For many, our first camping experience goes something like this; fill a cooler with ice, food and drinks, pitch a tent, sleep on the tent floor covered in sand and dirt, it’s either suffocatingly hot or freezing cold, you fend off swarms of mosquitos, forget you need an axe to cut wood to cook your food that you end up burning to a crisp, eating the occasional bug and at the end of it when you look into your cooler with the cheese slices and hotdogs floating around you can’t believe you ever ate a thing out of it in the first place.
We usually do this when we are young, energetic, and are ok with being uncomfortable, not having any real luxury camping experience as a reference point. Eventually, we may upgrade to a camper, decide that we only will stay in hotels, or perhaps even buy the coveted cabin.
In the past five years, people started to recognize a different outdoor enjoyment model’s business potential, realizing that people love to be outdoors and be comfortable. Enter Glamping.
Glamping is “Glamourous Camping.” Wikipedia explains Glamping as describing a style of camping with amenities and, in some cases, resort-style services not usually associated with “traditional” camping. When you Google “Glamping,” you are hit with glamping search engines, blogs and how-tos. Glamping is everywhere. It ranges from Airbnb rentals to organized Glamping locations.
Locally, in the RM of Dufferin No. 190, Glamping Resorts Ltd operates along the North shore of Buffalo Pound Lake south of Findlater. Its webpage says it has a mixture of 64 titled lots, 200 seasonal camping sites and 24 camping sites consisting of safari tents, geodesic domes, bell tents and trapper tents. Their current amenities include a public beach, bike and walking paths, public washrooms and showers with amenities in the progress of; a swimming pool, boat launch and marina. Glamping Resort’s website states that they are looking at opportunities to build a resort on Last Mountain Lake, and they have not secured a location but are in the process of doing so. In contrast to the NorthShore location’s titled lots, the resort at Last Mountain Lake, “... will be all seasonal campsites with zero lots for sale.”
President and Founder of Glamping Resorts Ltd, Cameron Wyatt appeared as a delegation before the Council at the RM of McKillop on August 25, 2020, submitting information to Council as to what a possible future development could look like in the RM, seeking feedback from Council if this was of interest to them.
He said that it could include 200-250 RV sites, which would be self-sustaining, with amenities such as a beach and boat launch. It would be seasonal from April 15 – October 15.
During the RM meeting, Wyatt stated there were already over 100 names on a waitlist for opportunities to lease a site at this potential location.
Bob Schmidt, Reeve of the RM, said that the information presented “.. is being sent back to the planning and economic development committee for review, and then it will come back to council.”
Cameron Wyatt declined to comment for this story.
-Jennifer Argue, LMT Civic Reporter