Glamping Hub grew by listing the unusual, not every tent

In the early 2010s the word "glamping" still got a few odd looks. Staying in a tent but sleeping in a proper bed, drinking your morning coffee in a treehouse, watching snow fall from a yurt (the round Central Asian tent). People were looking for these things, but there was no single site where they could see them side by side. Glamping Hub was one of the first companies to step into that gap.

In this post we look at how Glamping Hub was founded, what it did differently, and what a business in Türkiye doing glamping with a few bungalows or tents can take from the story.

The idea in San Francisco, the team in Seville

Glamping Hub's founders are David Troya and Ruben Martinez, who met in Seville. The company was founded in San Francisco in 2012, while the software team was in Seville from the start. For a long time the Spanish tech press called it a "Seville-based start-up".

According to the company's own account, the starting point was simple: people were searching online for "glamping", but there was nowhere they could see the options next to each other. There was search, but no shop window.

The early years ran largely on the founders' own money and angel investors. According to a Novobrief report from September 2014, the company had raised 230,000 euros from angels by then. Next came a 1 million dollar round led by the Spanish investment firm Axon Partners Group. In later years there was another round of 2 million dollars.

Growing by choosing, not by opening the doors to all

What set Glamping Hub apart from an ordinary listings site was that it was selective. The platform says it reviews the places that want to be listed and expects them to offer a distinctive structure or experience. So not everyone who says "I've got spare room in my garden, come and pitch" automatically ends up in the window.

That decision had a few consequences:

• Guests knew what they would find. Visitors came looking for a specific kind of stay (treehouse, safari tent, yurt, dome tent) and found it.
• Hosts met the right audience. A place priced at several times a standard camping pitch didn't get lost in a crowd hunting for something cheap.
• The brand became one with the word. A search for "glamping" and the name "Glamping Hub" carried the same word. That was a small but lasting advantage in search engines and word of mouth.

There was a price, of course. Being selective meant the number of listings grew slowly. But the quality of the window brought guests back to the same site for their next trip.

A sale and new owners

In November 2022 GlampingHub.com was sold to a new company set up for the purchase, Glamping Hub International. Its founders are CJ Wolf, an entrepreneur from the mobile games industry, and David de la Parra, who has worked in boutique hospitality and runs a glamping site himself. The sale announcement said the platform worked with more than 8,000 hosts in 115 countries.

According to Utah Business, the new structure has two offices: one in Park City in the US and the other still in Seville. So the Spanish software team the company had from day one stayed in place after the change of ownership. The sale price was not disclosed.

The real lesson: narrow but deep

Glamping Hub didn't try to sell everything. It could have moved into hotels, guesthouses or standard pitches, but for many years it stuck to one type. That narrow focus made three things easier:

1. The marketing message was one sentence. "Glamping all over the world" was enough.
2. Content wrote itself. Treehouses, dome tents, yurts. A platform focused on one type of stay never runs out of topics for its blog and social media.
3. Winning hosts was easier. For someone with an unusual place, "the site where places like ours come together" was a far more convincing offer.

What a campsite in Türkiye can take from this

Picture a business doing glamping with two or three bungalows and a few tents on the Aegean coast, in the foothills of the Kaz Dağları (Kaz Mountains) or on a yayla (a high mountain pasture). Glamping Hub's story tells a business of that size a few things:

1. Describe yourself in one sentence. Between "four safari tents in an olive grove" and "we have all kinds of accommodation", guests remember the first. Being clear about what you are also means saying what you're not.
2. Show the difference in photos. Glamping Hub's window was a visual one. The inside of the tent, the bed itself, where the bathroom is, where the morning light comes in. Guests accept the price by looking at these photos.
3. Being selective builds brand value. You don't have to accept every request at your own place either. Writing down quiet hours, the pet rule and a minimum number of nights clearly brings the right guests and filters out the wrong ones.
4. Own the word. People search for things like "Urla glamping" or "Kaz Dağları bungalow". Using these words naturally on your website, in your listing titles and on your Google Business Profile reduces your dependence on big platforms. Our post on how small campsites win online goes into this.
5. Don't lean on one platform. Glamping Hub changed hands in 2022, and any platform that changes hands can change its rules over time. The same goes for every marketplace. Keeping your own booking channel open protects you if things change. We covered the practical side in the benefits of online booking for campsites.
6. Say what the price covers. A glamping price can be several times that of a standard tent pitch, and guests want to see what they get for it. Is breakfast included? Are bedding and towels provided? Is the bathroom inside the tent or in a shared block? What about electricity and charging, and is there heating in winter? If the listing doesn't answer these, people ring to ask. And every question asked by phone is a booking you might lose.

None of these six points needs a big budget. Most start with an afternoon spent rewriting your listing text, photos and rules.

If you're curious how the big glamping brands grew, have a look at Huttopia and Under Canvas. They run sites, while Glamping Hub only builds the window. Both models target the same guest but carry different risks.

A short note

Plenty of conflicting figures about Glamping Hub's number of listings circulate online. In this post we only used the "more than 8,000 hosts in 115 countries" figure from the company's sale announcement. If you see another number, check its date.

teknovan.io is a tool we're developing so that small campsites and glamping businesses offering unusual stays can manage their calendar, bookings and their own booking page from a single dashboard.

Sources

• Glamping Hub raises $1 million from Axon Partners Group, Novobrief
• GlampingHub.com is Sold to a New Investor Group, PR Newswire
• GlampingHub Utah, Utah Business
• Interview with David Troya, CEO of Glamping Hub, Startupxplore
• Who we are, Glamping Hub

Image credits

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

• Özdere: Nihat1988, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons,_Aussicht_%E2%86%92_%C3%96zdere_-_panoramio.jpg)