of that discussion what do you feel like is maybe just one thing, like the, the single thing that you have changed in your business in the last year that has either i- improved the guest experience
• 47:16
  Zach Stoltenberg: piece or improved the staffing response to it?
• 47:20
  Zach Stoltenberg: What's one thing that maybe you've either gotten rid of or something new that you've added and just said, "Gosh, it took us a couple years to figure this out.
• 47:28
  Zach Stoltenberg: We should have done it sooner"?
• 47:33
  Joe Knihnitski: I would say adding...
• 47:35
  Joe Knihnitski: there's so much.
• 47:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: Go ahead.
• 47:36
  Joe Knihnitski: We've branched-
• 47:37
  Veronika Knihnitski: There's so much, yeah
• 47:38
  Joe Knihnitski: we introduced so much technology, we did so many renovations.
• 47:41
  Joe Knihnitski: But the one thing that changed the business was obviously technology integration, making sure that everything's automated.
• 47:49
  Joe Knihnitski: That was number one.
• 47:50
  Joe Knihnitski: Making that easy for everyone.
• 47:52
  Joe Knihnitski: That helps with the staffing so they're not on the phone all the time.
• 47:55
  Joe Knihnitski: And then number two is adding all these custom fun amenities.
• 47:59
  Joe Knihnitski: The hot tubs, the cold plunges, the saunas, all these little things that just kinda, they keep people at the park, and they keep 'em occupied, keep 'em busy, and just thinking outside the box, like introducing these little movie
• 48:10
  Joe Knihnitski: theater packages.
• 48:12
  Joe Knihnitski: They're rented all the time.
• 48:13
  Joe Knihnitski: People love sitting in a hot tub watching a movie with their kids.
• 48:16
  Joe Knihnitski: Just always thinking of, how do we get better and how do we offer something that's something that nobody else is offering?
• 48:23
  Joe Knihnitski: And they're all fairly cheap to do, and they incentivize your staff to s- upsell it, because it's worth more than what the stay is, and people buy it all the time.
• 48:33
  Joe Knihnitski: I think that's super important,
• 48:34
  Brian Searl: All right, Joe, do you have a question for anybody else?
• 48:36
  Brian Searl: You're apart from your wife apparently right now, so if you wanna take the time to ask her a question, you can do that, but...
• 48:42
  Joe Knihnitski: No, I'll save that for after the show.
• 48:44
  Joe Knihnitski: Let's talk to Tom.
• 48:45
  Joe Knihnitski: So you obviously run some big resorts.
• 48:49
  Joe Knihnitski: What is your biggest hindrance do you see with operating something on such scale?
• 48:56
  Tom Mason: It is the consistency.
• 48:58
  Tom Mason: We want to make sure we're consistent across all the parks, and there's a lot of diversity within our portfolio both with types of park and ownership groups.
• 49:11
  Tom Mason: So trying to deliver a consistent product, and we talked about attrition or turnover and leadership.
• 49:20
  Tom Mason: That, that constant deliverable it has been a challenge.
• 49:24
  Tom Mason: And we go, it seems like we go through some phases where- y- we go, a couple GMs resign or they move on or they've had a couple of, quite a few positions become available, so to fill those.
• 49:43
  Tom Mason: So all that kind of allev- causes problems for us to deliver a, a, a singular good product consistently.
• 49:51
  Tom Mason: And for me, my background is in the hotel world, that was always the focus as well.
• 49:56
  Tom Mason: But it still remains probably the biggest issue for us, a consistent good service product.
• 50:03
  Tom Mason: We never are, accept what has been given.
• 50:06
  Tom Mason: We always w- are striving for more.
• 50:09
  Joe Knihnitski: Fair enough.
• 50:10
  Brian Searl: Two things now, Tom, right?
• 50:11
  Brian Searl: You know that there are good people out there, like you hired some, right?
• 50:15
  Tom Mason: Oh, yeah.
• 50:15
  Brian Searl: But but obviously Joe and Veronika, there's good people out there.
• 50:17
  Brian Searl: And if there's not in your area, have you ever seen the movie Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg?
• 50:22
  Brian Searl: The, the pleasure robots are coming to do whatever you want to make you happy and- That'll be here soon,
• 50:28
  Joe Knihnitski: add that to the rent list, eh, Tom?
• 50:30
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 50:31
  Tom Mason: I know.
• 50:32
  Tom Mason: It's coming.
• 50:32
  Tom Mason: They just had the...
• 50:34
  Tom Mason: Yeah, it, they just had what, the Olympics over in China and,
• 50:38
  Brian Searl: oh, the Robot Olympics
• 50:39
  Tom Mason: the robot Olympics and some bot ran faster than the guy from Jamaica in the 100 yard dash.
• 50:47
  Brian Searl: U- Usain Bolt or is there another guy from Jamaica?
• 50:49
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 50:50
  Tom Mason: Or a hundred meters, so yeah.
• 50:54
  Brian Searl: All right Tom, you have a question for anybody?
• 50:57
  Tom Mason: Sure.
• 50:57
  Tom Mason: I'll go to the Joe and Veronika.
• 51:01
  Tom Mason: So you're, you've created this singular wonderful experience it sounds like.
• 51:07
  Tom Mason: Are there...
• 51:07
  Tom Mason: Are you thinking a couple years from now you're gonna head into a, another location?
• 51:15
  Joe Knihnitski: Absolutely.
• 51:15
  Joe Knihnitski: So we, me and my business partner, Alex, and then his wife, and then obviously my wife Veronika, we went into this together.
• 51:22
  Joe Knihnitski: So we wanted to see if we could create something in between Calgary and Edmonton where we could pull people.
• 51:28
  Joe Knihnitski: Because generally when we took over the park, it was all senior citizens staying at our park, and now we developed like such a cool experience for everyone.
• 51:37
  Joe Knihnitski: We have everyone, all kinds, all walks of life showing up there.
• 51:41
  Joe Knihnitski: I think we are, we're nailing it out of the park of how our projections were and what we were trying to do.
• 51:46
  Joe Knihnitski: And after this Prairie Haven expansion, we are definitely looking at expanding as well,
• 51:51
  Zach Stoltenberg: yeah.
• 51:51
  Zach Stoltenberg: That's where I can help.
• 51:54
  Joe Knihnitski: It's good to have your contact now, Zach.
• 52:03
  Brian Searl: Veronika, do you have anything to add or?
• 52:05
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah, I don't know if it's early retirement or what we're thinking.
• 52:07
  Veronika Knihnitski: It kinda just fell into our lap as an opportunity, right?
• 52:10
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's actually very interesting 'cause the former owners, they also were two, two couples, right?
• 52:14
  Veronika Knihnitski: They came into this together.
• 52:15
  Veronika Knihnitski: They had the park for many years, and then here we come acquiring the business.
• 52:19
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're basically the exact same.
• 52:21
  Veronika Knihnitski: So you've got two couples doing the same thing.
• 52:23
  Veronika Knihnitski: Let's see what we can do with this alongside our full-time jobs a side hustle.
• 52:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: See how we can, put our spin on it, add some amenities, do all the fun things that we like to do, generally enjoy, and see where that leads us.
• 52:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: And we've had the business now for over a year.
• 52:37
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's done exceptionally well.
• 52:39
  Veronika Knihnitski: We would be foolish not to try to scale this in other locations.
• 52:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: Now, other locations may have different features.
• 52:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: Maybe there's a river there.
• 52:45
  Veronika Knihnitski: Maybe there's some sort of of unique a- attraction, right?
• 52:48
  Veronika Knihnitski: The other thing that we haven't actually touched on, too, is we have a boardwalk next to our campground that actually our guests can board a steam train.
• 52:55
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's called the Prairie Railway one of the very few last railways that's available.
• 53:00
  Veronika Knihnitski: And so we actually thought that, when we acquired this, we would do a lot more partnerships, and we have to some degree, but we thought that the train was gonna be driving a lot more folks coming to us.
• 53:08
  Veronika Knihnitski: And to some degree, yes, but we've had to do a lot more.
• 53:12
  Veronika Knihnitski: So yes, we're gonna partner and expand in other locations based on what's around, but our core model, I think is what we're gonna keep to, and we're gonna try to replicate as best.
• 53:21
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yes, we can attract and bring in experiences from around the facility, but who we are and what we're doing absolutely we wanna maintain that, that kind of ecosystem, whether that's geodesic glamping domes, travel destinations at the campsite, hydrotherapy
• 53:35
  Veronika Knihnitski: hillbilly hot tubs that my husband's built with his bare hands.
• 53:38
  Veronika Knihnitski: Would like to keep that sort of fun, kind of family-oriented vibe going in any of the locations that we choose to expand into.
• 53:44
  Veronika Knihnitski: It's important to us.
• 53:47
  Brian Searl: All right.
• 53:47
  Brian Searl: We got a couple minutes left.
• 53:48
  Brian Searl: Final thoughts, Veronika and where can they learn more about your property and see what you got going on?
• 53:55
  Veronika Knihnitski: Final thoughts?
• 53:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: I don't know.
• 53:56
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're just excited.
• 53:57
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're excited to be able to be true to ourselves and to apply the things that we like to do.
• 54:02
  Veronika Knihnitski: We both, as Joe mentioned, are oil and gas, very heavy into operations and logistics in both of our roles, and so that's allowed us to kinda do what we're doing as a hobby, right?
• 54:12
  Veronika Knihnitski: I- in a way.
• 54:13
  Veronika Knihnitski: We didn't expect it to grow to this scale so quickly, right?
• 54:16
  Veronika Knihnitski: If you were to tell me when we acquired the business that we would be, partnering with Alberta Tourism, getting a grant and breaking ground in October to put in these massive geodesic domes in, in the heart of Alberta,
• 54:26
  Veronika Knihnitski: I'd say in what world?"
• 54:27
  Veronika Knihnitski: But here we are.
• 54:28
  Veronika Knihnitski: We're doing it in in, just a little over a year, with a two-and-a-half year old and doing it all.
• 54:33
  Veronika Knihnitski: So it's been really fun but w- it's a lot of work and we're just grateful that we've got the support of the city, right?
• 54:39
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got the support of the city.
• 54:40
  Veronika Knihnitski: They're behind us.
• 54:41
  Veronika Knihnitski: We've got great marketing, great staff and just, a, a good ecosystem to take it to the next level.
• 54:47
  Brian Searl: Joe, any final thoughts?
• 54:50
  Joe Knihnitski: No, I just wanna say thank you for having us on this podcast.
• 54:52
  Joe Knihnitski: It's such a cool experience, so I can put this feather in the hat, check this one off the bucket list.
• 54:56
  Joe Knihnitski: So thanks, Brian, for having us.
• 54:58
  Joe Knihnitski: Tom, thank you for the great conversation.
• 55:00
  Joe Knihnitski: Definitely will reach out, and we could have some insights and some good conversation forward.
• 55:04
  Joe Knihnitski: But I'm just excited.
• 55:05
  Joe Knihnitski: It's a fun business compared to our other businesses, so we quite enjoy it.
• 55:08
  Joe Knihnitski: Anyone that wants to get into the space it's definitely worth it.
• 55:12
  Joe Knihnitski: There's, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, though.
• 55:14
  Joe Knihnitski: There's lots of hurdles.
• 55:16
  Joe Knihnitski: Staffing's always number one.
• 55:17
  Joe Knihnitski: Research grants.
• 55:19
  Joe Knihnitski: Look into employment grants, too, with the student programs and the summer programs.
• 55:24
  Joe Knihnitski: There's all sorts of things you can do as a small business to save money, and a lot of people forget about that.
• 55:30
  Joe Knihnitski: But with the power of AI- You can search up anything, and it'll give you a full roadmap of different cost savings and how to save money on manpower and training and everything like that,
• 55:40
  Brian Searl: and I don't think Veronika said, but where can they find out more about your website, or where can they see p- what you built?
• 55:45
  Joe Knihnitski: Yeah, so-
• 55:46
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah, so on, on our website there.
• 55:47
  Veronika Knihnitski: Go ahead, Joe.
• 55:48
  Joe Knihnitski: No, you got it.
• 55:49
  Joe Knihnitski: Go ahead.
• 55:50
  Veronika Knihnitski: Yeah, so at pjrvresort.com, if you look into kind of our tabs there you'll see that we've got a Prairie Haven expansion component.
• 55:58
  Veronika Knihnitski: So it kinda shows you a mock-up of some of the rooms that you can expect.
• 56:01
  Veronika Knihnitski: And we've got an actual button that you can click and reserve yourself to join our wait list.
• 56:06
  Brian Searl: Awesome.
• 56:07
  Brian Searl: Thank you guys so much for being here.
• 56:08
  Brian Searl: Tom, any final thoughts, and where can they learn more about IVEE?
• 56:10
  Tom Mason: No.
• 56:10
  Tom Mason: Great to meet you both.
• 56:11
  Tom Mason: Brian, thank you for having, and anyone listening, if you ever need third-party management, IVEE is here and will deliver for you.
• 56:19
  Tom Mason: Thank you.
• 56:20
  Tom Mason: I have a-
• 56:21
  Veronika Knihnitski: Thank you very much
• 56:22
  Tom Mason: hard stop, but yep.
• 56:24
  Brian Searl: Yeah, so do we, so thank you.
• 56:25
  Brian Searl: Thank you, guys.
• 56:25
  Brian Searl: I appreciate it, for joining us on another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
• 56:28
  Brian Searl: We'll see you guys next week.
• 56:29
  Brian Searl: Take care.
• 56:30
  Veronika Knihnitski: Okay.
• 56:30
  Veronika Knihnitski: Bye.
• 56:30
  Veronika Knihnitski: Take care.
• 56:30
  Veronika Knihnitski: Bye bye.