Hi Desert Hideout, California, photo courtesy of The Dyrt user Adrian S
THE DYRT -
A FRESH LOOK AT BOOKING SYSTEMS Glamping Business Americas catches up with Sarah Smith Founder of the Dyrt which is disrupting the booking systems sector. What is the background of The Dyrt and how did you become involved in this sector? I started The Dyrt because I am an avid camper, and I was tired of getting frustrated while trying to find information about campgrounds online. Someone needed to create an app where campers could find photos, reviews, tips, videos and general information in order to plan their camping trips. So I did. Why do you think this is a business model that needed shaking up? It wasn’t so much a business model that needed shaking up; it needed to be created. There are
thousands upon thousands of campgrounds in the US, and millions and millions of campers, but there was so little information available that, unless you’d been there before, you didn’t know what you were walking into. We couldn’t do this without our nationwide community. How did you formulate the offer for glamping/ camping grounds? As we began opening up our marketplace to campgrounds, we saw an entirely different segment of campground owners from non-traditional campgrounds. These were individuals with private land looking for ways
Sarah and her husband/co-founder, The Dyrt CEO Kevin Long
to generate passive or active income by hosting campers. They don’t have a built-in base for demand and they were actively looking for ways to market their properties. We designed our campground product to be inclusive for all hosts. We built specific tools to help glampgrounds and private landowners manage their own listings and built specific marketing tools such as our PRO Discount Network that allows glampgrounds to increase their search placement on The Dyrt and offer specific promotions to our PRO users. All these tools are free for glampgrounds, including zero bookings or commission fees.
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