The Hidden Costs of Running a Glamping Business!

Summary

Embark on a journey with Vicki from Tractors & Cream Glamping as she unravels the hidden costs of running a glamping business. From laundry expenses and cleaning staff to the unforeseen repairs and the essential marketing strategies, every aspect is laid bare. Vicki gives you the lowdown on the nuances of managing costs, revealing how even seemingly small expenses like washer repairs or buying picnic benches can add up. Dive into her personal insights on marketing budgets and find out why storytelling remains at the heart of their unique selling proposition.

Highlights

• Laundry expenses can vastly differ based on whether you manage it yourself or outsource it. 🧺
• Simple yet thoughtful guest perks like chocolate brownies can set your service apart. 🍫
• Electricity costs can vary even with solar systems, especially if communal spaces require extra power. ☀️
• Timely repairs and maintenance, although often overlooked, are crucial in running a seamless glamping experience. 🔧
• Smart marketing approaches, as demonstrated by Vicki, can lead to substantial savings long-term. 📉

Key Takeaways

• Glamping business expenses extend beyond the obvious; daily operations include hidden costs like laundry and maintenance. 🧺
• Investing in a good booking system and using tools like Canva can streamline marketing efforts efficiently. 💼
• Marketing wisely can save substantial commission fees compared to listing on third-party sites. 📉
• Maintain a balance between quality service and cost-efficiency to sustain profitability. ⚖️
• A creative approach to guest experiences, like offering chocolate brownies, enhances the glamping experience. 🍫

Overview

Have you ever pondered about the hidden costs climbing under the glamorous surface of a glamping business? Join Vicki, the heart behind Tractors & Cream Glamping, as she spills the beans on what it truly takes to keep the experience magical while treading the fine line of operational expenses. From mundane yet essential laundry tasks to the cozy touch of chocolate brownies welcoming each guest, she leaves no stone unturned in this budget breakdown of her thriving business.

Diving deeper, Vicki reveals how their glamping site is powered not just by solar panels but also by the diligent efforts of managing minor but necessary costs like electricity and maintaining the natural aesthetics with hours of mowing. Her insights into cost-effective strategies like self-managed laundry services versus outsourcing present a practical perspective on cost-saving methods that don't compromise on quality.

Beyond daily operations, marketing strategies take the spotlight. Vicki’s narrative shifts to how they harness the power of social media and effective marketing tools such as Canva, emphasizing the importance of saving on commission fees. Her experience with a personalized booking system underscores the balance between expenditure and enhanced guest experiences, rounding off a thorough exploration of what keeps the rustic yet charming business ticking.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Hidden Costs In this chapter, Vicki introduces the concept of 'hidden costs' involved in running a glamping site. She aims to break down the overall expenses required to keep the business in operation. Vicki remarks that while some of these expenses might seem apparent, she's compiled a comprehensive list from her notes to ensure nothing is overlooked. Key recurring costs, like laundry when running a Bed & Breakfast (B&B), are discussed. The episode promises a detailed exploration of expenses incurred per stay, month, and year.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Laundry Costs and Challenges The chapter discusses the significant costs associated with laundry and explores different models for managing these expenses. One alternative is to have individuals bring their own bedding, which can save money but might lower the price point of the service. The speaker mentions personal experiences, stating they spend about £3 per dome on laundry by handling it themselves, which contrasts sharply with outsourcing laundry services that can cost around £30-50 per structure. This comparison doesn't include the value of personal time, focusing solely on the expenditures for washing machines and tumble dryers.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Cleaning and Guest Provisions Costs The chapter titled 'Cleaning and Guest Provisions Costs' discusses the time and financial costs associated with laundry and cleaning tasks. The narrator mentions the difficulties faced with a broken washing machine, leading to several hours spent in the laundry room each week. A new machine is expected to arrive soon, which is anticipated with excitement. The chapter also highlights the cleaning responsibilities and associated costs, mentioning that it typically costs about $20 per dome in staff wages for cleaning.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Monthly Utility Costs This chapter discusses the monthly utility costs associated with hosting guests. The speaker outlines the cost of amenities provided to guests, which include matches, fire starters, wood, and chocolate brownies. They estimate the costs to be approximately £7 per stay for these items. Additionally, the speaker mentions the possibility of providing a welcome pack with milk and other items, which would increase the costs but suggests it's straightforward to calculate these additional expenses per stay.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Gardening and Waste Management The chapter titled 'Gardening and Waste Management' discusses the cost implications of hosting guests. It mentions the nightly income from renting out domes compared to the physical cost associated with hosting. Initially, this setup seems profitable, offering £10 per night per dome with a two-night minimum stay, leading to £220 revenue against a cost of £3250. However, the discussion transitions into additional monthly expenses such as gas, electricity, and water. Notably, the speaker mentions using solar energy as part of their cost management strategy, indicating a focus on sustainable resource management. The detailed examination of these financial aspects suggests that while the initial income appears positive, ongoing costs could significantly impact overall profitability.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Replacement and Repair Costs This chapter discusses the various costs associated with replacement and repair in a communal living space. It mentions an electric cost of roughly £200 monthly for a shared kitchen connected to the grid. Gas expenses for larger units come to around £1,220 per season, while smaller units using camper gas stoves cost about £5. Additionally, the annual cost for items like washing up liquid, sponges, and hand soap is approximately £25, which is considered minimal.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Booking System and Marketing Expenses The chapter discusses the significant expenses associated with maintaining a garden, focusing on mowing. Brian spends 5 to 6 hours a week mowing in the summer, although his time is not monetarily accounted for as he enjoys doing it. The chapter notes the annual fuel expense for the mower is approximately $300 per season and an additional $200 for diesel required for the tractor. They use two different mowers to manage the mowing tasks.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Revenue Breakdown ### Chapter: Revenue Breakdown The chapter discusses cost-saving strategies used by the narrator's business. Specific roles are assigned to Annabelle, Bri, and Char for efficient task completion - with Annabelle volunteering her time for free, contributing to labor cost reduction. Another strategy involves minimizing expenses through efficient waste management. Instead of paying for large monthly waste bins, they use smaller blue bins and recycle extensively, keeping their commercial waste expenses at approximately £300 annually.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Competition Announcement and Fun Segment The chapter begins with the announcement of a competition. It then moves to a fun segment where the focus is on the financial aspects of maintaining a guest area, particularly the replacement costs for frequently damaged items such as hammocks, picnic umbrellas, benches, and bedding. It is mentioned that approximately £300 per year is spent on these replacements. The narrative touches on the challenges of attributing damage to individual guests, noting that wear and tear over time from multiple guests often contributes to damage, making it unreasonable to blame a single guest for issues like a broken hammock.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Conclusion and Call to Action The chapter discusses changes in the booking system, where a new system called Res NEX has been adopted. This system, costing £60 a month, includes features for comprehensive email marketing and other functionalities, making it a valuable investment. Additionally, the chapter briefly mentions costs associated with the website and Gmail, amounting to around £5 a month.

The Hidden Costs of Running a Glamping Business! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in this episode I'm going to take you through the hidden cost of running a glamping site how much is it going to cost you to keep the business running let's work it out together hi I'm Vicki welcome back to my channel where we talk all things glamping and running an experiential travel business let's get straight to the running cost of having a glamping business I'm going to be referring to my notes quite a lot because I've made kind of a comprehensive list of everything that we spend per stay per month per year hopefully a lot of these should be quite obvious laundry if you're doing B Bing
• 00:30 - 01:00 laundry is going to be quite a big cost obviously you can say bring your own bedding that's a different model if that's what you want to do that's going to save you a lot of money but your price point is going to be lower so I only spend around £3 per Dome on laundry CU I do it all myself if you're sending away to do laundry you can be paying more like 30 4050 per structure on laundry I'm not factoring my time in that I'm just literally factoring the cost of the washing machine and the tomble dryer
• 01:00 - 01:30 Thursday morning back in the laundry room I've got a mountain of washing because the washing machine is still broken the new one is coming tomorrow so that is very exciting cannot wait for the new washing machine I'm not factoring the the hours if I was paying myself how much it would cost but I'm probably in the laundry room a good 3 4 hours a week I would say then you've got cleaning of the structure that you're doing so I've got some casual stuff that helped me it generally cost me about20 per Dome to clean in staff cost next up
• 01:30 - 02:00 P day we're talking about the things that you're going to provide when the guest Ares so we provide matches Fighters and a basket of wood and we provide chocolate brownies so I reckon I spend about7 per stay on the matches the kindling highlighters would um and then another probably £250 for the set of brownies that I give them if you're offering like a welcome pack um with milk and things like that that's going to cost you a lot more um but that's a really easy thing to work out to factoring the costs so per stay I'm
• 02:00 - 02:30 talking around £ 3250 for the cost of the that actually physically cost me for somebody to come and stay now this seems great because I'm getting £10 a night per Dome so and I do a two night minimum so that's £220 for a cost of 3250 um so that is brilliant but then I'm going to give you a whole host of other costs that going to massively bring it all down so let's go on to monthly costs so things like gas electric water so we're on solar so
• 02:30 - 03:00 that's great but we do still have an electric cost because we have a communal space and a on grid kitchen that costs us an electricity generally we spend about2 200 a month on electric so the gas we use for our bigger un sweet ones we spend about £ 1220 per season on gas for the smaller ones we're spending more like £5 cuz that just literally just a camper gas stove so that's not too bad on gas we also spend around 25 pans a year on things like washing up liquid and sponges and um hand soap and things like that for the guest it's not too big
• 03:00 - 03:30 a cost the gardening SL mowing is also a big expense for us um Brian spends around 5 to 6 hours a week on the mower in this height of the summer um we don't factor in his time at all he does it for the love of sitting on the mower I don't think he'll tell you that um but we do spend about 300 a year or season on fuel for the mower um plus then we need diesel for the tractor as well so it's probably another 200 um just because of the track we mow with the tractor and we mow with two different mowers as well so
• 03:30 - 04:00 Annabelle go the mower I'll go on the other mower Bri go on the tractor and then we can get it all done a lot quicker and Annabelle doesn't want any thing for her time which is um great uh Char labor another expense for us is commercial waste our commercial waste bill is actually pretty cheap I think it's about £300 a year we use these blue bins um that we have to put down the end of our lane um we're not paying monthly for a big um kind of wheelie bin so that massively cuts down our cost and I do a lot of recycling as much as I possibly
• 04:00 - 04:30 can it's still £300 season that we have to factor in let's talk about all the repairs that are going to have to happen so we go through a lot of hammocks we go through a lot of picnic umbrellas uh picnic benches um stained bedding things like that so I reckon we spend around about £300 a year on replacing those items that have got broken you can take a brokers's deposit but I find if if something happens to a hammock while a guest is there I don't blame that guest because obviously that's compounded use over all the guest so I'm not going to
• 04:30 - 05:00 charge that specific guest the one that it broke on um I'm just going to take the hit for that okay let's talk kind of back off his stuff so we've just changed our booking system we're now spending around about £60 a month on our booking system it's a really comprehensive one we're using res NEX a us-based company and it can do all my email marketing it can do loads of stuff so it's well worth the £60 a month that we're spending on it website we're spending about £5 a month um on our Gmail and and uh website
• 05:00 - 05:30 hosting um which again is not a big cost considering the fact that you have to have a website obviously we spent 5600 on building the website but now it's built we've just got that £25 a month of ongoing cost we also spend about £900 a year on accounting that is me doing all the accounts and sending to the accountant and him then finding the return the next one is marketing and honestly I've got no idea how much you spend on marketing it is like how long is a piece of string I do spend £11.99 a month on canva um canva is a hugely
• 05:30 - 06:00 helpful um tool for me for marketing I can create anything from for Instagram for YouTube thumbnails for um email templates for anything I use canva having canva Pro is a massive plus point in my marketing Arsenal in terms of how much we actually spend on Advertising we maybe do the odd Facebook ad but we probably put 20 quid here or there I reckon we don't spend any more than1 a year on Facebook ads
• 06:00 - 06:30 um we don't list on any websites like Cool's days or any of those that are kind of 300400 a year on so we don't listen to any of those it's mainly done through social media I suppose which is and Word of Mouth but if you're deciding to invest in marketing which is obviously better than you giving that commission to those OTAs give yourself a marketing budget I keep using Sarah or from H's hi as a brilliant example of what she spent versus what she saved on commission so she reckoned in the last three years she spent about £9,000 on
• 06:30 - 07:00 marketing um and she saved herself £60,000 in commission so marketing if you can spend a bit of money on marketing then that will save you on the Commission in the long run but as I say our marketing budget is no more than £200 a year I could probably try a bit harder to be fair so I think that sort of covered the general gist of our ongoing costs so if I work that out it comes to around £13,000 a year on all those little bits that add up let's just break down what
• 07:00 - 07:30 we actually earn so if we take our two on suet domes which are £50 a night we tend to have about 100 nights a year because we have quite a short season because it's so flipping wet in this country so we're making around £3,000 a year from those two rentals and then if we take our three um nonon Suite smaller domes we make around £1,000 per Dome per year out of those um so all in all we're talking around about 63
• 07:30 - 08:00 £3,000 in revenue from the domes this is not including the event side of the business at all this is just the the glamping domes take over the 13,000 so we're talking around about 50k a year off five domes that's kind of real ballpark figures obviously if you're open all year around you're going to double that triple that maybe um because our season is so short and I quite like it that way I'm down with that I'm down with working really hard over the a few months in the middle of the summer and then having the winter off that is that's what keeps me ticking over okay
• 08:00 - 08:30 that's about it ah except my uh Sidekicks arrived to announce about the competition so last week we set a competition which we're going to try and do in each YouTube video um just to make things more fun and interesting so um join me join me um so we set you the task of trying to get inside Brian's head and work out what structure he was thinking it of if
• 08:30 - 09:00 you have made it this far we'd like to have a bit of fun if you drop in the comment the structure that I'm thinking about right now that I would really like to build as my next structure Vicki will send you a prize we had some amazing guesses including Castle pyramid Log Cabin Treehouse oh that was the other we had combine harvester conversion that would be fun I think someone's actually done that if I'm sure they have combine OB don't come cheap no they
• 09:00 - 09:30 don't I got to run new comine Harvester and what was the answer Brian the actual answer and the winning answer is a super funky Tree House everybody knows I love a tree house and I would really love to build one and make it super magical so when I was young I had a little Treehouse and that used to be amazing so I'd like to take that but to the next level and I don't mean a stilt house I mean an actual tree house okay some did
• 09:30 - 10:00 guess Tree House does it have to be super funky Treehouse or will you allow this person to win given that they said tree house um in that case then I'll let them have it so the winner of one of our traps and cream glaming mugs which we will post out wherever you are in the world um is oh user ns3 sn4 C H4 well that's helpful isn't it if you're use NC 4527 six you have won a
• 10:00 - 10:30 glamping mug so please get in touch um I will try and find out what your actual name is and I will post you out that glamping mug especially for you for us um so what is this week's competition going to be if I was to started glamping site now today and Money Was No Object where which country in the world would I want to start a glamping site so please leave your comment of where you think Brahman would like to start a glamping
• 10:30 - 11:00 site and I will whoever gets it right I will choose from those list of people and send them a prize wherever you are in the world thank you so much for watching if you have any questions then please leave them in comments I'm always happy to answer specific money questions it doesn't bother us talking about money what we spent that sort of thing so just get in touch and we'll see you on the next video