16 Apr 2025
Words
John Miller Informer
Group Think
From a single caravan park purchased by Ian Edwards in the early 2000s, Edwards Group has become South Australia’s second largest private owner and operator of holiday parks and land lease communities, nipping at the heels of market leader Discovery Parks.
Since 2014, Edwards Group has been under the management of CEO Stephen Edwards, Ian’s son. Stephen had always worked in the family business and was the obvious choice to take over from his father. But when Ian offered Stephen, then aged 23, the reins of Edwards Group there was a condition attached.
“Dad took me out for a coffee, which was unusual,” recalls Edwards. “He said, ‘I want to offer you the job as CEO if you want to take over the business. But the caveat is you have to grow the business. You can’t sit back and do nothing.’”
Grow it he did. Under Edwards’ stewardship, the group’s acquisitions have been fast and its expansion explosive. Edwards Group’s portfolio now includes five holiday parks and two residential villages. In 2019, Edwards added a construction arm to the group, Destination Homes Australia, to build cabins for its parks and homes for its villages. Destination Homes Australia now accounts for 25% of the group’s resources, equalling the share of its villages, with holiday parks making up 50%.
Edwards Group’s mainstay remains its holiday parks. Since 2014, the group has rolled out five parks under its Echo Holiday Parks brand starting with Renmark, then Waikerie in 2017, Windsor Gardens in 2018, Naracoorte in 2021 and Port Pirie in 2022.
“Echo Holiday Parks are dotted across South Australia. That’s not by accident,” says Edwards. “Our strategy has been to get a nice geographical spread. We want people who travel throughout the state to stay at all our parks.”
Edwards says the group looks for parks it can revitalize or enhance in locations that have something to offer.
“Our business isn’t interested in purchasing parks at the top of their game,” he says. “If they’re running really well and doing exceptionally well, it’s not a park for us.”
“The parks that attract us are ones we feel have had a lack of investment or aren’t being run to their full potential. We think we can add value there.”
“One of the things that gets me up in the morning is being able to grow these parks and the towns they’re in. Parks have a huge impact on towns. They bring tens of thousands of people intoa town each year. When we’re busy, the town is busy.”
Echo Holiday Parks do not conform to a brand identity. There is no specific model, explains Edwards.
“They’re all different,” he says. “The consistency across our parks is in our customer experience. We want to make people feel welcome in our parks. We want to create that sense of community. So we do in-park events in all of our parks … happy hours, pancake breakfasts, kids’ clubs … all those things to bring people in the park together and create that sense of belonging when they’re there. It’s those things we try to replicate across all our parks.”
Before caravan parks, Ian Edwards had been in hotels, pubs and clubs. When he bought his first park, Office Beach Caravan Park at Wallaroo, it was intended to be his last. His idea was to have a park manageable enough that he and his partner could run with the help of a cleaner and not have to worry about other staff.
“That didn’t last long because the entrepreneurial spirit in my father took over. Then he bought another park and another park,” says Edwards.
In 2006, Edwards Group purchased its first land lease asset, Virginia Residential Park, which Edwards says was a strategic move by his father. The group developed a second park, Waikerie Lifestyle Village, in 2010.
“Dad could see the future of residential villages,” he says. “He saw it as a great alternative accommodation offering to traditional retirement villages … something that was good for a business and good
for residents as well.”
“He thought it was really important to have those two arms to our business. We had holiday parks for tourism which is high growth, that you can really leverage up, and we had the stability of income from the residential villages.”
“There’s a misconception that residential village operators are out there to do wrong by residents. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re the most incentivised people in the world to make sure our residents are happy and taken care of. If we don’t, they won’t stay in our parks. If they don’t stay in our parks, we don’t have a business. In this space, our incentives are uniquely aligned with our residents’ happiness.”
Edwards inherited his entrepreneurial flare and an eye for a good opportunity from his father. Destination Homes Australia came about when Edwards identified a gap in the market: an acute shortage of builders to make and deliver quality transportable product.
“We wanted to secure quality supply and a process we could control,” says Edwards. “I also thought at the time that if we were feeling this then a lot of other operators might be too. I never met a park operator who had anything fantastic to say about their builder.”
“We didn’t want to a builder that focused on maximising our return from one particular build. We wanted to be a dedicated business-to-business builder focused on delivering a quality product and great service and most importantly for us developing a long-term relationship.”
Destination Homes Australia has proved a runaway success. In the last two years it had made the BDO Fast Movers Top 25: 11th last year, second the year before.
“In early 2020 we won our first external contract for a caravan park here in South Australia. From there on it has just been growth, growth, growth,” says Edwards.
The building business now delivers product to Western Australia and Victoria beyond its traditional South Australian base. Edwards says the group’s three business arms complement each other.
“As our footprint grows in tourism parks and land lease communities, that helps grow our building business as well,” says Edwards. “We’re also taking on more external clients, not just dealing with the caravan and land lease community market but also the broader tourism market. No one is providing quality tourism products at any sort of scale in the South Australia market. Local builders are doing a few here and there but no one is dedicated to delivering tourism products. We’re pushing into that space now as well.”
Edwards insists that while the group has a growth mandate, it won’t be growth for growth’s sake.
“We’re going to grow, but we’re going to grow the right way for the right reasons,” he says. “I don’t like to put a number on the amount of parks or villages."
"If you do, the danger is that you acquire new parks just to hit a certain target. It could be we don’t acquire anything for two or three years, or we acquire two or three things in one year."
"It just depends on the opportunities that come up and if they’re good opportunities we’ll pounce on them. We’re always looking at acquisitions where we can grow the group.”
Now CEO for more than a decade, Edwards still seeks the counsel of his father, who remains chairman of the board. Most of their catchups are over the phone because Ian, together with his partner, is fulfilling a long-held dream of travelling around Australia in a motor home.
“Dad’s a very valuable advisor to me,” says Edwards. “I would speak to him a couple of times a week at a minimum. Sometimes a lot more if we have big things going on. He has so much knowledge and advice he can give. For me to have a sounding board like that to say, ‘Hey, I have this problem, or I have this idea, what do you think?’ is absolutely fantastic.”
Oddly, running the family business was never part of Edwards’ plan. Though he’d worked in the family business from a young age, he never intended to join it. He was set on being a lawyer and was in the final year of a dual bachelor’s degree in law and commerce when Ian offered him the CEO role.
“There was never any pressure put on me to take it on,” recalls Edwards. “It was completely up to me. Dad said, ‘You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.’”
“In the end, it was a no-brainer. I loved the business. I loved the industry. And thought this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that not many people get.”
How Parkies Can Save on Insurance
“Insurance is something operators look at once a year, if that,” says Edwards. “Tick and flick. We were no different until skyrocketing insurance costs forced us to look at ours more in depth.”
“We found we were able to save tens of thousands of dollars by cutting out unnecessary insurances.”
“Years ago when it was more of a cash economy, it made sense to be insured for cash. These days, we’d take at most $1,000 to $2,000 in cash a week across all our parks. The $2,500 premium with an excess of $500 per event no longer made sense for us. Same for insurances for glass, parts and machinery, and air conditioner breakdown insurance. Now, if something breaks, we just replace it. The replacement cost is far less than the premium and excess
you might pay to insure it.”
“We also documented our risk management processes for the first time in the group’s history. Our systems were all in place but not well documented. By adding this to our insurance framework we widened the pool of insurers for public liability insurance, which we’d previously had to get out of London. This saved us about $100,000, around $20,000 for each park.”
“We also added new things like cyber insurance to our cover. That’s a huge thing now because if our systems go down our business is crippled.”
“It’s about right sizing your insurance. Keep what’s necessary. Add what’s necessary. Get rid of what isn’t." END
