Young travellers without kids have overtaken families for the first time in booming caravan/camping tourism and Indigo Council is looking at ways to improve its offering.
Indigo's four caravan parks have been assigned an economic value of $8.3 million by consultants, who have recommended master-plans be done.
Their report, building on interviews with the operators of the Beechworth, Rutherglen, Yackandandah and Chiltern parks, noted "a high level of visitor satisfaction".
"Managers work to maintain the parks and high occupancy levels ... (but) hold a level of uncertainty in regards to financial sustainability due to current lease agreements," the report said.
"The review of lease arrangements in a park-by-park plan would be useful."
Each of the parks are due for lease renewal in the next nine years, and all operators commented on the age of the infrastructure - some containing asbestos.
Councillor Diane Shepheard said the Beechworth park winning an Albury-Wodonga Business Award showed "we have the right type of lessees and now it's our job to look at infrastructure".
Council has $50,000 to spend, after putting $20,000 to the initial reports, and hopes the state government will match that for the master-planning - an expression of interest has been submitted to the investment fast track fund.
While at least one operator considers joining BIG4 too expensive, Cr Bernard Gaffney wanted to know if the end goal was for the parks to "match" BIG4 standards, which could cost millions.
Cr Larry Goldsworthy said some buildings were from the 1950s and many parks were in "desperate" need of upgrades.
"We would like to bring up our caravan parks to a better standard," he said.
"If that means getting up to a standard some would expect if they were to visit a BIG4 caravan park, then I would love to see that."
Cr Sophie Price also had concerns about potential costs.
"This isn't the report that I thought we were originally going to receive and I acknowledge ... we'd ask for too much with not enough budget," she said.
"I share some of the concerns of Councillor Gaffney; I do wonder how we will fund it into the future ... but I support master-planning for those sites."
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Cr Goldsworthy said the project was about boosting the local economy and was confident it would attract grants.
"if you try and buy a caravan at the moment, you probably won't take possession of it for another year," he said.
"Caravan parks are big business and the better offering we have, the more chance we have of attracting more people."
