Martin Johnson, J.M.W. Insurance Solutions. As an avid camper with a fifth-wheel toy hauler, I want to make sure that we connect with some RV campground owners and ensure that they have the RV park insurance they need.
The Importance of Liability Insurance
It’s amazing how many RVs and campgrounds there are in the United States. Some of them are discreet, while others are elaborate with all kinds of amenities. How do you properly cover each RV campground or park appropriately?
Nose-in trailers can range anywhere from $30,000 to a couple of half a million dollars, even more than that. It’s crazy that you would go into a park that didn’t have insurance because it does happen.
Do they have liability insurance? Are they going to protect you in that aspect of the park?
Owners need to know what they need to protect themselves from a power surge or from, you know, a toilet exploding because they provide bathroom supplies.
There are all kinds of things you want to think about in insuring an RV park and campground.
General Liabilty Insurance for RV Parks
General liability is the most important. The liability for someone’s injuries if they’re in your park is going to be huge.
And the onus is on both the campground owner or the RV park owner and the trailer or RV motorhome owner.
Both should have insurance to protect themselves. If somebody walks across your campground, your little spot that you’ve paid for, and trips over your mat, for example, and breaks their leg, that’s your liability, not the campground’s liability.
But if you’re moseying along through the campground and something happens, like a propane explosion, and you get injured, then the campground needs to have liability insurance.
So, general liability is probably one of the most important coverages, or the most important coverage, you’re going to have in any situation here.
Property Insurance for RV Parks
Property is the other thing. So, what part of the property needs to be covered in an RV campground? It’s easy for the trailer and mobile home owner because the property is theirs. It’s what they towed there or drove there.
For the owner of the campground or the RV park, it’s kind of subject to land, right? So, is it just the land they have? Do they have a building? Do they have outhouses?
Do they provide electricity and water? You know, those things start playing a role in what type of RV park insurance coverages you’re going to want to provide as far as a campground owner.
Cybersecurity Concerns for RV Parks
So, please make sure that you understand every risk that you possibly have if you have a website. It’s a marketing tool, but, you know, a lot of people use them for collecting names and addresses and email addresses, and that becomes a tool for cybersecurity issues, right? You’re going to store this information on a website or on a Google Drive or wherever it may be stored, and it can be hacked.
It could be, you know, someone could pull that information. How much information you’re holding there, are you holding driver’s license numbers, are you holding credit card information? Those are key items that you’re going to look at as far as a risk standpoint as well.
Cybersecurity liability insurance covers someone hacking into your system and stealing that information that you’re storing, whether it be names and addresses and driver’s license numbers for identity theft, whether it be credit card information and make charges, you know, at Walmart or whatever it may be. The other aspect of it is sometimes they do ransomware, where they hack into your system, they lock it out, and then make you pay to get it all back.
So, you build this database of clients, and then you don’t have access to it. So, you either scrap it and start over, or you have a great backup. I always recommend an IT person when you have a database that you’re going to rely on and manage for your business. And if you don’t have access to it, you have to pay this ransom to get that back, or you shut your doors.
And it’s kind of a sad situation, and it happens. It happens a lot. Right now, cybersecurity is growing fast, and it’s incredible the speed that this is going through and businesses are shutting them down.
Contact JMW for RV Park Insurance
So, if you have an RV park or campground, you’re going to need general liability insurance, possibly property insurance, cyber liability. If you’ve got a database that you’re keeping records for, those are the three key insurance policies you’re going to want to make sure that you have and that they have the right coverage to meet your needs.
If you have any questions or need to get this insurance, please give us a call at 951-501-2900.
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