Matt Sims
I caught up with Wendy and Vanessa. These guys have got backstage access to what’s actually going on.
Wendy Harris
Hi!
Matt Sims
So we’ve been talking about the fact that we think there’s going to be less camping and more glamping. And we’re trying to explain what we mean by that. We’re seeing camping products, the calibre of which are getting more luxurious. Tents are getting more and more expensive, and motorhomes are getting more expensive. And we’re seeing campsites react to this and respond to this by upping the offering.
Haven is putting a hot tub on every balcony and more and more yurts and these luxurious alternatives to what I grew up with as a camping holiday on a campsite. What’s your view of what’s going on? What do you think is happening? And what are you seeing? Tell us more.
Wendy Harris
We’ve been in this particular industry now for 10 years. We have celebrated being a booking management system for 10 years. And over that period of time, we have seen glamping consistently grow and grow year on year. We’ve gone to the glamping shows, we’ve supported lots of campsites, as you say, upping their service and upping what they offer.
We’ve worked with so many campsites and holiday parks which have taken a part of their land and said, ‘Right, okay, we’ll turn that into a more exclusive, luxurious zone. We’ll go and put some pods in there, some S-Pods or wigwams, whatever they want to do.
And you’re right, it’s all about adding to the value of it so they can increase their prices but give a really great guest experience as well. We have seen a huge, huge spike. But it’s not a huge spike over one particular month. It’s been consistent over the years, we’ve seen this grow.
Diversification in campsites
Matt Sims
So you’re seeing more campsites coming into play?
Wendy Harris
Yes, I’d say so. Definitely. Because as we’ve been growing our own business by providing the booking software, we’ve actually seen a huge diversity. There’s no standardised sense of a campsite because there’s the good, the bad and the ugly all the way through it. You have great rural wild camping kind of establishments right through to a very traditional family-run campsite with static caravans, some pitches and some glamping.
Interestingly, there’s a huge amount of diversification taking place. If you’ve got the land and you’ve got a great location or access to a great location, then you’re going to want to try and cater for quite a wide market from people who just want to go do a bit of backpacking to people who want to go into a motorhome and they want to enjoy a really good level gravel pitch. But some also enjoy the whole glamping experience where hopefully, in theory, you can turn up with no paraphernalia and enjoy the great space.
Matt Sims
We understand glamping as posh camping, don’t we? And it’s a buzzword that’s thrown around. Has anyone ever really defined it? What’s your view on the word ‘glamping’, Vanessa?
Vanessa Glossop
I think it’s been an easily adaptable, absorbable word, if you like, in the sense that it had to have a name. ‘Luxury camping,’ didn’t seem to describe the experience either.
Matt Sims
That would be ‘lamping,’ wouldn’t it?
Vanessa Glossop
I just think that the crux of it is the technology and new products in this whole sphere have made modern camping a lot cushier than a few decades ago. And I think, as we’ve discussed over the years, there’s a perfect storm of increasing demand for British holidays. And with that people are looking into, as Wendy has been saying, diversification and making more money out of their land, some of the farmers. They’re not necessarily earning a lot of money anymore in the farming industry.
So they’re looking at how they can make money. They’ve got land, they can convert barns, they can put in pods, they can put in tree houses. But tangled up in all of this is the guest experience. And I think where there is innovation, there’s an expectation, and then where there’s innovation and expectation there’s an increase in prices. And the whole thing is just going in an upward trajectory all the time.
Matt Sims
And of course, it costs a lot of money to build a campsite, doesn’t it? Friends of ours are farmers who have diversified and built a campsite. And it’s cost them a fortune.
Vanessa Glossop
Of course, and you need to get your return on the investment, which means you push up the prices, you expect a higher calibre, if you like, in terms of paying guests. And I think social media has completely changed everything too – the fact that camping has become this cultural pop icon, almost.
And we’re inundated with images of adventures of freedom. They’re young, they’re families, they’re retirees, it’s for everyone. Everyone can get into glamping and adventure and experience. And we’re just feeding off that, aren’t we?
Matt Sims
We are.
Vanessa Glossop
We need to be the cool kids. We need to join in on this.
Resistance from traditional campsites
Matt Sims
And Wendy, you were saying earlier that you’re seeing some traditional campsites resisting responding to this. And they don’t necessarily want to innovate and therefore put prices up because they don’t want to exclude their traditional customers. Can you explain a bit more about that?
Wendy Harris
Yes, we’re having some conversations with some campsites where they’ve been running them for 20 or 30 years or they’ve been handed over to the children who are running the campsites previously owned by their parents. And there are some places where people go camping there every single year, they know exactly what they’re going to get.
And there is this tentative notion – do you change what you’ve been offering? Do you reach out to new markets? And there have been some saying, ‘Actually, no, I really like keeping it the old school way of camping, allowing the caravanners to come along, come with their fold-out tents, the little gas stoves, that sort of thing and really enjoying traditional camping.
If you’re doing that experience and then just a few metres away you’ve got a glamping outfit with the Land Rovers coming through, you’re gonna feel like, ‘I’m not in the right space.’ Probably much like when you go on holiday abroad, I suppose. I’ve been to the Canary Islands a lot and stayed in various different resorts. And you’ve got the resorts that are a bit like, I hate to say it, the Benidorms. And you go to some resorts with a different class of people that are there.
When you’re mixing it all up on a holiday park or a campsite, you have to be really careful and considerate about those people who can probably just afford to go camping because it’s a cheap end of the market, sitting next door to people who are potentially spending thousands for the same view. It is interesting. There has been some resistance from some campsites. Not all, but some want to keep hold of their grassroots.
Matt Sims
Are you saying you can’t mix the two?
Wendy Harris
No, I think you could. You could mix them, but I think it’s going to be something a park will need to consider. And I suppose it depends on how much land you’ve got as well because if you’ve got acres of land, you could probably absorb it. There are some campsites I know that do offer two completely different ends of the extreme. There are some campsites I know actually in Wales. So it’s not necessarily about the camping and the different grades of camping. They want a specific type of person going camping.
There’s a huge level of diversification. But still, there’s still a sense of – what’s the phrase for it? It’s like there’s no standardisation, as such. There are no two campsites the same. It’s not like there’s a Premier Inn type of campsite where every single one is uniform, you’re going to expect the same thing, I don’t think. I think it depends on how much space they’ve got. If you have got plenty of space, then you probably could afford to have a section where you have got some really great glamping with the Land Rovers coming through, all the different types of people that can afford to spend £1,000 plus for a glamping experience.
Whereas ultimately, still, when you go camping, you’re spending probably between £10 and £25 per night. They are at two completely different ends of the extreme. It’s interesting. I see it very much from a booking behaviour perspective, which is the angle that I come from. I see so many people archiving pitches in favour of converting them into pods.
So there’s a lot of change that has happened certainly in our inventory over that period of time. What the mechanics look like on the ground, I don’t know. I’d probably go on how I would feel if I wanted to have the outdoor, almost wild camping experience. But then a few feet away, there are people there with the hot tubs and the pods. I would think, ‘Is that interrupting my experience?’ I don’t know. I think it’s an interesting one. But I think there’s going to be a balance.
Influence of the festival market
Matt Sims
Is it driven by the festival market? Because going to a festival, look at Glastonbury, they’ve taken over fields and built yurts on them and they offer a glamping solution. And it is thousands of pounds to go and stay there in a tent. To me, that seems like a very new market. Would you agree?
Wendy Harris
Definitely. And I think some of the legislation has changed in terms of the pop-up sites as well. The caravanner movement, for example, has done quite a few pop-up events, but they’re all based on events, though, so the experience is completely different.
It’s almost like what you’re going to stay in is almost – not secondary, but you’re there because you’re going to experience something else, which is different to going to a traditional family-run campsite, where you’re going there to relax and explore the area.
We’ve seen loads of pop up campsites, and certainly, during the pandemic, it did go literally wild. They were coming out left, right and centre. Farmers have a bit of land where they could go and make the most of their licence to go and do a temporary pop-up site. So they could earn probably between £11,000 and £15,000 over the course of the summer just opening up some fields.
Vanessa Glossop
I think there’s another angle too though Matt, where it’s the proprietor’s desire to extend their season that is also driving the increase in the glamping facilities. Because in order to extend the season, you’ve got to put down hardstanding, you would need to potentially put in yurts, put in the hot tubs to attract people to the yurts, put in the barbecue huts to attract people to your facilities.
So it’s that whole notion of extending the season that is also driving the growth in glamping. Things of luxury that don’t necessarily have to be classed as glamping. So there’s that angle as well.
Matt Sims
Another area I’ve seen of growth, which fascinates me, are Airstream caravans going on the roofs of buildings in the middle of a city. I mean, that’s a caravan holiday with a difference, isn’t it? Is that something you’re seeing more of as well?
Wendy Harris
We tend not to get too involved in the urban market. Most of our interactions are in rural places, so I can’t comment too much on that. But I do see it on social media and think, ‘Oh, that’s a really cool idea,’ where you see sky rises, and they’ve literally put tents on them. I just hope they’re really well pegged down.
We talked about this in a different conversation with you, Matt. We talked about legislation, and how you can make things safe, for example. There are all sorts of wild ideas to give a completely different experience. Who’s looking after it all?
Matt Sims
Well, yes. That’s very true.
The future of the industry
Matt Sims
What do you predict will happen over the next year or two or perhaps three years in terms of innovation? Is there any crystal ball gazing that you guys have done where you think, ‘Well, we can see this growing and this changing,’?
Wendy Harris
It’s an interesting one. The market is quite volatile in terms of businesses surviving. So it’s going to be about survival, I think, over the next couple of years. We did a Q&A session with a whole host of campsite owners. We talked about various different topics like, ‘How am I going to survive over the next season with fuel prices increasing as much as they have done?’ People are coming with electric cars and just charging up on the electric hookups that weren’t designed necessarily for that.
What we have seen is lots of parks being acquired by bigger chains of parks as well. So there’s a lot of movement on that front. So yes, for me, I think it’s going to be survival mode for the next few years. And they know they’ve survived the pandemic. So we can do the next bit.
Matt Sims
And do you think that need to survive will encourage innovation, or do you think it will be about consolidation?
Vanessa Glossop
I think it’s probably a bit of both. But I think what we’ll see a great deal of innovation in is in terms of the environment, sustainability and accessibility. The accessibility market is huge. The green environment is growing. I do a lot of work with the Southwest Tourism Awards and the inimitable Robin Barker.
I once had this chat with him where he said, ‘There’s going to be no such thing as excellence in tourism if you’re not looking at sustainability and accessibility. So if you want to be considered to be an excellent outfit, and what you offer is excellent, you need to be looking at these things.’ So innovation is going to be very much in terms of planting wildlife corridors, drilling your own boreholes, and also looking at, again, glamping – what are we doing differently?
Someone has just come onto our books who’s actually going underground. So they’re going to be using recycled materials and pushing their units underground. That’s going to be a completely different experience.
Matt Sims
Wow! I’ll go there. Like a hobbit!
Vanessa Glossop
Yes, a hobbit! So there are no limits to the innovation in this industry right now, which makes it a very, very exciting place to be.
Matt Sims
Yes. There’s uncertainty, sure. But it sounds really exciting. I’m encouraged. Thank you. That’s great. Well, guys, thank you both very much for your insight. I really appreciate it. And we’ll catch up again and see where we are in the near future and see if we’re all living underground on holiday.
Wendy Harris
Absolutely. We shall look forward to that!
Keith Gooden
Thanks for listening to the Motorhome Matt Podcast. Remember to check back here for more episodes full of hints and tips and helpful advice. We’ll see you soon for another Motorhome Matt podcast brought to you with www.thatleisureshop.com.
