How to Start a Lodge Holiday Park : From Concept to Completion
Extending a lodge holiday park project from a concept to reality is an intricate process that involves strategic planning, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of the market and environmental considerations. This expanded guide delves deeper into the nuances of establishing a lodge holiday park, offering additional insights and advice to support potential developers through this complex journey.
Detailed Market Analysis and Financial Planning
Before embarking on the construction of a lodge holiday park, we’d highly recommend completing a detailed market analysis. This involves not just looking at the competition and pricing structures but also understanding the demographics of potential customers, their preferences, and travel trends. It’s key to understand who is holidaying in your area such as bird watchers, surfers, hikers or those seeking a family retreat from the city life. We’d also suggest looking at the saturation of your market. If you have lodge sites within proximity, if they are at full capacity each year then you could learn more about their audience to gain their overflow. However, if a site isn’t doing so well, this doesn’t mean that the customers are not plentiful. Doing a deep dive into why these customers are not returning to these sites will give you an advantage. For example, some sites can look like carbon copies of one another. This is good in some ways as the customer has an expectation of their stay from previous experiences on other sites. However, the next generation are seeking new and modern getaways, ones designed with nature and relaxation in mind. If your site doesn’t stand out, you could be missing out on vital repeat custom from the holiday goers of 2024.
For financial planning, you’ll need to extend beyond initial cost assessments to include ongoing operational expenses, potential revenue streams, and break-even analysis. Developers should consider various financial scenarios, including best and worst-case projections, to ensure the venture remains viable under different market conditions. It's also vital to explore financing options early in the planning process, whether through loans, investments, or grants, especially for eco-friendly projects that may qualify for specific funding opportunities.
Can you reduce the amount of Infrastructure on your lodge site with Eco-Sustainable lodges?
When planning the infrastructure for a lodge holiday park, developers will be surprised to find out they can reduce their upfront costs as well as long-term costs if using an energy-efficient lodge.
With some of the biggest upfront costs being either the utility connections or foundations, we’ve found that using our eco lodges can potentially reduce those costs for you.
Foundations such as groundscrews could be less costly per lodge than traditional concrete pads, and reduce the impact of the biodiversity of the area, something councils are increasingly requesting from new parks or sites that are developing adjacent fields
Bringing utilities to site, be it new connections and transformers can at times be prohibitively expensive. Consider your park already is at max capacity with 16amp per lodge or caravan, and you’re in need of more ‘juice’ to power the new lodges and electric car chargers. With our lodges being capable of running just on 32amp, and with the addition of solar panels and battery storage, you can reduce the impact and load on the park’s grid substantially.
In addition, choosing a sustainable lodge manufacturer not only supports the environment (which may be vital in obtaining planning permissions for certain sites) but can also appeal to eco-conscious consumers.
Comprehensive Planning and Design Phase
The next and most exciting part of your grand plan is the design phase. This is an opportunity to get creative to see how you can stand out from the crowd and what style of holiday you are offering. This involves not just the aesthetic and functional aspects of the lodge designs but also the site layout, guest flow, and integration with the surrounding environment. You could consider creating separate zones within the park, such as areas dedicated to families, couples, or wellness retreats, to cater to different market segments.
Another key aspect is how many lodges you would like on-site. Do you want to fit in as many as possible, do you want to keep them well-spaced for nature stays as well as a premium price? Do you want a mix of family fun lodges as well as some quite couple lodges for romantic getaways. On top of this, you’ll need to decide if each lodge will be sold or rented or a mixture of the two. Fraction Ownership is becoming quite common allowing for a more affordable way to lodge without paying full price for the home. These factors will additional decide on how much you make and how busy your lodge site will be.
Involving a landscape architect can ensure that the site's design harmonises with the natural surroundings, enhancing guests' experience while minimising environmental disturbances as much as making the profits you need from the costs incurred to set up the site. This phase should also include detailed accessibility planning, ensuring that the park is inclusive and enjoyable for guests with varying needs.
Engaging with Planning Authorities and the Community
Securing planning permission is often one of the most challenging aspects of developing a lodge holiday park. Beyond the initial pre-application and full planning application, developers should proactively engage with local planning authorities and the community. This can involve presenting the project in community meetings, addressing any concerns, and demonstrating how the development will benefit the local area, such as through job creation or tourism revenue.
Working closely with a planning consultant who has experience with similar projects and a good understanding of local planning policies can be invaluable. They can help navigate the complexities of the planning process, from environmental impact assessments to negotiating conditions of approval.
We would always recommend seeking a local consultant who understands your local area and equally the right message to convey to your community and council to ensure your planning application is well received. An outsider will only provide generic advice and could miss something important such as community spirit, protected animals or other localised situations that could prevent your application from going ahead.
Construction, Delays, and Project Management
Once your planning permission has been granted, you’ll be excited to hear that you are halfway there as your construction phase begins. Speaking only for ourselves, at THC, you’ll have ongoing support from your Business Development Consultant who will introduce you to the THC design team ready for picking your fixtures and fittings from exterior cladding to bespoke designed kitchens. They will also liaise with you or hired help, such as your project manager to coordinate between the construction team, the groundworks team and utilities. For large sites of over 20 units, we would recommend hiring a project manager as they will be crucial in foreseeing potential bottlenecks, managing delays, and ensuring quality control throughout the entire process.
Whilst setting up a park has its exciting moments, understanding that delays are common in such projects, contingency plans should be in place. From concrete bases that are not set to a delay in getting the infrastructure prepared right through to a delay in the factory. Preparing for delays and being flexible where possible such as phased openings of the park to start generating revenue even as construction continues in other areas could be key to reducing some of the stresses created by common delays.
Marketing and Launch Strategy
The lodges have landed, the final touches are going into place. But what about your strategic marketing plan for the successful launch of a lodge holiday park? Ideally, for a uber-successful launch, this plan should start well before the park opens, building anticipation and demand through a mix of digital marketing, public relations, and engagement with your audience from publications in magazines that would attract your clientele to vlogging your journey on your new shiny website. Creating a strong brand identity will reflect the park’s values as well as creating a story that your soon to be regulars can get behind. Unique selling points will help differentiate it in a competitive market from sustainable goals to modern designs for a new way to holiday, not forgetting your day to day offering from cafes, bars to bird-watching zones and walking trails.
It would be key to leverage social media. However, we would recommend seeking professional support due to Instagram and Facebook marketing becoming more problematic. Many moons ago you could send a post out into the world for everyone to see gaining lots of like and a following before you can say ‘rent my lodge’. Over the past few years, the algorithms have changed significantly, forcing you to pay for regular ads to get seen. Rather than wasting money on trial and error, seeking a well-established marketing company will help you to get the ball rolling.
Alternatively, you could opt to place your site onto an established and managed site such as Hoeseasons (feel free to email in about more information on how this works) reducing the stress of marketing your site by yourselves.
However, you choose to proceed with your sales and marketing, ensuring that your message is clear from a good tale to showcasing the progress of the park’s development, highlighting sustainability efforts, unique features, and the experiences future guests can expect will begin your journey to filling up your site once you open.
Bonus - Offering pre-opening tours or events to locals, travel agents, and the press can generate early interest and bookings!
Long-term Sustainability and Community Engagement
After the launch, maintaining the park’s sustainability commitments and engaging with the local community will be essential for long-term success. This can include ongoing environmental initiatives, such as tree planting or wildlife conservation projects, and regular community events to ensure the lodge park remains a valued and integrated part of the local area. It would be a good idea to seek feedback from guests and the community to continuously improve the park’s offerings and sustainability. For example, if a common compliment is the nature trail, you can highlight this on your website, in magazines and on social media too!
Conclusion to setting up a lodge site
It may be a daunting idea to set up a lodge site. One that may have left you sat on the fence for a while. At THC, our biggest advice is to first run the numbers for a practical sense followed by a free consultation to run through the pros and cons of your site. Free advice is your saviour from quotes for your groundworks, information and advice from your manufacturers about the models including specifications and floorplans to support your planning applications right through to free consultations with marketing and sales consultancies to get a feel of what to expect.
On top of this, financial support is your friend. Understanding how much you can borrow and what you need to repay may lighten the worry of setting up your lodge site. Don’t forget investors are actively seeking lodge sites for their portfolios and some finance companies can offer a full fleet of homes without you paying a penny!
What to do next? As we said, we’d always recommend gaining as much advice as you can. If you’d like to learn more about our lodges then we’d love to set up a free Discovery Call to learn more about your vision and how we can support your plans to make it a reality. Whilst we don’t have an in-house team for groundworks and utilities, we are always happy to point you in the right direction to work through predicted costs as well as support with financing options so you are fully informed of what to expect from your site before you even pull the trigger!
For more information about our models, please visit the Educate page for further reading. To set up a free Discover Call, please email info@thetinyhousing.co with your name, location and the heading ‘Discovery Call’.
We hope this blog has been informative and look forward to hearing from you.
All the best,
THC Team
