Posts Tagged ‘RV lifestyle’

Camping World is celebrating the grand opening of its new Jacksonville location, officially named Camping World of Jacksonville.

Formerly Suncoast RV, Camping World of Jacksonville encompasses both a Camping World retail store and Camping World RV Sales dealership. It is located at 9012 Beach Blvd.

The grand-opening celebration, which began with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Nov. 4, runs through next Sunday. Customers will find a good selection of hundreds of new and pre-owned RVs. In addition, there are daily camping accessory and parts specials, plus free door prizes to the first 50 customers each day and free coloring books for children. There will also be free lunch on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. during the grand-opening event.

“With its abundance of outdoor recreational activities and natural attractions, Jacksonville is an ideal location for Camping World,” said Camping World of Jacksonville General Manager of RV Sales Matt Bateh. “We look forward to continue serving the Florida, Southern Georgia and Jacksonville areas.

“This store – along with our new Birmingham store – is the first step to reaching 100 stores by 2014. We believe that the Greater Jacksonville market needed a full-service solution for RVers,” said Marcus Lemonis, Camping World’s chairman and CEO.

Camping World is the world’s largest retailer of recreational vehicles and provides outdoor enthusiasts more than 8,000 RV parts and accessories, service and collision centers along with other products and services to enhance the RV and outdoor lifestyle.

Today, the Lincolnshire, Ill.-based company serves more than 4 million RV enthusiasts with more than 81 RV lifestyle retail locations.

Camping World provides retail sale, finance, service and rental of recreational vehicles, with more than $300 million of new and used recreational vehicle inventory representing more than 13 RV manufacturers and 150 brand names.

In addition, Camping World currently operates in 33 states, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

For more information on Camping World of Jacksonville, call 1-877-508-5417 or go to campingworldofjacksonville.com.

Master Sergeant Robert Everhart served in the Air Force for 22 years. And as the saying goes, you can never take the soldier out of the man. A short time after leaving the Air Force in 2004, Everhart returned to be of service to his Country as a contractor supporting our troops in the Middle East including Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nearing the end of his current contract, he and his wife Judy were mapping out some of their goals – and one of them was to rediscover America and the freedoms he had protected for most of his life. To fulfill that dream, a new RV was in his sights.

Everhart is not new to camping and the RV lifestyle. Decades of service were a proving ground for survival. Also, having had a 32′ fifth wheel, a “house on wheels” as he called it, Everhart wanted a bit more freedom to go to the more majestic and secluded places that a smaller RV would allow. So he set off to find out as much as he could about products on the market.

With the advent of technology, service personnel can easily have video chats with their family. So besides staying in touch with his wife, step daughter, daughter and son (Everhart also has two grandchildren ages 8 and 12), he was able to take advantage of his internet time to research RVs.

Robert’s wife first went to the local RV dealer to see the Lance product.

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Camping is emerging as the top choice for many families this year, as the industry touts new amenities to draw penny-pinching vacationers who still want to get away, but can’t afford shelling out big bucks for airline fare, posh resorts or pricey home rentals. The road to recovery started last year, when revenue for the nation’s more than 13,000 privately run campgrounds and RV parks grew 3% after falling 4.8% in the wake of the recession in 2009, according to a new report by IBISWorld, which provides market intelligence on a variety of industries. Although hurt somewhat by the recession, camping didn’t fall as fast as other travel segments, such as hotels and motels, whose revenue plummeted more than 9% in 2009, according to IBISWorld.

The camping uptick is expected to continue for the next five years as more retiring baby boomers hit the open road. Growing up in the “height of the Boy Scout movement,” boomers have a “permanent appreciation of the outdoors,” IBISWorld notes in the report. “This generation is expected to be wealthier and live longer than any prior generation, making them prime targets for an RV lifestyle.”

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