$3 Million Glamping Business

2.5 minute read

We first need money to invest, however….investing in yourself is absolutely the best investment by far.

I know that the next story will inspire you to invest in your inspiration, and start a new venture, or to even grow your current one.

The story goes like this…

Meet Kylie and Andrew Chenn—founders of Wander Ventures.

In 2023, they’ll likely generate $3 million of revenue operating glamp sites 30 minutes outside of major national parks.

They’ve scaled the business in less than three years without any outside capital.

It’s absolutely genius.

Here are 5 gems from their operation:

Demand Validation

When they think about entering a new market, they start by creating a “placeholder” Airbnb listing.

The listing will include stock images, generic descriptions, and no reviews.

Their logic is if people are willing to book something so incredibly sub-optimized, they will definitely book a polished listing.

If they get a few of these organic bookings quickly, they’ll start investing more time.

A genius way to make small bets before going all-in.

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Lease > Own

Andrew and Kylie are very scrappy.

To minimize their cash out-of-pocket (and lower risk), they always lease land their first season.

Here’s the pitch to a prospective landowner:

• We’ll do all the work (set up tents, hire staff, maintenance, etc.)

• We’ll create economic value (from your currently dormant land)

• We’ll share that value with you (eg. 10% of gross income goes to the landowner)

In return, they receive a 1-year lease to operate on the property.

If performance is strong in that first season, they can use the profit to buy land before the next season.

Tents >

Further to the point above, everything comes back to capital efficiency.

Tents offer a couple of big advantages over things like cabins or domes:

• Low-cost: ~$4K each, including all furnishings

• Transient: easy to store them in the offseason (or relocate to other sites)

A few years in, they are just now exploring the addition of a few “high-end” cabins in their most popular markets.

A very natural way to grow.

“Workcamping” Force

One of their biggest challenges were staffing.

Due to the seasonal nature of the business, finding reliable temporary workers to clean and run day-to-day operations can be challenging.

The aha moment came when they discovered an entire community of “workcampers”

People who live out of their RV and travel the country—campsite to campsite.

Tapping into that labor pool must have been a total game changer.

Franchising

As the story goes: Andrew as a former management consultant, probably geeks out over the operation side of the business.

As he e loves systems and finding ways to do things more efficiently.

Kylie, meanwhile, is the creative.

They make for a powerful team.

In the next two years, they’ll productize their system/playbook and franchise it to landowners (or leasing operators).

I believe this is a huge opportunity and one they are suited to execute.

The ROI

The average site has the capacity for 20 tents (call it $60K out-of-pocket).

The average daily rate is $150/night before factoring in miscellaneous income.

What we can figure out is the major line items are:

• Landowner revenue share

• Cleaners/operations staffing

• Platform fees (to OTA’s/Airbnb)

• Day-to-day supplies (soap, paper, etc)

• Utilities and septic servicing

I’d speculate operating margins run 70%+ (total guess).

If they average 80% occupancy across the site, they’ll recoup their $60K investment in 35 days.

That leaves the remaining 6 months of the season as profit.

How’s that for capital efficiency?

A Story that Inspires

I love Andrew and Kylie’s bootstrapped story.

It proves you don’t need loads of capital to build wealth.

Just some creativity and hard work.

The good news is the window of opportunity remains wide open for others to follow in their footsteps.

Coming from a travel-obsessed, remote-working millennial myself, experiences like this will only grow in popularity.

Thank you so much for reading & I will see you next week! Until then, keep buying assets. 🙂 

- Stefan