Talking Business: Sam Bruner on how a camping trip led to a hot new app for the RV crowd

Sam Bruner, chief operating officer of Spot2Nite, at left, together with the company's CEO and one of its co-founders, Terry Broussard, middle. Also pictured on the right is Grant LaGrange, director of park relations.

Sam Bruner was hanging out with buddies in Lafayette three years ago when they had a light bulb moment for a new business. The gap that needed to be filled, they realized, was a way for recreational vehicle enthusiasts — a.k.a. RVers — to conveniently book a suitable spot for the night using their phone. There just wasn't anything on the market.

Thus, New Orleans-based tech company Spot2Nite was born to develop an app for that. Bruner, chief operating officer, is a finance guy. Co-founder Terry Broussard, the company's CEO, is a tech head, as are the other two founders, Mike Perrone and Joel Garcia Martinez.

They went through the Idea Village accelerator program and were finalists for the New Orleans Entrepreneur Week pitch competition in 2021. Now, the company has just raised $3 million in their first major investment round, which was led by a Chicago-based family investment fund.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What's the story of how the company was founded?

Terry Broussard and I are both avid RVers. About three years ago, we were sitting in the backyard in Lafayette, Louisiana, (Broussard's home town) and looking at his Jayco Seneca, which is just a massive bus, TVs everywhere, sleeps like 14 people, and it's just sitting in the backyard. He then started the horrible process of trying to find a suitable campground that had availability. That's when we decided to build Spot2Nite.

What's the "elevator pitch" description of your business? Are you like Airbnb meets, I don't know, the National Park Service?

So, quite literally, the elevator pitch is that we are the largest and the fastest growing online travel agency, or OTA, which is more like a Booking.com or an Expedia.com, for campgrounds.

How does that work?

We've had a lot of success aggregating property management systems that service the campground industry and the RV consumer. By aggregating the availability — we're in nine systems now nationally — we can then match that to your very specific criteria and book the site that you're looking for with the click of a button.

There's an image of the typical RVer being a retired couple with time on their hands taking long road trips. What kind of trends are you seeing in RVing?

Yeah, the majority is still the retiree population, about 58%. But a trend that was accelerated during COVID is that the millennials are the fastest growing component, now at between 26% and 28%. There are a few trends behind that, like the younger generation forming families later in life and wanting to be more mobile in their careers and employers embracing more flexibility. There is a growing market for renting RVs, which has lowered the barriers to entry. Also, technology, like Starlink, means more sophisticated hotspots and wider Wi-Fi availability.

What's happening on the campground side that might drive your business?

Investors are looking for — I don't necessarily want to say inefficient — but they are looking for businesses that have good cash flow and have an opportunity to optimize. There is a lot of opportunity for just that. So, you are seeing a lot of commercial real estate investors moving into the campgrounds and we're seeing consolidation. Some of the larger resort groups as well as others are looking to build or buy into this space, taking over some of "mom ’n’ pop" operations that were maybe started by baby boomers.

How does Spot2Nite make money?

Simply put, we charge the traveler a convenience fee of 10%.

When we were deciding on the business model, we didn't feel that the margins would support pulling the rates from the campground and, quite frankly, we didn't think it was necessarily fair. There's a 10% booking fee that's applied on top of the campground rates and we allow you to include any sort of membership discounts, like Good Sam memberships, military, first responder, every discount that a campground would offer. Typically, that's 10% so it nets out.

I know you don't like to share finance numbers at this stage, but what are some of the metrics that show how far you've come?

We've got 18 full-time employees now. We've got over 100,000 local spots in our system now nationally and a handful in Canada. When we add a new campground to our system, they are usually getting a new booking within 10 days and the average stay is 2.6 nights, with an average daily rate of $75. We have been adding annual incremental income for campsites from about $16,000 for the smaller sites, up to about 50 spots, to more than $60,000 for the larger grounds with 300-plus spots.

What does the $3 million investment mean for you?

That $3 million is going to help us to rapidly expand our team and allow us to expand into other outdoor combinations, meaning cabins, wagons, yurts, across the board. That (money) raise, you know, within this environment is something that we're incredibly proud of.

What's your dream for how the company evolves?

Our phrase internally is "look, book and go." We want people to not have to spend hours and hours having to book their trip. We're trying to lower the barriers of entry so folks can RV and get out and camp more.

Email Anthony McAuley [email protected].