Peak six weeks carry the whole rate card and the other 46 don't

The 60 day booking window is the detail I'd chase before anything else. Families planning a summer trip book in February. If he won't take that reservation, he isn't losing shoulder nights, he's losing peak nights to the park down the road that will. Which would mean part of your "upside" is in the months you already believe in, and that's a different and much better bet than paying for October.

On the capital side the question I'd get asked is what happens to your coverage in a single bad summer. Not a recession, just rain. If 61 percent of revenue lands in six weeks then one wet July is your whole year, and a lender looking at that concentration is going to size debt off something conservative anyway. Might be worth asking your lender early what revenue basis they'd underwrite from, in writing, because that number may end up setting your price for you.

Before you spend more time on rate cards, find out whether the county lets you do anything with the closed months. Some jurisdictions treat a stay over 30 days at a campground as something other than transient occupancy, and that changes what you're allowed to sell in the off season. It varies by state and often by county, so read the actual ordinance rather than asking the seller. If long stays are permitted you may have a winter product. If they're not, your November through March really is zero forever and you should price it that way.

halyard's point reframed the whole thread for me. A booking window fix is cheap and testable. A shoulder season demand fix is neither.

I'd want the two years of monthly data turned into nights sold rather than dollars, if he'll give it to you. Revenue mixes rate changes with volume changes and you can't see which one moved. If nights sold in September have been flat for two years at the same rate, that's a market telling you something. If nights sold dropped while rate rose, he's been trading volume for rate and the shoulder may be more elastic than it looks. Either way it's one spreadsheet away and it's the difference between guessing and knowing.

Also, who answers the phone now? If it's him personally and he's retiring, some of that trailing revenue may be his relationships with repeat seasonal guests, and repeat guests do not always follow a new owner.

Small point from the cheap end of the market: no plowing in winter isn't just lost revenue, it's a maintenance regime. Roads and pads that sit unmaintained under snow and then thaw are how you end up with a gravel budget nobody forecast. Ask what he spends on road work each spring and compare it to what the pro forma has for repairs.

Genuinely asking, does anyone buy these things at trailing revenue? Every listing I've read in this category prices the improved version. If the whole market is priced on operator upside then paying trailing means you're just not a buyer, and windlass's second position starts to look like the realistic one.

marlow, you can still be a buyer, you just have to be the one who walks. I've bought two small buildings by being the second call after the aggressive underwriter's financing fell through. Sellers of seasonal assets have a clock too, and a park that doesn't sell in March is a park that has to be operated through another summer by an owner who wanted out. That's leverage you get for free by being patient.

windlass, I'd also separate the 22 percent lift into what costs money and what doesn't. Online booking is software and a few weeks of your attention. Pulling October families into a mountain park with no heated bathhouse costs capital. Pay for the first, don't pay for the second.

The thing that breaks at scale here is staffing a shoulder season you don't believe in. I've watched a small operation try to extend a season by five weeks and the real cost wasn't marketing, it was keeping people on payroll for weeks that ran at 20 percent. Your model can carry a shoulder night at incremental cost. Your labor schedule can't be built in increments, you either have somebody there Friday or you don't.

So if you do buy the lift, buy it with a plan for who's working those weeks and what they cost, at hours you can actually staff.

I'm two rungs below this deal but the repeat guest question anchor raised is the one I'd lose sleep over. Do seasonal guests sign anything, or is it a handshake every spring?