The Biggest Mistakes You'll Make On Your Glamping Journey - Ali Young

Ali Young, co-founder of Glampitect and North Coast 500 Pods, returns to the podcast today to discuss the common mistakes he sees prospective and existing glamping site owners making. This is a must listen for anyone at any stage of their glamping journey.

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Transcript

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Ali Young: 0:08

If you can open up your bookings before you open your site, because you've marketed it well, because you've generated that demand, it can allow you to generate some income. As you're finishing off your site, that can be a really welcome boost. Having something that's instagrammable on your site, so a nice sign that people will take a photo and post on your page, and everyone's going to see it. And it's free advertising effectively when people start doing that. And it's not common to see people thinking about that at the at the build stage or before. The website also needs to be usable. So when people go on it, there's not garish colours that are jarring, or there's not funny text that can't be read, it's very clear what everything is, there's great information about the the area, the site, get people kind of excited to book a stay. And then probably the best, the best feature of it is the ability to book there and then.

Nick Purslow: 1:03

Hello, and welcome to the Glampitect podcast. Today I'm joined for the second time by Ali Young, co founder and director of Glampitect and North Coast 500 Pods. In our last episode with Ali, we discussed the experience setting up the first NC500 Pods site. But today we're going to lean on his experience with Glampitect, where he's seen literally hundreds of plans for glamping sites. This puts him in a great position to talk about some of the common mistakes he sees prospective site owners making across the process, from the concept stage to planning permission, to setup. We also touch upon common mistakes established site owners make, so if you already own a glamping site, you might still find this useful, particularly if you're struggling for bookings. Before we start, I'd like to ask a little favour. If you know of anyone who's had even the briefest of thoughts of setting up a glamping business, or someone who'd be interested in investing in something with a great ROI, consider sending this episode or any other episodes of this podcast that you find useful over to them. That's all from the intro. As ever, I hope you find value in today's episode. Hi, Ali, how you doing?

Ali Young: 2:01

Hi, Nick. Hello, again. I'm glad to be back. I'm

Nick Purslow: 2:04

Good to have you back. Last time we spoke about good, thanks. your journey with NC500 Pods and the mistakes you made and the things that went well and things like that. And obviously, your main role now really is at Glampitect, and you do a variety of things. And obviously, in your capacity at Glampitect, you see a lot more glamping site owners than just yourself like you would at NC 500 Pods. So you benefit from a broader perspective, I suppose. What we're really going to dig deep into today is the mistakes that you often see clients or prospective clients making in their glamping journey, and we're going to do it in four parts. The first one, the mistakes they make in the early stages when they're you know, they're dreaming up their site, and it's all exciting, but they sometimes make mistakes there. The second stage is when they apply for planning permission. And then when they actually after they've had planning permission approved, when they're setting up. And then finally, once they're up and running, things that they could be doing better there. So we're just going to run through those to start with. So first off, you know, there are some common mistakes that we see, or you see, in the early stages when it's all very exciting or very new. And people are dreaming up various schemes and things for their glamping site before they've really got anything on paper. So what are some common mistakes you see in that stage of the process?

Ali Young: 3:29

Yeah, so the first one, it's not not so much a mistake, but maybe it's just a lack of a lack of knowledge on development as a whole. So we were in exactly the same boat, and we set up north coast 500 Pods, we came from engineering backgrounds, not architecture or development or anything like that. So we learned a lot along the way. A lot of it has to do with costs, we didn't have a good handle on that at the time. So things like construction costs. You know, I've mentioned, I've mentioned other things like laundry as well, that was surprised to us. So, so yeah, really, it's one of the biggest things that we see is having an expectation that there will be hurdles along the way. And when the unexpected hits, more than likely you're going to have to spend more money than ideally you'd want or maybe budgeted for. So that can be anything from a survey during the planning process, to know really needing something like a retaining wall, or maybe a more robust retaining wall that requires, you know, engineering and put to design and approve other things like flood prevention that you know, nobody would think about to start with until they understand their site, the more and all of these things can lead to unexpected costs that are just part and parcel of development. So that's that's the big thing, really. So a lot of that is, is really centering around the feasibility, I suppose, which is one of our main offerings now, which you know, we set up Glampitect to help people in this situation, you know, the situation we'd find ourselves in. And the feasibility was the the main way we do that. So we look into some of this and hopefully identify some of these potential hazards up front for people. So So that's, that's the main one, really, that it really helps understand, you know, the policy associated to your land. And you know, practicalities, like running services and your flood risk and gradient I've already mentioned. But that's, that's probably the main thing is people have the great idea, they have a vision, but they don't know where to start. And they don't know what they don't know, which is exactly where we found ourselves. We'll touch on this a little bit more later, as well. But also a willingness to compromise is probably another one. I had very set ideas when I, when we started to build our first glamping site. I knew I knew what I wanted, I knew how I wanted it to look, I know how even down to things like the colours of the materials we wanted to use, I was quite quite fixed on what we were having. And sometimes that has to change for planning reasons, for practicality reasons, sometimes you just don't get what you want that way, and being prepared to change and compromise, and that's vital I think, and you know, sometimes sometimes, that's it comes down to personal taste. And that can be hard to admit to yourself that this isn't the right thing for my business, even though it's the thing I want myself. So, yeah, you learn quite a lot during a development like this even about yourself.

Nick Purslow: 6:52

Okay, so I think the key lesson for across those points there is you've got to be prepared for everything that is in store, because, you know, it's obviously, you know, it's all exciting at the start, but it can be a long road. And you know, as you say, the cost that you don't expect, but it's also for the frustration that you don't expect that, you know, planners can be difficult and stuff. And as you say, the surveys and things like that. And also having as you say, Be prepared to be flexible, sometimes, I think it's Stephen King says you've got to be prepared to kill your babies, you've got to let go of something that you're really emotionally passionate about, sometimes for the benefit of the business as a whole.

Ali Young: 7:30

Although, although that that passion is also I would say a prerequisite, because when you do hit these hurdles, and sometimes it can be big hurdles that seem insurmountable at first, having that passion and the drive to see your vision through is essential. That's that's what gets you through it, it's quite easy to say, Oh, that's a problem. I don't know how to solve it. Let's not do anymore. You've got that that desire and that passion, that that makes you a lot more likely to succeed and overcome all these all these little road bumps.

Nick Purslow: 8:01

I also imagine knowing about all the costs and stuff involved beforehand, you know, you can go into and you can say, Okay, I expected this, I can push on carry on. Whereas if you start with a really expensive thing that you have to do that you weren't expected, I can imagine it'd be a lot more demoralising than you would have thought.

Ali Young: 8:20

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, having a good handle on the costs, allows you to understand the return on investment a bit more so that when you do have an unexpectedly big bill somewhere along the way in the build of the site, you can see how it will affect your return on investment. And unless it's on unimaginably unimaginably big bill, it's probably going to be okay for a profitability point of view, your site's still going to make money, it's still going to return investment in a pretty good time probably. So it helps you to have a bit of perspective into what the what the big bill, the unexpected cost, actually means for your business.

Nick Purslow: 9:01

And then moving on to the to the planning permission stage, this is probably the most stressful period. As much as you can prepare for something, you never know what you're going to get with a particular planner, you know, common theme we come back to is that planners are human, some are nice, some aren't, some you know, some are looking out for the best for the council, some might be out to get you so, you know, this is a really tricky stage. It can be frustrating. I remember speaking to Morag at Braeview Glamping and she was saying, you know, even though we were handling it all for her, she was saying she can't imagine how bad it must have been, you know, having to deal with it herrself. And so what what are some of the, you know, the common mistakes that you see prospective site owners making at this stage?

Ali Young: 9:44

A quite common question we're asked when we're at trade shows and things like that is when people that are quite unfamiliar with glamping and just really kind of starting to think about it will ask us how do you get around planning, and that that that phrase that way is a question we're very often asked, when the answer is you don't get around planning. And you have to work with planners. And no i, that's ideally what you want to do, you don't want to be battling with them. This isn't. It isn't always a battle. As far as I can see, sometimes there'll be differences of opinion and can be tricky. And sometimes, unfortunately, sometimes planning applications are refused. And there's, there's nothing that can really be done along the way. But if you go through the pre planning process, which we very often recommend to people, you're more likely to form a relationship with planners where you're working with them rather than against them. And if you're prepared to compromise a little bit, like we mentioned earlier, then, you know, you're you're starting the right way to develop your site properly. And you know that that has to be the right way to do it, and has to be a good thing for everyone. So that everyone's happy with the, with the end product. Another kind of attitude towards planning is that we see quite frequently as people not understanding that the planning permission covers more than just installing the pods or the shepherds huts or whatever unit you have in mind. You know, the planning permission also covers the road access that will cover the drainage that you need to instal. And it will, you know, very concerned with the landscape and the habitats and you know how wildlife impacts to it, it's more the use of the land, rather than just your parking some pods on, that's not what you're applying for, there's a lot more than just just the siting of units. So that's probably the two, the two big ones then once we're involved in, in a planning application, we, we often see not so much from our clients, because obviously we have direct input into this, but we see from when we're doing feasibility studies and we look at other planning applications, quite often the applications are quite late in terms of the contents of the documents or the drawings, or even even the number and type of information that's been provided. So really, you want to be giving the planners as much information as you can to help them evaluate it as best as they can. And you know, typically our packages will have a drainage design, which we don't often see from other other places, other applications. So, road access and poor landscaping, visualisations can be a really, really helpful tool for that. And that's something we've developed a lot more in the last few months. And we're, I would say pretty good at now. So yeah, really, really what you're wanting to be doing in your planning application is tell the best story you can for your your glamping vision to help you tell and sell it to the planners.

Nick Purslow: 12:44

Okay, what standard is expected by councillors? I know it can vary from council to councill, but is it is a is it expected to be really professional? Or is there a bit of leeway for if someone's doing it by themselves?

Ali Young: 12:56

I'd say there are some things they will require types of drawings, types of maps, the use skills of maps to be used and your how you show the boundaries of your ownership and, and the the site that's going to be developed. But yeah, the in terms of quality, there's not really anything, any way they stipulated. I would say for a full planning application, you always want to be getting it done professionally. With proper proper drawings professionally done. It really really helps to describe to the planners what you're what you're intending. And yeah, the the other great thing about pre planning that we mentioned earlier is when the you get your response from pre planning, the planners will tell you what they want to see for a full planning application. Usually they're all kind of much of a muchness, sometimes they'll be, some coucnils will put more weight towards landscaping or towards road access or drainage, for example. So that can be really good to steer you in the right direction. But yeah, we've for our packages, we try to include as much as we can in there, which also stops if you're going to receive consent for your development and it also helps to limit the amount of conditions you may get. So that's something else that people don't often understand is once you have your planning permission, that's not the end of the story. You can quite often still have conditions to satisfy before you can actually start your build or have people stay you'll have guests stay on your site. And on the back of that as well for things like drainage, there will be a building warrant required to, so again, we've had this with some clients that haven't been ware that this would be neede and it's been costly under bud eted for and yeah, again, it's more cost. It's the way develo ment is that feels like it c n be never ending at times. Bu you know If If by including as much information into the applic tion as you can up front, you imit the amount of conditio s in theory. And that hope ully reduces the amount of work fter you've had your pla ning permission, which also save you a bit of time as well. And that that can be quite critic l so that you're opening your site when you want to open it. A d if you're, if you're a f w months late from opening, t could be that you miss the be t part of the summer season, f r example. So that can be a really, really important facto, especially in the first year f a business, you know, you wa t to be making as much as mu h money as you can to sta t reaping off your yo r investmen

Nick Purslow: 15:37

Yeah. And then, just going back to a point you made at the start of that section, about how sometimes people try and get around planning, there are set rules where you don't have to have full planning permission, like I think it's the 56 day rule now where, you know, so I won't go into it now, all sorts of minutiae, but in terms of actually trying to actively evade planning and you know, try to be, you know, dodgy to say, I was actually speaking to Steph Curtis-Raleigh, in an earlier episode, and she was saying, not not on this specific subject, but how glamping has sort of got away, has been able to get away with a lot of being amateurish, really, because it's so quirky and so new, that they've been able to, you know, no one's really clamping down on things like, you know, technically, I don't think you're supposed to be able to pick people up from the train station or something like that, there's all sorts of rules that people aren't actually aware of. But she reckons that, as, as, as, as the industry matures, the traditional operators at holiday parks and stuff might just start to say, hold on, why aren't these these growing and big businesses abiding by all these sorts of rules, so I can imagine, you know, maybe maybe there might be some sort of attack on the industry, and particularly those who haven't got planning permission or doing it illicitly, they could be pretty vulnerable.

Ali Young: 17:03

I think the industry is big enough now that it, we can be fair, we can we can all play by the same rules, there's enough enough demand for everybody, especially at the moment with, you know, staycations on the rise. So so that's fair, I think. And you know, with that as well, hopefully, that your planning policy is quite well defined for bigger developments like that. And we're well established traditional ones. So you know, that that'd be a welcome addition, on the planning policy site for glamping, as well, and I've spoken about this before, but glamping, sometimes isn't very well described in planning policy. And if there can be better information around what you need to do to design a glamping site for that council, then that would be great, too. So yeah, for all playing by the same rules, that can only be a good thing. And like I say, there's enough demand, there's enough money for everybody, so why not?

Nick Purslow: 17:54

And then move on to the next stage, when you've if you've been lucky enough to have your planning application accepted. during the whole setup, you know, you can all the physical stuff, like the digging, foundations and stuff, also, you know, maybe in the marketing beforehand, there's a there's a setup stage just before you just before you open up and start making money. And do you see any common mistakes this this sort of area?

Ali Young: 18:18

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would say they're mistakes, but perhaps missed opportunities. So we we always recommend to people, if you have received your planning permission, you probably want to be ordering some units. And you also want to be really cracking on with marketing your site, whether that's through social media, or through more traditional forms of advertising, and marketing, then so be it, but you really want to be be starting that then so that you have a demand for for your site from from day one. And even even before if we're honest. I know Calum's mentioned this in a previous episode. He's He's really passionate about that. And it worked well for our site. We had bookings before the site was was, was finished. So it meant we had to finish when we said we would . And luckily we did. But it meant we had demand on day one from opening and our occupancy rates were really good from the start and continued to be high afterwards. Now, the other benefit from that is, I mentioned costs earlier can get a little bit out of, not out of control, but there can be on unplanned costs. And if you can, if you can open up your bookings before you open your site, because you've marketed it well because you've you've generated that demand. It can allow you to take some generate some income as you're finishing off your site, and that can be a really welcome boost. You know, we did that and you know, I think it was it was over 10,000 pounds we were able to generate before we opened the site and that really helped us finish off, it just you know alleviated that financial pressure to some extent, meant that we could finish the site standard we wanted. And, you know, if we're, if you're behind on your development or your your build a little bit of extra income can help you expedite and fight fires and then chase so that you are ready for, for opening when you want to be to the level that you want it to be at. So yeah, marketing's definitely a big one, then there's also something that, I suppose I kind of touched on this earlier that people have a vision of what they want their glamping site to be. Now, this is another kind of change in mentality from being somebody that perhaps isn't too business orientated to having a glamping site is really what you're doing is you're you're, you're, you're becoming a business owner. So you want to be thinking about how you can maximise your your profits. And that, that those two things maybe don't go together sometimes for glamping, it can be people wanting to diversify and you know, improve their work life balance. And, you know, maybe maybe they've worked for a number of years in a certain industry, and they want to do this to have a better a better lifestyle. So that's, that's great, but you still need to make the business profitable and successful. And one of the ways to do that, that people quite often overlook is with unique selling points. There's quite a lot of glamping sites out there now and it can become formulaic if you're not careful. And the way to to avoid that is to have some unique selling points. That can be anything from your your location next to a great tourist attraction, or you can be integrating hot tubs or saunas, or, we've done that Amazon Alexas, lights that can change colour, controlled by Alexa, something that you can you can use in your marketing to distinguish yourself from from your competitors. And going back the start, the vision you have of your glamping sites when you set off might not might not tie into that, you may not have considered USPs. And it is quite important. And yeah, it can really it can really really challenge what you your vision was at the start, especially if you realise that what you want isn't the best for your your area, or for, for what your customers want. So sometimes there's a bit of an inner conflict between, I want my glamping site to be like this, but my customers don't like that they want something else. So you have to swallow your pride at times and really think about what's best for the business. So I suppose related to that is, a little bit more focused this one, but having something that's instagrammable on your site. So a nice sign that people will take a photo of and post on their page, and everyone's going to see it. And that's not free, because you have to install something, but it's it's free advertising effectively when people start doing that. And it is not common to see people thinking about that at the at the build stage or before. It can be done afterwards, of course, but it's better if you have that from day one. Especially if you're going to be really kind of hot on the marketing side of it and try and get some some influencers to your sites. You want them to have your your logo somewhere they can take a selfie and post it at all their followers.

Nick Purslow: 23:26

Yeah, there's a bar there's a bar, I think it's in Newcastle, where it's like, on the wall, there's some like angel wings. That people you know, every every person under the age of 30 seems to have taken a pic at that location and posted on Instagram. I see what you mean, yeah, something that something that is Instagrammable that can be as you say, a sign it could be, you know, a hot tub. Could be could be anything. And yeah, you got it. You got to think about all aspects of the business. And marketing is massive in that. And then the final part once people are actually up and running. Yeah, obviously there's a there's a lot of glamping sites out there and you got it you'vve got to try and differentiate yourself. But once you're actually up and running, are there any things that you as you say, you might say it might be more of a missed opportunity than a mistake. But is there anything that you see that people should be not doing or that people should be capitalising on once they're up and running?

Ali Young: 24:21

Yes, probably not so much once they're up and running, if a site's failing, and that we've not really seen anything like that where they are feeling demand is pretty good across the country, I would say but if a site's failing there will be reasons for that, whether it's marketing or whether it's some form of barriers to booking as that could be a range of things. So usually we'd like to see glamping sites have really good websites. And there's lots of benefits to this. First one is making you're, without getting into technical jargon here, making your website perform better on search engines like Google. So people search for glamping in your area, you're, they're more likely to find you. And there's there's ways to do that. Like I say, I won't get into the technical details of it, because it's pretty boring. And it's definitely not my forte. But your website also needs to be usable. So when people go on it, there's not garish colours that are jarring, or there's not funny text that can't be read, it's very clear what everything is, there's great information about the area, the site, get people kind of excited to book a stay. And then probably the best, the best feature of it is that the ability to book there and tehn, and I think glamping has probably moved on a bit from from this it routes where it was kind of

Nick Purslow: 25:43

Drop us a message on Facebook.

Ali Young: 25:45

Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Or is it you know, that kind of quaint kind of farm setting where you go and meet the farmer and they book you into a pod there and then on the day, or you phone up, and that's fine, if you want to have that that personal touch. That's, that's great. And that, in some ways that can be your USP is that your your family run traditional kind of site, and harking back to the days of yesteryear, and all that, if that's something you want to go for great. But it makes it harder for people to book and there's, I think it was some something ridiculous like 80 odd percent of bookings a couple of years when it was 2018, for accommodation in the UK, were done online. And, you know, that's, that's a large chunk of the market, you're cutting yourself off to if you're not able to book online, and you know, the best way to do that, then in our opinion is through your own website. So having some sort of booking function, there is ideal, there are there are companies out there that will do it for you. And, you know, it doesn't have to be something you you invest in the website to set up yourself, although in our opinion, that's the best way to do it. Because it means that people can book direct through your website, you've taken all of the all the income, that you can still do that and have access to Expedia, booking.com, and TripAdvisor, things like that through a channel manager, so that will manage all of your bookings, and speak to these other websites. And they will and other websites will take a cut, but it still allows you to have online bookings. And you know, you're you're open to the whole market. So you're competing with people in your area as well, which is, which is what you want to do. And it allows you to do bookings any time of day. So if you're, if you're only taking bookings at, during during working hours, then you know, it's not ideal you want you want to be you want to be open all all hours for bookings, never mis an opportunity, and it allows you to, you know, appeal to foreign travellers, too. So, yeah, having kind of a working website that's almost autonomous is beneficial, I would say. But yeah, other than that, I don't think there's too much we see from people making mistakes. I wouldn't say you can go wrong, but it's, it's pretty hard to make mistakes. And if you do find that something's not working, it should be easy enough to change it. If you've, if you've got nice units, and you've got a nice site and everything like that there shouldn't really be too much that would prevent you from being successful.

Nick Purslow: 28:22

Yeah, on the website point, I would argue it's not just about ease of booking or anything like that, it is obviously a big point, also is brand identity as well. And if you've got a website that hasn't been updated since about 2010, then that might be reflected in, well customers will probably think that might be reflected in your site. If it's all up to date, and it looks really nice. And you know, it's a good start don't mean that, you know, your site will be amazing, but it's a good start. And I'd argue that's a big part of the brand identity, it also feeds into the marketing things as we keep going back to.

Ali Young: 28:53

Yeah, absolutely. And if you were, if you were comparing two glamping sites in the area, and one had a flashier websites, it's probably an indication that there are newer, nicer sites as well. And you're probably more inclined to do. You've got to think about all these things. And it does, it does matter.

Nick Purslow: 29:07

And it just so happens that it's almost like it was planned. But a lot of the things we've been talking about today, we do actually offer services in that regard. I think we talked about feasibility planning, websites and marketing. So maybe you could just give us a quick two minute rundown of those sort of services that we offer, if anyone is interested.

Ali Young: 29:24

Yeah, absolutely. So I won't go into prices, I don't think because that can change a little bit more people wants, but we offer feasibility studies. First and foremost, like I said, That's for people that are really just starting and want to understand what they don't know. So lots of really good information about the planning side of it. Planning policy can give an idea of whether or not your ideas going to fly through planning or not, then on to looking looking at competitors and return on investment and we've got a really good way of calculating your your setup costs. So You know, you can, you can spend a bit of time looking into this yourself. Or, you know, I think we can do it better and faster. So it depends. If it's something you want to take your time looking at yourself, fine. If not, give us a show, we will happily do that for you. Then onto planning permission. So I mentioned pre planning, we'd like that, it's a shorter, quicker way to speak to the council, the planners won't, won't speak to you unless you do some form of application. So pre planning is good. You've asked for their opinion, you're working with them. Then onto full planning is where they actually do all the evaluation. They speak to the consultants and so the consultees such as roads and environmental health and everything to really, really delve into whether or not your your idea is going to be acceptable. And then yeah, we can help with once you do have your planning permission, we can help with setting up your websites, integrating the the booking channels, and social media management to make sure that when you are ready to open or even just before as we mentioned that you've got money coming in from day one.

Nick Purslow: 31:11

Perfect. Well thank you for your time again for coming on a second time. I'm sure we'll have a third time at some point in the future. But yeah, thank you very much.

Ali Young: 31:19

No problem I look forward to it.

Nick Purslow: 31:21

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Glampitect podcast. I hope you enjoyed and that you found value in today's episode. If you did, feel free to leave a rating and review on Apple podcast because it really helps us move up the podcast rankings. Thank you