Nine years of Getaway, from a Harvard idea to Marriott

A city dweller's weekend escape usually hits one of two snags. Either the place is too far away, or once you get there you end up staring at your phone anyway. Getaway answered both at once: a small cabin in the woods a few hours' drive from the city, with a box inside to lock your phone in.

The company started in 2015 as an idea between two university friends. Nine years later it was a brand bought by one of the world's biggest hotel groups. For campsite owners, the interesting part is how little the product actually consists of.

From a dorm room to the New Hampshire woods

Getaway was founded by Jon Staff and Pete Davis, who were dorm neighbours at Harvard. According to press reports, the idea came out of the start-up scene at Harvard, from a project the two founders called the "Millennial Housing Lab". The question was how people could try living in smaller, simpler spaces.

The first cabins went up in 2015 on land in New Hampshire within driving distance of Boston. They were designed by architecture students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. According to a 2016 piece in Dezeen, the first houses were about 160 square feet, or roughly 15 square metres. Later models grew a little, but the spirit stayed the same. As Time Out put it, each cabin has a big picture window, a small kitchenette and a fire pit outside.

The product itself: less

Getaway cabins had no Wi-Fi. Guests were encouraged to lock their phone in a box in the cabin. According to press reports, there was a landline in each cabin for emergencies.

That "missing" feature was the product. Getaway didn't present itself as a hotel or a campsite but as a break from city fatigue. The language of its marketing wasn't comfort. It was quiet.

The location logic was just as clear. Getaway's sites (the company called them "Outposts") were chosen about two hours' drive from big cities. The network started around Boston, New York and Washington and spread over time to other parts of the US. The target was the person who leaves work on Friday evening and wants to be home by Sunday night.

Growth and investment

Getaway grew early on with venture capital. According to reports, it raised a 22.5 million dollar Series B round led by Starwood Capital. In 2021 a 41.7 million dollar Series C followed, led by Certares, an investment firm focused on travel and hospitality. With each round, the number of sites grew every year.

In late 2024 Getaway changed its name to Postcard Cabins. On 12 December 2024 Marriott International announced that it had bought the Postcard Cabins brand. According to the announcement, the portfolio had 29 sites and more than 1,200 cabins. The price was not disclosed. The plan was for the brand to join Marriott's booking channels and the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty programme in 2025.

What did it do differently?

It described its audience precisely. Getaway's customer wasn't a nature lover or an experienced camper. It was a tired city dweller. Product, marketing and location were all tuned to that one person.

It made distance part of the product. "Two hours from the city" is information that makes the weekend decision easy. A long drive kills a weekend break, and Getaway turned that into a rule for choosing sites.

It standardised the design. Same cabin type, same layout, same kit. That made opening a new site faster, and guests knew what to expect.

It turned a suggestion into a story. The phone box is a small detail, yet it appeared in most press coverage of the brand. A rule or a suggestion, told well, can become a story.

It made arrival contactless. Check-in and check-out are contactless. Guests book online, receive the door code on their phone shortly before arrival and go straight to their cabin. No need for a busy reception team.

The limits of the model

Getaway's story is also an investment story. Opening dozens of sites in a few years was only possible with millions of dollars of capital. A small business doesn't need to copy that pace, and couldn't anyway.

A standard product has a cost too. The same cabin and the same layout on every site reassure guests, but they push the character of the place into the background. The difference between being in a forest and being in an olive grove is felt outside the cabin more than inside it.

Finally, the phone box isn't for everyone. For someone who works remotely, whose child is at home with a babysitter or who simply wants to keep up with the news, being "disconnected" is an obstacle rather than a promise. At Getaway, too, the box is presented as a suggestion, not a requirement. If you set a similar rule at your own place, you need to know your audience.

What a campsite in Türkiye can take from this

Around big Turkish cities such as Istanbul, İzmir, Ankara and Bursa there are already campsites and bungalow businesses in woodland within two hours' drive. Getaway's story tells them a few things.

1. Say how close you are to the city in the first sentence. Something concrete like "45 minutes from central İzmir" sells better than "in the heart of nature". For someone looking for a weekend escape, distance is the first filter.
2. Think about weekdays separately. Places near cities fill up on Fridays and Saturdays and empty out Monday to Thursday. Try midweek packages for remote workers, small team meetings or quiet writing weeks.
3. Pick something you leave out, and talk about it. A site with no Wi-Fi, a phone box, a no-music-after-10pm rule. Pitched to the right audience, these are selling points. But say so clearly in the listing from the start.
4. Standardise your units. If you have four bungalows, give all four the same bed, the same kit and the same cleaning checklist. Your guests and your team get fewer surprises.
5. Try self check-in. A key box, plus directions and house rules sent before arrival, keep late-arriving guests from waking you up. For a business run by a small team, it saves time.
6. Plan for privacy. The distance and sight lines between units can matter more than floor area. When you place a new unit, check what can be seen from the neighbouring unit's window.

For a forest escape near İzmir, see our post on Karagöl Nature Park, and for camping options around the city, our guide to camping around İzmir. For other brands growing in glamping, the Huttopia and Under Canvas story is also worth a read.

If you want to show your cabins and bungalows one by one on a map and manage online bookings and arrival information in one place, teknovan.io is being built for exactly that.

Sources

• Harvard students create tiny vacation houses for stressed-out city dwellers (Dezeen, 2016)
• How a Harvard student's summer in an Airstream trailer led to a startup (Boston.com, 2015)
• Getaway Raises $22.5M to Get You Off the Grid (Built In)
• Certares leads $42M Series C for Getaway (PhocusWire)
• Getaway (Time Out New York)
• Marriott Acquires the Postcard Cabins Brand (Hospitality Net)
• Marriott Acquires Nature-Based Lodging Company, Postcard Cabins (TravelPulse)

Image credits

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

• İnciraltı, Balçova: Ayratayrat, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons