Outdoor hospitality is a fast-growing market, especially with the growing desire for unique stays and experiences. However, it’s still a fragmented industry and there’s work to be done to meet the demand.
The Dyrt aims to provide a solution to the 70M Americans looking for outdoor destinations. Founder Sarah Smith joins us to talk about creating a platform that offers reliable camping and RVing information online and the need to move the fragmented outdoor hospitality industry into a more consolidated one. She also shares how she’s grown the company through connecting with the community, how they are putting properties in front of their 30M visitors, and gives her take on the trends in the space.
[00:01] – [07:23] The Outdoor Boom
- Sarah on why they founded The Dyrt
- There is a huge opportunity in the outdoor hospitality space, and RV camping is on the rise.
- A lot of people who are working from the road need the reliability of an RV resort
[07:24] – [20:12] Making Camping and RVing Easier and More Accessible
- The Dyrt is a platform where users can find campgrounds and RV resorts to stay at for free.
- Amassing 30M visitors
- They don’t charge commissions from campground and RV park owners
- Creating the platform
- Even though Sarah has no technology background, they were able to innovate by working with the right people
- Integration with other PMS
- Important question entrepreneurs must ask themselves: are you solving a real problem or are you just doing this for fun?
- How they leveraged the community to crowdsource photos and reviews
- Using incentives to encourage contributions
- What’s next for The Dyrt: expansion to other countries, the opportunities in the Glamping market
[20:13] – [22:15] Closing Segment
- Sarah’s advice: Keep looking forward.
- Reach out to Sarah!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“It seems like a no-brainer because all we hear about is it’s so hard to find a place to go camp or I wish there are more places.” – Sarah Smith
“If you’re doing any sort of startup, it’s really important to understand if are you solving something that needs to be solved, or are you just doing something that sounds fun?” – Sarah Smith
“Bringing this fragmented industry of camping and RV into one area is really what we want to do.” – Sarah Smith
—————————————————————————–
Connect with Sarah through The Dyrt website. See if your property is already listed at thedyrt.com/claim.
Connect with me:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on. Thank you for tuning in!
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Sarah Smith: I’m really excited to be the top-ranked camping and RV out there in the app store. So if anything, I’m proof that you don’t need a background necessarily if you have a passion and you hire the right people.
[00:00:24] Sam Wilson: Thank you to everyone who is a dedicated listener to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. Just want to give you a heads up that today, we had some audio issues on actually three or four episodes that we recorded in a row. They were such good episodes and the guests were so kind of course, to share their time and insight with us that I couldn’t ask them to rerecord it. So we’re going to go ahead and publish these episodes. I am aware of it. The audio is not what I like to put out, but running a daily show at some point in time, we’re going to run into a hiccup along the way. And today is one of those days where I get to share my mistakes and hiccups right along with you. But again, it’s a great episode. You can hear the guest a lot better than you can hear me. And it’s just part of what it is that we do. Nevertheless, here it is. Thanks so much for tuning in. Certainly appreciate it.
[00:01:07] Sam Wilson: Sarah Smith is the founder of The Dyrt, which is the number one app for camping, with the most active online camping community. Sarah and her husband, The Dyrt CEO Kevin Long, were avid campers who struggle to find campground information online. So they started The Dyrt, that’s spelled D Y R T, which I think is a really cool name. Sarah, welcome to the show.
[00:01:26] Sarah Smith: Thank you, Sam. Very happy to be here.
[00:01:29] Sam Wilson: Hey, the pleasure’s mine. Sarah, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes to the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?
[00:01:37] Sarah Smith: Sure. Sure. I started as a camper who was very frustrated because I couldn’t find reliable information about camping online. So created The Dyrt, which now is the most active online community of campers out there, including RVers. And we have crowdsourced over 4 million photos reviews and tips of campgrounds over the past several years that we’ve been doing this. We’ve recently expanded our focus onto bookings. It was kind of a natural evolution of going from focusing on campers finding campgrounds to campers booking campgrounds. So we’ve done that in a way that really supports campground owners and RV park owners by offering commission-free bookings. So campground owners keep their full nightly rate when campers book through The Dyrt. And we’re really excited about kind of expanding this whole thing. And it really, you know, we kind of got to this point, as you may have heard, I don’t know if you’re a camper, but camping and RV really boomed in the pandemic. Didn’t really know if that was just going to be a blip or if it would stick around and indeed it stuck around. And 2021 was even busier than 2020 as far as camping and 2022 is turning out to be so as well. So, really excited that more people are getting outside and happy to have a platform where we can help them.
[00:03:08] Sam Wilson: Outdoor hospitality has absolutely exploded. That’s been one of the transitions that we’ve made actually is out of multifamily, even some other assets, and started buying RV resorts this year, just because of it. And said, Hey, you know what? There is a huge opportunity here. And what we have found, I just want to kind of compliment what you’re saying, by what we have found is the price difference. You know, the number of people buying RVs, the prices of the RV resorts have not kept up with the influx of people buying actually RV. We can still find value inside of the RV resort acquisition space. I love what you were saying there about how it’s not just a fad. You know, it’s been several years now that the outdoor hospitality space continues to grow. Can you give some kind of background information as to why you think that is?
[00:03:54] Sarah Smith: Sure. It’s amazing. We saw 8 million new Americans go camping last year, never camped before. And so it’s a big new thing. And a lot of those people were trying RVing. And if you think about the sort of investment you need to put into RVing as a camper, you need to buy an RV. That’s not cheap. You need to buy equipment. None of this is cheap, even if you’re a tent camper, it’s an investment. So once you make that investment and once you’ve camped or RV’d for the first time, and you kind of break the barrier and understand how it works. And if you don’t know, if you didn’t grow up doing it, it’s like a big mystery to you. It’s like, I don’t know what RV to buy. I don’t know what tent to buy. So once I think you break through that, it becomes something that you understand how to do, you realize it’s easy to do other than back in an RV into a spot, that’s never easy to do. And yeah. I just think it’s going to continue to blossom.
[00:04:49] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. I like that idea where you said that, you know, once you kind of broke into the space, I mean, you bought the tent, you got a sleeping bag, you got your marshmallow sticks, you’ve got whatever all the stuff is, your coffee pot, you’re going to put on the fire, you name it, I mean, you’re well invested into equipment and time and thinking through all the things that you’re going to get in order to go out and partake in this hobby. And so it’s not typically just a one-off, use it once and then move on type of thing.
[00:05:15] Sarah Smith: Totally. You know, we did a camping report last year. We surveyed our users and other campers out there. RVing is the fastest growing type of camping right now. And you’re absolutely right. I always say I should go into, I should buy campgrounds and RV parks, which I’m sure a lot of you have. And a lot of your listeners are interested in that. And as someone who’s not in that side of it, not in the real estate side of it, but providing a platform for you all to put your RV resort or your campground. It seems like a no-brainer because all we hear about is it’s so hard to find a place to go camp. I wish there are more places.
[00:05:54] Sam Wilson: Right. And a lot of our investors are saying the same thing. You know, a lot of our investors own RVs. They travel around, especially around the Southeast. And they’re saying the same thing. They’re like good grief. And of course, we’re buying RV resorts. We’re not buying just one-off RV parks in the middle of the country, you know, fly over state. So we’re buying RV resorts and those are especially hard, especially hard right now to get into, I mean, months in advance.
[00:06:16] Sarah Smith: Right. You know, what’s interesting is my husband and I, we bought a sprinter van and we spent six months last year on the road. And we’re normally more like we camp in the middle of nowhere or like national forests. We’re definitely not normally in an RV resort, but we were working full time while we were on the road. So we stayed, for the first time ever, in RV resorts, because we knew we could have reliable electricity, we could, you know, have showers and there are so many more people who are working from the road who need that reliability, who are going to turn to places like RV resorts and they didn’t use to.
[00:06:55] Sam Wilson: Right, right. Yeah. That’s absolutely awesome. I’m glad to kind of get, of course, you know, we’ve compiled a lot of kind of industry research before we ever went long in the space. We said, okay, let’s do our homework. Let’s make sure this is not a fad. And we came to the same conclusion, but it’s also nice just to hear from other people in the industry, especially you running a platform to say, Hey, look, this is not just a fad. This has, you know, this has legs, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going away anytime soon. Sarah, here’s a question I have for you. One of the things that you had mentioned early on was that you had originally started off making a site where you could get reviews or could find open sites, things like that. And now you’ve made it possible where campgrounds, RV parks, RV resorts can post their platforms or their listings on your platform and have commission-free booking. I’m really curious as a RV resort owner, how in the world does that work, and how do you monetize?
[00:07:49] Sarah Smith: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, the first thing to understand about The Dyrt is we make money through our subscription that campers pay for. So The Dyrt is totally free for users to use, but if they want some additional tools and some additional discounts, like not paying fees themselves on bookings, then they pay a $36 a year fee. That’s how much it costs and that’s how we make money. And that is how we are focused on making money. So we do not need to make commissions off campgrounds and we are really excited to support them and help them get in front of our 30 million visitors who come to our site every year, looking for places to camp. You know, campers don’t always know exactly what they’re looking for. So they search North Carolina and they search around an area and zoom in and look at what’s on The Dyrt and they find something. And once they do, they want to book it and they can book it right on The Dyrt. We do not charge any sort of commission to campground owners or RV park owners. And honestly, there’s a good chance your RV park is already listed on The Dyrt. We have users adding places all the time that we then verify and make sure are accurate. But I’ve gone to different RV resort conferences where I’ve talked to owners and found their listing on The Dyrt that they didn’t know about. They had six five-star reviews, raving reviews about how great their place was and they didn’t even know it. So it’s very easy, yeah, to go to TheDyrt.com/claim, search for your property, see if it’s already on The Dyrt, and if it is, claim it. And then we go through a very easy process to help you set up, you know, all your information, make sure it’s accurate. We also, we partner with PMS’s, you know, booking software out there. So if you’re using a booking software, there’s a chance it’ll integrate with us as well, so that it will disperse your information onto our platform. And you don’t actually have to do much for that. And then you are, like I said, getting in front of the 30 million people who are coming to our site to find a place to camp and RV.
[00:10:08] Sam Wilson: Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the innovations that we, and it’s not even an innovation really, but it’s one of those things that we’ve seen in the outdoor hospitality space at large is the lack of dynamic pricing the space. Now I know this maybe not, doesn’t necessarily pertain to you, but I think it ties well into the fact that these two softwares, a lot of these softwares can integrate because the resort we just bought last Friday, today is the 26th, on Friday, we bought a resort. The same price was to same in a book an RV site was on April 4th as it was on July 4th. And for those of us who are, you know, listening to this you’re going, wait that doesn’t make any sense at all, like July 4th, the busiest week into the year. But we’re seeing this a lot in the outdoor hospitality space because it’s mom and pop owned, a lot of it. They just, it’s easy to remember that, well, right, 49 bucks a night or 59, whatever. It’s 99. I don’t know. Made up numbers. But you know, for us just bringing simple dynamic pricing to the table. So you can answer the question I have for you. How does our prices get translated over to your guys’ platform? Who going to actually see what that daily price is today ’cause our price has change, like the airlines, Airbnb, et cetera, on a daily basis?
[00:11:17] Sarah Smith: Exactly. Yeah, you integrate through these systems. You know, we have everything from RV resorts to people who have private land and they just have one little site that they want to put on The Dyrt, you know, more like a Airbnb-type situation, but for the outdoors. And they can do all this directly on through our backend portal where they can go in and set their pricing and everything themselves. So you can do it either ways, either through a system or just, you know, through The Dyrt yourself. So we try to be accommodating to all sorts of, types of places to stay.
[00:11:52] Sam Wilson: Now tell me this. Do you have a background in software development? Is this just your first foray into something and it was really cool, you had a great idea and then you just made it happen?
[00:12:03] Sarah Smith: Yeah, that’s a great question. My background is actually in international education. I had never done anything like this before in my life. Being a tech founder is a little bit intimidating and I think I was like 46 when I started it, you know? No, I must have been 43 ’cause I’m 53 now. And it was 10 years ago. So in the past 10 years, we’ve raised $24 million from investors, but we have a staff of about 50 people now. So we’ve, you know, come a long way since we were just me and a contractor. Really excited to be the top-ranked, camping and RV out there in the app store. So if anything, I’m proof that you don’t need a background, necessarily if you have a passion and you hire the right people.
[00:12:46] Sam Wilson: Yeah, that’s really cool. Let’s talk about the scaling side of your business. I mean, that’s one explosive growth, but how did you, to market and grow your company, like, what would you feel were the top two or three effective strategies that you used that took you guys to the top of all these platforms?
[00:13:04] Sarah Smith: Yeah, that’s a great question. First of all, if you’re doing any sort of startup, it’s really important to understand, are you solving something that needs to be solved, or are you just doing something that sounds fun? So are you actually solving a problem? And as a camper, I did a lot of research to make sure that this was indeed a problem. For this 70 million Americans who camp and RV, finding a place to camp online was super painful. Having a consolidated place to find them and then book them, super painful. And then the other thing we did is we really leveraged our community because The Dyrt is all about having photos, reviews, and tips from users. And if you don’t have that, it’s just an empty shell of a directory. No better than what used to make me so frustrated. So we had to learn how to incentivize people because it’s not easy to ask someone to come to your website, sign up, leave reviews, leave photos. That’s a lot to ask of people, right? So we gamified the whole thing and worked with different outdoor brands so that, you know, you do a review of a campground in Tennessee, you get three points for the review, five points for the photo, 10 points for the video. There’s a leaderboard for Tennessee, you’re competing with other people. And then at the end of the month, the top reviewer would win a prize from one of the outdoor brands that we partnered with. And then we would start over the next month. And we’ve done that for years and years and years, and that’s really helped us get our platform to where it is now, where, you know, we have someone buying The Dyrt PRO, the upgraded part of The Dyrt, every couple minutes, you know. It’s really phenomenal to see a little idea spark into something like this.
[00:14:48] Sam Wilson: Right, right. What, And there’s so many platforms like this. I mean, the hotel industry has had it for, you know, a pretty long time. I’m subscriber to, like, AllTrails. I think AllTrails.Com is one of the, you know, it’s all the hiking trails across the country, but it’s like, oh my gosh, we’re going to go out in the park, like, well, what’s the best route? What are the best days? What are the sites like? I mean, you don’t know, looking at a cellphone map. Okay, can I get from a, to B in the same time ’cause that’s maybe a six mile trail, but that six miles may take me 14 hours too because it’s 9,000 feet of elevation game, whatever it is. But the problem, you know, and I wonder just how many other things like this have yet to be solved. You know, you guys have found a unique niche and I think what you said there was really great, are you solving a problem? And clearly, this is an absolute problem. What are some other things that you look to the future and say, OK, cool, you know, we’ve been able to allow people to find open sites, open RV resorts will now allow them to book online. What’s the next big thing you guys are looking to tackle?
[00:15:48] Sarah Smith: Well, I mean, a more short term, we really, you know, we’ve kind of historically been known as a rating and review site, you know, more like Yelp. And we want to be known more as bookings.com for camping. We want to be the consolidated place where you go to find camping and RV and to book it. So, you know, kind of like what happened with the hotels? You know, I don’t know, 20 years ago when it was also fragmented. So bringing this fragmented industry of camping and RV into one area is really what we want to do. And once we’ve done that successfully in the United States, of course, we’d like to expand to other countries.
[00:16:29] Sam Wilson: Gotcha. Oh, that’s really, really cool. I love that. I love that. What are some innovations, I guess, that you’re seeing, or are you seeing any innovations in the RV resort, RV park, camping space? Or maybe we didn’t have 10, 15 years ago outside of, you know, accessing information like that.
[00:16:47] Sarah Smith: Oh my gosh. Yes. I mean, we just did an award thing on The Dyrt called The Glampys and we chose the best glamping sites in the US. So I think glamping has become such a big thing. And it’s really interesting to see, you know, our V parks and our V resorts starting to have a couple of sites that are kind of set aside for like a tiny home that has a theme of like, it’s the outdoor bear theme or it’s the sailing theme or something, make it a little more special. And I think there’s something to be said for doing these glamping type sites, adding those to an RV resort that really, really make it more interesting to a wider range of type of people who are out there camping.
[00:17:40] Sam Wilson: Yeah. And do you think that, I guess that’s a question, ’cause a resort we bought in May, part of the plan is adding glamping sites to it? Do you think that’ll stick around or is that a fad?
[00:17:52] Sarah Smith: I think it will stick around. Personally, when I think of camping, like I said, I’m more of a dispersed in the middle of the woods sort of camper, but there is something so special about going to stay in a caboose in the middle of the woods in Northern Minnesota. I mean, it’s so fun and unique and I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I just think it didn’t really exist before. And now that, that, that whole market has opened up. I think people love it and they’re going to keep doing it.
[00:18:20] Sam Wilson: Yeah, even on a national level, we’ve moved as a society into a more experienced-based, I guess, more experienced-based society. So we want to get out and touch and feel. It’s not so much necessarily, you know, all packaged up and neat and tidy. It’s like, oh, Hey, let’s go experience the environment, but maybe we can go experience the environment in a place where there still might be, you know, air conditioner in the corner in our dirt or whatever it is. So we’re not necessarily sweating out with the mosquitoes, but yet we can get right outside if we want to our glamping site, whatever it is. Yeah. But certainly, bring some fun to the experience. That’s really, really cool. I love what you guys are doing. You guys are making outdoor hospitality accessible for people. You’re making it easy to find sites. You’re making it easy to reviews and, you know, really just bringing innovation into space if hasn’t, I guess probably seen it in a long time. So this is absolutely awesome. What are some other things that you think about when you look at this space you love to share with our listeners, you guys are working on or that you know, you just see in the industry as a whole?
[00:19:21] Sam Wilson: Well, I just really, you know, we’ve seen a lot of people doing different sorts of camping in the report that we just did last year. And I’m a good example. I was only a tent camper. And then I bought a camper that I towed behind in my car. And now we have a van. You see more and more people doing new sorts of camping and exploring different ways of camping, like glamping or dispersed camping in the middle of the national forest. Even, you know, larger RVs can do that. If they know where they’re going. So, you know, it’s really fun to see people having open minds to the different sources of camping that they can do, even if they’ve only done it one certain way their entire lives.
[00:20:01] Sam Wilson: Yeah, I think that’s really cool. Dispersed camping is loads of fun. Anytime you can get off the grid, get off somewhere in the middle of nowhere and set up and make it your campsite, I think that’s loads of fun. Sarah, I’ve really enjoyed having you come on today. Thank you for breaking down. Kind of what you see in the industry where you see it going, what you guys are doing to innovate. Is there anything that you would do differently that you would tell yourself if you could?
[00:20:25] Sarah Smith: Oh my goodness. How much time do you have?
[00:20:29] Sam Wilson: As much as you want to give.
[00:20:30] Sarah Smith: Yeah, no, I mean, you always look back in hindsight and think I should have done that differently. The thing I always encourage people to do is look forward. And when you do look backward, think of how far you’ve come. It’s always easy to look, oh, I should have done that differently. I wish I would’ve done that. But look at how far you’ve come. If you’re a property owner and you now own two properties instead of zero properties, that’s awesome. If you start a tech company and you now have 30 million visitors instead of one, that’s awesome. So be positive in that sense.
[00:21:02] Sam Wilson: I love that. I love that. Look how far you’ve come. Yeah. 30 million visitors a year is a substantial number of people coming to TheDyrt.com. That is absolutely awesome. Sarah, if our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you. What is the best way to do that?
[00:21:16] Sarah Smith: Well, that’s a great question. I would love to encourage people to check out The Dyrt and see if their campground or RV resort is already listed at TheDyrt.com/claim, that’s T H E D Y R T.com slash claim. And you know, it’s a hundred percent free. It’s just a little effort to get it set up, but you know, 30 million people are coming there looking for camping and RV resorts. So I encourage people to make sure their property is listed.
[00:21:44] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sarah, thank you again for your time today. I do certainly appreciate it.
[00:21:48] Sarah Smith: Thank you, Sam.
