RV Parks & Campgrounds
The industry — Recreational vehicle (RV) parks and campgrounds
Base industry report for 721211 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,498
- Under 10 employeesA
- 70%
Of 1,498 Canadian establishments with employees, 70% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Structure decidesThe binding constraint is not executional. Being better than the incumbent does not, by itself, get you in — this one is cleared with capital, an asset, or a permission.
Come with the asset, or buy the business that owns it. Plant, fleet, land or quota decide this market before any operating skill does. Operators here are bought, not started.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 4
The binding constraint — capital intensity
A Canadian season is short, the revenue is weather-correlated, and the capital sits in serviced sites, septic and power that must be paid for whether or not July is wet. The real opportunity — ageing owners with no succession selling below replacement cost — is genuine, and it is a land acquisition play requiring patient capital rather than an operating business a new entrant can bootstrap. The listed comparable shows which half of that capital still earns. At Equity LifeStyle Properties, the continent's largest owner, FY2025 base rent from annual RV sites rose 4.7% while seasonal fell 7.5% and transient fell 3.0% — and inside its core portfolio the nightly and seasonal lines fell 8.5% and 9.9%, which ELS attributes partly to fewer returning Canadian guests [A]. Annual sites are a land lease with a cottage on it; the nightly business is the one a new owner is actually buying, and it is the one contracting.
Demand is seasonal, weather-correlated and drawn from a few hours' drive. Sized by serviced sites × season length × nightly rate, all three of which vary by province and climate.
Handle — ELS's split of RV base rent into annual, seasonal and transient. ELS is the only operator that publishes rent for the three ways an RV site is sold, separately, with site counts beside them. That split is what a buyer's pro forma needs, because it shows that the land-lease half of a park compounds and the nightly half did not in 2025 — and a park bought on its nightly revenue is being bought on the falling line.
$446.3M of FY2025 RV and marina base rental income divided by roughly 70,000 sites and slips (34,400 annual + 11,200 seasonal + 17,500 transient + 6,900 marina). Derived from reported figures. It excludes the 26,000 membership sites, all utility and other income, and any home or cottage sales, and it averages an annual lease against a nightly stay — two different businesses that happen to share a field.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 2 of 5 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 5 named · 2 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equity LifeStyle PropertiesNYSE: ELSA | $1.5B | — | FY2025 total revenues; RV and marina base rental income was $446.3M of that |
| Sun CommunitiesNYSE: SUIA | $2.3B | — | FY2025 total revenues from continuing operations, after the 2025 disposal of the marina business |
| Kampgrounds of America (KOA)C | not disclosed | — | The franchisor and banner. Claims 500-plus campgrounds across North America and owns over 40; also brokers campgrounds for sale, including in Canada. Private, no financials published. |
| Parkbridge Lifestyle CommunitiesC | not disclosed | — | The largest Canadian operator: more than thirty RV resorts in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, plus 59 land-lease residential communities and 13,000-plus homes, on its own site. Privately held; no financials published and ownership not stated on its site. |
| The independent single-park majorityA | not disclosed | — | 1,498 Canadian establishments with employees; 673 have fewer than five people and five employ 100 or more (Statistics Canada, December 2023). Quebec 410 and Ontario 393. |
Evidence
Evidence. The operator figures are read in Equity LifeStyle Properties' FY2025 10-K (filed 18 February 2026), not in coverage of it: the RV and marina base rental income table with its annual, seasonal and transient lines and their percentage changes; the core-portfolio commentary giving −8.5% transient and −9.9% seasonal and the company's own explanation of it, including fewer returning Canadian guests; the site-mix table; and the portfolio of 453 properties and 173,371 sites in 35 states and British Columbia [A]. Total revenues of $1,531.4M and $1,526.2M are from ELS's XBRL company facts; Sun Communities' $2,306.1M likewise, on the continuing-operations basis its FY2025 10-K presents after the marina disposal [A]. The fragmentation estimate — about 8,700 RV properties, 1,300 of them with 200 sites or more — is ELS's own, attributed in the 10-K to industry reports, so it is tier B however authoritative the filing is. KOA's 500-plus campgrounds and Parkbridge's resort footprint are each company's own claim, read on its own site [C]; neither was audited and Parkbridge does not state its ownership there. What is NOT sourced, and it is the heart of the original screen: no Canadian nightly rate, season length, serviced-site construction cost or park transaction price was found. The claim that ageing owners with no succession are selling below replacement cost is UNVERIFIED analyst judgment, as is the cut factor — ELS's figures establish that the nightly business is contracting at scale, not what a Canadian park costs to buy or build.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
North American campground and RV park owners' association; arvc.org now redirects here. Blocked automated access (Cloudflare 403).
OHI's annual conference and trade show, Fort Worth, 9-11 November 2026. Blocked automated access (Cloudflare 403); dates from trade press.
Trade association for BC campgrounds, RV parks and lodging, founded 1944; runs the Super Camping guide.
Daily trade news for campground and RV park operators; front page current.
Outdoor hospitality news for owners and operators, with a Canada section; front page current.
The Canadian Camping and RV Council site (ccrvc.ca) returned a 521 origin error on both attempts and is not listed. camping-in-ontario.ca did not resolve.