The Secret Reason Why Starting A Glamping Business Is So Rewarding

Starting a glamping business, or any business for that matter, is incredibly hard. In return for your hard work, you receive stress, a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and a regular urge to throw your computer against the wall (just me?).

But, in a weird way, that's part of the fun.

Allow me to explain.

Adversity Gives You a Story to Tell

I’m a big fan of entrepreneurial origin stories. They provide a fascinating insight into how someone changed their life circumstances for the better.

What’s the key ingredient to a good origin story?

Adversity.

Let’s take two of the most successful people in glamping today: Ben Wolf of Onera and Sarah Dusek of Under Canvas.?

Ben sold his first micro-resort at a valuation of $7 million, after just 14 months of operations. He’s just launched a new 28-key resort and is raising capital for another.

Sarah was the pioneer of glamping in North America, growing Under Canvas to 8 locations and selling for $100+ million in 2019.?

What do they have in common? They both went through major adversity when first setting out, and have cool stories to tell as a result.

Before he’d opened his first location, Ben fell in love with a property in Wimberley, Texas. He got funding in place, agreed a price with the seller, and worked for more than a year on the entitlements. Just as he was about to close, his lender, who’d assured him the funds were good for 12 months, pulled out. This left him scrambling.

In contrast, Sarah made it through the funding phase for her first project and reached opening day without losing her investors. The problem was, when she opened her doors, nobody came. She simply didn’t get enough bookings to make it a viable business. A total disaster.

To those two at the time, their respective situations would have seemed like the end of the world. And yet they made it through.

Ben picked up the phone to a ton of lenders and investors. After a lot of work, he secured a construction loan to close the deal. He’s now on his third location, though of course his greatest achievement is his board position at Posh Outdoors. You can keep up with his story by subscribing to the excellent Unique Stays Guy newsletter.?

Sarah’s road to recovery took longer. She ceased operations at the failed location and started a tent rental business. She wasn’t going to give up on glamping that easily though, and decided to take a second bite of the cherry with a new location near Yellowstone National Park. This one was a roaring success, and the rest is history.

Ben will now take great pride in the fact he had the smarts to improvise and find another lender. And Sarah, after selling Under Canvas for $100+ million, will look back at her decision to dust herself off and try again with a second location as one of the pivotal moments in her career, and indeed life story.?

Neither Ben nor Sarah would have realized it at the time, but their darkest moments were where their origin stories were written.?

An Origin Story Half Written

Like Onera and Under Canvas, the Posh Outdoors story hasn’t been completely plain-sailing. We launched a crowdfunding campaign in April, with the aim of raising $750k to get our first location off the ground.?

Flush with excitement at the quality of our proposition, we thought we’d hit our target quickly. After several weeks of unsuccessful reach outs, and with the pot stubbornly sitting at $50k, it was clear that the raise would be more difficult than first thought.?

Some might have given up at this point, but we had no intention of that. As a team, we worked, and worked, and worked some more. Phone call after phone call, email after email, text after text.

6 months later, the crowdfunding pot stands at a healthy $452,500, with incredibly exciting investor discussions still ongoing. Aside from the money, I feel like I’m twice the operator I was coming into 2024. I work faster; I’m better at dealing with highs and lows; and my bullshit detector has become a whole lot more accurate.

While my dreams of an easy start have long since been dashed, the opening chapter of my entrepreneurial story has been written. Who knows, maybe someone will feature it in a newsletter some day.

If you enter the world of glamping, you’ll face challenges that will make you question why you ever started. But, if you stick with it, I promise you’ll write a story to be proud of.

This piece was taken from the latest edition of The Glamping Insider, my weekly newsletter on all things glamping. Subscribe if you're in the hospitality biz and you want hot takes, opinion pieces, cool ideas and much more.