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The Best and Worst Things About Owning a Glamping Site - Ali Young · Outdoor Hospitality Podcast: Glamping, STR, Resorts, Unique Stays, RV Parks, RV Resorts & Campgrounds

• 0:08
  Ali Young: It dawned on me actually, the first time I stayed at the pods properly was that the other families, they are enjoying Achmelvich and enjoying their time in the pods.
• 0:17
  Ali Young: And they wouldn't have been able to have those holidays and create those family memories. If we hadn't built our site.
• 0:25
  Ali Young: Sometimes you get a good planner and projects go through the planning approval process quite well. And even within the same Council, you might have a different planner for a different project and there are hurdles that come from what feels like nowhere.
• 0:41
  Nick Purslow: Before we sign off, if there's one tip in particular that you could give to prospective glamping site owners, what would it be?
• 0:49
  Ali Young: It's, it's really not sexy, but laundry and cleaning.
• 0:59
  Nick Purslow: Hello, and welcome to the Glampitect Podcast. Today we're joined by Ali Young, co founder of Glampitect and NC500 Pods. Glampitect, of course, are the UK's premier glamping site designers, helping with all stages of the glamping setup process, including feasibility studies, planning, permission applications and websites and marketing. NC500 Pods is the glamping site company that Ali and his co founder Callum set up a few years back. They have two sites set up in the north of Scotland and have another three in the pipeline. Having set up his own glamping site and helped our clients through the process as well, Ali is uniquely placed to offer multiple perspectives of the challenges people face when starting glamping businesses. As ever, I hope you enjoy and that you find value in today's episode.
• 1:40
  Nick Purslow: Hi, Ali, how you doing?
• 1:41
  Ali Young: Yeah, good. Thanks, Nick. Thanks for having me.
• 1:44
  Nick Purslow: No worries, no worries. So in episode one we had Callum, we had Calum on, who basically told us the story of how he founded co founded nc 500 Pods with you. NC500 Pods is your glamping business, which at the minute has two sites I believe and is looking at adding more onto the roster. So could you just give us your perspective on how, you know you entered into the glamping industry through nc 500? pods?
• 2:13
  Ali Young: Yes, certainly. It's a bit of a contrived story, I suppose. Maybe not the same way that most people get into glamping. But that started many years ago when a friend invited me to stay with them on holiday a place called Achmelvich, right in the far north of Scotland. So it's a gorgeous place really, really lovely beach, and it attracts the same people that go year after year. So when I went up, I quickly made friends and since then become a bit of a serial visitor and even met my wife up there, and her family were also serial visitors of the place. So so really kind of ties to the place now and we go back every year. The problem with so many serial visitors is that all the accommodation is like hen's teeth, just you just can't get anything, it's really a case of dead man's shoes before you can you have a chance of of looking at somewhere to stay with with decent facilities. So for most of my time going there, I've been kind of limited to staying in a tent. And a bit older now, really a tent doesn't cut it. So I'd always said that if I ever had the chance to buy some land and build something up there with proper facilities, I would do so. So fast forward to summer of 2018. I was probably less than sober at a bar with one of my friends the one that invited me to Achmelvich. And he mentioned that his cousin Callum, who I've also known for a long time from from Achmelvich, had planning permission for pods up there.
• 3:52
  Ali Young: And that took me by surprise a little bit. But even through the boozy haze, I knew that that was my chance to to hopefully sort out some proper accommodations and proper facilities in Achmelvich. So that's how I kind of got involved, approached Calum and said, I'd like to invest. And I thought initially, it would be a case of maybe putting in a little bit of my savings. And that would be enough to secure a pod for a couple of weeks every year so that I was guaranteed of having somewhere nice to stay. Quickly realised after doing some sums and knowing the area and knowing that there's a lot of demand out there, that this was potentially a really, really good investment. And after I invested a lot more money and really mortgaged the flats to finance the project. So so that's it, after that Callum and I were kind of your partners in crime and you know, we've worked really well together, splitting up the tasks to project manage everything and get together The glamping site opened for roughly when we wanted it to be open.
• 5:01
  Ali Young: And other than pesky things like COVID, it's been a pretty good success since. And yeah, I guess we'll touch a bit more on this later. But that's that's kind of the the basis for how Glampitect started as well as us working well together and, and learning a lot about glamping.
• 5:19
  Nick Purslow: And so, is that a strategy that you look for moving forward with NC500, in terms of looking for remote locations where there aren't many options available for accommodation?
• 5:31
  Ali Young: Yeah, I mean, glamping is great for that. So it works really well. And perhaps the Far north of Scotland is a bit unique, and that there's really not much development, and glamping's fairly quick and easy to set up.
• 5:47
  Ali Young: And you don't need an awful lot of land. And you can get some really nice high quality facilities quite quickly out there. And it's, there's some beautiful, beautiful scenery, so it definitely attracts tourists and the creation of the North Coast 500 in the last, the last few years has really seen numbers of tourists rise. So we want we want to make the most of that for our own for our own business, but for also for offering tourists somewhere to go so that you can enjoy these places.
• 6:16
  Nick Purslow: And were there are any particularly difficult challenges that you found when you're setting up your first site in particular?
• 6:23
  Ali Young: Um, yeah, probably the biggest was just that we didn't know what we didn't know.
• 6:25
  Ali Young: And that turned out to be quite a lot. So you know, it looked fairly, fairly easy from the outset, there was a big grassy field with sticks and ponds on it. But there's, there's so much more complexity to that. And in terms of technical considerations in terms of planning policy. And one of the things that really caught us out and added quite a significant cost to the project was the gradients of the of the land, which, from from our basic knowledge back then didn't seem scary at all. But we ended up having to put in quite a sizeable retaining wall, to build the project the way we wanted it. And I think it ended up costing something like 14,000 pounds that we hadn't budgeted for. So I guess the lesson from that is to be more diligent and to speak to people who do know what they're looking at with these things. And, you know, the knowledge we learned from from things like the gradient and also how we handled various other problems that the Highlands threw at us, like not having very good phone lines, so that we couldn't get the broadband we wanted. So we ended up going for Satellite Broadband, to, you know, just the logistics of getting things there. You know, we learned a lot. And if we'd known some of these things at the start, we'd have probably handled it differently, we'd have probably budgeted more time more money.
• 7:54
  Ali Young: And to an extent we were flying by the seat of our pant, but, you know, now that we've been through all that we know the pitfalls to some extent, so that we can hopefully help other people through Glampitect. So to not make those mistakes. Yeah.
• 8:08
  Nick Purslow: Is there anything that you did or that you learned from setting up the first site in Achmelvich? I think I said that right. That you applied to the second site in Brora, and that you'll apply to future sites that you're looking to set up as well?
• 8:23
  Ali Young: Yeah, the sites like broadband was definitely one, it's been a really good success, we were quite worried about that. BT were not great to work with for the first site. And the infrastructure there wasn't great. So we took a bit of a gamble on that. And, you know, we'd been months dealing with BT to try and get something. And then before this, this other company that did the Satellite Broadband, and it was installed in a week. And it's been great, you know, you can stream Netflix and things like that, no problem in the pods. And so we, you know, we didn't even try with BT for the second site, we just went straight to the Wi Fi again, because it was so quick and easy to set up. And it's been no problem at all.
• 9:06
  Ali Young: So, yeah, other things. We've, even from the second site, we've actually been learning, we're learning things, we we had a view on the East Coast, this time, looking down towards the sea. So we've angled our pods that way. And then we found since then, that it's people, people prefer them to be facing the other way so that they can see the sun when it's setting.
• 9:31
  Ali Young: So we've found that people have been moving chairs from the pods to sit at the back of the pod so they get the sun when it's coming in in the evening.
• 9:36
  Ali Young: Something we hadn't considered.
• 9:39
  Ali Young: So for for our next site, we'll probably mix it up a bit and do a bit of both or depending on what it looks like. We might even have them all facing that way. So yeah, always learning there's always always things you can apply from from from what you're learning. And yeah, I think our second site is a better glamping site in its own right than the one we did first time in Achmelvich. Location is probably not quite as desirable, it's not so close to a nice beach but there's still lots going on there and lots going for it. But the site itself i think is better. And with a bit more space, we could do some extra things like a sauna. And we have more than one style of pod. So all things that we wanted to do on the on the economic side, we just didn't have the space.
• 10:32
  Nick Purslow: You mentioned the solar there. Have you found that in terms of the effect it's had on maybe the interest the site's generated, and maybe the nightly rate you can charge and also maintenance? Because I don't know much about saunas, but I know hot tubsrequire a lot of maintenance. Are saunas a little bit easier to handle?
• 10:48
  Ali Young: Yeah, absolutely easier. But that was the reason we went for the sauna over over hot tubs. The the daily maintenance that you have to do with your new typical jacuzzi slash hot tub was too much for us. We operate the site remotely, we have we have somebody close by that manages the day-to-day cleaning and changeovers and maintenance of the site. But really, it's too much to expect somebody who's not full time or at you know, living working on the side to to do that. And the Sauna on the other hand is pretty much self sufficient. So it will be cleaned on a regular basis but it doesn't need anything like the testing that that hot tubs do.
• 11:34
  Ali Young: Are they as enticing for guests as hot tubs? Possibly not. But we did have, due to COVID, an indication of how much our sauna was drawing people in that the sauna was unfortunately delayed because of the world being in kind of disaster mode at the time. So we had some guests feedback to us. They were disappointed that it wasn't there. Obviously there's nothing we can do about that. But you know, that was obviously one of the things that we're really looking forward to, to using when they came to visit. So it's absolutely a draw. And we're really glad to have it, wish we could have one at Achmelvich as well.
• 12:14
  Nick Purslow: And am I right in thinking there are a fair few weather-related challenges being on the north coast?
• 12:19
  Ali Young: Yeah, there are. One of the locals said to me when we were building the site, but pretty much Achmelvich, the wind is hurricane for nine months of the year. So I've seen out there that we've come up, we've come up in the summer and the place is different, there's caravans that have been there for years and years, some years they're not there anymore, and the wind has moved them somewhere else.
• 12:43
  Ali Young: And so the pods are much better there for a start there. They're heavier and smaller than caravans they're less of a sail.
• 12:50
  Ali Young: But also you know they're they're a better shape for dealing with the wind. And they haven't we haven't budged an inch. The guy that has the static caravan park up there has them all chained down to several tonnes of concrete. We don't have that and touchwood they haven't budged an inch in all the high winds.
• 13:17
  Nick Purslow: So you've been a glamping site owner for a few years now. What would you say is the best thing about owning a glamping site?
• 13:25
  Ali Young: Really good question.
• 13:25
  Ali Young: And it's something that took me by surprise, I was expecting it to be, I can enjoy it my own glamping site and have my own pods now and it's making making some money for me, but it wasn't. The thing I really really liked about it is it dawned on me, actually, the first time I stayed at the pods properly was that there were other families there enjoying Achmelvich and enjoying their time in the pods, and they wouldn't have been able to have those holidays and create those family memories if we hadn't built our site. So yeah, something I hadn't considered.
• 14:02
  Ali Young: It wasn't a motivation for us building the site, but it's something that I was really pleased to see. And something I'm really proud of now.
• 14:10
  Nick Purslow: And then the obvious question after that is, what's the worst thing about being a glamping site owner?
• 14:15
  Ali Young: Honestly, that's quite a hard one because nothing's been really bad.
• 14:17
  Ali Young: There's some complaints now and then. They're pretty hard to avoid and you can never tell what somebody will complain about. Luckily, we've not had much of that. The reviews we've had have been you know, vastly vastly the good ones outweigh the negative ones. And but yeah, you know, dealing with with tricky customers is never fun, but that's just part of the job.
• 14:41
  Ali Young: So that's probably on a day to day he worst thing you can expect there so there's really, really nothing that dreadful.
• 14:50
  Nick Purslow: It must be annoying, well, I hope there aren't any planners listening, but in the setup process, it must be frustrating sometimes dealing with certain planners who may be opposed to project from the outset as well, I imagine,
• 15:02
  Ali Young: Yeah, that's something we find with Glampitect is that you'd like to think that a planning council is one consistent body, but you are dealing with individuals and their personalities. So at times it feels like and we've nothing, no way to prove this, this is just what we what we've felt that sometimes you get a good planner, and projects go through the planning approval process quite well. And even within the same Council, you might have a different planner for a different project. And there are hurdles that come from what feels like nowhere. So yeah, it's a little bit luck of the draw. That's, that's maybe being a little bit unfair to planners, I'd like to think they're a little bit more consistent than that. But it does feel like sometimes projects stumbled where we don't foresee them there being a real issue.
• 15:54
  Nick Purslow: So I know, you've stepped back slightly from the planning side now that at Glampitect, we've got, you know, a dedicated team of planning experts, but you have got experience in that field as well. So is there anything in particular that you'd recommend for prospective site owners when it comes to getting through the planning process?
• 16:14
  Ali Young: I think there's a willingness to compromise, is something you have to have. I think everybody would like to build whatever they want to build to some extent, but part of the the approval process should be in our opinion, working with the planning department to, to build something that is suitable for everybody. And that might mean that you have only approval for installing half the amount of pods that you want to or it might mean that you don't get to do your your hot tubs or your sauna or, you know, there's a dozen or one other things they might, they might make, make take issue with and impose some conditions. So it's being being willing to change and work with councils is probably the best bit of advice I would give.
• 17:04
  Nick Purslow: And being prepared to be knocked back as well, I imagine, because it must be difficult if you've got a big dream of what exactly what you want to do, and then being told, maybe that can't happen.
• 17:13
  Ali Young: Yeah, that's it. And unfortunately, that is a risk with with all forms of development like this is sometimes you can spend some money doing doing planning and you're investing in your idea, your your dream, and sometimes it's just not going to come off.
• 17:27
  Ali Young: There are things policies out there that will just put a dead stop to an idea like this. And it's one of the risks you take with this. So it helps to have done your homework first, and be kind of comfortable with those risks.
• 17:44
  Nick Purslow: So moving on to Glampitect. Again, Callum gave his perspective on episode one of how that came to be. So from your side, how did Glampitect come to be for you?
• 17:54
  Ali Young: So yeah, Glampitect started, Calum very cleverly put the kind of bones of it together, after realising that we'd learned a lot from setting up the first site and all of the things that we didn't know at the start that we'd had to kind of fumble through and figure out for ourselves that that was valuable. And, you know, if somebody had come along at the start of our project said, hey, we can help with this. In fact, we can do it for you, we'd have, at the very least seriously considered it and probably will have taken them up on the offer.
• 18:29
  Ali Young: So we we wanted to help people.
• 18:29
  Ali Young: And we we both realised, recognised that this could be a great opportunity to work for ourselves. So Callum was in a engineering job at the time, which I think he had gone to university and become an engineer. And it wasn't, wasn't probably what he thought it was going to be. And I was working in the oil industry and was, I suppose to some extent, kind of, in a bit of a rut. And this felt like a good opportunity for us both to do something new and exciting working for ourselves.
• 19:09
  Ali Young: And certainly, my my thought of it was, this would be a nice little job that would give us an income, personal income, while we were able to set up more glamping pod sites for North Coast 500 Pods. And that's how we started, so it very quickly became more than that. And we've since hired lots of people, have quite a large team now. And I would say it's day to day this is taking primacy over North Coast 500 Pods, although we are still looking at doing more sites and we will do more. But yeah, this has become a much much more kind of, a much bigger company than I saw it being certainly after a year of kind of, you know, working away in anger.
• 19:58
  Nick Purslow: So what's your role in Glampitect, day to day?
• 20:03
  Ali Young: My role has changed a lot from from day one, when we first started and first had our first few clients. The plan was that Calum would do feasibility studies and kind of do the the sales side of it. And I would do the design side. So drawings design, designing the layout of the sites and preparing the planning submissions. That lasted I think for two or three months, and then we had an awful lot of work, we had to start hiring people. So my role and calendar will kind of change to more of a management role, I suppose, you know, orchestrating the other teams too, and Calum with a sales team, myself and the design team.
• 20:48
  Ali Young: And, you know, it's just grown and grown and grown to the point where we're bringing in more people we're bringing more managers now, so that we can step away and focus on other parts of our businesses. So for Glampitect, I want to be looking at bigger projects that we can be directly involved with, moving into kind of operations phase of projects like that. And also progressing North Coast 500 Pods. And for Callum, it's worth kind of looking at how to expand Glampitect into the international arena. So at the moment, I, suppose a bit of a transition, still have a hand in the day to day for Glampitect.
• 21:28
  Ali Young: So a lot of a lot of QC and a lot of helping the newer guys, we have been passing on some of my knowledge to them, so that so that they can they can take it on. So yeah, bit of a transition, I suppose a bit of a jack of all trades, a bit of everything within Glampitect.
• 21:44
  Ali Young: But yeah, definitely trying to focus on bigger projects from day one.
• 21:50
  Nick Purslow: And you must get a slightly different perspective, working at Glampitect than you did at NC500 Pods. So you know, when you set up NC500, it's your baby, isn't it? Whereas now it's your clients' babies. So is there anything in particular that you've learned while working at Glampitect? From that different perspective that could or could be applied to people who want to set up their own glamping site?
• 22:15
  Ali Young: Yeah, so I suppose what I'd say on that is we've come across lots of different motivations for people wanting to set up their their glamping site. You know, in a previous episode, you've spoken to Morag at Braeview, and she's very keen on having an adults-only site with a kind of wellness retreat, vibe to the place. And you know, that's that's their unique selling point. And we've tried to do that at North Coast 500 Pods by incorporating some, some interesting technology into the pods that can, you know, people can come in and change the lights by asking Alexa to do it.
• 22:54
  Ali Young: And I think that's the thing to think about for people setting their sights. It's not, oh I want pods, or I want shepherd huts here, it's thinking about how the site itself will, will function and having to be able to market it, and what will what will distinguish you from from all of your competitors, because at the end of the day, you will have competitors, these glamping sites are quite common, though.
• 23:20
  Ali Young: And, you know, you need to be making sure that you're, you're not just run of the mill.
• 23:28
  Nick Purslow: And I also imagine, you know, you learn a lot from just speaking to, so we've got, you know, dedicated team of designers and architects and stuff, you know, you learn a lot, just speaking to them about how the whole process works.
• 23:40
  Nick Purslow: Because obviously, you know, you've had experience setting up your own site, but with a number of projects that we've got going at the minute with Glampitect.
• 23:46
  Nick Purslow: You know, you just learn a lot more about the whole process and how councils operate and how they differ from council council, and how difficult it can.
• 23:58
  Ali Young: Yeah, absolutely. And the guys that we hired, the design guys, we've hired in the last last nine or 10 months, have all brought in new experience new, new ways of thinking we've improved our offering massively, and in the year, they've realised things that we didn't, Calum and I, to begin with. So we've, as a company, our knowledge base has improved, our experience has improved. And I think we're far more capable of designing glamping sites than we were when we started to the point where I think we're really good at it.
• 24:36
  Nick Purslow: Before we sign off, if there's one tip in particular that you could give to prospective glamping site owners, what would it be?
• 24:43
  Ali Young: It's, it's really not sexy, but laundry and cleaning.
• 24:49
  Ali Young: It caught us out quite a bit.
• 24:49
  Ali Young: And you know that that's what I'm saying. You have to really think about how your how your site is going to operate. We had a three-night minimum stay policy, in fact, we still do.
• 25:00
  Ali Young: And so that means you're changing the beds and the towels at least two times a week. So for four pods, that's quite a lot of laundry to be doing if you want to try and tackle it yourself. So we didn't, we outsourced it to professional cleaning services, and even the struggle to handle that handle the volumes. Maybe you're struggling with the volume too much, but definitely underestimated how much time and effort it was going to take. And that ended up you know, the, the costing of it was always an argument, how much should we were prepared to spend, how much they felt they needed for it. So it's, it's been a bigger headache than I ever thought it would be. And it's one that you really have to have a good idea, a good plan for how you're going to tackle.
• 25:54
  Nick Purslow: And that requires good staff on the ground as well, I imagine. I know it took you a few days to find the right person to handle that side of things.
• 26:01
  Ali Young: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:01
  Ali Young: Absolutely. And having somebody there that is, you know, prepared to go a little bit beyond, above and beyond. And, you know, it's not, it's not a nine to five job. A lot of times you know, guests can arrive late at night. And if they have trouble with access and deposit, it's great to have somebody nearby that can help. And we are based in Edinburgh and our pods are five hour drive away. So if somebody calls Calum or I at 8 o'clock at night and says I can't get into my pods, what can we do about it? Really nothing.
• 26:32
  Ali Young: And so having somebody close by that you can trust is really important as well if you're not going to be there.
• 26:38
  Nick Purslow: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Glampitect podcast. I hope you enjoyed and found value in today's episode. If you did, feel free to leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts because it really helps us move up the podcast rankings. Thank you.