9 minute read
Digital Nomads: Tap Into A Long-Term Guest Community
Imagine letting out your accommodation in the shoulder or low seasons to long-term guests, who are looking for somewhere to work online and explore the country. The pandemic has shifted our work patterns and more people are planning to leave their office behind in search of the perfect life combining travel and work. Steph Curtis-Raleigh explores what this might mean for glamping providers.
The nomadic life has always gone hand in hand with tented and temporary structures and like many ancient trends, the term and concept has now been reworked for the digital age. Digital nomads – people who work and travel at the same time – only tethered to a wifi connection – are a new tribe who have increased in number and influence during the pandemic, when we have all been confined to our homes nurturing pent-up dreams of foreign shores. Once international travel opens up once more – these nomads will circle the earth in even greater numbers, creating stronger communities wherever they gather.
Savvy accommodation providers are already tapping into this new market – particularly those based in sunny climates, which are particularly attractive all year round. As well as new purpose-built glamping villages for nomads, we are also seeing Spanish villages where villas are let out during the low season rather than lying empty, or hotels offering special nomad packages to fill rooms for longer stays. The Digital Nomad movement is incredibly connected, passing on information on great stays via social media, doing much of the marketing of locations through word of mouth.
João (J) Mendes has been a Digital Nomad since 2010 when he left Portugal to live in London. He now organizes online events and provides digital marketing services and is one of the co-organisers of the Eco Hotel Summit events, alongside World of Glamping and International Glamping Business.
He says, “From London I jumped over to the Cayman Islands. At first, I was an offline nomad, which meant I looked for in-person, local work. Everything changed in the digital world while living in Brazil in 2014 and I started to teach English online. Since then I have done a myriad of online work, focusing in digital marketing and events.”
J has now lived in Sweden, London, Cayman Islands, Nicaragua, Brazil, Vietnam and Thailand – he also organizes a number of events dedicated to the Digital Nomad movement. He says, “The movement is growing stronger than ever because every single remote worker in the world is now a potential Digital Nomad as soon as they realize they could just move to a different location while continuing to work. Humans are sedentary because of family/connections and work, if the second one is not an issue with location anymore then life becomes much more flexible doesn’t it?”
J says that glamping sites are ideal locations for Digital nomads because they provide two main things – community and quality of life. “We are the opposite of short-term travelers who avoid other guests and overcrowded places. Digital nomads flock together – they go to places where there are already a number of similar people based,” he says.
“Glamping sites can offer a differentiated experience by its characteristics that can make them even more attractive than more classic hotels. I would prefer a Glamping site to a hotel chain to live long-term every day of the week!” he adds.
But are digital nomads themselves the kind of guests that glamping sites want to attract? J says that the profile of the typical nomad has changed since the concept was first recognised around a decade ago.
J and his partner, Sara
“The digital nomad lifestyle is very appealing and to a certain degree quite easy to access to the millennials and Y generation, with all their natural digital agility. This was the first big wave of digital nomads that started around 10 years ago and gave its initial bad name of cheap party people, what I like to call digital bromads,” he says.
“The community has matured now, and with the help of Covid the average age of nomads is now around 30-35 years old, with much more wealth to spend where they live. That is why you see countries like Estonia and Barbados launching their digital nomad visas but requiring minimum income of 50k a year.”
Given this demographic, the type of accommodation being sought out is more aspirational than bunks or dormitories – although J admits that newcomers to the trend will often start out with cheaper, shorter stays. “When you achieve your freedom of travelling, it is common to travel like there is no tomorrow for some months,” he says. “Then you will feel the travel burn-out and start to travel less frequently and stay for longer periods in a single location. But if we are talking about the main community of digital nomads then a dormitory is not as suitable, they would prefer to share houses and have more co-living experiences than to stay in a fast-changing dormitory. Backpackers can be digital nomads, but once they start to make some money they will want rooms and Airbnbs instead of dorms.”
From a legal viewpoint, digital nomads are tourists like any other guests staying in accommodation. They are only limited by their visas. Most travel on tourist visas although more countries are now introducing specific digital nomad visas for this kind of worker. In many countries like Vietnam and Thailand – nomads can enter on a tourist visa and keep renewing every three months by making a short trip across the border. This can continue for years, perfectly legally.
However, accommodation providers may want to enter into a different type of contract with long-term digital nomads, which is closer to a rental agreement than a daily room rate. “Some site owners do rental contracts with nomads staying for over a month with special prices then they will become tenants and not guests and will be under the jurisdiction of a different law,” says J. “But most of the sites just do direct discounts for quantity purchase keeping everything else as normal guest conditions.”
Not surprisingly, one of the biggest considerations in attracting the nomadic community is the provision of a strong internet connection. “This is probably the most critical amenity of all – it is non-negotiable! And I am not talking of an unstable 10MB connection shared by everyone, I mean 50MB upwards stable wifi everywhere in all the facilities including rooms,” says J. “Rooms will very often become offices to digital nomads, so if this does not happen the community will know very fast about it.”
It is also worth considering the provision of comfortable co-working spaces if possible. “Every person is different, some prefer to work in their rooms others like more sharing experiences so a proper co-working area with good chairs, plenty power plugs and very reliable wifi is a must,” says J. “For some hotels who do not have this, a solution is to use the breakfast area after the breakfast service so that for the rest of the day it is a co-working space. This is a great way to optimize already available resources.”
The other essential aspect required for a digital nomad is a community and therefore accommodation providers need to consider facilitating this through events and shared facilities.
“Workshops, talks, social gatherings, speed networking, anything that will make a digital nomad willing to spend a decent amount of the year in one place is essential. I would say the future will see community managers in all these types of accommodations that look at this market. Combining this position with strong skills in digital marketing as digital nomads live online and find opportunities only there. The rest of hotel amenities/services are great to have but not key success factors in this way,” predicts J.
If their needs are met, then digital nomads can be the perfect long-term guests. “I tend to stay at least 6 months in a place but I am a very slow traveller,” says J. “It is very uncommon to spend a weekend for example, that’s not worth the flight. The perspective of traveling changes completely when there is no deadline to return home. A thousand-pound flight to Thailand for a week makes you count every penny when you are paying for it, for three months you don’t even hesitate. The majority of nomads stay for some weeks in places, and if the community grows stronger and bigger (more of a location success not necessarily the individual hotel) some of them will make that place what we call a base. Digital nomads can have 2/3 bases where they always spend some time of the year. In my case I plan to spend Autumn/Winter in the Canary Islands, Spring/Early Summer in Portugal and then summer peak somewhere in Europe.” For accommodation providers, it is worth remembering that digital nomads will likely be relying on expensive tech, which they will be completely dependent on. Therefore, security for them and their kit has to be a consideration. “The most valuable thing for a digital nomad is the laptop, their entire life is there so yes security is relevant, but I don’t see a need to do the extra mile here. Maybe having cameras in the co-working area to make sure equipment does not disappear would be the extra thing I would recommend,” says J.
Finally, J suggests that site owners should consider that digital nomads will also require other work facilities at times, such as conference rooms. “These are really attractive to the Digital Nomad community. The normal approach of a site is to offer guest tourist activities around the town or country, because the short-term guest does not travel to spend a lot of time in an accommodation,” he says. “But for Digital Nomads, staying inhouse is very important because lots of them have normal working hours. So, the common areas are crucial to give flexibility to activities. When a hotel has conferences rooms for external entities to use, the site owner of the future needs to become an event manager of its own events too. And the place I have found who does this the best is the hotel chain called Selina.”
Selina Jaco, Costa Rica
Selina Hotels
Selina has hotels all over the world in more than 60 destinations. Rafael Museri and Daniel Rudasevski were living in Pedasí, a small fishing town in Panama. Through running real estate projects and developing the town, they began to build a tight-knit social circle comprised of locals and travelers alike. It became clear to them that they were working on something special, and just like that, the first Selina was born in Venao, a surf town near Pedasí in 2014.
Since then, Selina has grown and is still growing at the rate of a new location per week. Selina provides guests with beautiful places to stay, travel, and work abroad indefinitely. Plus, they use our in-depth local knowledge to create thousands of authentic activities and experiences.
Selina provides an accommodation solution for every budget. From luxury suites to hammocks under the stars and everything in between. They also provide beautifully designed offices tucked into city centres, jungle hideaways, and yes, even beachside, providing the ultimate flexibility to work and travel indefinitely.
