Somewhere in your first season, a guest slides a membership card across the counter and asks, "Do you take Good Sam?" Then it's AAA. Then AARP, Passport America, Escapees, a military ID, a senior rate someone swears your previous owner honored. Each one feels small — a few dollars a night. Added up across a season, discounts are one of the biggest pricing decisions a small park makes, and most parks never actually decide. They just inherit whatever the last owner said yes to.
This post is about deciding on purpose.
What a discount actually costs
Start with the math nobody does at the counter. Say your site is $45 a night and your true variable cost per occupied night — electric, water, a little wear, a little labor — runs somewhere around $8–12 for a typical RV site. Your margin on that night is roughly $33–37.
A 10% discount is $4.50. That doesn't come out of the $45 — it comes out of the margin. You just gave up 12–14% of what you actually keep on that night, in exchange for... what, exactly?
That's the whole question. A discount is marketing spend. Like any marketing spend, it should have a job: fill a night that would have sat empty, win a guest who books again, or buy goodwill you genuinely value. A discount that goes to a guest who was booking anyway at full price does none of those things. It's just a smaller number on the deposit report.
The three questions to ask about any discount
Before you honor a card, ask:
- Would this guest have booked anyway? If your park fills Friday and Saturday from June through Labor Day, a 10% club discount on a July weekend is pure giveaway. The guest found you, wanted you, and would have paid the rate.
- Does it fill a night that would have been empty? A discount that moves someone into a Tuesday in May that was going to sit vacant costs you almost nothing — the site was earning zero.
- Does it create a second booking? Repeat guests are the cheapest bookings you'll ever take. A discount that converts a first-timer into a regular can pay for itself many times over. A discount to a one-time pass-through guest cannot.
Now run the common cards through those questions.
Good Sam, AAA, and AARP: the 10% club
These are the cards you'll see most. The standard ask is 10%, and the honest truth is that most of these guests found you on their own and were booking regardless. The membership didn't send them to you — it just showed up at checkout.
That doesn't automatically mean say no. Some travelers filter their search by parks that honor their club, and being listed in a club directory is a form of advertising. But go in clear-eyed: for a park that's full on peak weekends, an always-on 10% club discount is mostly a transfer from you to guests who didn't need the nudge.
A reasonable middle path: honor the 10%, but only Sunday through Thursday, or only outside your peak window. The guests it was supposed to attract — flexible retirees roaming in shoulder season — are exactly the ones who can use it. The July Saturday crowd pays the rate.
Military and veteran discounts: a values call, so treat it like one
Plenty of owners offer a military discount because they want to, full stop. That's a fine reason — arguably the best one. Just structure it deliberately: pick a flat dollar amount ($5 a night reads as genuine and costs the same whether your rate is $38 or $68) or a percentage with no blackout dates, decide whether it covers active duty only or veterans too, and ask for ID the same way every time. What erodes goodwill isn't the policy — it's inconsistency, where one guest got it and the next didn't.
Passport America and the deep-discount clubs
Passport America is a different animal: 50% off at participating parks. No small park survives giving away half its rate on nights it would have sold anyway — and the program doesn't expect you to. Parks that make it work fence it hard: weeknights only, shoulder season only, two-night limit, excluded holidays.
Used that way, it's a tool for exactly one job — putting a rig on a site that was going to earn nothing. If your empty-night problem is real, it can work. If you can't commit to enforcing the restrictions at the counter and in your booking rules, skip it. A 50% discount that leaks into peak weekends is the most expensive marketing you'll ever run.
Write it down, then let the software enforce it
Whatever you decide, two implementation rules matter more than the percentages:
- Flat dollars beat percentages as your rates rise. A 10% discount quietly grows every time you raise rates. A $5-off discount doesn't. If you expect to push rates over the next few seasons, flat-dollar discounts protect the gains.
- Never stack. Good Sam plus senior plus weekly rate turns a $45 site into a $30 one without anyone deciding that on purpose. One discount per reservation, best one wins. Put it in writing.
Then get the policy out of your head and into your booking system. Discounts that live in an owner's memory get negotiated at the counter — every arrival becomes a small haggle, and staff give away whatever ends the conversation fastest. Discounts that live in the system as promo codes with date restrictions just work: the guest enters the code, the rules decide, and your rates and policies apply themselves the same way every time. Verify the card at check-in like the clubs require, and you're done.
This is also a quiet argument for taking bookings online in the first place: a booking page applies your discount policy perfectly at 11pm. A phone call applies whatever your most tired-hearted employee agrees to.
The trade-off nobody puts in the brochure
Here it is: restricting discounts will occasionally cost you a booking, and once in a while it costs you a grumpy review. Some club members believe the card should work everywhere, always, and a "Sunday–Thursday only" policy reads to them as stingy. You will absorb a few of those conversations.
Absorb them. The alternative — an always-on 10% to everyone who asks — costs a 40-site park real money every season, most of it handed to guests who were coming anyway. A clear, consistently applied policy offends fewer people than owners fear, and the guests you lose over it were your most price-sensitive, least loyal segment to begin with.
The takeaway
Don't inherit your discount policy — decide it. Give every discount a job (fill empty nights, build repeat guests, or honor service), prefer flat dollars over percentages, fence the deep discounts to weak nights, never stack, and let your booking software enforce the rules so your counter stays friendly.
If you're pricing this out alongside software costs, the good news is that with Bunkpost the software itself isn't one of them — it's free for the park, with a flat $3 booking fee paid by the guest and no percentage taken from your rate, discounted or not. If you want to see how rates, promo codes, and policies get set up, here's how it works — most parks are running in an afternoon.