The Harvest Hosts Phenomenon: How to get the Best Camping Experience [2021]

Harvest Hosts just signed up its 2,000th location and it has plans to reach 3,000 by year's end. Here's how to find the best camping with the program. Harvest Hosts is nothing short of a phenomenon in the RV industry, a service that lets you camp free overnight at wineries, farms, distilleries, tourist attractions, and even golf courses all across North America. While you are expected to patronize and purchase some of the produce or products at the Harvest Hosts locations where you camp, your RV camping is free, covered in the membership fee you pay to belong to Harvest Hosts. With commercial campground fees of $50 a night pretty much commonplace now, Harvest Hosts is one of the best camping bargains available. Just a couple of stays more than pays your membership fee. Here's a video we did on one of our stays not long ago: The latest News from Harvest Hosts In Episode 337 of the RV Podcast, we interview Joel Holland, the CEO, about his plans for the service in the coming months. You can listen t the complete podcast interview in the player below or on your favorite podcast app. But keep scrolling down for a transcript and video version of our interview with Joel. And keep scrolling down for a special offer to our community that will save you 15% off your membership fee. Here's the video of the interview: Here's an edited transcript of the interview with Joel Holland, Harvest Hosts' CEO: Mike Wendland: Joel Holland joins us right now, from Harvest Hosts. And Joel, it's time to go camping again. How are you? Joel Holland: I'm doing great. And I think like most of your viewers, I'm itching to get back on the road. We live out in Colorado. So, it's been our winter season, but the RV is winterized and I'm ready to de-winterize. So, it's exciting times. Mike Wendland: And you are going to be traveling with a new companion, a three-month-old baby girl, right? Joel Holland: That's right. Yeah, Waverley was born on December 8th. She's had all her baby vaccinations now, and it feels like she's going to be a good traveler. You never really know. But as far as driving her around in the car, she seems to like to look out the window and it's very... Really enjoys traveling. So, she got that from us, hopefully, that carries over to the RV. RVers are Traveling Again! Mike Wendland: Well, let's talk about this year that is just now really getting underway. In most places, COVID at least seems to be on the decline. There's a general feeling that we're going to be able to travel again. You guys did a pretty comprehensive study, in fact, I think it's one of the more in-depth studies that we've seen anywhere, about travel, RV travel in 2021. And can you give us a quick recap of what you learned from that study? People are hungry to find the best camping experiences Joel Holland: Yes, absolutely. So, we had 10,000 RV mainly owners respond to our survey. So, it's a lot of data. And it was very positive for the travel outlook, the high-level data points. 76% of respondents said they plan to travel more this year than last year, which was not hugely surprising. What was surprising was a full 60% said they plan to travel more this year than pre-COVID. There's a lot of people who are just like, "I'm itching to get out and on the road." So, we're going to see... 2021 is going to be a massive RV travel season And here's why it's going to be domestic, 81% of respondents said they do not plan to go internationally this year. 69% said they still don't feel safe getting on an airplane. And 56% said they don't feel safe staying in a hotel. No surprise, 99% said they do feel safe traveling in an RV. So, all this data, kind of, points to more travel, it's going to be domestic, and it's going to be in an RV. Mike Wendland: Now, you guys still had a lot of people that were out using Harvest Hosts locations in 2020. As not every venue, of course, was open, but lots of people were out there using it. So, I wonder how everyone just prepared for 2021. Now, you've been around long enough that everybody knows what Harvest Hosts is, and with campgrounds so full, how are you guys going to handle all that? All those spots that are Harvest Hosts locations, how are they going to handle this demand? Meeting the demand for more Harvest Hosts locations Harvest Host locations across North America Joel Holland: Well, that's what we focus most on, our host locations and increasing that number with high-quality hosts. And so, we added hundreds last year, where we just announced, this month, we passed 2000 hosts in our network, which is great, right? Great geographic coverage. There are 2,000 Harvest Hosts locations now And it's a really good compliment to the campground inventory. Because to your point, we're seeing already, some early signs that campgrounds are sold out, state parks are sold out, national parks are sold out. So, I think Harvest Hosts becomes a great tool in the toolkit for finding a location to stay, especially during th