It is wrong to assume you have to own land to set up your glamping site. Although owning land has its benefits, it is not necessary to own land to get into glamping.
The answer is leasing land. It’s not a novel concept. It gets interesting when leasing allows you to set up a business with very little in terms of capital investment.
In the glamping or Airbnb or short-term rental business, land costs can form a substantial part of the investment amount.
Setting up a glamping business on leased land involves setting up tents/yurts or even more solid structures on someone else’s property. You, the business owner, rent land for setting up your glamping structures.
Step by step of how to set up glamping on leased land
Land search is the first step of this process. Land listings for land on sale is advertised online on websites such as craigslist.com, land.com and many others. Online marketplaces are rife with cheap land listings.
Create a listing for what you need. Make sure your listing is clear and concise. Mention clear ranges and close approximate values for your requirement.
Look at facebook groups, online platforms related to buying and selling land, land hack social media groups. Even platforms such as land sale based subreddit groups, land owner platforms, message boards for farmers, tiny-home subreddit. You get the idea.
Take your search offline as well. Talk to people you know – friends, family, colleagues, neighbours – anyone you know who might have information about properties.
When talking to people about land deals, exchange information. If you know of any good land deals that they might be interested in, talk about it. They will remember to let you know of anything that they become aware of that may be of interest to you.
Leasing land has another benefit. If the owner or care-taker lives on the land, you can offer to pay or offer a cut of the profits to look after the property – restock, report fixes required, sort out cleaning on the premises. More often than not, they might be willing.
This model is also beneficial to you because having boots on ground is worth its weight in gold in the glamping business. It creates for a good customer experience which results in good ratings. This in turn creates more demand and more bookings for your property overall.
When you find the right land, check up zoning permits, HOAs etc., and fire up a contract with the landlord. These steps are the exact same for someone setting up glamping on their own land.
Hitches… that can be glitches
There are a couple of points to consider however.
This type of deals are a little tough to find. It might need a lot of networking and legwork just to find a favourable land owner.
Land owners might be interested in setting up temporary structures such as safari tents, yurts etc and not so keen to set up stronger and less temporary structures such as A-frame tiny houses, container homes etc. That means that your customer base becomes smaller.
Another possible issue. Consider things like pets, farm animals and little children on the premises, barbed fences etc., anything that might be a possible issue to customers on your air-bnb. Airbnb guests usually book far-away properties for privacy and would prefer not to be disturbed. Usually.
Last, but not least. Any permanent construction that is an addendum to your rental structure such as septic tank, water tank, any alteration to the land such as elevating or leveling to build your structure, will need to be okayed by the landlord. It might be ok or it might not be. Its something to be consider as a point of contention between you and your landlord signing the deal that starts your glamping business.
