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CAMPSPOT CUSTOMER STORY
Manistique Lakeshore Campground, a public park located in the remote upper peninsula of Michigan is a wildly popular destination for campers looking to experience this incredible corner of the United States.
To learn how Manistique Lakeshore Campground manages the high demand for their public park and streamlines their booking experience we sat down with campground manager Colleen Hoholik. Hear what she had to say below.
“We are very far north. The UP (Upper Peninsula) as it’s referred to in Michigan, is actually one-third of the landmass of the state, but we only have 3% of the overall population. So while we’re very remote, it also makes us very special because there are sites beyond your wildest imagination.
“Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is just an hour away from us. We’re very centrally located to so many things. There are waterfalls all over the place. I think there’s near 100 waterfalls within an hour’s drive. We also have about 200 inland lakes in our county, but yet we’re right on the very top of Lake Michigan and we have a beautiful lighthouse which offers the prime view of the campground.
“The campground has several sites that are steps from the waterfront and everyone has access to the waterfront, pavilion, playground, boatlaunch, fishing station, and marina. Our downtown area is just about a five-minute walk and it’s full of restaurants and shops including a new brewery, breakfast spot, gift shop, and ice cream. One of the biggest draws to our area is a place called Kitch-iti-kipi which is actually a natural underground spring that bubbles up to 10,000 gallons of water per minute.”
50
RV Sites
6
Tent Sites
11.7
Miles to Kitch-iti-kipi
46.5
Miles to Pictured Rocks National Park
“We have campers that come here every year, and this is our eighth year open. We’re a city campground and I was up on New Year’s Eve when we opened up reservations for the year because I knew what was going to happen. At midnight we opened up reservations, and I think I had 900 when I woke up in the morning. People vie for the waterfront spots and book all the way out to July, August, and part of September. It’s incredible.
“I think in the upper peninsula, we’re probably one of the only campgrounds with full hook up cement pads. Our sites have 60 ft long cement pads, so for somebody with a big rig, this is the most big rig friendly campground in the UP for sure.”
100+
Nearby Waterfalls
4.8
Stars on Google Reviews
0.0
Miles to Lake Michigan
MI
State
“Our biggest challenge is finding everybody who wants a spot, a spot. It’s a good challenge to have. To help address that, we are actually going to be expanding the campground hopefully next spring. We’re going to add 35 more sites and another bathhouse. So that will help with the lack of availability challenge we face.”
624
Days on Campspot
4,910
All-time net online transactions
10
Employees
222
Online cancellations Managed Through Campspot all time
“When I first came on board, we had a different software management system. It was a homemade system by someone who had some tech experience. It was not very user friendly. It also meant a lot of work for our city treasurer because every time we had a cancellation, we had to write it down, bring a cancellation slip down to him, and then he had to go in and do the credit back to the credit card.
“There was a lot of back and forth paper and pencil work that the city treasurer had to handle as far as refunding any cancellations. And, you know, in camping there are a lot of cancellations. So that was our main purpose for getting Campspot—number one, finding something that people could book online, and number two, something that could handle the cancellation and refund process.
“We find it’s a lot easier with Campspot as far as editing reservations whether it’s lengthening or shrinking a stay. For refunds, if it’s something that we handle through the office, then I can do the refunding easy peasy. That’s all been fantastic and a big, big relief to the city employees.”
“That was our main purpose for getting Campspot—number one, finding something that people could book online, and number two, something that could handle the cancellation and refund process.”
Colleen Hoholik from Manistique Lakeshore Campground
“I love the grid, the locking of the spots and being able to shuffle the Tetris board to fill in some of those empty gaps that we’ve had has been very, very beneficial.
I was also really happy to see that Campspot added calendar availability for campers to see through the booking flow this past season. That was huge.”
“Our goal is to create a positive experience for our office staff, the maintenance staff, and all of our campers. We love being here and the campers love being here, which makes it easy and we work to make it seamless for everyone. We use the maintenance part of Campspot where we can check off when campers come in or not. It’s easy to mark when we have campers leave and their site has been cleaned. Being able to track that is very helpful.“Campspot has improved the check in, check out, and booking reservation system tenfold. If you could have seen the paper and pencil version and the very ancient reservation system we had before—it was on a computer, but it was very tedious. This is hands down a great experience for us.”
“If you can order something off of Amazon, you can book a reservation on Campspot.”
“I’ve had five new office employees since we implemented Campspot and it’s easy to train them. I tell them—if you can order something off of Amazon, you can book a reservation on Campspot. The ease of training has been very helpful and I also point them to the library of videos and resources that you have as well.”
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