The Zoning Hack for Finding the Perfect Glamping Property

Need to find a property for your glamping business? This week’s Glamping Insider is for you. Not in the market for a property? Skip to Idea of the Week.

I think most people have it backward when they’re looking for a glamping property.

The traditional approach is to find your dream piece of land first and worry about the zoning and permitting later. In my view, this is completely inefficient and a recipe for heartbreak.

You could spend months looking for properties and doing due diligence, only to find out that your county zoning code prohibits glamping, or its permitting procedure makes it damn near impossible to get anything approved. 

So, what’s the solution?

I call it the zoning-led approach to finding a property (hardly rolls off the tongue, I know). Here’s how it works.

Step 1 - Identify Your Geographic Area

Before you start worrying about zoning, you should have a rough idea of where you’d ideally like to start your glamping business. This should be a fairly large area containing several counties, municipalities and/or townships.

How do you identify your area? There are lots of potential inputs here. 

For one, the market needs to be right. There’s no point starting a glamping business in a place where nobody wants to visit. Assessing a market warrants its own newsletter, but at this point you should be considering all the usual stuff, such as distance from major metropolitan areas, annual visitor numbers, major attractions, level of competition, etc.

Your chosen area also needs to make sense for you. If you plan on being on-site frequently, it’s best to choose somewhere within driving distance of where you live.

There’s no harm in browsing Zillow at this stage either, as you’ll need to make sure there’s enough properties of interest to make it worth your while.

Step 2 - Identify the Counties Within Your Chosen Area

This is pretty easy to do. Load up an interactive mapping tool like ArcGIS and add a “counties” layer. Identify the relevant counties and head to their planning department websites through a quick Google search. It’s on these websites that you’ll find the zoning codes.

In some places, like Pennsylvania, it’s generally the townships that make the planning decisions, rather than the counties. You can easily identify the relevant townships by calling around the counties or doing a bit of Googling.

Step 3 - Do Your Research

This is where things start to get nerdy.

The zoning code is where you’ll find out if a glamping development might be allowed within the county or township. You need to find a permitted use in the code that your development will qualify under.

You’ll almost never see “glamping” listed as a permitted use, but you may find that “campgrounds”, “resorts”, or other similar uses are allowed. 

The code will have a “Definitions” section. where you can see how the county defines the various uses, and this will help you figure out whether your glamping project may qualify. For example, some counties define “Campgrounds” traditionally, whereas others will allow the owner to have yurts or domes up year round.

Once you’ve identified a suitable use type, you’ll need to find out which zoning districts that use is permitted in. Most of the time, you can look this up quickly in something called a table of uses or a use matrix. Typically, glamping-related uses such as campgrounds will only be permitted in rural districts.

I recommend reading the zoning code yourself so you have a thorough understanding of the language it uses. This will allow for more informed conversations with county officials if you need to ask them questions. It is possible to expedite the process by calling the county directly and asking them if your proposed development might be permitted, but the quality of answers will vary depending on who answers the call.

Regardless of how you do it, you should aim to know the following:

• Whether your proposed glamping development matches a use type contained within the code

• Which zoning districts the appropriate use type is permitted within

• What the permitting process looks like for said use type

Rinse and repeat this process for every county or township you’re considering, and you’ll find yourself with a robust set of criteria with which you can commence your property search.

Step 4 - Start Filtering

Let’s say you’ve assessed five counties. Two of those don’t contain any glamping-related uses in their code, so you rule them out, leaving you with three.

Of the three counties remaining, one county has a really stringent permitting process which requires a public hearing, whereas the other two only require administrative approval. Knowing this, you choose to focus on the two counties with an easier approval procedure.

You now have a smaller list of counties, and you know which zoning districts within those counties your project is likely to be permitted in. From here, you can ask your realtor to only send you properties that fit these criteria.

By following this method, you’ll know that every property you look at at least stands a reasonable chance of being approved for a glamping development. The land-finding process becomes a whole lot more efficient, and you’ll save yourself the heartbreak of falling in love with a property only to find permitting is impossible!

Want to Follow the Method but Don’t Want to Do the Work?

Glampitect North America uses this method for our Multi-County Zoning Screening service. Simply give us your list of counties, and we’ll write a report for you that narrows down the counties and zoning districts you should be targeting. It costs just $997 per county.

We have extremely limited spots available for this service. If you’d like to learn more, simply reply to this email.

💡Idea of the Week - Happy Hour

If you’re the kind of person that loves to meet your guests and provide warm, hands-on hospitality, you should consider hosting a glamping happy hour.

I got this idea from Donna Vaughan of Hawley Farm Glamping. When her latest batch of guests arrive, she welcomes them with drinks round the campfire. The guests get to know her and their fellow glampers better, and it leads to a ton of positive testimonials for Hawley Farm.

This won’t be for everyone, but if you want your glamping business to have a community feel, a happy hour might be for you.

🎧️ On The Pod

We had two of the best glamping operators in the game on the Unique Hospitality Podcast this week.

Blake Smith of Walden Retreats and Bygnal Dutson of Open Sky joined us for a wide-ranging discussion, covering everything from strategies for bootstrapping a glamping startup to the importance of nature to the glamping experience.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Youtube.