Greater Lansing Family RV Dealers Show director Greg Dennis said the event, which takes a full year to plan, gets bigger annually.

“We have to make sure everything is set up properly and the vendors are here on time,” he said.

Those responsibilities only increase in the week leading up to the event.

Dennis said the same dealers have been used for all 17 years, but the vendors will change from year to year. He said the show usually draws about 25 vendors.

Dealers, such as Ryan Sclvius, the general manager of Gillette’s Interstate RV, rely on the event every year to sell units. He said the company has been coming to the RV show since its inception.

“We probably sell 40-80 units,” Sclvius said. He said even though the economy’s downturn in 2008 didn’t have a huge effect on the RV industry, the improved economy should help vehicle sales moving forward.

“We’ve had a better first January than we had in the past,” he said. “We deal on more of a national basis so we didn’t really see a pullback.”

Gillette’s is a national company with a national reach in stores as far away as Utah.

Many people mulled around the Pavilion either ready to buy RVs or just to look, such as Lake Odessa, Mich., resident Bruce Estes.

Estes said he went to the RV show last year and has been pleased with the event so far. He said he began considering purchasing an RV as a retirement gift to himself.

“It’s good education for someone like me, I’m just trying to learn what is available on the market right now,” he said.