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[DFDureiko]

Has anyone in our club tried to compare the structure of our club with other similar clubs? FMCA, Escapee's, Good Sam and Tin Can?
Friends are going to be vendors at the FMCA Brooksville Rally, we are going to visit, to see what might be different than what we do.....fact is, I for one only know WBCCI, so can't compare it.
a quick look though at FMCA.com shows 103,000 members, and seemingly a management structure 1/2 the size of ours? Dues at 45 first year and 35 a year after.
they appear to have 9 areas (Regions) and within that Chapters (Units)
Eastern has I think 40 chapters? Seems like they focus on the local level?
another thing I notice is that though there seem to be alot of VERY expensive motorhomes, the groups seem's pretty casual,,,,,a lot more than we are at this moment...........
more than one (albeit retired) airstream MH owner that I know prefers to attend FMCA as they "have more to offer, tons of vendors and great entertainment" their words not mine:)
Dan

[RickDavis]

Has anyone in our club tried to compare the structure of our club with other similar clubs? FMCA, Escapee's, Good Sam and Tin Can?
Friends are going to be vendors at the FMCA Brooksville Rally, we are going to visit, to see what might be different than what we do.....fact is, I for one only know WBCCI, so can't compare it.
a quick look though at FMCA.com shows 103,000 members, and seemingly a management structure 1/2 the size of ours? Dues at 45 first year and 35 a year after.
they appear to have 9 areas (Regions) and within that Chapters (Units)
Eastern has I think 40 chapters? Seems like they focus on the local level?
another thing I notice is that though there seem to be alot of VERY expensive motorhomes, the groups seem's pretty casual,,,,,a lot more than we are at this moment...........
more than one (albeit retired) airstream MH owner that I know prefers to attend FMCA as they "have more to offer, tons of vendors and great entertainment" their words not mine:)
Dan

Some of this is impressions and would bear out double checking, however.

TCT   essentially revived and i believe operated by Forrest Bone, an Airstreamer.  I belonged at one time and liked it, had to many time conflicts.

Escapees.  Family run. lots of rallies, chapters, BOF groups (Birds of a feather) loosely like the WBCCI intra clubs.   Has campgrounds  (Rainbow and Co-op) plus discounts up to 50% at other campgrounds.  Mail forwarding and a facility to allow RV's to live in there RV as sort of an assisted care operation.  Dues are roughly comparable to WBCCI.
I  recently renewed for 5 years.
I have attended 2 rallies. They seem to do an east and west each year. They had far more vendors. both inside, and an outside row, than the WBCCI ever thought of.  In fairness tho both rallies I went to were in Goshen IN. near the RV plants.

Long ago, in the early 70's I worked as a vendor at several FMCA rallies including Salem, OR and DuQuoin , Il, ( those spots seem familiar)  As a vendor i was allowed to bring my trailer and my family was allowed to participate in all the rally activities.  Not sure of their structure , but all my contacts were with one person in their office so they may be run from a  managerial approach.

The one thing  that seems to be true of all these, and that would include Good Sam. is they DO NOT CHANGE MANAGEMENT EVERY YEAR and they are not bogged down  like we are with the blue book.   In other words it seems some one can make a decision and get something done.
These are just my impressions, subject to correction.

[Lynn]

I don't think any comparison to Good Sam is viable. The club is owned and operated by the Affinity Group, a large corporation with many ventures thoughout the RVing industry.

http://www.affinitygroup.com/

The remaining three, Escapees, Tin Can Tourists, and FMCA, are more reasonable comparisons.

Of the three, I think the Escapees offer the most bang for the buck, especially with their discount programs and the Escapees parks. Yes, we have Airstream parks, but they are very few and far between. And we have no discount program at all when compared to that offered by the Escapees.

Peronsally, I find this quite amazing because setting up a discount program involves simply asking parks to provide significant discounts to WBCCI members. There are lots of them out there willing to do so, and I'm not talking about those that provide measly 10% discounts!


Lynn

[65GT]

There are lots of them out there willing to do so, and I'm not talking about those that provide measly 10% discounts! Lynn

My impression for listening to IBT's past...

Our RV Parks program may not have been run efficiently.  I remember hearing that we had pages and pages of parks listed, yet many of those parks didn't remember agreeing to a discount of any kind.  Regardless, the entire program was hacked away for the sake of downscaling everything but the Great North American Tour, and now we CHARGE parks to offer us a discount.  There you go -- more of that "What are they doing now?" way of thinking...

Are we having FUN yet?   

[Lynn]

Our RV Parks program may not have been run efficiently.  I remember hearing that we had pages and pages of parks listed, yet many of those parks didn't remember agreeing to a discount of any kind.  Regardless, the entire program was hacked away for the sake of downscaling everything but the Great North American Tour, and now we CHARGE parks to offer us a discount. 

Exactly our thought. That's why we told them to stick it, but to continue with our discount (50%) for members.

Meanwhile, we increased our discount for Escapees to 25% and plan to join the club as members once we're able to start traveling more.


Lynn

[65GT]

Lynn -- but how do members know that you offer a 50% discount if you're not in the directory?

The sad part is that the logic used by club mis-managers (you can forget international leaders -- the mere premise is a joke) in regards to the RV Parks directory merely echoes the piss poor logic and decisions that are made in every instance of importance in this club.

It's really sad to watch a bunch of incapable managers spiral our club right into the ground, but since they've chased away the majority of Airstreamer owners, were merely on an accelerated track into the dirt.

If I couldn't perform as expected, I'd get the hell out, why doesn't that work with these folks?

I'd be interested to hear how you spread the word of your 50% discount so that members are aware...

[Lynn]

Lynn -- but how do members know that you offer a 50% discount if you're not in the directory?

Strictly word of mouth at this point.

But for us, this is not about what we do as park owners, but rather the benefit that we, as WBCCI members, receive from our membership. When we first started traveling a bit, we brought the old WBCCI book -- and discovered right away that the parks listed there had no idea what the WBCCI was, much less that they were supposed to be offering a discount. Ah, duh.

Then we started offering a WBCCI discount, a small one at first, and contacted the WBCCI about it. They listed us. Fine, no big deal. What was a big deal was that nobody seemed to follow up in any specific fashion in subsequent years to make sure that we would continue to offer the discount. Ah, so that explains it. Those other parks may have been contacted 20 years ago (or whatever), and they agreed at that point to offer some smidgen or another. Since then, people die, parks sell, who knows what, but the listing continues. No wonder we had such a long list of parks, all presumably offering discounts. And a total rip-off to members.

The 50% story came along when we started offering it, and some of our WBCCI friends noted that Passport America parks offer the same. So we looked into Passport America. The thing is that these parks are included into that system for free, though the parks can (and do) set conditions on the 50% discount (no major holidays, only weekdays, whatever they want).

So why can't the WBCCI set this kind of thing up, too? The participating parks get listed in a directory (I suggested an online one so that it can be updated easily and quickly), and we WBCCI members can take advantage of it in our travels. It would make the $65+local dues immediately worth the money if they had even half of the number of 50% parks that Passport America has.

Note, by the way, that this kind of thing would not be "good" for us as park owners, but rather potentially "bad" for us, because it would presumably give us competition where there is none now. But that view is all screwed up. We do the discount just so that we can see our friends in the WBCCI more often. At best (or worst), we'd just wind up seeing our friends less often.


Lynn

PS: No, we're not in the Passport America system and don't plan to join.