Own or Start an RV Rental Business in the Florida Keys
Reviewed by Ben Kiser, RV rental operator and fleet consultant.
Almost nobody keeps a rental RV in the Keys. Within 50 miles of Marathon, Outdoorsy had 2. Everything else a visitor rents is towed or driven down US-1 from the mainland, and fewer hosts make the trip the further down the chain you go.
- 2
- RVs based in the Keys
- 81
- can be delivered to Key Largo
- 43
- can be delivered to Key West
38 RVs drop out between Key Largo and Key West
Of the 144 Outdoorsy RVs within 100 miles of Marathon, 81 have a host whose published delivery radius reaches Key Largo, 75 reach Marathon and 43 reach Key West. An RV kept on a key starts its delivery where everyone else's ends.
30 of the 81, 37 percent, come from an owner who publishes a single vehicle, and 40, or 49.4 percent, are dealer listings. The largest owner-published vehicle count on any of them is 17. Price against the median for your class, not the market average: the mean is $261, pulled up by a few very expensive units.
Four rules that decide more than your rate does
| Rule | What it says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Tax on the rental | 6 percent on the rental of a motor vehicle in Florida. Whether the $2 a day rental company surcharge, or the $1 peer-to-peer one, applies to a motorhome or a trailer is not stated in the statute. Ask the Department of Revenue. | Florida Statutes 212.05 and 212.0606 |
| Tax on the site | 12.5 percent on an RV park stay of six months or less in Monroe County: 6 state, 1.5 county surtax, 5 tourist development tax. Your renter pays it to the campground, and it changes what a week costs them. | Monroe County Tax Collector |
| Delivered rentals at campgrounds | Jolly Roger in Marathon says it works with companies that deliver and set up RVs. Keys Palms allows only licensed and insured vendors. Florida State Parks and most private parks say nothing at all. | Jolly Roger FAQ |
| Hurricane evacuation | For a Category 3 to 5 storm, Monroe County's plan orders visitors, RVs and travel trailers out first, about 48 hours before tropical-storm winds. The only copy found is a November 2025 draft plan amendment. A delivered unit has to be recovered inside that window. | Monroe County plan draft, Policy 101.2.4 |
Read together: an operator based in the Keys saves the US-1 drive on every delivery, but carries the storm risk on every unit, and still has to ask each campground whether it accepts a drop. Most of them have never said.
No income figure, and no host count
The marketplace publishes what a listing asks, never how many nights it books, so nothing here supports an earnings projection and none is printed. The owner field in this feed is mostly blank, so a count of distinct hosts would measure the blank rather than the market. The per-listing owner vehicle count is used instead.
Every figure is a count taken once, and every count decays. Re-run the measurement before putting money behind any of it.