Glamping Tents vs. Wigwam Glamping Pods

Interested in starting a glamping business? You’ve got good taste! Of course, as a glamping franchise we’re biased, but the numbers don’t lie: the glamping industry is booming right now. The global glamping market was valued at £1.36 billion in 2020, with expected annual growth of 14% between 2021 and 2028.

Whether you’re looking at glamping as a farm diversification idea or a completely new career path, one of the first questions you’ll have to answer is which kind of accommodation you want to offer your guests.

To help you figure out the right option for you, we’ve put together the guide below comparing various types of glamping tents to wooden camping pods. Let’s dive right in.

What Are Glamping Tents?

This is often what first-time glampers think of when thinking of a glamping site: white canvas tents covered in fairy lights, furnished with boho-chic cushions and blankets for a cosy bedroom vibe in the middle of the forest.

Glamping tents like bell tents, safari tents, yurts and teepees are all very popular as glamping accommodation worldwide, but how do they hold up against each other and wooden camping pods? Let’s take a look at the two most common glamping tent styles:

Bell Tents

Bell tents are tall, large canvas tents with a circular base and a wooden pole in the centre holding it up. They provide good ventilation through the summer months and with proper upkeep, stay waterproof, with rain drops easily sliding off their sloped sides. 

However, these sloped walls also mean there’s less usable space inside. The central pole further limits your options for configuring the setup inside your tents. They’re also usually on the smaller side and thus better suited for couples’ glamping breaks than family holidays.

Bell tents are quite popular due to their affordability, easy setup and quintessential “glamping look”, with lots of ways to make the interiors look dreamy and comfortable.

That being said, their canvas construction doesn’t make them suitable for four season glamping breaks in the UK, where weather is famously unpredictable. There are also typically no windows, so once you close the door, you’re visually sealed off from your natural surroundings.

There’s also no heating, insulation or option to hook them up to running water. This means that your guests will have to give up some more of their creature comforts in a bell tent than they would in some other forms of glamping accommodation.

Bell tents may be suitable for your glamping business if you only plan on hosting visitors in the summer or for events like weddings on your estate, and you need something cost-effective and easy to set up.

Safari Tents

Safari tents are rectangular tents that come in a wide variety of sizes. Like the name suggests, tents like these were originally used on the African plains for safari holidays, though they can now be found on glamping sites across the world.

They’re constructed of canvas as well as a number of wooden poles that support the walls, making them more durable and robust than many other types of glamping tents. 

Unlike bell tents, the whole footprint of a bell tent is usable, and the rectangular shape can be easier to furnish. You can also find very large safari tents able to accommodate as many as eight people, some of which will even have separate bedrooms inside .

Many safari tents feature things like wooden decking and wooden frames, making them something between bell tents and glamping pods or cabins in terms of structural integrity and permanence. This also means that they’re pricier and take more work to set up than bell tents.

Safari tents do however have many of the same problems as bell tents when it comes to glamping in the UK. While you can find safari tents with some form of a heating system such as a wood-burning stove, they’re not very well insulated and therefore aren’t suitable for habitation through the coldest months in the UK.

Like bell tents, safari tents could be the right option for you if you don’t want to host guests year round. However, they’re not as easy to set up or take down and you’ll need the help of at the very least a handyman to set them up, meaning they’re a little more permanent structures than bell tents.

What Are Glamping Pods?

Glamping pods are sturdy structures constructed of solid timber. They’re insulated and heated, making them excellent for glamping breaks in fall and winter as well as the warmer seasons. You stay warm and dry in the strongest of winds, the heaviest of rain storms and coldest of winter nights.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to types of glamping pods out there, from modest, warm wooden structures with few to no bells and whistles to luxury glamping accommodation for 6+ people, complete with bathrooms, kitchens and hot tubs.

Constructed from sustainable solid timber, wooden glamping pods need very little maintenance. Their sturdier construction doesn’t necessarily make them all that difficult to set up, though. 

For example, Wigwam® cabins arrive ready-assembled, so all you need to do in preparation is make sure the spot you want to place your pod is flat and dry and, if you’ve chosen ensuite glamping pods with running water, that you can hook them up to mains electricity, water and drainage.

Wooden glamping pods could be right for you if you want to welcome visitors to your site year round and offer them greater creature comforts, such as heating, electricity, kitchens and ensuite bathrooms, all housed inside a durable dwelling that needs only minimal upkeep.

Becoming a Wigwam® Franchisee

Since building our first glamping pod prototypes in the early 1990s, Wigwam® Holidays has been a trailblazer of the glamping trend in the UK. Our cabins are built to last and in fact, with just a little love and attention every few years, your Wigwam® glamping pods could last as long as a hundred years.

Joining an established and much loved franchise within the glamping industry has many benefits: you get great exposure from day one, expert support through every step of the way and all the tools you need for success, including but by no means limited to:

• Setup and support for your own website
• An easy to use booking system
• Access to Wigwam® Academy
• Photo shoots for your website & brochures

If you’d like to learn more about becoming a Wigwam® Holidays franchisee, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for more information. We can’t wait to hear from you! To view out full range of timber glamping pods through the link below