August 2, 2004
Catering to the happy camper | From arts centers to climbing walls to state-of-the-art wiffle ball fields, summer camps invest millions to lure campers — and their parents
By Taylor Smith
On a warm July day at Omni Camp in Poland Spring, Gar Roper, co-founder and director of the camp, interrupts a tour to have a chat with Roger Beaulieu, owner of Sabattus Resources, who is bent under the hood of a rumbling diesel dump truck. The truck is idling on a wide dirt road curving up a hill to Omni's new $2 million, 10,000-square-foot arts center, for which Beaulieu did the site work.
Even though he's not on staff at Omni, Beaulieu is a near-constant presence on the camp's 240 acres, working on a number of year-round projects such as maintaining a twisting network of dirt roads and clearing trees from the woods. Omni also employs a full-time resident handyman, Howie Powell, who spends his time building and maintaining the dozens of structures scattered over the camp's grounds. "Keeping up with the maintenance of a camp like ours is a real full-time job," says Betsy Roper, Gar's wife and Omni co-founder and director. "Even our maintenance person has to subcontract out a lot of work."
The constant maintenance and construction being done at Omni isn't an anomaly: In recent years, the owners and directors of many of Maine's 150 residential summer camps have spent an increasing amount of time and money improving their physical plants. From new athletic fields and gymnasiums to arts centers and movie theaters, camps now boast facilities that rival those of a small college (or, in some cases, a small country). "If you're a general residential summer camp, you need to keep up with the times, and keep up with the Joneses," says Jason Silberman, an assistant director at Camp Matoaka, a girls' camp in Smithfield that this season unveiled four new lighted tennis courts and a basketball court.
The pressure on Maine camps to spiff up their facilities, their programs and even their menus has increased in recent years, as affluent parents from New England and across the country seek out enriching educational and athletic opportunities for their offspring. That's meant increasing capital expenditures for camp owners ˆ the Ropers estimate that they have spent nearly $4 million on maintenance and new construction at Omni over the last three years ˆ as well as higher tuition for campers, whose parents shell out as much as $8,000 for a summer in the Maine woods.
As a result of all those ongoing projects, camps that used to be staffed by seasonal workers now frequently employ a number of year-round staffers. "No one that I can remember, outside of two or three people, did camp full-time," says Bill Lerman, director of Camp Caribou in Winslow. Lerman began working in the camp's administrative office in 1968, and he says it's not just the schedules that have changed: In recent years, Camp Caribou has added a scale-model replica of Fenway Park for wiffle ball games and a 10,000-square-foot gymnasium. Decades ago, most new construction projects were intended to improve utilitarian facilities like bunkhouses or dining halls.
Lerman says the turning point came in the 1970s, when many summer camps were dealing with lower-than-usual attendance ˆ partly because of the economic recession, partly because of a post-baby-boomer drop in the population of summer-camp-aged kids. As a result, camp directors needed to boost enrollment by recruiting new kids. "A lot of camps went under because they were stubborn," says Martha Lerman, Bill's wife and Camp Caribou co-director. "They didn't want to be salesmen; they just wanted to be camp directors. But parents started looking at camps like colleges, and if you weren't willing to be a salesman, you weren't going to get the campers."
The facilities arms race
Summer camps in Maine ˆ many of which date back to the early 1900s ˆ built their reputations as healthy, rural summertime escapes for city kids. They taught rugged outdoor skills and stressed personal growth through a mix of camping, sports and waterfront activities that became the hallmark of the summer camp industry. The camps were rustic, with campers often sleeping in creaky bunkhouses or canvas tents, and offered kids a change of pace from their urban upbringing.
Most residential camps in Maine still offer the staples of summer ˆ sailboats, water-skiing and archery, among other activities ˆ but how, exactly, each one keeps up with the Joneses depends on the camp's clientele. Camp Matoaka, for example, boasts three new dance studios with cushioned hardwood floors, sound systems and specialized ventilation systems ˆ a must for an all-girls camp that offers dance classes ranging from hip-hop to ballet. Camp Caribou, an all-boys sports camp, offers a nine-hole pitch-and-putt golf course and the new $250,000 gym, complete with a weight room and cardio-fitness center.
Construction on Omni's new arts center, a towering facility perched on a cliff above the camp, was completed earlier this year and features studios for such electives as stained glass, ceramics, pottery and silk screening. Campers also can use Omni's video editing suite for digital video and computer animation, and its theater program features full-scale productions put on by campers twice a summer. "Arts and crafts is much more sophisticated than simply wandering aroundˆ with feathers and glitter," says Betsy Roper.
Even camps that bill themselves as traditional summer camps aren't immune to the facilities arms race. For example, kids and counselors stay in tented encampments at Winona Camps for Boys in Bridgton rather than bunking in cabins, but the camp still boasts tennis courts and athletic fields in addition to a fleet of new sailboats and a handful of llamas. The camp focuses on outdoor sports such as rock climbing, kayaking and camping.
Associate Director Spencer Ordway says that's the way Winona has operated for the past 100 years, but he acknowledges that the camp's traditional offerings sometimes are a tough sell to families used to camps that have the newest and most glitzy amenities. "A lot of camps are promoting all the special fun things they have, and that's hard for us," he says. "But there's still a market for what we do."
The growth of camps' facilities and range of activities hasn't come without a price for camp directors. Alan Ordway, camp director at Winona, estimates that residential summer camps typically bring in $1 million to $3 million in annual revenues, and Gar Roper pegs Omni Camp's annual revenues at $1.3 million. But much of that money gets plowed back into operations; on top of the $4 million they've spent on facilities in recent years, the Ropers recently took delivery of three $30,000 water-ski boats. Bill and Martha Lerman at Camp Caribou estimate they spend nearly $100,000 each year on maintenance alone, from keeping their 15 acres of playing fields aerated and fertilized to repainting and replacing roofs on their more than 40 buildings.
Staffing is another huge cost for summer camps, where camp directors and counselors act as surrogate parents for up to seven weeks each year; the camper-to-staff ratio at many Maine summer camps can be as high as two-to-one. A 2003 survey by the American Camping Association found that roughly 42% of operating expenses for New England residential summer camps goes toward salaries, while another 10.8% is spent on food and related expenses. The rest of the operating costs are earmarked for such expenditures as insurance, transportation, marketing, construction and maintenance.
While parents don't scrutinize line items on camp budgets, they do pay close attention to the visible effects of those expenditures on individual camps. And the results can be overwhelming: Bette Bussel, executive director of the American Camping Association of New England, says parents need to consider a raft of different options before choosing summer camp programs for their children (campers' ages typically range from eight to 15, and some camps offer counselor training programs to older kids). Some camps focus more on athletics, others on the arts, and still others concentrate on niches such as horseback riding, theater or golf. "Many families are realizing that camps are more than what they have been," says Bussel. "Camp is no longer a place for your kids to go just to have fun, but a place for tremendous growing and learning."
Camp as a consumer product
Along with the amenities, though, comes the sticker shock. A quick glance at the Maine Youth Camping Association's 2004 summer camp guide shows that seven weeks at Winona Camps for Boys costs $5,750. Tuition rises to $7,150 at Camp Caribou and, at some Maine camps, tops $8,000 for the summer ˆ more than a year's tuition at the University of Maine. But Bussel says that parents who send their kids to Maine summer camps cross all financial categories. Though some camps cost more than $1,000 a week, many camps offer financial assistance to parents who can't afford such sizable bills. And there are scores of residential camps in the state that charge much smaller fees.
Given the proliferation of specialized camps that might help burnish a college application or simply give a kid a chance to try some new activities and make a few friends, selecting the right one can be a difficult task. That's where camp referral services come in. Scores of such services operate across the country and are a bargain for parents, who don't have to foot the bill for the agents' matchmaking. Instead, camps pay a fee ˆ usually 15% of the camper's tuition ˆ to the agents. "Decades ago, you went to the camp your neighbor went to, and your mom didn't do much more research than that," says Eve Eifler, a referral consultant in Baltimore.
Eifler is co-director of Tips on Trips and Camps, a referral service that employs more than 15 consultants spread from New York to California and in France, Scotland and London. The service has affiliations with roughly 500 camps in the United States, from specialized language immersion camps to traditional sleep-away camps, and Eifler says parents have become much more critical when choosing camps. Eifler points to Omni Camp's range of activities, from stained glass to computers to aviation instruction, as the kind of hook many parents are looking for in a general interest camp. "Parents don't send their kids to camp to paddle a canoe anymore," says Eifler. "The programming [at camps] has become very broad."
That's reflected in camps' own efforts to lure the next season's campers. Word of mouth still is a big recruitment tool, as are returning campers and family associations with a camp, but directors frequently spend the off-season traveling to camp fairs in the United States and abroad to promote their camp, or visiting with prospective campers' families to make a sales pitch. (Bussel says kids come to Maine from all over the eastern seaboard ˆ particularly from cities such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York and Boston ˆ but also from across the country and Europe.)
And most employ slick promotional tools such as videos and DVDs to sell parents and kids on their camps. Omni Camp's DVD features a montage of camper testimonials interspersed with highlights that include a guitar workshop with blues legend Taj Mahal and campers receiving flight instruction in small two-seater planes flying over Omni's private lake.
Camps' marketing materials need to appeal to kids ˆ Bill Lerman says hockey pucks hitting goal posts and the buzzing of scoreboards in Camp Caribou's video are sounds kids love hearing ˆ but they also need to convince parents that the camp is a good fit for their kids. Caribou's video is like an episode of ESPN's SportsCenter: Fast edits and quick cuts knit together goals, baskets, home runs and other highlights, while the narrator ˆ sportscaster Chris "Boomer" Berman, whose son is a seven-year veteran of Caribou ˆ gives the play-by-play on life at Caribou. "Camp is expensive, and parents approach it like a consumer product," says Bill Lerman. "They're much more discerning."
The various camp directors interviewed for this story wouldn't disclose how profitable each of their operations are, but each said ˆ in their own way ˆ that running a summer camp isn't a recipe for riches. But between the promotional videos, the constant off-season recruitment visits and the 24/7 schedule of the summertime months, the business of summer camps clearly is a labor of love. "We don't mind a little profit," says Betsy Roper, "but we are pouring so much back into the camp. A couple of years ago, I had the choice of taking a salary or building a new tennis court. We took the tennis court."
Even though he's not on staff at Omni, Beaulieu is a near-constant presence on the camp's 240 acres, working on a number of year-round projects such as maintaining a twisting network of dirt roads and clearing trees from the woods. Omni also employs a full-time resident handyman, Howie Powell, who spends his time building and maintaining the dozens of structures scattered over the camp's grounds. "Keeping up with the maintenance of a camp like ours is a real full-time job," says Betsy Roper, Gar's wife and Omni co-founder and director. "Even our maintenance person has to subcontract out a lot of work."
The constant maintenance and construction being done at Omni isn't an anomaly: In recent years, the owners and directors of many of Maine's 150 residential summer camps have spent an increasing amount of time and money improving their physical plants. From new athletic fields and gymnasiums to arts centers and movie theaters, camps now boast facilities that rival those of a small college (or, in some cases, a small country). "If you're a general residential summer camp, you need to keep up with the times, and keep up with the Joneses," says Jason Silberman, an assistant director at Camp Matoaka, a girls' camp in Smithfield that this season unveiled four new lighted tennis courts and a basketball court.
The pressure on Maine camps to spiff up their facilities, their programs and even their menus has increased in recent years, as affluent parents from New England and across the country seek out enriching educational and athletic opportunities for their offspring. That's meant increasing capital expenditures for camp owners ˆ the Ropers estimate that they have spent nearly $4 million on maintenance and new construction at Omni over the last three years ˆ as well as higher tuition for campers, whose parents shell out as much as $8,000 for a summer in the Maine woods.
As a result of all those ongoing projects, camps that used to be staffed by seasonal workers now frequently employ a number of year-round staffers. "No one that I can remember, outside of two or three people, did camp full-time," says Bill Lerman, director of Camp Caribou in Winslow. Lerman began working in the camp's administrative office in 1968, and he says it's not just the schedules that have changed: In recent years, Camp Caribou has added a scale-model replica of Fenway Park for wiffle ball games and a 10,000-square-foot gymnasium. Decades ago, most new construction projects were intended to improve utilitarian facilities like bunkhouses or dining halls.
Lerman says the turning point came in the 1970s, when many summer camps were dealing with lower-than-usual attendance ˆ partly because of the economic recession, partly because of a post-baby-boomer drop in the population of summer-camp-aged kids. As a result, camp directors needed to boost enrollment by recruiting new kids. "A lot of camps went under because they were stubborn," says Martha Lerman, Bill's wife and Camp Caribou co-director. "They didn't want to be salesmen; they just wanted to be camp directors. But parents started looking at camps like colleges, and if you weren't willing to be a salesman, you weren't going to get the campers."
The facilities arms race
Summer camps in Maine ˆ many of which date back to the early 1900s ˆ built their reputations as healthy, rural summertime escapes for city kids. They taught rugged outdoor skills and stressed personal growth through a mix of camping, sports and waterfront activities that became the hallmark of the summer camp industry. The camps were rustic, with campers often sleeping in creaky bunkhouses or canvas tents, and offered kids a change of pace from their urban upbringing.
Most residential camps in Maine still offer the staples of summer ˆ sailboats, water-skiing and archery, among other activities ˆ but how, exactly, each one keeps up with the Joneses depends on the camp's clientele. Camp Matoaka, for example, boasts three new dance studios with cushioned hardwood floors, sound systems and specialized ventilation systems ˆ a must for an all-girls camp that offers dance classes ranging from hip-hop to ballet. Camp Caribou, an all-boys sports camp, offers a nine-hole pitch-and-putt golf course and the new $250,000 gym, complete with a weight room and cardio-fitness center.
Construction on Omni's new arts center, a towering facility perched on a cliff above the camp, was completed earlier this year and features studios for such electives as stained glass, ceramics, pottery and silk screening. Campers also can use Omni's video editing suite for digital video and computer animation, and its theater program features full-scale productions put on by campers twice a summer. "Arts and crafts is much more sophisticated than simply wandering aroundˆ with feathers and glitter," says Betsy Roper.
Even camps that bill themselves as traditional summer camps aren't immune to the facilities arms race. For example, kids and counselors stay in tented encampments at Winona Camps for Boys in Bridgton rather than bunking in cabins, but the camp still boasts tennis courts and athletic fields in addition to a fleet of new sailboats and a handful of llamas. The camp focuses on outdoor sports such as rock climbing, kayaking and camping.
Associate Director Spencer Ordway says that's the way Winona has operated for the past 100 years, but he acknowledges that the camp's traditional offerings sometimes are a tough sell to families used to camps that have the newest and most glitzy amenities. "A lot of camps are promoting all the special fun things they have, and that's hard for us," he says. "But there's still a market for what we do."
The growth of camps' facilities and range of activities hasn't come without a price for camp directors. Alan Ordway, camp director at Winona, estimates that residential summer camps typically bring in $1 million to $3 million in annual revenues, and Gar Roper pegs Omni Camp's annual revenues at $1.3 million. But much of that money gets plowed back into operations; on top of the $4 million they've spent on facilities in recent years, the Ropers recently took delivery of three $30,000 water-ski boats. Bill and Martha Lerman at Camp Caribou estimate they spend nearly $100,000 each year on maintenance alone, from keeping their 15 acres of playing fields aerated and fertilized to repainting and replacing roofs on their more than 40 buildings.
Staffing is another huge cost for summer camps, where camp directors and counselors act as surrogate parents for up to seven weeks each year; the camper-to-staff ratio at many Maine summer camps can be as high as two-to-one. A 2003 survey by the American Camping Association found that roughly 42% of operating expenses for New England residential summer camps goes toward salaries, while another 10.8% is spent on food and related expenses. The rest of the operating costs are earmarked for such expenditures as insurance, transportation, marketing, construction and maintenance.
While parents don't scrutinize line items on camp budgets, they do pay close attention to the visible effects of those expenditures on individual camps. And the results can be overwhelming: Bette Bussel, executive director of the American Camping Association of New England, says parents need to consider a raft of different options before choosing summer camp programs for their children (campers' ages typically range from eight to 15, and some camps offer counselor training programs to older kids). Some camps focus more on athletics, others on the arts, and still others concentrate on niches such as horseback riding, theater or golf. "Many families are realizing that camps are more than what they have been," says Bussel. "Camp is no longer a place for your kids to go just to have fun, but a place for tremendous growing and learning."
Camp as a consumer product
Along with the amenities, though, comes the sticker shock. A quick glance at the Maine Youth Camping Association's 2004 summer camp guide shows that seven weeks at Winona Camps for Boys costs $5,750. Tuition rises to $7,150 at Camp Caribou and, at some Maine camps, tops $8,000 for the summer ˆ more than a year's tuition at the University of Maine. But Bussel says that parents who send their kids to Maine summer camps cross all financial categories. Though some camps cost more than $1,000 a week, many camps offer financial assistance to parents who can't afford such sizable bills. And there are scores of residential camps in the state that charge much smaller fees.
Given the proliferation of specialized camps that might help burnish a college application or simply give a kid a chance to try some new activities and make a few friends, selecting the right one can be a difficult task. That's where camp referral services come in. Scores of such services operate across the country and are a bargain for parents, who don't have to foot the bill for the agents' matchmaking. Instead, camps pay a fee ˆ usually 15% of the camper's tuition ˆ to the agents. "Decades ago, you went to the camp your neighbor went to, and your mom didn't do much more research than that," says Eve Eifler, a referral consultant in Baltimore.
Eifler is co-director of Tips on Trips and Camps, a referral service that employs more than 15 consultants spread from New York to California and in France, Scotland and London. The service has affiliations with roughly 500 camps in the United States, from specialized language immersion camps to traditional sleep-away camps, and Eifler says parents have become much more critical when choosing camps. Eifler points to Omni Camp's range of activities, from stained glass to computers to aviation instruction, as the kind of hook many parents are looking for in a general interest camp. "Parents don't send their kids to camp to paddle a canoe anymore," says Eifler. "The programming [at camps] has become very broad."
That's reflected in camps' own efforts to lure the next season's campers. Word of mouth still is a big recruitment tool, as are returning campers and family associations with a camp, but directors frequently spend the off-season traveling to camp fairs in the United States and abroad to promote their camp, or visiting with prospective campers' families to make a sales pitch. (Bussel says kids come to Maine from all over the eastern seaboard ˆ particularly from cities such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York and Boston ˆ but also from across the country and Europe.)
And most employ slick promotional tools such as videos and DVDs to sell parents and kids on their camps. Omni Camp's DVD features a montage of camper testimonials interspersed with highlights that include a guitar workshop with blues legend Taj Mahal and campers receiving flight instruction in small two-seater planes flying over Omni's private lake.
Camps' marketing materials need to appeal to kids ˆ Bill Lerman says hockey pucks hitting goal posts and the buzzing of scoreboards in Camp Caribou's video are sounds kids love hearing ˆ but they also need to convince parents that the camp is a good fit for their kids. Caribou's video is like an episode of ESPN's SportsCenter: Fast edits and quick cuts knit together goals, baskets, home runs and other highlights, while the narrator ˆ sportscaster Chris "Boomer" Berman, whose son is a seven-year veteran of Caribou ˆ gives the play-by-play on life at Caribou. "Camp is expensive, and parents approach it like a consumer product," says Bill Lerman. "They're much more discerning."
The various camp directors interviewed for this story wouldn't disclose how profitable each of their operations are, but each said ˆ in their own way ˆ that running a summer camp isn't a recipe for riches. But between the promotional videos, the constant off-season recruitment visits and the 24/7 schedule of the summertime months, the business of summer camps clearly is a labor of love. "We don't mind a little profit," says Betsy Roper, "but we are pouring so much back into the camp. A couple of years ago, I had the choice of taking a salary or building a new tennis court. We took the tennis court."
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