Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Glamping Hub CEO Ruben Martinez (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What about number of travelers? Are we looking mostly at couples traveling or are we looking at group travel?

Ruben Martinez: Our demographic is between the ages of 25 and 42. There really is something for everybody. We do get a lot of families and couples, and ladies weekend and solo trips. Really because of the variety of accommodations, you can find something at your price point within your area.

You could glamp every weekend and do something completely different. You can break the bank if you want to or you can spend $40 a night. There’s a wide variety of new glampers out there every day.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. Your business model is the usual percentage of the price point?

Ruben Martinez: Yes, we take a site service fee for the guest who’s booking. Then we also charge the host for any successful bookings. It is lower than the industry average. That’s why a lot of hosts will book exclusively with us. 

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about competition a little bit. You have some overlap with Airbnb. Are your hosts also listing on Airbnb and other vacation rental sites?

Ruben Martinez: For a company like Airbnb, they are extremely successful, but they’re focused on the cities. That’s something that we’re not interested in. Our host will list on multiple other platforms. A good portion of them don’t. They’ll just list with us.

What we find is our host prefers our customer service. You can talk to a human being seven days out of a week. They like our customer service. In the US and other markets that are growing at a rapid pace, there really isn’t another niche market like us that focuses on outdoor accommodations.

Sure, some of these other booking platforms will take a piece of that just because of their size. They also run the risk of disenfranchising these small business owners because this type of business is very personal for these hosts. They’ve devoted life savings. This has been a dream of theirs. They want to partner with a company that takes that seriously.

Sramana Mitra: Got it. You described quite a large team. How does the team work and what functions are where?

Ruben Martinez: Denver has a mixture of PR, business development, finance, and operations. A majority of it is based in Spain. We’ve got a 12-person technical team. We’ve got our marketing team and our customer support team.

The majority of the operations is in Spain. That’s worked out well for us. I believe we’ve got individuals from over 14 countries. I think that’s added to the very unique culture that we have. This is a global business. We’re not just doing bookings in Colorado or New York; we’re doing bookings all over the world.

It’s important that we have a staff that is sensitive to that and understands it. We’re just better, as a whole, when we have people from different backgrounds and cultures.

Sramana Mitra: What is the total amount of financing that you raised?

Ruben Martinez: We have raised $4 million.

Sramana Mitra: What are you comfortable disclosing about revenue level? I know you’re above $5 million because we have that as a cut-off. 

Ruben Martinez: We have close to 700,000 visitors every month. That’s growing at a rapid rate.

Sramana Mitra: Great. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Glamping Hub CEO Ruben Martinez
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