Assessing and Improving Camper Satisfaction: 4 Top Tips

Camp directors and staff members have plenty on their plates, from handling day-to-day responsibilities to planning fundraising events to creating marketing materials. However, it’s crucial to focus on what matters most—how satisfied campers are with your camp, its offerings, and its messages.

If you’re ready to make serious changes to enhance camper satisfaction, this guide is for you. Here, we’ll cover the top tips for assessing and improving happiness at your summer camp. With these strategies, you’ll have no trouble creating an experience that delights all of your campers.

1. Establish your goals.

For most organizations, the main benefit of improving camper satisfaction is securing more summer camp enrollments. However, there are other goals that boosting camper satisfaction can help you reach. Ask yourself, why do you want to focus on camper satisfaction right now?

Other goals that relate to camper satisfaction include:

• Improving the camper experience. Maybe you’ve received feedback that other camps have more to offer than yours or that yours is lacking in certain areas. In that case, you may want to generally improve the experience for your campers, such as with new programs or better food.

• Boosting your visibility and reputation. Your camp’s goal might fall into this category if you want to reach a wider audience and improve the way your camp is viewed by them. This might mean focusing on improving satisfaction in your marketing messages.

• Increasing retention rates. If not many campers stay with you after their first year enrolling in your camp, then your organization may not have made a good first impression. In that case, you may focus on camper satisfaction to boost your retention rates.

Once you establish your goal, you’ll have the foundation for your strategy, allowing you to take a more targeted approach to assessing camper satisfaction.

2. Decide on metrics to track.

Choosing your main goal is just the first step to improving camper satisfaction and furthering your camp’s success. Before you make any changes or adjustments to your existing strategy and processes, you should collect key data that provides actionable insights into your camp’s operations. With this information, you’ll make informed decisions to effectively boost camper satisfaction.

Determine which key metrics your camp should track. For example, you may want to keep an eye on:

• Overall satisfaction

• Repeat attendance rate

• Camper engagement levels

• Messaging open rate for emails and text messages

• Social media likes and comments

• Net promoter score (NPS)

Camper satisfaction extends beyond the happiness or fulfillment they feel while at your camp. It reflects their attitude toward your camp as a whole, including its programs, messaging, and more. 

For instance, if your goal is to boost your camp’s visibility and reputation but you’re seeing low open rates, you can deduce that your audience is dissatisfied with your marketing efforts. The metrics you track are key to adjusting your strategy, so be sure to pick ones that align with your goals!

3. Create effective survey questions.

Aside from the quantitative data you gain by tracking important metrics, you can also glean valuable insights from qualitative data. While there are various ways to get that information, ranging from interviews to focus groups, surveys are one of the best and most reliable ways to understand your campers.

According to WildApricot, a satisfaction survey can cover a wide variety of topics, including:

• General satisfaction

• Ideas for improvements

• Areas of most and least interest

• Barriers to participation

• Benefits for customers

Here are some examples of questions to include in your camper survey:

• Did you have fun at camp? Tell us how much fun using a number from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most fun you've ever had.

• Will you come to our camp again next year?

• Would you tell your friends to come to our camp?

• What was your favorite thing to do at camp and why?

• Was there anything you didn't like to do at camp? Why?

• Were the camp counselors nice and helpful?

• Tell us how much you liked where you slept and the food you ate using a number from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best.

• Were the messages we sent you before camp helpful?

• Do you have any ideas to make our camp better?

• Is there anything else you want to tell us about camp?

Be sure to include a mix of short answer and multiple choice questions. That way, campers will have ample space to explain their thoughts and feelings, while not feeling burdened by too many long-form questions.

The key to ensuring you get responses is timing. That’s where camp management software comes in. CIRCUITREE advises using a robust solution that allows you to schedule and automate your messages. Schedule surveys to be sent within a few days after camp ends, after campers get settled in at home but before they’ve forgotten any key details about their experience.

4. Make changes based on feedback.

After collecting this information and assessing it to find the areas of greatest dissatisfaction, you can begin making changes to improve camper happiness. You may make changes in the following areas:

• Camp programs and curriculum. This includes your campers’ daily activities, your camp’s traditions, workshops, programs, and any other special events.

• General operations. This includes your campers’ accommodations, the food they eat, your camp’s safety protocols, and anything else relating to your camp’s general operations.

• Staff engagement. Camp counselors can make or break a camper’s experience, so it’s crucial to keep staff engaged with their roles and motivate them to provide the best possible summer for campers.

• Registration. This includes providing online registration, streamlining the registration form, and enabling online payment processing.

• Marketing. Adjust your marketing strategy based on how satisfied campers and their parents are with your communications. For example, send out more reminders of upcoming deadlines or include more robust packing lists.

You may be wondering, what if the information I collect suggests that I should make an adjustment that I can’t or feel that I shouldn’t make? Let’s break that down:

• If the change is one you’re interested in, but you don’t have the bandwidth to make it currently, the answer might be as simple as waiting until you have the funds, time, or resources to do so. If the change is urgent, then you may need to look into making room in your budget or other resources to accommodate it.

• If the change is one that you don’t feel would benefit your camp, you may need to dig a little deeper. One-off suggestions that fall in this category may be ignored. However, if many of your campers have the same view or your data supports their feedback, then you may need to interrogate why you feel the change would not benefit your camp. Reflect honestly on the adjustment and get second opinions on whether or not it would improve camper satisfaction.

Keep in mind that these changes are not one-and-done—it’s a continuous process! If, after making adjustments, you see no change in camper satisfaction, you can always go back to the drawing board and make tweaks to your strategy until you have the results you’re looking for.

---

When you work at a camp, camper happiness and satisfaction are some of your top priorities. So take steps today to set your goals, collect relevant data, and start making changes that will boost camper satisfaction. Happy campers mean returning campers, ensuring you boost your revenue and secure plenty of funds to create meaningful summer experiences.

***************************************************************