Location, location: How Grant Wilckens built Australia’s largest holiday park business

The biggest deal I’ve pulled off was the acquisition of a property called Onslow in Western Australia. It was an amazing property which I bought for $14 million and later sold. We now manage the property on behalf of the owners and it makes $30 million profit a year.

It was the right price at the time. The property was owned by a mum and dad; the male was the businessman and the female was very keen to leave. I got along really well with the wife and we’re still good friends.

I’m very proud of that deal. Three months after the sale, a massive oil and gas project was announced nearby.

When completing these kinds of deals, you’ve always got to remember what the other party wants. Don’t go in just thinking about yourself. If you can satisfy their needs or concerns then I think you’re halfway there in terms of getting a result.

It’s a matter of understanding what the vendor wants and also what you’re arguing for. I also understand finance and numbers and returns, so I am able to form decisions relatively quickly.

We had a business plan to start with and we pretty much executed in the first four or five years but then we didn’t have a plan for another three years. I wrote another plan in 2010 because we needed to write one. Not having a plan probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but we managed to get some structure back. I’ve just written another strategic plan for the next five years through to 2019.

Writing a business plan is a really important thing to do. When you look at what we did between 2010 and 2014, it was a massive period of growth and we were very structured in what we did. It gets your head clear about what you want to deliver.

We have a very large shareholder now and Sunsuper wants to invest a lot more money into the sector. We are arguably the biggest and best holiday park management company in Australia. Our approach is to buy up parks for tourism and for the grey nomads. We have a tourism-based model and we’ll continue that strategy.

We want to invest a lot more in the Australian market. We’ve looked at New Zealand but it is quite small and caravan parks are not all that big in Asia. We may eventually look at Europe.

Our focus on Australia is about mergers and acquisitions, as well as development. A big part of what we do is developing properties that need cabins and other facilities like waterparks. We’ve recently spent $1 million developing a facility in Merimbula in New South Wales.

People are what keep me awake at night. We have around 600 employees and it can be hard to manage when people have emotions. We have remote locations too and our people live together onsite. So there is a lot of conflict because people are living and working together. Unfortunately, it is often about maturity and having to say, ‘Come on guys, you’re adults’.

It’s also about communication. I think a lot of people don’t communicate effectively and every business faces similar issues.

I’m very focused on the next five years. From a personal perspective, I feel I haven’t done much for the community or charities and I want to start giving back. I’ve worked really hard and have been pretty successful, but what I’ve realised is that I need to give back.

I’ve created a big company and lots of jobs but I haven’t given much back yet.

The tourism market in Australia has been tough, but the caravan industry has been a strong performer in a tough market. We’re the outback Aussie dream, so our market has been okay.

We were one of the first corporates in 2008 but there is now a lot of institutional capital buying up parks. More and more parks are being bought up by corporates and I think these parks will probably be converted to aged care retirement living. But we’re a tourism operator and we’re still very keen on that market.