Street View is free advertisement for businesses on Google Maps. You can buy a $200 360 degree camera and you can video a campground in an afternoon. There is very little barrier to putting your campground “on the map”.
If you want the property to look like you care, you should use a high resolution camera. The Street View below was shot with an 8K resolution camera.
Once a Street View is uploaded to Google Maps, you can display it in a window like the one above. The display is fully interactive, as if it were being viewed on Google Maps. The window above displays Redbud Ranch RV, which I filmed in May 2025.
There are three different filming processes that I use. The RV portion of the park is done with the camera mounted above my Mini Cooper. There is a grassy park area that I filmed using an Off-Road e-bike using a custom camera mount. The pool and playground areas were filmed with the camera mount attached to a vest while I walked through those areas.
The reason street view will become a requirement for campgrounds is that vacation planning is 90% about knowing what to expect. Currently it is almost impossible to go to a campground website and be confident of how your day-to-day experience will turn out.
There are so many different expectations of a park. For the family that only pulls their trailer twice a year, they want wide turns and wide sites. Are the kids going to track in dirt, or maybe you want them to see squirrels and birds and maybe a racoon. For me, I want to know if the trash cans are bear-proof. That tells me that nature is more common than people. But most campers I know want comfort and well maintained sites that are easy to navigate.
I know you already know this. My point is that Street-View solves this problem with the benefit of no maintenance or advertising. It is on the most known and accessible internet resource.
The average job ends up being around $750. There is a detailed cost breakdown at the bottom of this page. I don’t know anyone else who has the same business model that I am working to. Most of my competition are advertising companies that do Street-View as part of a package of promotional content. I look to find parks that will be in the area that I am traveling. I will go out of my way on occasion to do a job when it is a large job that I can cover the overhead.
Once a date has been set for planning we will meet and plan out what is to be filmed, how it is to be filmed and what time of day. Normally filming is done between 10am and 3pm otherwise there are shadows that make the park look dreary. However, there may be activities that need to be worked around.
On the day of filming, the staff should be notified so that unpleasant activities are not filmed.
After filming I will do a quick check to be sure camera settings were correct.
Post-production can take anywhere from two to eight hours. There may be planned or unplanned editing required. There may be a charge if these changes need to be ok’d by the client.
A set of deliverable videos will be loaded on a memory stick and delivered to the client.
The last step is to upload the files to Google. It is preferable that the client does this as it will tie the Google business presence to the Street View.
The base price is $500. This includes an hour planning session and post production stitching, badging and creating deliverables.
For each of the three different filming processes (Car, Bike, Walking), there is a minimum of $100 which includes setup and one hour of filming. If more time is needed, then it is chage at $100/hour.
Badging. Badging is the artwork that covers the camera area so the user sees the park insignia instead. If the artwork is provided, there is no cost. If there is electronic artwork that just needs formatting, then there is a $50 charge. If there is no electronic artwork, then there is a $100/hour charge for creating this artwork. I do not pretend to be timely at this. So this option could get pricey.
Uploading files is a flat fee of $100. It is highly recommended that an official representative of the park upload the video files instead.