My wife and I recently were traveeling through the wisconsin Dells area and looking for a campground to spend the night. We looked up the towns in the book and NO campgrounds were listed! We were lucky enough to spot the billboards and chose one. We remarked while registering about the lack of listings and were told that the campgrounds around the area had not paid for ads in the book and maybe that is why there were no listings.
I thought that the guide was advertised as an aid to help RVers and that ads were to give more information and to try to have yoou choose one over the others not to get mentioned at all!
It has to get paid for in some way, I guess advertising is it.
On the other hand, this is exactly why I never rely on CG review/ratings from Trailer Life or Woodalls, Cg's get rated if they pay for advertising, unlike rvparkreviews.com, where the reviews are done by actual campers.
2007 Forester 2941DS
2005 KIA Spectra
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You know, the paper book is going the way of the Dodo bird. I bought the TL 2010 CD version, and have now moved on to a combination of web reviews and apps on my iPod Touch. In fact, I'm not buying either the book or the software CD anymore because the iPod apps and the web reviews are both free and more convenient, as well as up to date.
There are as far as I can tell at least 4 and probably more apps with what I need to know, and more. I have Woodall's app, RV Park Finder, and RecreationGov, I can recommend all three.
But to answer the OP's question, yup, the books all get paid for by advertising, and parks that don't buy an ad tend to not get listed.
The Trailer Life app shows 27 campgrounds, Woodall's app shows 33 all within 25 miles of Wisconsin Dells, WI.
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edited 05/13/12 05:02pm by naturist *
The book trys to list all parks that meet certain criteria such as a minimum number of sites available for overnight guests, open to the general public etc. The listings are not dependent on ads, there are many, many more parks listed than there are ads. Ratings are also not dependent upon ads, they rate you the same regardless, however you will probably find a loose relationship between higher ratings and ads, primarily because who would buy and ad touting their park only to have the potential guest look at the ratings and find it is crummy. Also, owners who agressively market their parks are probably more agressive owners as well and will keep a nicer facility. One big, big, big problem with the book is it lists the parks by their cities, which may be some small berg with 30 people although it is adjacent to a big town you can actually see on the map and maybe even heard of. Unless you are a geography savant, that fact makes the book very hard to use. Hopefully that is something that will change in the future. Listing the park by location to major towns and landmarks would probably make it much easier. Example: For Kansas City listing the Kansas City KOA as being in the eastern section of KC would be much more relevant than the current listing of Oak Grove, Mo. Just my unhumble opinion.
Several years ago our family was coming home from Florida and decided to stay at a campground listed in the campground book that was rated as a ten. Turns out it was a field with water hookups and electricity. Since then I use it only as a reference guide...it was pointed out to me that campgrounds pay them goodly amounts of $$$$$$$$$$ to rate them. I just thought that they stayed there and rated them but it turns out that it may just be jaded. Moral of story is take their ratings with a grain of salt!
westernrvparkowner wrote: One big, big, big problem with the book is it lists the parks by their cities, which may be some small berg with 30 people although it is adjacent to a big town you can actually see on the map and maybe even heard of. Unless you are a geography savant, that fact makes the book very hard to use.
Guess I don't understand. There are maps in the front of the book. Look at the map, find the area you are looking for, find the black or red dot, see the town name, look up the listing. Very easy for me.
OK, been thinking about this for a while. Lets say I want to find a campground on the east side of KC. By your way---I read the listing under KC. Read the how to get to the park directions, then find that on a map. And do this for each of the listings, mark or remember all of the locations. Then determine which campgrounds are near where I want to be? Doesn't sound like it would work so well.
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