Another wonderful summer season has come to an end. While it might feel like a moment of reprieve, fall is actually an important time to start planning your next season of summer camp. In fact, every season is important for different reasons.

Fall is all about celebrating the success of the summer and capitalizing on that post-summer glow by offering early bird discounts and trials. Winter is go-time: Parents are researching and booking summer camp, so you need to be ready with published activities, events to make connections, and lots of fun marketing. Spring is the time to capture those procrastinating parents, write lesson plans, hire and train your counselors, and prepare for the best summer ever!

It’s a lot, so we’ve outlined key steps and tasks that you should follow throughout the year to be ready for camp next summer. For even more tips and templates, we created a downloadable camp planner and toolkit that you can use to stay on track and make this upcoming summer a success!

Fall

When the summer ends, don’t let your customers forget about the amazing time they had at your camp! Instead, nurture relationships with your current families, make connections with new customers, and most importantly, take bookings for next year.

Scheduling

If you have not already, the fall is the perfect time to sign up with a camp registration and management software so you can set yourself up for success next summer. Software can help you streamline operations, increase your bookings, save yourself time and energy, and gain access to a strong support team.

In the fall, you should also publish your camp listings for next summer! Even though this season has just come to a close, happy families are looking to book early for the next one. Use high quality photos, include sample schedules, and offer early bird discounts for families who book in the fall.

Administrative Work

Fall is the perfect time to refresh your website and showcase all of the photos, videos, and fun from this past summer. Plus, it’s important to update your booking page with updated camp dates and pricing as well as a functional booking link so excited families can take advantage of the early bird discounts and book. 

This is also a good time to reflect on the summer that just ended. Did you accomplish the goals you set out for yourself, your team, and your business? Where were the challenges? How can you avoid those pitfalls next year and replicate your successes next year? Take the time to think through these questions with your team.

Activity Planning

Thinking about trying something new during your next camp session? Fall is the perfect opportunity to test out activities, themes, games, and more during school day off camps and after school or weekend programming. Plus, it’s a great way to introduce new families to your camp!

Marketing

One of the most important marketing tactics you should take in the fall is to collect reviews from your campers and their families while the summer love is still high. Leverage these reviews on your website, social media, in email campaigns, and everywhere you can! Customers are more likely to make purchasing decisions when they see peer reviews.

Fall is also a good time to make connections with local schools and participate in community events. You can meet customers where they are and give your camp credibility by sponsoring events, donating to raffles, assisting with school activities and programs, and showcasing your program at community fairs and back-to-school events.

Winter

When the weather is cold, everyone is dreaming about summer. In our 2025 Children’s Activity Industry Trend Report, we found that parents spend one to two months researching and comparing summer camps and then book two to three months in advance. That is why winter is such an important time for summer camp owners! To get those bookings, you need to set yourself apart from the competition and highlight your value.

Scheduling

Make sure your camps are published! Then, offer timed promotions, early bird discounts, and other specials to create a sense of urgency and excitement around your camps and encourage families to book.

Administrative Work

In the winter, it’s time to plan. Start sourcing and interviewing counselors and staff members, set up SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based) goals for your summer, and create important policies for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), safety protocols, and more.

Activity Planning

Winter is also important because it is the right time to build your curriculum and write your lesson plans for the summer. Once you have an idea of what will be covered throughout the summer, you can use that information to make your camp listing even more robust. Parents want to know what their children will learn and do at your camps, so include that information! 

Marketing

Now is the time you want to get your name out there. Beyond social media, Google Ads, and Meta (Facebook) ads are simple and cost effective ways to spread the word about your camps. Organic social media is also great because you can actually build connections with prospective customers (and current customers, as well!). Open your DMs for questions about your camps, run contests, ask customers to post reviews, and more.

Spring

When spring arrives, parents who haven’t booked yet are definitely looking to make a decision on summer camp. In fact, March is one of the biggest months for camp booking! Get procrastinating parents over the hump to book and then get your future campers and their families excited for a wonderful summer.

Scheduling

In the spring, you need to show you are in demand. Let parents know that your camps are filling up. Include this information in your listings and emails so parents know spots are limited. And once spots fill up, enable a waitlist so you can keep track of interested registrants for sold out sessions. 

With waitlists, you can see which specific programs are generating buzz and who is waiting to book. If your waitlist gets large enough, you can consider opening another session of that camp. At the very least, you will know which camps are most popular so you can plan to run more of those next year.

Administrative Work

Make sure your team is secure and get started on onboarding so that everyone knows what to expect when summer rolls around. Proper camp counselor training is one of the best ways to keep your campers and staff safe over the summer, so make sure you keep your counselors engaged throughout.

Activity Planning

If you haven’t already, you need to have your lesson plans written and prepared in the spring. Then, start gathering supplies for your lessons and just for fun this summer. What do you need to make this summer the best one yet? Make sure you stay organized while getting everything you need.

Marketing

Spring is one of the most important seasons for marketing your summer camp. Post frequently and interact often with families, both prospective and current customers. Use Instagram Stories to ask questions, run polls, and more, then share the responses to create a sense of community before the summer begins. In addition, encourage families to refer friends to your camp and reward them when they do with a robust referral program! Your current customers are your best marketers.

It might be fall, but it takes all year to make the summer a success! We hope these tips help you as you prepare for another wonderful summer full of happy campers. We have even more examples and templates, as well as a printable camp planner that you can fill in yourself in our camp tool kit.

This article was sponsored by Sawyer. Sawyer is an all-in-one camp registration and management software that helps camp owners and children’s activity providers efficiently run their businesses so they can spend more time doing what they love. Looking for ways to supercharge your camp? Speak with one of our camp experts.

Lizzie is the content marketing manager for Sawyer. She helps connect camp owners and educators with the resources they need so they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time working with children. A lifelong lover of camp as both a camper and counselor, Lizzie is thrilled that she gets to spend her days helping providers discover and use Sawyer to make camp more accessible.

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Periodically, the American Camp Association (ACA) makes timely and relevant information about products and services available to its members so they can make informed decisions for their camps. However, the ACA does not endorse products, services, or companies.