The RV park review audit checklist
Thirty minutes, once a quarter. Five numbers per platform, and one exercise that is worth more than all of them.
By Korey Brooks · Published August 29, 2026
A review audit is five numbers per platform, plus a comparison against the parks campers actually see beside yours. It takes about thirty minutes, and quarterly beats continuously. Reviews move slowly, and watching them daily produces anxiety rather than decisions.
Which platforms to check
Not all of them. Check where campers actually look for a park in this area, which is a shorter list than it appears.
- Google. The one that matters most, because it appears in the search results and the map. If only one platform gets attention, this is it.
- The campground and RV directories that show up when searching the park's own area. Which ones those are varies by region, so look rather than assume.
- The booking marketplaces the park already uses, since reviews accumulate there whether or not anybody is watching.
- Yelp and TripAdvisor, where the park has a presence. Weight them by whether they actually appear in searches for this park.
- Social pages, where a park has one and people leave recommendations on it.
A park spreading equal effort across eight platforms is spreading it thin. Google plus whichever two directories genuinely rank locally is a better use of the same thirty minutes.
The five numbers, per platform
| Number | What it tells you | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Total count | Standing, but only relative to nearby parks | Compare, never read alone |
| Average score | Whether there is a satisfaction problem underneath the count | A low score is an operations question, not a marketing one |
| Date of the newest review | Whether the asking process is actually running | Anything older than a few weeks in season means it has stopped |
| Reviews in the last 90 days | The rate, which is the number that predicts next year | Compare against the same quarter last year |
| Share with replies | Whether the profile reads as attended | Recent ones matter most; do not work backwards through years |
Recency deserves particular attention. A park whose most recent review is eight months old reads as one that may no longer be operating. No amount of historic volume fixes that impression.
The competitor gap
The number that turns the rest into a decision, because a count means nothing in isolation. Sixty reviews is strong where the alternatives have twenty and weak where they have four hundred.
Search the area the way a camper would, using something like an RV park search for the nearest town. Note the three results that are not this park. For each, record the count, the score and roughly how recent the newest review is.
Three numbers, three parks, ten minutes. The review gap calculator does the arithmetic and shows what a consistent request flow could do about the difference.
Use the same three parks each quarter. Changing the comparison set makes the trend meaningless, which is the most common way this exercise gets wasted.
The exercise worth more than the numbers
Read the last fifty reviews in one sitting, with a notepad, and tally what gets mentioned.
Themes appear quickly and they are almost always operational rather than mysterious. The road in. Site levelling. Internet. Noise at one end of the park. How the office handled an arrival. Bathhouse cleanliness.
That tally tells an owner which physical problem is costing them stars, in guests' own words. A park that fixes the thing forty people mentioned has improved its reviews permanently, which no amount of asking can do.
It is the most valuable half hour in this checklist, and the part most often skipped because it is not a number.
What to record and where
One row per quarter in a spreadsheet. Date, platform, count, score, newest review date, reviews in the period, reply share, and the three competitor counts.
The value is entirely in the comparison over time, so the format matters less than using the same one every quarter. A park with four quarters recorded can see whether the asking process is working. A park recording it differently each time cannot.
What not to do with the results
- Do not react to a single bad review by changing the process. One review is noise; a theme across fifty is signal.
- Do not chase a perfect score. A profile of nothing but five stars reads as suspicious to readers.
- Do not report reviews merely for being unfair. Only policy violations qualify, covered in removing a fake review.
- Do not filter who gets asked in response to a low score. That is prohibited, and it hides the operational problem the audit just found.
- Do not check weekly. Reviews move slowly, and frequent checking produces worry rather than action.
The quarterly rhythm
- Record the five numbers for each platform that matters.
- Record the three competitor counts, same parks as last time.
- Reply to anything from the last quarter that has no reply.
- Read the last fifty reviews and tally the themes.
- Pick one operational thing to fix from that tally.
- Confirm the request process is actually sending, by checking the newest review date.
Step six catches the most common failure at parks that have automated the asking: requests quietly stopping and nobody noticing until the count flatlines.
Or have the gap measured for you.
The free Review-Gap Audit does this comparison against the park's three real competitors and reports what it found. By email, usually within one business day.
Prefer email? Write to info@fillmypark.com