Canopy & Stars, the glamping site that turns most places away

Most booking sites like to brag about size: thousands of listings, something for every budget. Canopy & Stars in Britain does the opposite. It says no to most of the places that want to join, and that choosiness has become the brand's main selling point.

For any business that has built a glamping unit, or is thinking about it, the story raises two questions. First, why would a guest trust a site with few listings over one that has "everything"? Second, what does it take to get onto that short list?

From guidebook publisher to glamping

Behind Canopy & Stars is Sawday's, a Bristol-based publisher and travel company that has spent many years promoting carefully chosen B&Bs, hotels and country houses through guidebooks and a website. Its founder is Alastair Sawday.

Canopy & Stars was set up in 2010 as part of the Sawday's group. The company's own account traces part of the idea back to Alastair Sawday's childhood memories of building treehouses: rediscovering the pleasure of living outdoors. Today the collection includes treehouses, cabins, shepherd's huts, gypsy caravans and other unusual places to stay. The company's website says it has hosted more than 200,000 guests since 2010.

What did it do differently?

Fewer listings, more trust

Canopy & Stars says it makes regular inspection trips to see the places it is considering in person. According to the company, only about 20 per cent of the places that apply are accepted.

For a guest, that means someone has actually been to the treehouse on the screen. The photos aren't flattering, the bed really is comfortable, the road is as described. On big platforms the guest does the sifting themselves. Here the brand does it for them.

Listings that tell a story

The guidebook heritage of Sawday's shows in how listings are written. A place isn't described with a bare feature list ("2 bedrooms, hot tub") but with a written introduction. The guest understands what they're renting by reading about it.

Knowing which units sell

In a letter Canopy & Stars wrote in support of a planning application in Scotland, it noted that seven of its ten best-performing places in 2018 were treehouses and the rest were cabins. A small detail, but it shows something: the platform knows which unit types are in demand and can tell its hosts.

Advice for hosts

The Sawday's group bought the glamping consultancy Crown & Canopy, and according to news reports the consultancy now runs within Canopy & Stars. So the platform doesn't just publish listings. It also guides people who want to start a new glamping site on design, location and business planning. For hosts there is a separate community and knowledge area, the Owner Hub.

The company structure is part of the message

Sawday's is one of the British travel companies that have moved into employee ownership. According to Travelmole, 52 per cent of the shares belong to employees, 24 per cent to the newly founded Sawday Charitable Trust, and 24 per cent stayed with the family. The company has been a certified B Corp since November 2019. None of this sells anything directly to the guest, but it builds an identity that backs up the claim "we choose with care".

The price of being choosy

It would be wrong to say this model suits every business. A selective platform sets its own bar: if design, comfort, photo quality and the host's attention fall below a certain level, you won't get in. Commercial terms such as commission also vary by contract, so you need to ask the platform directly.

On the other hand, a place on a selective list is a quality signal in the guest's eyes. What sells is less the price comparison and more the simple fact that "this place made the list".

Before you apply to a curated list

The questions a business should ask itself before applying to Canopy & Stars or a similar platform are really the questions any guest would ask:

• Are my photos honest, or is it one frame taken from the best angle on the best day?
• Could the bed, pillows and linen compete with a hotel room?
• How far is the bathroom and toilet from the unit, and is the path lit at night?
• Is the unit shielded from the noise and sight lines of the next one?
• Who greets guests when they arrive, and who do they call when something goes wrong?
• Does this place have a story, and can I tell it in two paragraphs?

If you can't say yes to most of these, it makes more sense to improve the unit first and apply afterwards. Even a rejection from a selective platform is a free inspection that tells you what to fix.

What a campsite in Türkiye can take from this

Türkiye doesn't yet have a well-established platform like Canopy & Stars that lists only hand-picked glamping places. But the lessons of the model also fit a small business selling through its own website and social media.

1. Show your best, not everything. If you have five units and two are clearly better than the rest, put those two in the shop window. Describe the others honestly and separately as "budget".
2. Write your listing like a guidebook writer. As well as the square metres, say which side the morning sun comes from, how many minutes it is to the nearest bakery and what sounds guests will hear at night.
3. Consider an unusual unit. A treehouse, a shepherd's hut, a restored old caravan. Canopy & Stars shows that different units are in demand. But being different never replaces a comfortable bed and a clean bathroom.
4. Measure which units sell. Which one fills up first, which gets the most reviews, which stays empty even with a discount? That tells you where to put your next investment.
5. Make your shared values visible. Buying from local producers, waste management, saving water. If you do these things, describe them briefly and concretely on your listing page. If you don't, don't claim them.
6. Inspect yourself. At the start of the season, spend a night in your own unit as a guest. If you don't notice what's annoying, you'll read about it in the reviews.

For more practical advice on writing listings and being found online, see our posts on how small campsites win online and the benefits of online booking.

If you want to show your treehouse, huts and pitches as units with photos on a map and take bookings directly, teknovan.io is one option for that.

Sources

• About us (Canopy & Stars)
• Canopy & Stars is now employee owned (Canopy & Stars)
• Ownership restructure at Sawday's (Travelmole)
• Canopy & Stars expands consultancy offering with acquisition of Crown & Canopy (Travolution)
• Sawday's B Corp profile (B Lab)
• Support letter from Canopy & Stars (Scottish Borders Council)

Image credits

Photos illustrate the region; they are not photos of the campsites themselves.

• Erdek: Kızıldeniz, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons