Members and Friends
On our way to Sedalia at a lovely Harvest Hosts location (Missouri).
This will be a short update since many of us (~1,300 Airstreams) are either on our way, planning to depart (or already here volunteering) for the 67th International Rally in Sedalia, MO. Led by our International Rally Planning Team (volunteers + staff), this event is only possible due to the volunteering of 300-400 of your fellow Club members.
This President’s Corner will focus mainly on our developing partnership with Harvest Hosts and the new Courtesy Parking Powered by Harvest Hosts that just launched in mid-September.
- Our New Partnership with Harvest Hosts
- Reminder: Club marketing and outreach materials are now available
- Reminder: Current Club Strategic Priorities
Courtesy Parking and Harvest Hosts:
Courtesy Parking is one of the joys and benefits of membership at Airstream Club International! The next time you are in need of an overnight parking area try one of the best-kept secrets in Airstream Club International, Courtesy Parking. Currently, approximately 300 fellow members offer free, overnight parking across the USA and lower Canada.
Harvest Hosts is a membership program that provides access to a network of more than 5,000+ wineries, farms, breweries, museums, and other unique attractions that invite self-contained RVers to visit and stay overnight. Harvest Hosts has been a lifeline for many small businesses that don’t have huge budgets to market their services. We’ve talked to several who have said Harvest Hosts was a game changer for them, and we believe supporting small US and Canadian businesses speaks personally to many of our ACI members.
The Harvest Hosts Partnership: How It Started
During the Strategic Planning Meeting in 2023, attended by our full International Board of Trustees, the team identified our legacy “Courtesy Parking” as a key but woefully underutilized benefit to our members: challenging to view, no date filters, no way to tell what size Airstream could be accommodated, cumbersome to initiate conversations with Hosts and no idea ahead of time if the spot would be available on a particular date.
After considering the development cost to re-build (and support) a new interface, we followed up on a suggestion of two Club members to consider reaching out to the industry-leading Harvest Hosts to see if we could partner rather than investing Club funds (and limited volunteer time) into a grounds-up design. Not to mention the long-term continued improvement and support required if done “in-house” or through a contracted “app” developer.
Fortunately, we quickly realized the synergy of working with the [fantastic] Harvest Hosts team. They had the vision, experience, and skillsets to add our Courtesy Parking to their core solution in a way only available to current Club members. A perfect match – as I’ve said many times, a successful and long-lasting partnership is based on shared visions, specific benefits for both organizations, and, frankly, compatible leadership teams. For our Club, this partnership lives squarely under our strategic priority of “Welcome and Retain Members” by continuing to improve and deliver new membership benefits.
Just Launched: Courtesy Parking Powered by Harvest Hosts
- NO cost to any Club member or ongoing costs to our ACI budget.
- Only accessible by current ACI members.
- Optional paid features showing traditional Harvest Hosts properties, including wineries, farms, church parking lots, distilleries, and even a [decommissioned!] missile silo.
- Privacy protections for our Hosts.
- Rich set of features, including filtering by Airstream size, routing, photos, a calendar showing the availability of Courtesy Parking spots, simple request-to-stay, and responses.
- Thanks to our ACI Project Manager Kathy Geese, ACI Executive Council Member for keeping the project on track, and personally helping our members get going onto the new Harvest Hosts ACI Courtesy Parking feature.
Our ACI Courtesy Parking Locations
Multi-stage, filtered routing.
Comment from a long-term Club member and Courtesy Parking Host:
The Courtesy Parking program, driven by Harvest Hosts, went live the day before yesterday— or was it yesterday? Regardless, I have 2 Airstreams coming in today. The request & reply & confirmation was a snap. And this morning, I received a text reminder — cool! I know that you and the team have spent many hours to plan, develop, and make this a reality. Thank you for all your efforts. It’s working!
What’s Next?
First, our joint teams realized that a curated list of Harvest Hosts on main travel routes to our Sedalia (and later) International Rallies would be a fantastic service. Here’s a screenshot for travel to and from Sedalia (click image to view):
Next: A curated list of Harvest Hosts willing to host an official Local Club Event.
We know finding unique, exclusive rally locations can be challenging for our Local Clubs. We know many wineries, farms, distilleries, and other commercial host locations may welcome a two-to-three-day official Club event (rally) with the accompanying photo opportunities of 10-20 Airstreams lining their fields. And 20-40 individuals learning more about their business and purchasing some of their offerings. Even better if they already provide some food service, food trucks, etc. It seems like a great match. So, we’re looking into it with a 4-6 month pilot program starting shortly, focusing on locations where the weather allows events from now through the spring of 2025.
We’re quite excited about these and likely other opportunities to grow our partnership along lines that benefit ACI and, of course, Harvest Hosts. As your International President, I’m very pleased to see the launch of selected services through partnerships that we could never do by ourselves.
Reminder: Club marketing and outreach materials are now available
One element of our Strategic Priorities is to better introduce Airstream Dealers and their new customers to our Club.
- While we know some Local Clubs and/or Regions do a great job getting our Club material to the dealerships (and restocking), we will augment this with a new set of materials and automatically stocking the dealerships from our HQ staff.
- This will ensure the most updated material is available and reduce the requirement for our Clubs to manage the process.
- Members and Clubs are also encouraged to order additional material directly from HQ, free at: AirstreamClub.org/ACIcollateral.
Current Club Strategic Priorities
- Internal Communications
- External Communications
- Welcome and Retain Members
- Infrastructure (buildings and software)
- Training at all Levels
- Financial Literacy and Sustainability for IBT Members
Upcoming International Rallies
- Rally2024 in Sedalia, Missouri
- Rally2025: York, PA (August 23-28, 2025)
- Rally2026: Minot, ND (August 22-27, 2026)
- Rally2027: Due to popular demand, “Back to Rock Springs,” WY (June 2027)
- Rally2028: Tentatively east of the Mississippi
That’s it for now!
Looking forward to seeing you all down the road, and let me know if you have ideas for our Club.
Eric McHenry
International President / BRN 153 // Amateur Radio callsign AA6EM
