STARTING A GLAMPING SITE.
Frequently I get asked, ‘why did you decide to start a glamping site in Cornwall?’ or ‘how did you go about setting up your glamping site’ so I’ve decided to start a blog on the experience! This first post is about moving the idea of Ekopod from conception to reality. Which took about 3 years all, in all, although don’t worry this blog will only take a minute to read.
STARTING A GLAMPING SITE: CONCEPTION.
So for us starting a glamping site came about by accident…. Matt, my friend Jess and I were trekking across Olkhon Island in Russia, wild camping as we went. There’s plenty of time to cover a lot of topics when you’re hiking and we got onto our ideal future lives. All three of us had a lot of experience in working in hospitality. Jess in tour guiding and ski resorts, Matt in restaurants and myself in hotels. So continuing to work in the hospitality industry seemed likely. All three of us are also quite outdoorsy, so our ideal business venture seemed to us to be one that could allow us to live in the countryside and pursue our various outdoor hobbies. We also wanted to be able to provide the experience of getting closer to nature (which was what we had been experiencing wild camping in Russia) to our guests.
From Russia we moved onto Mongolia to meet my sister and there the ideas continued to flow. Here we were staying in Gers (Mongolian Yurts) and loving it after squishing into our two man tent previously. Running a glamping site emerged as ‘the dream’. Over the couple of weeks we’d grown the idea of starting a glamping site from an idle remark, into a proper plan mostly focussing on who would actually want to stay and how to create something perfect for them. By the end we seemed to have a plan that could potentially become a reality for us!
IS STARTING A GLAMPING SITE FOR YOU?
Starting a glamping site appealed to us as I’d had experience of setting up hospitality businesses in my current job. We were also all currently working in hospitality and enjoying it and we wanted to live in the countryside and near the beach. When we were discussing it as a concept we were pretty carried away with all the exciting opportunities glamping provided! We also came up with some overly elaborate plans, some of which we probably can’t ever put into fruition!
However, I can’t stress enough that you have to really think; are you really prepared to have a 24 hour business and move away from friends and family? Customer service is really rewarding, but can also be stressful at times, is it something you have experience in? Are you OK to be on call and work during the weekends at your glamping site and not take a break in the summer? Are you also OK working in an environment when each day can potentially bring a new unexpected challenges and you’ll need to do a bit of everything from building, to cleaning to marketing! Also who are you setting it up with? If you’re doing it with other people, are you going to be able to work together in stressful situations and do you have the same work ethic and goals? I think the most important thing is though, is that you need to be genuinely passionate about it, if you love something you can overcome most obstacles!
Thanks for reading…. my next blog will be: Owning a glamping site: The financial reality!
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