82. Titans of Tents: Four Founders, Four Continents, One Honest Conversation

Speaker A: What if the people who actually build the foundations of this industry, the ones who've spent decades engineering structures in the Okavango Delta, on 45 degree slopes in Thailand, in the middle of the Australian outback, in the Middle east and on the shores of the Bahamas, what if they've all sat down together and just talked honestly about where this is all going? That's exactly what you're about to hear. Welcome to Titans of Tents, a brand new series sitting inside the Glamping business podcast where I'm bringing together four of the world's leading glamping structure and luxury tented villa founders for a conversation that frankly doesn't exist anywhere else. Four companies, four continents, four very distinct positions in the global supply side of outdoor hospitality. From engineering led tensile structures to haute couture tented villas and battle tested eco resort structures built to withstand category five cyclones. And yet, these four people genuinely like each other, respect each other's work deeply and share something that I find more rare than any of their individual achievements. A real desire to raise standards across this industry for everyone in it. That's what this series is built on. Friendship, honesty and a guiding mission to make this industry better. So let me introduce you to the titans. We have Brendan Omelone, who is the founder and CEO of 10th House Structures. He's spent the past 15 years building one of the most innovative full service tent architecture firms in the world. We have Yuli Wick, who leads Escape Nomad and has delivered more than 450 luxury tent structures across 55 countries. Individuals, celebrities and businesses have all been his customers. And we have Tom Butterfield from Ecostruxures out of Western Australia. When the owner's resort was flattened by a Category 5 cyclone and had to be rebuilt from scratch, Tom joined to help make that happen. And his epic global story starts from there. And David Patrick court, who brings 25 years of actual living and operating in the African safari industry before he crossed to the supply side. His work now spans luxury safari lodges and award winning tented resorts across Africa, the Gulf, Middle east and the Far East. If you've ever wanted to sit at a table with people shaping outdoor hospitality worldwide, this is that table. In this first episode, we cover how each of them got here. Whether we're dealing with one global glamping market or a series of very different regional stories. What Covid really did to this industry, why tented structures might be perfectly positioned for an AI disrupted world, and um, what's still misunderstood about what these structures can actually do. This is Episode one of Titans of Tents let's get into it. Glamping and unique holiday rentals are surging in popularity with the growing desire of customers to book holidays that deliver an experience. They are also the new business of choice for those wanting to improve their work life balance. So how do you build a strong business like this that gives you the life you need and a great investment? I'm Sarah Riley and I want to share what I've discovered after being immersed in this industry for over 20 years to inspire you to find out more about what's going on. Welcome. This is the business of glamping and unique holiday rentals.

Speaker B: Foreign.

Speaker A: I want to share something with you. For years I've been guiding people to launch and grow their own unique glamping businesses and transformational retreat events. And honestly, I've lost count of the number of times someone said to me, this is great, but can you just do it for me? For a long time my answer has been no. But not anymore. Now I've built a team, a hand picked collective of trusted creative experts who understand our industry. We've come together to offer done for you marketing and um, business support so you can stop carrying it all on your own and start focusing on what you love most, creating beautiful experiences and lifelong memories for your guests. Because let's be honest, until now your team has been you and that's just not enough. You wear all the hats, manage all the customers and still need to figure out the ever changing world of marketing. Bookings dip algorithms, shift, competition gets fierce, you become less visible and it feels like you're carrying the world on your shoulders. But now you can expand your team without having to expand your payroll and finally get the help you need to take the pressure off and move forward. To find out more about the team you've always wanted but never had, head over to inspiredcourses.com team and learn about what inspired collective offers. And let's get some of those to do's off your plate. But be aware that we only have capacity to work with a handful of people. So if you're interested, be sure to get in touch. All right, back to the episode. First of all, I'm going to start with a few observations from me because I from the outside looking in, I see four founders, four companies and four countries and it's a really genuinely unique, multi voice perspective on the global supply side of tented structures around the world. And this does not exist anywhere else. And the other thing that I really love about what I see, what I observe about you guys is that you have a really strong competitive respect for each other. And this is second to none. In fact, I don't think I've even seen it anywhere else in the industry. And you are the go to experts in this space. And the fact that you actually really enjoy each other's company and you're really good friends is quite crazily unique. But the thing I find most interesting about all of you is that you are with a genuine desire to help raise standards across this industry, across this world. And that's rooted in your friendship, it's rooted in your honesty. You seem to have a guiding mission to try to help the industry and make it become better and achieve better, everyone in it to achieve better. So first of all, I'd really like to go around the table, as it were, around the room and allow you all to have a little time for introductions. So tell us the moment that you knew that this is what you were going to do and what your company looks like today. Brendan, let's start with you. Tell us the moment you knew this was what you were going to do.

Speaker B: I was in my 20s when I started working for myself, really, and I was in finance of all things prior to that, which I hated, to be honest with you. And a friend of mine said, come and help me rig some tents on a weekend. We were young and some fun to do. South Africa was changing. It had just opened up. There were these crazy movies being made here and events going on all the time. And it's a very exciting time to be back in South Africa. I'd been studying abroad, so I went out and we were slamming up pegs into the ground and putting up these big tents for movie sets of all things. And I kind of got the bug for being outdoors. And then I got an opportunity to build a tent, a custom tent for a project in Namibia for 20th Century Fox. And it had to be. It had to disappear in the background because they had no way to hide it. It was for the catering, uh, big catering team. So I had to camouflage it and it had to be taken up and taken down really quickly. And it was quite an exciting, interesting challenge. And I came up with this idea using horse riding pants fabric for dodgers, right. Which are stretchy but very tough to make this sort of stretchy tent thing. And that's how sort of stretch tents began. And it's a worldwide industry now. But at from that time that I spent in Namibia, I would say that was my kind of. I got my bug for Africa putting up tents there when I was 26 and building this kind of custom, really cool different tents. And I, yeah, that's really how it started. And then it evolved into, into wanting to combine design and experience and structure as one. And uh, my, my, my interest and, and, and business in, in this field evolved.

Speaker A: That's amazing. So Yuli, how about you?

Speaker C: In my case it was more of. After a banking career of 20 plus years further back I was even uh, in uh, I did apprenticeship as a landscaper. Then I went into fishing gear industry which is a hobby of mine. And then I always saw something else. So I saw all these entrepreneurs in the bank, all these CEOs and I thought, okay, that's kind of cool. I want to invest uh, in a company. So it was more entrepreneurial driven. And then I got connected through a friend that's also a client now, um, to our founder, Anike Van Wasberger. So the company's a bit older than when I joined 14 years ago and it was the entrepreneurial challenge to invest in a company and build it. And of course when I went to the show site, which is quite, uh, interesting story. So she bought a land and she want to build a house and then she want live uh, in a tent to see the construction of the house. And in essence she never built a house. She just built a better and better tent. And then people came and she entertained them for afternoon high tea and so on. And then Uma Terman came along somehow, uh, she was in this circles and she bought a tent for the Bahamas which is still there I think 18 years later. And so it became a business. And then she uh, did some installation for wealthy individuals and so on. And then I popped up and saw that showroom and I said to Annie, you're like a jewel in the jungle, so what's your website? And she's like, I don't have a website. I'm scared. People copy me. And then, and, and so I was an investment consultant in the bank and I figured that I really did the research and there were like four people talking to me about luxury tents in the span of three weeks. So I believe in those signs. And then I really looked into it and thought, okay, this is, I was thinking I invest. And we hired uh, a general manager, but the general manager didn't last. Uh, so somehow I had to jump in because I already put the money and then we started to build a company. So that's the brief story how I got this. This is more entrepreneurial. But I have to say, until today, I love the product I cannot sell if I'm not convinced about something. The tents are beautiful in all the shapes and forms that, that we all are doing. And of course they have evolved quite a bit. And in our case, we do more concepts with the tents. So we're being pushed by obviously China and all this. But that was how I came into this business, actually. I wanted to become an entrepreneur first and foremost. Could have been something else, but by. By sort of accidents and by. By signs from people talking with me about luxury tents. I ended up. And then the opportunity came And I think 14 years later, now we're here today, and I became the CEO of the company, but also because I put the money in, I couldn't go back.

Speaker A: So that's the story I often find actually, if you're on the right path, everything opens up towards you. And the fact that you believed in the product so much as well was the reason why you saw those signs and you followed that path. So how about you then, David?

Speaker D: One of the advantages I would assume of Africa is I started basically in the safari industry. I was an adventurous traveler since I can remember. I basically started a mobile M safari company and in Botswana, Okavango Delta. And the mobile safari company grew and that grew into developing basically getting property and actually having my own tented lodges in the Okavango Delta, creating boat station. And it. The interesting part was that the tents at that stage were from a total different entity. And I did not even actually understand the tented industry, but I understood the tourism industry, the hospitality side, the safari side. And also the other aspect that was the absolute love was the mobile safaris because you had to take a group of people into a piece of land in the middle of the jungles. And I'm talking across the static of Africa and arrive at a piece of land where there's nothing. And then basically put up eight tents for your 16 guests and cook for them in a period of a couple of minutes. And I'm not joking, we should put up eight tents in eight minutes. It's another story. But it was a great adventure. The sad part of having the tourism industry, there's this thing that affected every one of us in the world in tourism, was Covid. Covid kindly came and took it all away. So, uh, that was the end of that. But then one sits under a tree and you think to yourself, what do I know? I know tourism. I, uh, know safaris. I actually know tented camps. And that's how my marriage into the canvas intent group, Hans Bushtech, arrived Where Bushtech was looking at creating a turnkey division called Bushtech Creations. So basically holistically looking at a total different division in the group. And I thought myself, hang on, I know the tents, I lived in them, had them, m did them M. I could do this and basically put up my hand and said, pick me, I'm going to head this department and this division for you. And that's how, uh, my love grew from being a provider of, of services to the industry to now being a provider of the actual solution. And the funny part was it's supposed to be short term. Eight years later and here we are. Still.

Speaker A: That is so often the case, isn't it? When you find something that you really love, you end up being there so much longer than you ever expected. But yeah, wonderful. Thank you. And Tom, finally. Tom. Tom, we've known each other for many, many years. You've been a guest, uh, on the podcast quite some time ago. And yeah, what you do is incredible. All of you, what you do is incredible. But Tom, tell us a little bit about what you do and where you are.

Speaker E: Uh, yeah, okay. I guess from the company it was, it was born from a, uh, necessity to rebuild our resort. So strongest category 5 cyclone, typhoon, hurricane depending on where you are in the world, what you call it, to cross the Australian coast, directly hit Eco beach resort which was uh, timber, built on stumps, single and double room cabins and there was nothing left of it. The, the idea was born to how do we take the sister company, which was a construction company with remote construction skills, how do we take this and um, rebuild faster, efficiently, cost effectively and not have it blow down again? So we started designing the cabins and then we had the brain, brainy idea to start looking at tents. And uh, then we're like, what are we doing? We're crazy. We're supposed to be building it to withstand cyclones. But we started prototyping and came up with a structure first and then clattered it in canvas to make it look a bit prettier than just a steel structure. During that journey in prototyping, a client came past, saw it and we ended up building a 50 key resort in the middle of the Australian outback before we started building, rebuilding our own resort. And that's when the kind of the, the ball dropped and I was contacted. So just like uli, I think 14 years now, a little bit over 14 years I've been doing this. I was contacted out of nowhere, came from a very small town, knowing Carl, and he just asked me if I wanted to do this one day. I think within four weeks I was in Oman at a turtle reserve, building, building tents and got to uh, experience culture and fell in love with it right there. So I've been doing that ever since.

Speaker A: What's not to love? Goodness me, Tom, um, you really got the life, haven't you? You're traveling the world. All of you are traveling the world. It's just incredible really what you do, the fact that you're so good at it. And each of you provides different element of either, uh, design, how it looks, how you actually build it and bring it together, what your strengths are. Particularly Tom, you've created something that is withstanding very high winds and each of you are very unique. So you were all together at the Eco Resort Network recently in Thailand with Steph Curtis, Raleigh, and you were having a conversation there where you were talking about the global market. And one of the things you were talking about was whether you're dealing with one global market or a series of very different regional stories. So what do you think there? What's your view from your perspective, each of you? I mean, open discussion. Who'd like to start?

Speaker B: Well, I don't think it is that different. I think being outdoors, having that connection to nature is universal. I think different parts of the world, the pace has been different. It's all started in Africa, Southern and East Africa with the safari industry for sure. So we've had a bit of ah, a head start on other continents if you like. And that experience then just expanded into, I would say that the US and the European glamping thing is in a way its own thing. It was always very accessible to people. It was just nice camping, right. Luxury camping. Whereas Africa was always more real destination experience. You come in to see lions eat zebras and stuff. It's a whole different kettle of fish and people pay a pretty penny to do that. So there was always that budget to start making things look better. But I would say even Dave, let's go back to not even 15 years ago. There was no luxury class, beautiful tenor camps. They were all just basic kind of tents. And then you'd have lodges which are like thatch lodges.

Speaker D: Correct.

Speaker B: I remember building it was dumata in, in, in, in in the lin. And that was the first kind of luxury tinted lodge that was really in the whole wildernesses sort of ecosystem. And they, when they, when they first do it, they thought they were going to put it at, in their sort of adventure category. Very quickly that went into the ultra premium and then they started saying, listen, more of These and I think out of that southern African space we started from my experience anyway, we started seeing interest outside of Africa and we started seeing interest in the U.S. it's like the, the AM, the Amman Resort there, which we built and started building in 2016, some years after we'd established but. And from there I think that Amman resort was quite interesting. It was a huge postcard for us. The world's most luxurious tenor camp if you like. And from there the Middle east for us picked up and from there Four Seasons and Six Senses and all these high end brands trying to get to. So it was quite an interesting. In the luxury space, the kind of glamping space, something is not really something we serve so much. We don't really do that. It's far more design engineered turnkey type of solutions. Although over the years we've started kind of making solutions products for that are more readily accessible to people. But it's still quite upscale. But what I can say is today when I look around me and I look at my colleagues around the table here is that whether you're in Oman or whether you're in Indonesia or whether you're in Australia or Zambia, Mexico, Costa Rica, nowadays the demand for this outdoor experience, the demand for really well put together structures is universal. Now it's not specific Europe I'm still waiting for to see. I know stuff's happening there and I'm sure it will. I guess it's less, I guess it's just probably is very regulated and there's not as much space available to people and, but outside of that it's an industry now. It's a proper worldwide industry. Never mind China. I don't know how much work you guys have done in China, but my, I mean that is, that's our world on its um, own and largely served through its own markets. But it's big and Asia is so interesting. Uli's. Uli and Tom are uh, probably most entrenched out of the four of us in that part of the world. I like to spend a lot of time there and I'm starting to do work out there and I'm very happy to see the uptake and interest in Asia. Like four years ago, five years ago it seemed to me like maybe it's just generational, right? Like Asia, like being outdoors, getting sun on my beautiful curly white skin. No, thank you. I'd rather be under an umbrella that that whole thing has fundamentally shifted and I guess that just speaks to a worldwide interest in connecting with nature. That's what it is in style.

Speaker A: How about you, Tom? What do you think?

Speaker E: Yeah, Global or regional? I actually like something I read recently that Luca Franco posted on um, LinkedIn, which was before he starts any project, he has the luxury to do so, but he sees the place. If the place doesn't work, then the experience, the resort, the whole doesn't matter whether they're tents or cabins or anything that, that you have to be able to go to a place and say, wow, I think so. That doesn't matter whether it is in MENA regions or Pacific, South Pacific, Southeast Asia or Europe. I think so, yeah. I think from what we're seeing and what we're doing, we can be anywhere from the Bahamas to Mexico to Zambia, Australia and the Pacific and Southeast Asia. It's wherever there's demand and growing tourism needs and the space to do so. I think Brennan definitely nailed it on space. The whole idea of doing something like this isn't to be in a three by three hotel room. Uh, it's all about space. And in that sense you can be quite limited to finding that right property. So although it's a global thing that we're doing in many different parts of the world, it is not something that is we come across every day is I had this beautiful piece of land on the beach at least lately. Not that isn't on a 45 degree slope at least. Yeah, I think all regions and we should take geopolitics, uh, out of it because there is something we quite often forget about which is domestic tourism. And domestic tourism is very big business. I learned a lot about that during COVID uh, which David touched on. Some people didn't do too well out of COVID and some people did very well. But what I discovered in Covid was international tourism kind of dried up or at least inquiries and leads and conversations. But domestic tourism, because you couldn't travel outside that country actually boomed. So I think that's when I first twigged that all countries have domestic tourism. And sometimes you forget about that. But that will take away from how luxurious the end result's going to be because you look at the room rates and the room rate dictates what you can spend on the actual product or the full cost of building a resort.

Speaker B: Like that old Covid thing that domestic tourism is. It was almost an incubator for this, for taking this industry to the next level. So suddenly everybody was getting out and wanting that need. The ordinary man like me or you, we wanted to get out there and just experience stuff and yeah, sure, like ultra luxury Tourism was always quite unaffected by these things to some degree, to economic cycles and black swan events. But it was quite. I think that was a. It was a strangely necessary shock to the system for our industry. That's when this whole outdoor travel just went. That's when I started doing this.

Speaker D: It's actually interesting because it's one thing I brought up before, and this is always. Sometimes I'm, um, very careful with my words. But as bad as Covid was, it actually changed the better for tourism. And exactly what it did is it created an entire new industry that all of a sudden realized people don't want to go to the city anymore. The city people want to get out of the city. And that's where slash glamping, slash the luxury tents has just boomed.

Speaker C: So in our case, I can pretty much rely on Dave. It was about to take off before COVID and then, of course, it was a screeching halt and then it really take off. So our BAS were 22, 23, 24, where we could hardly cope with the, uh, production. And also in this region, and also the quality of tents is increasing. The concepts are getting more and more and the general interest. So I think it takes me about half the time to explain the product and make a sale than it used to be 14 years ago. And that's probably an underestimation. So that's, that's what we feel. And I also think it's there to stay. So the trends that were in there scraping up before COVID were accelerated through Covid, where people move out of town. I think we had one of the few resorts here in Bali that actually made money through Covid, because people just, even from then, even the local one, they were surprised on how many domestic tourists, like what Tom said that they had. They discovered something new. And I think it's there to stay because the experience itself, you know, it brought them over the line. And it's so much better than those concrete bunkers. I think they will struggle. But, uh, from that perspective, I think the trend that we have or we're in on the industry or the niche is going to grow.

Speaker A: It's really interesting because back in the day of the financial crash in 2008, 2009, there was soon after that a bit of research done on what industries survived that and what industries became stronger. And it turned out that camping and specifically glamping was one of the industries that seemed to come out better from a result of that terrible time. And what I'm hearing you say is very similar from the Pandemic a terrible time but actually glamping did okay as an industry coming out of it. And so I have to ask the question, we are going into a new time of. There's lots of question marks. We don't know where this is going, we don't know what's going to happen. AI, what do you see could be a potential outcome of people becoming more overwhelmed with AI, maybe losing their jobs through AI, maybe seeking places to escape the technology. Do you see this as being another catalyst to the industry? Anyone else got any thoughts over that?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's quite an interesting one. I had a number of conversations about that also with my 16 year old son. Where's this heading? And I cannot think of many things that will employ more people or better. But I have a feeling that if it turns out that somehow governments can keep a lot of people in with money. We call in German buk. I don't know what the English term is. Eventually people will have more time to travel and it could be that they will spend three months in Sumba a year maybe buying a unit in one of a tented resort or a cabin or a prefab house and work from there. And they do this every year. So there will be more of this kind of communities. It will be more even with Starlink now and the people might can do more with AI agents in the same time. Right. So what I keep hearing also from friends that they have an AI board now and just everyone instead of five people they need three. And then what I see in our company, the first we have a number of architects, interior designers and they're not coming to me saying we want to use AI but they'll have to. And uh, we put someone in charge now and it's quite rapidly. I just saw a video before I came to this thing that looks so amazing, so real time. We really think the thing is built already and we make this now in, in a fraction of the time. But coming back to your question, so I do think as one of the the industries oh net net on this AI thing I could well have or imagine a scenario where we would actually would benefit. And one of the things I think that also the industry is looking at maybe to create more tent brands or tented operators. So our industry is evolving right from making tents in our case to making concepts to actually build our own resort or have a service that we manage people's resorts. So I think that's where it's kind of evolving. And I uh. And you can go also the off grid Part of it. I, uh, had a meeting yesterday with them and what they have now they can offer an off grid and waste management and all of that on places that were not affordable a couple of years ago. It's quite impressive. So, yes, I think AI net net. I hope or I believe actually that our industry will be beneficial. And as a last to say, if I go to a resort and I spend three or four or five hundred dollars a night, even in five or ten years, I want to be served by a person at the reception and the waiter and have a joke with stuff and whatnot and not by some robo. So I think there will still be, maybe people even pay a premium. There might be a robot the back doing the laundry and God knows what, they're in the kitchen, I don't know. But I think people will still have. And there has to be places where people are being employed. And this could be one of the industries which, especially in villages. So the staff ratio on a resort that we have is maybe 2 to 1 or 3 to 1. So there's a lot of people employed in the wedding resorts. We deliver the tents here. I think they have 168 employees. Another one is 145. You know, there's a lot of people and it's kind of high. There will be less people. Yes. But even in 10 years, I think there will be a high number of people being employed in this industry.

Speaker A: David, I can see you nodding your head there. Tell me what you're thinking.

Speaker D: Yes, the aspect of AI is that there will be basically a growth and uh, enhancement on design, your engineering aspect, whatever, but from a manufacturer, because as ourselves, as a manufacturer, we do joke even today about it, we still want to see AI manufacture a tent because it's not a dead stock standard thing. Because when it comes to bespoke tense, the design and the client changes all the time. So the AI component can help on the one side, but we see it actually enhancing employment on the other side. Because everything's not just done machine driven. It's basically hand cutting, it's stitching, it's certain angles that we do not see AI doing that I'm um, using the word yet. So we actually see the advantage in the design aspect, your marketing aspect, your promotion stuff. Yes. AI push a button, give me a brochure. Boom, there's some brochure. But that brochure can create an opportunity where the factory gets fuller and then create a job credit situation where we get more. So we can enhance the staff complement to complement the AI pushing from the other side. It's like a sausage machine. So we actually see that happening. And I think also, um, no disrespect to the wonderful continent of Africa. Africa's Africa. And it's. Whenever we also go into any of the countries, especially Africa, one of the key things of installation, of resort is job creation. So we always. It's always local workforce and the projects are always based on job creation, especially in rural areas. And there is no AI guy that's going to come around walking through a swamp. And all my colleagues on this panel know some sites. Are you walking through mud, water, swampy, whatever areas, that robot, one step into that swamp, he's going to sizzle and he's not going to go any further.

Speaker E: But if there is, David, the robots can go to that one and I'll do the Bahamas project.

Speaker B: Yeah, I will keep your eye out on what's happening in China, though, because I guarantee you they'll be the first guys who will have a team of robots building tents and making. Yeah, I mean, the making of the tents, to me, with all due respect to good manufacturers out there, is absolutely. It's also on the size of the industry. If you're producing huge volumes of things, robotics, of course it can do the job, but you need volume. And when you do morbis podcasts and stuff, maybe not you can have certain tools and whatever, but I just kind of feel like, what is the industry survey thing? We're not serving robots, we're serving humans. And the reason, the whole point of glamping, luxury, tinted adventures, new tent architecture, whatever, the whole point of it is to provide a human experience for people to connect to nature, not for robots to connect to nature. And so to Uli's point, I'm with Uli. I really feel like a natural evolution for our. Maybe not all of us, but, uh, certainly where I'm looking at is we design incredible stuff, engineer design incredible stuff. And it's a real labor of love putting something out with all kinds of interesting challenges. Remote sites are just fundamentally, there's no comparison to buildings up being in the city or even just next door in the country. There is no comparison. There's none. Your risks are fundamental risk profiles fundamentally different. The installation needs very specialized kind of people. You know, they're doing. The materials need to be durable and the engineering needs to be steady and reliable for our clients to get a return. So in doing that and building something like that, it just seems to me if we could do that for ourselves the way we want to do it the way I like designing and the way my team can put their passion into uh, it and teaming up with the right partners. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker E: Tom.

Speaker B: Started out in that space, right? You built your own lodges. I guess it's got its own challenges, hospitality itself. But there's definitely uh, a kind of end to end opportunity there. And I think there's also this whole shift in tourism from, from day of our era. Uli, I'm keeping you out of that. Tom, I still think you're a young gun, but we, it was two weeks a year, uh, get, go out to the hotel, uh, maybe at the kids. With you it was a bottle of champagne and whenever. And that was your holiday. What's happened since COVID is that the Blair is morphed into where living and working and playing and experiencing yourself is becoming one thing. So I almost see that tourism is changing into a new way of living, if you could put it that way. And I think we've got the perfect platform to make that happen. The sort of quasi residential experiential concept is community based concepts are really interesting. Um, and it's still early in that space. Like right now, if you were to talk to a big hotel group and they may say to you, yeah, residential. In my mind, if I think of residential, I think of a wall that thick and a ruthless big and it's home and whatever. But much the same way several years ago, Uli, when you'd have to spend twice as long explaining to somebody what the benefits are, what you're doing, I think that's going to shift too. So there's a really interesting spaces to explore out there. The sort of convergence of living and working and playing. This is a new way of living. Wouldn't it be nice to spend six months of your year or three months of your year pottering, uh, around in your wild space with your sarong on and doing your work and you've got a community of people around you and living healthily and engaging in adventure and active tourism. I just think the word tourism is almost pathetic in a way. Yeah.

Speaker A: So Tom, as the young gun of this luxury tent family, what are your views on this from uh, I guess

Speaker E: this perspective is AI is definitely helping us to give information faster to the person that is wanting the information. But at the same time I'm finding myself a lot busier with people wanting connection with someone real. So there's a lot more video teams, meetings, zoom meetings. There's a lot more even in person meetings. Can you please fly across the globe to come and sit down and have a meeting. You can do it as a teams meeting, but they want to meet you and they want to absorb your passion and experience. And depending on who this client is and what their background is, they may built a lifetime of wealth in manufacturing something they know nothing about, tourism and experience and where to start. Uh, and yes, you can chatgpt if you want, but I think so. Uh, that's what I'm finding. I'm finding it's making my life a lot easier. It's getting. Show me a photo of your site and let's do a render. That used to take three, four weeks to get back. That cost seven or $8,000. Now I can get it back to you in a couple of hours. So things like that, it's definitely easier. But I'm definitely finding just like people want to do when they go to these places, they want to disconnect or reconnect. And I think that's what we're finding anyway. We're finding that we're doing a lot more in person meetings and a lot more of these video type meetings to deal with real people. And I think that'll continue to grow.

Speaker A: Do you think that's being fueled by the fact that people are seeing so much AI content and they're seeing people produce so much professional looking but not realistic content that they're concerned about what's real and what's not. And so in order for them to feel more confident about that, they're wanting to see you in person, they're wanting to speak in person and to actually really tangibly touch and feel the structures or at least test your knowledge and test your company's knowledge. Is that something you think that is being uh, evolving as a result of the AI so people can't fake it until they make it and they're just testing you as a company. Is that something that you think?

Speaker C: There's always a counter trend like what Tom mentioned. So we have not less since this AI came up or we don't have actually less meeting in person. And we built a new show site for the prefab housing and we're going to build one for the ten to Concepts next event. I think people, yeah, uh, even myself, you know, sometimes you get so much uh, information overflow. Right. You don't even know anymore what is true, what is not true. So the real thing to meet, people to touch, that's the counter trend to me. And I always say in our industry nobody will buy, not even for 100k or 300k tents, unless they have seen one or they talk to myself or our sales guys or engineers and so on. It's a product that is still, until today, needs handholding and they got to see the real thing very rarely. Some, it's not that you click on some, I don't know, website and you say, oh, two tenths, five by seven and a half with interior. And you never talk to an. It's impossible because also of course, all the other things, the technical, the delivery, the mep. And so the product itself brings a complexity. But yeah, again, I think that's not going to disappear. You might can create leads, yes, with beautiful renders, beautiful videos, but at the end of the day, the real product is a must and the real people is a must too.

Speaker B: I think the AI, uh, gives us an advantage in that allows, like you were just saying, it's a complex delivery. Putting those stuff together is. It's a cross functional, multidisciplinary, um, design and hardware and human thing. It's a deeply human experience, not just the end experience where you're inviting guests to do it. And people respond to human creativity, which is flawed and not perfect. And that's why it's so great. It's unique. It's not. I have often come up against guys who are putting out these amazing renders and probably achievable now that what we're doing with our engineering is insane with AI, really incredible. But you still got to make it happen. And that requires human ingenuity. And I dare to say it requires our flaws. It requires that in a weird way. So we just. You need to be able to look at things, um, in an unlogical, um, way sometimes to create a great design or to think out of the box about how to do something. And so it's inside our space, but I think it does certainly facilitate things. But everybody's doing it, so I don't think we're going to work any less that I don't think I don't see it because competition's competition and your neighbor's got a better tool and you got to get that tool. And so I don't think that's going to change, but I do feel it'll give us opportunity to get more and more into what our customers want, which is that, uh, just that thing that a picture doesn't really show when you stand in front of that tent that Tom's got behind him. Right. Or that Dave's got behind him. We stand in front of it. It has a whole different Perspective to the human eye, it's not. It actually feels grander and bigger and more solid. And, you know, it's. The senses are kind of all brought together in one. And that's not something that a robot gets, I don't think. Anyway, we're not sending to robots, we're sending to people. And look at the creases on Dave's tent behind him.

Speaker D: Can't even fix that.

Speaker B: Yeah. What is that? It's. Why do we like that? What is it about that we like? There's something very primal about being outdoors that is in our biology. It's not just. It's not just contrived magazine words. We really just. We respond to it very well. So I think our industry is healthy and I think that AI is a fantastic tool, but it's a deeply human execution and a deeply human experience to go and stand these tests. So it's got great legs.

Speaker A: So one thing I've noticed as one of the co directors of the Glamping Show America's conference, is that there are individuals who are selling their software companies to big companies like Microsoft, and they are moving that investment into this luxury tented hospitality space. So it's a really interesting shift. So obviously those people in the industry, in the software industry, are also seeing the strength within this industry. So I think that bodes really well and it's very reassuring at a time when things are quite. We don't know what's happening, we don't know where we're going with it, but there are signs and signals that we are in the right space, which is fantastic. So, David, I'm, um, really interested in was there a time for you, and this is an open question to everyone as well, what was there a time for you, specifically when you didn't need to explain what you did quite so much at, uh, a dinner party. So people started really understanding what the industry was about, what it meant, what it looked like, what it, you know, maybe if they could invest into it as an individual, as a business, whatever. Was there a time when you just had. You didn't have to explain it anymore, Suddenly people got it.

Speaker D: That's interesting, because dinner parties, and I, uh, guess it also depends on the diversity of the friends who one hangs around with. But at, uh, dinner parties, before I could answer a question, approach from anyone, and if one of my daughters was with me and the question was, what do you do? Or what are you about? My kids would answer and says, he's a tent salesman. That's it. Okay. Our dad sells tents. And then immediately the response was oh, uh, we will be going camping the weekend. Do you. And you just shake your head. But the tourism, hospitality safari industry and it is very powerful in Africa is that you can clearly see that. And we've all touched on this aspect that uh, people now understand. And there's this wonderful word that has come up and it's now stuck. Glamping. When you mention glamping, people get it immediately. And I think Brendan spoke touched on this prior to Covid and at 15 years plus minus a year ago there was this understanding of luxury tent. But media, social media even I think the strongest is your tented environment is now world known. So at a dinner party and brands it is interesting is people re associate also yourself with a brand. So Bushtech is a strong brand. But at the same dinner party you'll be oh, so you also that tent house structures people or ecostruck. We've seen it or escape. So it is interesting how our brands and I use the word our brands will get discussed at the same dinner party because the benefits I'll think of this industry has grown so much that the informed traveler understands. And this is the other part. Informed travelers rather book into a luxury tented resort than they would into a brick and mortar hotel.

Speaker A: And Tom, why do you think that is? Is that something that you've seen as well on your part of the world, your side of the world?

Speaker E: Yeah, it's education, definitely. I think Uli said earlier, Maybe only spends 50% of his time and that's overstaying. Probably talk. It really depends on the client and their education level on the subject. But I would say on a normal conversation to a client, I'd probably talk about the tent 10% of the time of that hour conversation because it really is. I don't know what your business plan is. You want a big one, a small one, a long one, a square one, you want a big bathroom, a small. That's irrelevant. That's part of your business plan, your budget and what you want to spend per key.

Speaker D: Ah.

Speaker E: And then so we shift almost directly to Tell me your plan, tell me where you're at. Have you seeked the necessary permitting processes or approvals or environmental studies or. Because it really is the easy part, at least for them for us, obviously not so much because especially if they want to design something new and different and we got to spend the time to do that. But for the client that's the easy part. It's like, how much is that one? Yeah, I can afford that one. Because I'm going to get that much per night. So that I find is very refreshing compared to the initial, say, three, four, five years.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And, Yuli, you've got some quite interesting views around the terminology glamping, the word glamping, even though, as David was just saying there, it really helped people to understand what it meant and what you provide. But you've got some thoughts around that.

Speaker C: You share that briefly, of course, initially, as I'm from Europe, the. The term tent or glamping is cheap on the floor and so on, and we had to do. It's been evolved. I think the people that are looking to buy something like that, they have done the homework and they know, of course, the differences. But then the ground, I mean, the folks that are still going to Campra, they don't necessarily know. So they maybe never seen actually a tent with an AC in it or a, uh, toilet and a shower. They don't even know that this exists. So what we came to was tented villas. And we did spend hours and hours thinking of something else. And at the moment you say villa, of course, it has another price tag. And in our region, of course, there's tons of villas in Bali and those places, so that's how we got around. But, yeah, I had longer discussions with our founder back then because he hated the word glamping. And then every time people wrote, the inquiry said, I'm looking to build a glamping resort. And then she got angry and I'm like, yeah, okay. Yeah. But also when they search, they look for tents. We just can't get around. A, uh, butcher is a butcher. How do you. How do you. It's very hard and we still struggle with that. So in our case, it was tented villas. Then it's prefab luxury cabins or prefab housing for the gmodular. And that's that. That's what we did.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's a difficult one. I know it's a debate. It's definitely up for discussion as to what would be a better term. But in terms of the user, the guest, the customer, they all understand what glamping is. So, Brendan, what's the one thing you think is about tented structures and the industry that you're in that is still misunderstood by people, even those people who are buying your products. Have you seen anything that is still questionable in terms of what they understand about it?

Speaker B: Few things this may apply to me particularly, or not, but more and more, uh, where, in fact, almost always now, we have to design structures, to meet, to be code compliant. This is an interesting, very interesting area, an area of engineering, largely architecture too. But, uh, code compliancy basically means that it can be signed off and permitted and so forth. But code's not largely designed for traditional buildings. And so code is not really caught up with lightweight structure. The Germans and the French and the British are, um, probably, maybe, I would say the Germans actually mostly are, uh, kind of world leaders in lightweight engineering. And out of there emanated great visionaries like Friarto and Jurgen Heineken and all the amazing individuals who created these really cool tensile textile architecture, what we call new tent architecture now. But to understand that this thing can perform like a house, like a building, and you have the allure of a, Of a tent, is take some explaining and, uh, without getting too technical with people, without getting into being the nerd engineer that I am and explaining to people that things can perform in a certain way. That takes some understanding, right? It takes some understanding that a thin envelope structure, something that's less than a millimeter thick, can withstand hurricanes if it's designed properly and has to be sometimes. Or you can govern it and manage it like that. But that whole performance piece obviously takes some conversation. Tell us about how these things perform. Now, it's fine when you're dealing with somebody on the other side who's fairly technical. Maybe you're dealing with a QS or you're dealing with an architect, an experienced architect. But when you're just dealing with your average punter out there or your investor, uh, who's got maybe a short attention span and he just wants to know, or she just wants to know, can it do the job to persuade them that they like it and they want it, but they want to be pulled across the line. It's obviously easier if you've got a, uh, great track record of projects with lovely brands attached to them. That helps. And we're probably all fortunate that we have that, that track record. But still, even today, I've had clients in the States come to us and they insist on being able to go and visit something that is exactly like what they want in exactly the same kind of territory. Maybe we don't have something like that there, but I'll just say to them it's not relevant. We designed a code, it gets signed by an engineer record and permitted. It's all there. Go down to Amangiri and go and visit Amangir if you want to get a sense of. Great. It's the same thing. We're just going to make it Smaller for you. In a sense it's the same technology. People who aren't say, technically minded, it's. There's still a little bit of a uh, of education involved in understanding what non traditional building structures, how they behave, their advantages, their disadvantages. Not everything's perfect right now. That's. That to me is something it doesn't come across my desk every day though more and more today people understand it. They get, these are well engineered things. Lots of people have got them up. All these brands are doing it. It must work.

Speaker E: I do think the building code might sound boring, but I think you could do a whole segment on building codes, meeting building codes and performance. What do you want it to perform to? You could go on and on because it's getting harder. The authorities want to know what you're building. You have to get the building permits. It has to be certified and engineered and uh, rightly we want our clients, guests around user to be safe at night when it's uh, a windy night or there's a storm or rain or whatever it is that it's getting hit with coastal environments.

Speaker B: Interestingly, you would think that I think there was this period of time when the opportunity for tender structures to get them in there quickly and start earning, start generating revenue for your project was a clear advantage. It still is a clear advantage. It's still relative. But it's become more and more regulated. One would hope not. But it has become more and more regulated, which is fine, it's the language we speak. But I think actually where the challenges come in play is less around building codes of permitting. That's just an engineering exercise. The challenges are uh, more on getting entitlements on your land and in more sophisticated markets. Can I get an environmental impact assessment done inside 12 months? Can I get my entitlements in California inside 5 years? Can I get done? Because suddenly then the advantage of doing something lightweight didn't become what is for the experience. It's not necessarily for the execution speed because in five years you can design anything. So there are those other pieces there to consider. I think the thing comes down to ultimately is at a land investment perspective, the luxury of camping is the land. It's a luxury. When you're in the city, you don't have that luxury. So your luxury is inside four worlds pretty much okay, and the courtyard and the pool. But when you're in the wild, that is God's country, whatever you want to call it, right? That is unreplicable. Every view you have is totally unique and it cannot be replicated. And then what happens inside that space and um, that is the real luxury and we just there to provide a platform for people to experience that and a really cool one. So I think what's quite interesting and we talk to investors because of course our clients are largely. It'd be B2B really mostly. Sure there's private clients and so forth but when people are. It's interesting to see how the funding is working in our industry. That could be an interesting podcast. I think what, what's happening with the funding in this industry. Having a piece of land attached to a. An investment is that's got value and can be whatever the terms you use in different countries, mortgage, bonded, whatever that sold off at a value, an increase in value. That is of course any investors are particularly interested in I would think particularly for example in Asia that's a big thing right? In the States leasing is easier. Maybe it's M6 to 1/2 a dozen than the other. But I think that the land that we the great piece of property has never changed, has it? David, you said location is everything and more and more now a couple of hours outside of a city is a very. Another very interesting space. Not necessarily hugely remotely where you can access this kind of thing on a weekend. Those properties of course worldwide are starting to see big booms. I'm um, sure we all know any secondary or primary city getting within a kind of couple hours radius of a city within the winelands or whether you're in the orchards or just nature, um adventure cycling. This kind of. These kind of properties are very interesting and I would imagine their land value has gone up. So this is an interesting tie between property value and what we do and how that might converge. It's different in Okavango Delta. Can't own the property. It's all community owned. Uh, concessions, concessions. But that's not the case in many parts of the world.

Speaker D: Exactly on that point. 45 minutes from where I'm sitting. Depends on how fast your job could do in 40 is a big five game reserve. It's just up the road. So those pieces of property are privately owned, each piece and there's many private owners all in this big group, Big five Reserve. So they've seen the value and exactly like you say, you put up a couple of tents on their property with and each one is looking straight into the absolute unbelievable wilderness and you got the big five. So the city, we go back to local tourism or whatever. So the city all of a sudden for weekends you can imagine with Respect to the rest of the world, where there's no big five. In 45 minutes, I could be sitting under by a fire in a tent, sipping a good South African wine and watching the big five. So those unique opportunities create the growth and it comes back to our industry because each one that gets a little piece sees the next door neighbor. I also want a tent, which is

Speaker B: not just, it's not. We're obviously African files, right? That's our home ground. But I spend a lot of time in Asia, uh, in Thailand. I have a little farm up there

Speaker D: and

Speaker B: that we can get away to go into a beautiful part of the world with incredible bird life. Maybe then there's no tigers anymore, but there's certainly. It's still a stunning piece of nature which is fertile and fruits growing everywhere and the birds are going crazy. And there's an incredible community experience in these places, little villages. I know all the locals, they come

Speaker C: over, uh,

Speaker B: they come do some work with us or they come to sell something or come just have a chat and they come into the forest to go and pick mushrooms on the weekends. This sort of thing doesn't all have to be super high end, super remote. Amazing that. But just for general getaways and also just for spending a month out there at a time, uh, our industry presents that opportunity much more so than used to. How many people have got private lands, are, uh, buying three, four, five, six, seven cabins or putting up. We're doing crazy residential stuff at the moment. That is Manobili's into that too. Super luxury private residences. And now we're getting into the branded residence side, which is real interesting in our space. Wait to see how that, that evolves. But the point is the demand is there for, for it beyond the original idea of just one CEO, uh, going on holiday.

Speaker A: So I'm aware that David has to go because he's got to travel now. So I think maybe what we realize that there's so much to talk about, there's so many topics to talk about. So what I'd love to ask you is will you come back and maybe we do a bit of a series where we talk about different issues facing the industry from your perspective and we dive deep into things like permitting and everything else that you've mentioned today. Is that, uh, something that you'd be prepared to do?

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker A: Wonderful. I'm gonna. Thank you for your time, David. If you have to leave, please leave. It's really so great to see you all. Thank you so much for being here today. And um, yeah, to the listeners. I will leave all of your contact details, your website, everything else that people can see who you are, see what you do, get in touch with you directly and follow up in any way that they want to. But thank you so much for your time today, and I, uh, really look forward to our next conversation.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker E: Wanna talk about look forward to? Yeah. They're doing wonderful.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, everyone.

Speaker E: Bye.

Speaker A: Uh.