Filling a Growing Glampsite with Emma Warren, Dimpsey Glamping

You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast.

Thank you for joining me today.

I am your host, Sarah Orchard.

I'm delighted to welcome a guest to the podcast today, Emma Warren from Dimpsy Glamping.

Emma is somewhat of a pioneer in the glamping world as she's been running dimpsy glamping for nine years and she's told me it's their 10th birthday next year, so she's seen a lot of changes in the industry as it's evolved in that time.

Emma has expanded her site over the years and I wanted to explore with her today how you continue to fill your booking calendar as you have more spaces.

And I know that Emma has some brilliant insights for us today.

Welcome to the podcast, Emma.

Hello, Sarah.

Pleased to be here.

Thank you.

It's great to have you here today.

Now, you and I have known each other for a little while, having both been involved in the industry for a bit, and I know, like me, you've got a bit of a marketing background, but I thought it'd be really good to just start off with if you could introduce us or introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and Dimpsy Glamping and how it all started.

Oh, good idea.

Well, it all started with a visit to Babington house for my 40th birthday.

So that's part of the Soho House group, they're in Somerset and my husband took me there and it was amazing.

Everything was taken care of for you.

You didn't need to take a toothbrush, it was all there.

And I thought the service was amazing.

And in the same year we went to stay at somewhere called the Yurt Farm in Wales with our family and we purchased where we live now with some land.

So those three things all sort of melded together into my head and I wanted to do something with the land here.

We'd bought it with a view that we wanted to do something and I was like, why not do Babington House in a field?

Why not just create something where you arrive and you don't have to make your bed and every.

Everything's ready for you and it's just a beautifully coting stay for you to come to.

And there wasn't that much.

I mean you, you've been around in the industry for a long time as well.

There wasn't that much around at that point that was at that level that I think it was early treehouse days.

But the majority of the stays certainly in shepherd's huts and things were more about the sort of outdoor, maybe a compost toilet in the field, a walk to the facility.

So lovely, absolutely lovely.

But I, having gone through camping with the kids, I wanted to give people an experience where they didn't have to make the bed when they got there.

And so we looked around and I was thinking ys and things like that, which I absolutely loved.

But Andrew was a big no on taking them down every winter so I had to sort of.

So when I was first looking around and I loved it, I just loved the space and it was really simple.

It was no sink, no bed, no nothing.

Just absolutely loved the feeling the space cave gave me.

And I ended up helping them with their business development and they kept saying, you must have one at yours.

And we were like, we've got fields that aren't fenced and ditches that aren't dug and we've got so much work to do.

And I wanted a bed and an ensuite bathroom and they didn't do it.

And I'd been saying that to, for them to, to them for ages.

You, you sort that out and we'll get a shepherd's hut.

So we all work together on what is effectively their best selling turnkey design.

So mine was the first one Dimpsy, the one hut was the first one that they ever built of that and it arrived here just.

It was like Santa arrived with a shepherd's up two days before Christmas.

Knew nothing about hospitality, never done it before, stage places, but never done it before.

Wow, that's a big Christmas present to wrap a shepherd's heart.

Big Christmas present to yourself.

They didn't put a ribbon on it, Sarah.

So you really were sort of, as I said, a pioneer in terms of doing something.

And I remember obviously like you say, I'VE been in the industry for a while.

We'd been planning what we wanted to do with.

It sort of sparked our interest in doing something different.

So we've been following the industry and sort of getting our head around, you know, what the options were in terms of space.

And I remember seeing Dempsey and going, oh, my God, that's like, so luxurious, you know, with the hot.

You know, the outdoor hot tubs and the decor, it was like, totally different to anything else that I'd seen.

So, like you say, really sort of like setting a path and a direction for where the industry is now gone.

So you've.

You've expanded.

You started with the one Shepherd's Hut, and you now have three.

Yep.

So how have you found that now that you've added, obviously over the years, you didn't do it all in, like, one go.

What was sort of gaps between sort of adding the additional spaces and how have you sort of found sort of filling that from a.

From a booking perspective, it's always difficult.

Filling more rather than just one.

But I've always managed to create quite individual spaces, even though there's three here.

So in a certain respect, they attract slightly different customers and I just gradually build up.

So I don't expect, just because we're an established site, that when you add a new space, it's immediately going to fill up.

It.

We had absolutely loads of bookings and then it slowed back down after lockdown like everybody else.

And in the nine years I've been doing it, it's been very cyclical.

You know, there's times when we're absolutely bouncing along and then there's other times when an election happens or a budget happens and, you know, things slow down a bit.

And I think you just have to have a bit of patience with it at the moment.

Much slower in terms of bookings come in a lot later than they used to.

So I'm not.

I've not got as much forward visibility as we used to have.

But it'll come back round, it always does.

If you're offering something that people to come and stay in.

So yeah, I think you just have to keep refreshing yourself, don't you?

You have to keep not resting on your laurels and moving forward.

And I think you touched on a really good point there at the beginning.

You.

All three of your spaces are in very different sort of even like physical locations.

You've not been greedy and put them sort of side by side.

They're all having been to the site, you know, they're all spaced out, they've all got a very different sort of layout and you know what's included in terms of the space and the experience.

So obviously do you find you get a lot of guests that come back and want to try another one.

So they.

I suppose that's the benefit of having three very different ones is that maybe they come back to try all three eventually.

Yeah, some of them do.

And when there's not people in they can always pop and have a look at the other ones and I think that's it.

Sometimes we can concentrate so much on getting new.

Getting new.

Who are we going to find?

Who are we going to find that we actually forget to nurture the ones who've always already been and they're a really good source of bookings from that point of view, you know, market to them.

So do you use email marketing a lot?

Do you have built up a good database of guests?

Because obviously having been doing it for, you know, almost 10 years, you should have quite a nice base of customers that you can go back to.

Yeah, we've got a good email database.

I haven't done loads of emails.

I do, you know, do the regular updates and things like that usually I tend to find when it's a little bit quieter, it coincides with when we have a really busy life going on.

And I wonder whether the energy that you put into it in terms, well, you're, you know, this, the marketing that you put into it and the outreach that you do generates your business in three, six months time, doesn't it?

And I think sometimes you can't run at full tilt and run a business all the time.

It can't be absolutely flat out.

So it gives you time to step back and say, right, how are we going to change going forward?

What are we going to do?

Get that maintenance done and things like that.

So I look at it as, as good space rather than, oh, it's all going wrong, what am I doing here?

And I know that there's a certain sense of when, because the booking calendar has literally been like 96%, 100% full.

And then you see those gaps, it's natural to sort of panic a little bit.

But actually now we, we.

We're nearly five years down the line, we tend to look at them and go, brilliant.

We can get some maintenance done or, you know, or we can grab a weekend of work, you know, a midweek break or something, and actually have some time away.

So not panicking so much when there's a few, like, just natural gaps in the calendar which actually help us to get some of the business things done as well.

Yeah.

And the peak periods always fill up.

I never, ever worry about peak periods.

And I think I'm very lucky.

This isn't the only business that I run.

So I can have the luxury of being a little bit more.

Do I really want to push it?

I know if I press the button, the marketing and the legwork has been down there and you can press and feel, but sometimes you can just take a step back and decide not to.

And it's everybody's individual circumstances.

Somebody else might think, actually, I want to run at full tilt, I'm going to.

To do it.

And if you do your marketing and, you know, your customer and you stick to your story, you can do that.

It's.

I think it's just a little bit more difficult for everybody at the moment, and I think you can forget that.

That it's everybody, not just you.

Yeah.

I think it can be easy to, like, so get panicked and.

Or to listen to sort of chat in some of the Facebook groups which sort of talk you down, sort of talk the industry down and the market down and then to sort of panic.

But I think you do have to have confidence in your, you know, if you've done the.

If you've done the marketing legwork, as you've said, and you've put the foundations in place and you have a strong brand and, you know, your guest experience is differentiated from everyone, you know, from everyone else, and you've not just sort of look alike.

You know, I think you can, you know, you can rely on that and it definitely.

The bookings will then come in, but also it's your business, isn't it?

So we can choose what level of occupancy we, you know, aspire to operate at.

And I think we learned that operating at, like, 100% all the time was exhausting.

So this year we've made a conscious that we want to operate at about 80, 85, which is like still a really good occupancy.

I think the industry average is about.

When I looked at some for holiday lets, it was about 35% across the, you know, the holiday let industry.

So short term rentals and obviously glamping sometimes is a lot higher than that.

But I think sometimes we, you know, we have this really high expectation but a lot of people are sort of, you know, ticking along at that, sort of between 30 and sort of 50%.

So actually even operating at 80% is, is, you know, a good, good achievement.

And I think, you know, we do want some downtime as well and a few holidays.

So it's good to have those gaps.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, you have family events that go on.

You know, I had a very, very ill mother and we've had the boys going away and I've wanted to spend time with them.

So I think it's.

Isn't it lovely that we have the luxury of a business that we can do that.

You and I were talking earlier on about Christmas and you know, actually not having people at Christmas is really lovely.

Traditionally we've been open for Christmas and sometimes some years we say, actually no, we've got loads of people here because I don't know about you, but there is some kind of innate link between us and something going on or us driving off our drive and something happening.

It's very rare.

We have issues from our guests but when we do, it's always, always like the minute friends drive onto the drive or the minute we drive off it and it's like, I can't do this.

So sometimes it's really nice not to have that little background worry that you're going to be many, many is the meal where Andrew's had to, you know, go off and help with a fire or something like that.

So, you know, I just think it's nice.

Be kind to yourself.

We need, I think we all need a little bit of a regroup.

I don't think any of us have really taken into account how busy we all were after Covid and I think, you know, that's exhausting.

You can't run at that level for forever.

So I think it's a really good time to actually say, yeah, let's have a regroup and let's decide who we are and what we're doing and off we go.

I wanted to actually ask you about over the time as well, like guest expectations.

What sort of changes have you, you've seen in the industry over that sort of almost 10 year period.

One, one thing that I would comment on is that I think Covid and because of all, I mean, I can remember us having discussions and lots of people having discussions about the refund rules and things like that.

I think that changed people's expectations about the fact that with you, you need to let people know if you're not coming and you may not get your money back if that's what the terms and conditions say.

And I think because Covid, we all like bent over backwards, change things around and things, I think people are having difficulty.

A lot of hotels still have got that, you know, cancel within 24 hours and when you're a big chain, that's really easy.

It's not so easy for someone with one place or three places.

So I think for, I guess, expectations from that, that we are kind of a pick up and drop type place.

There's still a little bit of a hangover from that.

We don't get a lot of problems with it.

But I hear a lot of people, you know, cursing that one.

And I agree, actually, I think that has, I think that booking.com, airbnb, etc.

That has created a bit of a precedent and with COVID that people do think we're like big hotel chains that, you know, you can cancel up until the day before with no, with no penalty.

But that's like.

So that's fine when you've got 200 rooms, you can probably have the odd guest cancel.

But when you've only got one or two or three spaces and that's your income, you can't.

You can' afford to let people cancel at short notice because you're not going to be able to fill it.

No, exactly.

And we're really lucky, I have to say, touch wood here.

The majority of our guests, a very, very high percentage of our guests are absolutely lovely and really enjoy having them here.

But I think their expectations of what they're expecting for their money have also gone up in certain cases.

I mean, we've always offered quite a high end offering with a lot of added extras that are included in the price.

So generally we haven't suffered from that.

And up and certainly pre lockdown it wasn't ever anything.

But I think now some people are, you know, they just want more, more, more.

And maybe we're creating that ourselves.

Maybe, maybe we give too much sometimes and that causes problems when you don't do that if someone else doesn't do it.

So, yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it but I think their expectation of the experience.

We've.

We've absolutely firmly moved out of the.

We're one step up from camping.

We as an industry, I'm talking they're not we dimpsy.

We're one step up from camping and you'll get forgiven for things.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

I think the, the entry of hotel spaces into the market, which I believe is a really good thing because I think it introduces people to glamping and then when they've stayed in a hotel with glamping they then want to be a bit braver and go somewhere with glamping just in a field.

So I think it's actually introducing people to our market that might not have come to us before but that introduction of that brings with it slightly more hotel like expectations, I think.

Yeah, I agree.

Actually we've had a few guests that have turned up and sort of or they request things at set times like it's room service and we're a bit like, well we'll put the hampers into the tree house for your arrival.

I think they're expecting us to trot down every morning with breakfast and I know some people do that with.

I've got some clients who basically deliver breakfast every morning but we tend to put the hampers in and then let them get on with it because it is self catering accommodation.

But I think yeah, there's definitely.

And there's also with COVID I think we've all discovered, you know, a lot of people coming and going glamping who had never probably considered it before and that obviously has presented some challenges I think particularly during the sort of COVID years where people had, you know, people that wouldn't maybe normally gone abroad and then suddenly they were like, well we'll try this glamping malarkey and obviously maybe didn't quite understand how it differed to maybe what they've done before.

So I think that was challenging for quite a few of us hosts during that, during that time.

I'd love to bring it back to sort of marketing and just having a chat about, you know, you said that you don't do a huge amount of email marketing.

So what works for you in terms of driving?

What percentage of bookings by the way are direct?

It'd be good to know like understand how many, what percentage of direct bookings you have and then what marketing works well for you, Emma?

Well, as I said to you before, I do other things as well as this so I'm probably approach It a bit differently to most because I have a.

A jewelry business and I do business development for people as well, so.

And I do a lot of work for Blackdown Chipatas, so I probably approach it like, what level do I want it to be at that I can manage alongside that.

And so we.

I still am with Canopy and Stars, who I joined when I first joined, and we get a good amount of bookings through from them.

They've done us really well and we get a lot of direct bookings.

I can't tell you off the top of my head what my percentage is at the moment, because I haven't looked recently.

That's bad, isn't it?

But I'd say we're probably about 60, 70% direct, probably.

But that's literally my head.

But bear in mind, these are the benefits that you get when you've been in the game for a long time.

Because we've had a lot of people, Word of mouth is a great marketeer for me, and then I suddenly find there's a little cluster of people from the same area and things.

So when you give a really good experience, which is what we try really hard to do, then word of mouth is better than anything I can do myself.

And then after that, you know, the Instagram being present, making sure that people know who we are and where we are, a little bit of magazine work and the emails.

So, yeah, it's kind of a combination of a number of things.

It suits me to do that because Canopy and Stars are marketing.

If I was only doing this on my own, I probably would have driven more for.

For Direct because obviously, you know, that does present more money in your pocket at the end of the day.

So for me, where I am, time is my issue and I don't always have the time to do all the things I should do for dimpsy because it's my soul project, it's my passion project, but if I have to let something dip, it's probably the.

The proactive marketing on dimpsy that I don't do.

So, yeah, I think you touched on a really good point there about the use of an agent, because Canopy and Stars is obviously a really good brand fit in terms of the profile of their, you know, their followers and their, you know, their database and your clients.

I can, you know, and your guests, I can see that there'll be a really good fit there.

And as you quite rightly said, and I always say this, that if you've got limited time, you know, using an agent is.

It's not A dirty word.

It's like, you know, they're there to do some of the heavy lifting for you, so they're doing marketing for you.

They're also handling bookings, they're dealing with guest requests and all the weird and wonderful things we get back from guests in terms of things that they're not really cancellations or they want to move bookings and things like that.

So having an agent means that you've got an extra pair of hands that are helping you with the business.

So it sounds like that's a really good fit for the fact that you're running multiple businesses and you don't want to be a slave to your business either.

Yeah, and I'm also really careful about who we list with.

We list on cool stays, cool places, but the ones I generally values, I think values are a really, really good barometer.

And I work.

Anybody that I work with, I like.

If they've got similar values, I find it always works.

So when you've got good customer service ethic, you're thinking about experience and things like that.

They're the support companies that I choose, and anybody that, like, creates lots of fuss and mess and things for me, I just, just don't go there because I don't have the time to fuss with it.

So that suits me.

So we haven't.

We were on Airbnb in the early, early days, very early days when we first opened.

But when you list with Canopy, you can't be on other booking sites.

And that suits me for this, But I think it's very much Horses for courses, isn't it?

It's what works for you and what makes your life work for you in conjunction with your business.

Because if you just try to run your business and you take no notice of your life, then know is.

Is there, isn't it?

So, yeah, so I.

It is always a balance for me and one that I make work for me as much as I can.

And Andrew, my husband and the family, rather than the other way around.

It's not the tail wagging the door.

Yeah.

And I think, yeah, like you say, values are really important.

And picking either an agent or an advertising listing site that fits well with your sort of branded guest experience and your own, like, ethics in terms of how you want to operate your business.

And it's important to find the right partners in business as there, you know, that's really important.

So I think that's a really good point.

If you were giving advice to your younger self, maybe before you started all of this, or to Someone who's new to the industry, what advice would you give them in either expanding their glamping site or setting up?

What.

What advice would you give them?

Emma?

Always put customer at the centre of everything that you do.

I was thinking about the knowns and the unknowns the other day and we all know that, you know, have a vision, know your customer and all of that sort of thing, and it's almost kind of their cliched phrases and you can almost try and walk away from them because it's what everybody says, but actually everybody says it because it's really good advice.

So I think knowing your customer, knowing what you want to do and knowing the area that you're in and putting those together and concentrating there and being brave enough to not try and put your arms around the world and offer everything to everybody, that would be my advice.

I think that's a great piece of advice because it's what everyone tends to do, isn't it?

It's like they launch and then they're like, well, I could have anyone come and stay.

So maybe they haven't thought about who that ideal guest is when they're creating their spaces.

And I can tell that you've really thought about, you know, who you want to attract to Dimpsy and what they're looking for as a guest when they come and stay with you.

And that's reflect in the spaces that you've created and how you've differentiated the three offerings that you've.

You've got.

So I think that's a great piece of advice.

Yeah.

And I think also don't, don't be afraid to be different.

I think, you know, when you're starting out, confidence is usually low, so you look for inspiration and that's absolutely great.

But someone who's doing really well might not do well in your spot, where you are with what you've got.

So you have to kind of look around for that instant inspiration and then come right back to where you are, what you want to do and the customer, and build your own version of it.

Yeah, like, play to your strength.

So, like you say, every location is different.

You know, we went out with a very conscious decision that we only wanted couples, we could only build the one unit.

So it was like we knew we were going to go for a tree house, because if you're going to build something that's going to maximize your revenue, it's going to be a tree house.

And we didn't want to take children or dogs.

And that was.

Dogs was mainly from a Wildlife point of view, but it was a conscious decision.

And then obviously, everything we've done is shaped the space.

And I can see that you've done similar in terms of thinking about, you know, the.

The Dempsey brand.

And.

And I know you're very passionate about local as well.

So it's like, again, it brings all of that into.

To the brand and the individuals or the couples that you attract to the, you know, as your ideal guests.

Yeah, exactly.

Brilliant.

Well, it's been wonderful talking to you today.

I have one last question for you.

If you could have one celebrity to come and stay at Dimpsy, who would it be?

It's a really tricky one.

It's a really tricky one because I immediately started thinking about all of the.

The sort of.

The extras that go with that first day, rather than thinking, who would I love to sit and have a chat to?

So I'm gonna go, who would I love to sit and have a chat to?

I think this is a really random one, but it's in my head at the moment.

I'd love to have Lady Bamford to come and stay from Daylesford and the Wild Rabbit at Kingham.

And they.

There's just such a brand because it's got.

I think a brand is what they talk.

Say about you when you're not in the room, isn't it?

Isn't that what they say?

Yeah.

What people say about you when you're not in the room.

Yeah.

And.

And I just think that like.

Or love what they do, actually, the brand extension that they've done, from what they started with to now sort of farm shop events, spa stays, and it.

It looks perfectly executed across all touch points.

So I'd love to sit and chat about where that thinking comes from and where that's going, because I just find it quite fascinating and a lovely place to visit.

But I'm always sitting there thinking, how did they do this?

What's happening?

So, yeah, I think Lady Bamford, I'd love to sit, have a chat.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Because, like you say, the brand extension, to go from, like a farm shop into all of the other things that they're now doing.

And also to, obviously, you know, you could think, well, food and drink, it's sort of aligned with hospitality.

But they have created a huge amount of brand extension.

So if people haven't seen Daylesford, go and have a look at that.

And what was that?

Wild.

The Wild rabbit.

Yeah, this is Wild Rabbit at Kingham.

So there's a.

There's also a chain of pubs and you can actually buy Daylesford products on Ocado now.

It's quite.

Yeah, it's.

It's an experience, like up there with experiences.

So that's what I'd just like to say hello and have a chat about that.

Yeah, and it just shows you what you can do with a brand if you build a strong brand.

And.

Well, we went to Daylesford, actually, when we were in the Cotswold area and actually we remember seeing people look like they'd driven quite a long way.

You know, it was like a destination people actually wanted to go there to, you know, so that they could say that they've been there.

So, yeah, that's a really good one.

Thank you for that.

Well, thank you for joining me today, Emma.

It's been great to have you.

Thanks for listening.

I'll be back next week.

I've got a solo episode and I'll be exploring how you turn your website into a marketing machine.

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could leave me a review.

You know how much hosts love a five star review.

I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free direct booking roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get-fullly booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.