RV Parks and Campgrounds (United States)

NAICS 2022 code 721211 — a Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

An RV (recreational vehicle) park or campground rents out overnight and longer-term sites where travelers park an RV, tent, or trailer, usually with hookups for power, water, and sewer plus shared amenities. In plain terms it is a land-and-hospitality business: the operator owns dirt and infrastructure and sells the right to occupy a pad by the night, the season, or the year, and layers store, cabin, and activity income on top.[1]

Why it is worth understanding as an investment: it is a real-asset business with hotel-like revenue economics but a much lighter cost structure — no rooms to clean, far less staff, and modest maintenance capital. Demand rides on a long, mostly secular rise in American camping and RV travel. The catch is that the industry is dominated by tiny "mom-and-pop" operators, so direct, pure ways to invest are scarce, and returns are highly property-specific — the real question is whether an operator controls scarce, well-located sites and can raise rates without hurting occupancy.

• Public-market route: two large real estate investment trusts (REITs — companies that own income real estate and pay out most of their earnings) — Sun Communities (NYSE: SUI) and Equity LifeStyle Properties (NYSE: ELS) — own the biggest branded RV-resort portfolios. In each, RV/campgrounds are a segment sitting alongside manufactured-housing communities; there is no pure-play public campground stock.[8][9]
• Private route: direct ownership of a park (the classic small-business or SBA-financed path), private-equity funds and syndications rolling up parks, or franchising under a brand such as KOA.[14][19]

2. What it is, and how it's structured

Scope (what's in 721211). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) defines 721211 as establishments that operate sites to accommodate campers and their equipment — tents, tent trailers, travel trailers, and RVs — often with washrooms, laundry, a recreation hall, playgrounds, a camp store, snack bar, and hookups. Campgrounds that mix tent and RV camping are included here.[1]

What it excludes (adjacent NAICS codes):

• 721214 — Recreational and Vacation Camps (except Campgrounds): summer camps and activity-based vacation camps that bundle lodging with programming.[1]
• 531190 — Lessors of Other Real Estate Property: lots leased to residential mobile-home occupants (trailer parks used as housing) sit here, not in 721211.[1]
• 721110 — Hotels and Motels and 721191 — Bed-and-Breakfast Inns: conventional lodging.
• Subsector 713 — Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation: recreational facilities sold without accommodation.[1]

Business types under the code: transient parks (nightly/short-stay), seasonal parks (part of the year), annual-site communities (steadier recurring rent), destination resorts (pools, activities, cabins, glamping), and membership networks that sell access across many properties. Government-operated campgrounds are economically important but generally sit outside private employer-business statistics (Section 3).

Ownership mix: highly fragmented and owner-operated. Trade estimates put roughly 16,000+ privately owned parks (about 1.3 million campsites) in the U.S., of which roughly three-quarters are independent mom-and-pop operations, plus an estimated 13,000 public campgrounds run by government agencies.[7] Large public REITs own scaled portfolios; families and regional operators own most individual parks; franchise systems supply branding and reservations without owning every location. The federal data does not provide a reliable percentage split between private, franchise, and government ownership.

3. How big it is

Our federal figures. Two U.S. Census Bureau programs measure the employer side of this industry:

The Small Business Administration (SBA) treats a firm as "small" at or below $10 million in annual receipts — a low bar that most operators clear, underscoring how small the typical business is.[5]

The undercount — read this before quoting a market size. The federal figures cover only firms and establishments with paid employees. This industry is unusually full of businesses that fall below that line, so the totals understate the whole market in two ways:

1. Nonemployer and family-run parks. Thousands of small parks are run by owners and seasonal help without formal payroll employees; they largely fall outside CBP and the concentration table.[4]
2. Public campgrounds are excluded. The National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Army Corps of Engineers, and state parks together run thousands of campgrounds — by site count, government is one of the largest camping "operators" — but these are public and not captured in a private-industry NAICS code.

Our ground-truth file does not provide an industry-wide site count, occupancy rate, average daily rate, operating margin, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), or capital-spending figure; those should not be inferred from the numbers above. Third-party trade estimates that try to capture the whole private market land higher than the Census receipts figure: IBISWorld pegs 2025 U.S. campground and RV-park revenue near $10.9 billion (up ~2.5% on the year); Kentley Insights estimates roughly $9.6 billion.[6][7] Treat these as private estimates, not official statistics — but the gap between them and the Census $4.25 billion is the undercount, made of small operators and (conceptually) the excluded public sector.

4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play public campground company. The two REITs below are the closest public exposure, but in each, RV/campgrounds share the balance sheet with manufactured housing (MH) and other operating lines — so their share prices, debt, dividends, and valuation multiples reflect far more than NAICS 721211. Tickers and valuations belong to the how-to-invest discussion (Section 10); the figures here describe the business.

Major private and other owners:

• KOA (Kampgrounds of America) — the largest system of privately owned campgrounds, with 500+ locations across North America. It is mainly a franchisor: most sites are independently owned franchisees paying a fee and royalty, while KOA itself owns and operates a smaller set of locations.[14]
• Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park — a private franchise system with 75+ individually owned and operated locations across the U.S. and Canada.[15]
• Northgate Resorts — private-equity-backed; ~28 upscale camping resorts under the Jellystone Park, Margaritaville, and Camp Fimfo brands; roughly $160 million in revenue.[16]
• Blue Water Development — manages 60+ outdoor-hospitality destinations (RV resorts, campgrounds, glamping) for institutional owners.[17]
• Great Escapes RV Resorts (The Jenkins Organization) — private developer/operator pursuing RV-resort acquisitions, development, and management partnerships.[18]
• Government agencies (NPS, USFS, BLM, Army Corps, state parks) — the largest camping operators by site count, but public and outside NAICS 721211.

Note: franchise counts are not owned real estate. A franchisor can earn fees and set standards while the land stays with independent operators.

5. How the money works

The revenue model is essentially available sites × occupancy × site rate + ancillary revenue — a campground version of a hotel's occupancy-and-rate math, minus most of the labor. Owners make money by filling sites at the highest sustainable rate and layering on amenity income.

• Rate and revenue per site. Nightly rates run roughly $35–$90 for a standard site and $60–$150+ at premium destination resorts; a site under normal conditions produces on the order of $10,000–$15,000 a year in revenue.[20][21]
• Occupancy is seasonal. Blended annual occupancy of 50–60% is typical, with peak season often 85–95% and deep off-season troughs; results swing hard on weather and travel budgets.[20]
• Site mix drives stability. Transient sites (booked by the night) earn the highest rates but are volatile and labor-intensive. Seasonal sites (a whole season) and annual sites (a year, often ~$300–$500/month) trade rate for a stable, low-cost income base. A common target is roughly 70% seasonal/annual, 30% transient.[20]
• Ancillary revenue — cabin and park-model rentals, camp store, propane, laundry, activities, utility recovery, and amenity fees — typically adds 10–25% of total revenue at good margins.[20]
• The margin difference is stark. A transient-heavy, hospitality-style operator (KOA's model) can run operating expenses near 70% of gross revenue; an annual-lease-heavy REIT operator such as Sun Communities has reported operating expenses around 46% — which is exactly why the REITs push to convert transient sites to annual leases.[20]

The operating metrics that matter are occupancy by site type (annual/seasonal/transient), average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available site, same-property NOI growth, reservation pace and length of stay, ancillary revenue per occupied site, and utility, labor, insurance, and capital cost per site. Because these are land-and-infrastructure assets with meaningful fixed costs and low maintenance capital, they are valued like other income real estate — on net operating income (NOI) and a capitalization rate — rather than on hotel-style RevPAR alone. For the two REITs, results are also reported in funds from operations (FFO), the standard REIT cash-earnings measure.

6. What drives demand

• RV ownership and buyer interest. The RV Industry Association (RVIA) counts roughly 8.1 million U.S. RV-owning households and about 16.9 million more households interested in buying an RV — a large installed and prospective base that supports overnight demand.[23]
• RV shipments. Manufacturers shipped 342,220 RVs in 2025, up 2.5% on 2024 — back to historical norms after the 2020–2022 record surge. Shipments are a leading indicator of fleet growth, not a guarantee of campground demand.[24]
• Camping participation. More than 52 million North American households camped in 2025, above pre-pandemic levels but down about a million from the ~58 million 2022 peak as pandemic-era travel normalized; KOA reports 11 million more households camped in 2024 than in 2019, and 72% of campers view camping as the most cost-effective travel option. Outdoor hospitality generated an estimated $66 billion in local community spending.[22]
• New, younger campers. Gen Z and Millennials make up a majority of new campers, and glamping, cabins, and park models broaden the customer base well beyond RV owners.[22]
• Macro and travel behavior. Drive-to, flexible leisure; remote/hybrid work extending trips; retiree and "snowbird" seasonal migration; fuel prices; interest rates (which drive RV financing and purchases); and discretionary income all move demand. Limited supply near coastlines, lakes, national parks, and major travel corridors supports rates in the best locations.

7. Regulation

Regulation is mostly local and state, and lighter at the federal level than in most real estate — but development and infrastructure compliance can be the binding constraint.

• Zoning and land use. Parks generally require commercial or recreational zoning; municipalities dictate density, setbacks, site coverage, signage, and building/fire codes. Entitlement is often the hardest part of adding new supply.[25]
• Maximum-stay caps. Many jurisdictions cap continuous stays (e.g., 60 or 180 days) to keep a park's use transient and prevent it from becoming de facto residential/mobile-home housing — a rule that directly limits how far an owner can push high-margin annual leasing.[26]
• State licensing and health/safety. States license parks through health authorities (for example, Oregon under ORS 446), with rules on water, sewage/septic, sanitation, and fire and electrical codes.[27]
• Environmental permitting. Development can trigger federal or state review: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) generally requires National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) stormwater coverage for construction disturbing at least one acre, and septic systems are permitted through state/local health authorities.[28]
• Accessibility and workplace. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility rules apply to public areas, parking, recreation facilities, and accessible camping units; the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) governs workplace safety.[29][30]
• Public land. Camping on federal land is governed by the managing agency, frequently through concessionaire contracts — a separate regime from private parks.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The federal concentration data confirm an intensely fragmented national industry: the top four firms hold just 13.3% of receipts, the top 50 only 31.6%, and the HHI is 59.6 — near the low end of the scale, signaling almost no national concentration.[3] Local markets can still be tight, because customers care about destination, highway access, amenities, and available hookups.

That fragmentation is exactly why institutional capital is moving in.[19] REITs (Sun Communities, Equity LifeStyle) and private-equity platforms (Northgate, Blue Water, Great Escapes, and others) are rolling up independent parks and bringing online booking, dynamic pricing, revenue management, centralized procurement, amenity upgrades, and brand standards.[31] Scale buys better insurance, financing, and technology, plus the capital to add sites and upgrade utilities. Deals are concrete: in Q4 2025 Sun Communities completed a $457 million acquisition that included three annual RV properties and eleven MH properties.[8]

The bull case is a classic fragmented-real-estate roll-up — buy under-managed parks, improve utilities and amenities, raise occupancy and rates, and capture efficiencies. The constraints: local approvals, site-specific infrastructure, and hands-on operations make integration harder than combining hotel rooms, and new ground-up supply stays modest because zoning and entitlement are difficult (which protects existing owners' occupancy). Critics note that roll-ups have also brought higher nightly rates, resort fees, stricter rules, and less personal service.[32]

9. Risks

• Cyclical, discretionary demand. Camping is a want, not a need. Recessions, high fuel prices, and expensive RV financing all soften trips and rates.
• Post-COVID normalization. Participation has drifted down from the 2022 peak; Sun Communities' 1.4% full-year 2025 decline in RV same-property NOI shows how quickly transient demand can wobble.[8]
• Weather and climate. Portfolios skew to the Sunbelt and Florida — exposed to hurricanes, floods, wildfire, and heat — and property-insurance costs are rising sharply in coastal and storm-prone markets.
• Interest rates and leverage. Public REIT valuations and private acquisition returns are both sensitive to financing costs and property cap rates; REIT share prices can move with rates independent of park-level performance.
• Infrastructure. Water, sewer, septic, roads, electrical hookups, and stormwater systems can demand large unplanned capital.
• Entitlements and regulation. Zoning opposition, density limits, environmental reviews, and max-stay caps constrain both expansion and the shift to high-margin annual leasing.
• Seasonality and concentration. Cash flow is lumpy; a weak peak season is hard to recover.
• Data quality / secular-growth dependence. Federal statistics omit government and tiny-operator activity, making market-size estimates uncertain; and the bull case leans on continued growth in RV and camping participation — a stall would compress the premium valuations paid in recent roll-ups.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes.

• The two REITs. Sun Communities (SUI) and Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) are the only large-cap ways to own branded RV-resort portfolios (each roughly a mid-teens/low-teens-billion-dollar market cap and yielding around 3–3.5% as of mid-2026).[11][12] The caveat: in each, manufactured housing is the larger business and RV/campgrounds is a segment — you are not buying a pure campground company. Sun has sharpened this exposure by selling Safe Harbor Marinas to Blackstone Infrastructure for $5.65 billion (closed April 2025), reshaping itself into a manufactured-housing-and-RV REIT.[13] When analyzing either name, separate RV results from MH, marina, membership, and home-sales lines, and watch whether same-property NOI is growing after insurance and infrastructure costs.
• Adjacent thematic exposure. Camping World (CWH) sells and services RVs and runs the Good Sam club — retail economics, not real estate, but leveraged to the same RV-participation trend. Broad REIT and residential-REIT exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hold SUI and ELS.

Private routes.

• Direct ownership of a park — the dominant model — usually financed with SBA or USDA loans or bank debt, run owner-operated or with a third-party manager. Underwrite the property, not the brand: historical monthly occupancy, booking pace, rate by site type, utility bills, payroll, insurance, property taxes, deferred maintenance, permits, environmental conditions, and realistic expansion costs.
• Private-equity funds, syndications, joint ventures, preferred equity, or private/development debt (e.g., Blue Water- or Northgate-style platforms) that pool capital to buy and upgrade parks.
• Franchising under KOA or a similar brand for reservation systems, marketing, and brand pull.

Near-term drivers and outlook (forward-looking judgment). The most likely path is demand stabilizing above pre-pandemic norms after normalizing off the 2022 peak, supported by younger campers entering the market and by glamping and cabins widening the audience beyond RV owners. Institutional consolidation of a fragmented, mom-and-pop industry should continue, with operators leaning on transient-to-annual conversion to lift margins and smooth cash flow — partly offsetting softness in volatile nightly revenue. Returns will stay highly property-specific: stabilized annual-site communities offer steadier cash flow, while transient- and resort-heavy assets offer more upside and more volatility. The main swing factors to watch are consumer discretionary spending, fuel prices and interest rates (which drive both RV purchases and REIT valuations), insurance costs in storm-exposed markets, and the pace of new supply. These are judgments about direction, not guarantees; the industry's cyclicality means a consumer pullback would show up quickly in occupancy and rate.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS — 721211 RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds" (definition and exclusions; 721214, 531190, 713). https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=721211&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 721211 (establishments, employment, payroll). https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Establishment and Firm Size / Concentration, NAICS 721211 (firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
4. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns: About this Program" (employer-only coverage; undercount). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/about.html
5. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards," NAICS 721211 ($10M receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
6. IBISWorld, "Campgrounds & RV Parks in the US — Market Size," 2025 (~$10.9B). https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-size/campgrounds-rv-parks/1667/
7. Kentley Insights / RVParkIQ, "RV Parks and Campgrounds Industry — structure, park counts, ~$9.6B market size," 2025. https://www.kentleyinsights.com/rv-parks-and-campgrounds-industry-market-research-report/
8. Sun Communities, Inc., "Reports 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results; Provides 2026 Guidance" (RV property count, occupancy, RV same-property NOI, Q4 2025 acquisition). https://suncommunities.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/sun-communities-reports-2025-fourth-quarter-and-full-year/
9. Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc., "2025 Annual Report" (annual RV/marina base rent +4.1%; seasonal/transient softness). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/895417/000162828026018805/a2025els_ars.pdf
10. Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc., "Our Portfolio" (220+ RV resorts and campgrounds; Thousand Trails membership). https://www.equitylifestyleproperties.com/our-portfolio
11. StockAnalysis, "Sun Communities (SUI) — market cap and dividend," 2026. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/sui/
12. CompaniesMarketCap, "Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) — market cap and dividend," 2026. https://companiesmarketcap.com/equity-lifestyle-properties/marketcap/
13. Sun Communities, Inc., "Sun Communities Announces Sale of Safe Harbor Marinas to Blackstone Infrastructure for $5.65 Billion," Feb. 24, 2025. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/02/24/3031233/0/en/SUN-COMMUNITIES-INC-ANNOUNCES-SALE-OF-SAFE-HARBOR-MARINAS-TO-BLACKSTONE-INFRASTRUCTURE-IN-AN-ALL-CASH-TRANSACTION-FOR-5-65-BILLION.html
14. Kampgrounds of America, "KOA Pressroom / Fact Sheet" (500+ locations, franchise model). https://www.koapressroom.com/
15. Camp Jellystone, "About Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park" (75+ individually owned locations). https://www.campjellystone.com/about
16. Crain's Grand Rapids Business, "PE-backed Northgate Resorts helps campgrounds step into digital age," 2024. https://www.crainsgrandrapids.com/news/hospitality-tourism/investor-backed-grand-rapids-firm-helps-campgrounds-step-into-the-digital-age/
17. Blue Water Development, "Institutional Campground Management," 2025. https://bwdc.com/what-we-do/hospitality-management-services/institutional-campground-management/
18. Great Escapes RV Resorts (The Jenkins Organization), "RV Park Development / About," 2026. https://www.greatescapesrvresorts.com/about
19. RVBusiness, "Investors, Equity Firms Seeing Opportunity in Campgrounds," 2024. https://rvbusiness.com/investors-equity-firms-seeing-opportunity-in-campgrounds/
20. OH Weekly (Substack), "The Economics of Campgrounds & RV Parks" (rate, occupancy, site mix, ancillary; KOA ~70% opex vs SUI ~46% opex), 2024. https://ohweekly.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-campgrounds-and
21. RoverPass, "RV Park Industry Stats (2026)." https://www.roverpass.com/blog/rv-park-industry-stats/
22. Kampgrounds of America, "2025 North American Camping & Outdoor Hospitality Report" (52M+ households, +11M vs 2019, 72% cost-effective, $66B footprint). https://www.koapressroom.com/press/2025-camping-outdoor-hospitality-report/
23. RV Industry Association, "Media Resources" (~8.1M RV-owning households; ~16.9M interested), 2025. https://www.rvia.org/media-resources
24. RV Industry Association, "RV Shipments End 2025 with 342,220 Units, Modest 2.5% Growth over 2024," Dec. 2025. https://www.rvia.org/reports-trends/rv-shipment-reports/2025-12/rv-shipments-end-2025-342220-units-modest-25-growth-over-2024
25. CRR Hospitality, "Understanding RV Park Legal Regulations" (zoning, ADA, permits), 2024. https://crrhospitality.com/blog/understanding-rv-park-legal-regulations-what-you-need-to-know/
26. RoverPass, "Legal Compliance in Long-Term Campground Rentals" (max-stay caps, licensing), 2024. https://www.roverpass.com/blog/regulations-long-term-campground-rentals/
27. Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS 446.310–446.350) via LegalClarity, "RV Park Rules and Regulations in Oregon," 2024. https://legalclarity.org/rv-park-rules-and-regulations-in-oregon-what-you-need-to-know/
28. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Stormwater Discharges from Construction Activities" (NPDES, 1-acre threshold) and "Frequent Questions on Septic Systems." https://www.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater-discharges-construction-activities
29. U.S. Department of Justice, "ADA Standards for Accessible Design," 2010. https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/design-standards/
30. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Help for Employers." https://www.osha.gov/employers/
31. Woodall's Campground Magazine, "ELS, 'Sun' Lead Charge as Investment Firms Go All In," 2024. https://woodallscm.com/els-sun-lead-charge-as-investment-firms-go-all-in/
32. RV Podcast, "Wall Street Took Over Your Campground… And Prices May Never Be the Same," 2024. https://www.rvpodcast.com/wall-street-buying-campgrounds/