Industry Insights
Building a Successful Outdoor Resort Business
Discover why Zander left traditional multifamily investing and how he scaled his portfolio to 5 glamping resorts that generate long-term cash flow.
In this episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast, we welcome Zander Kempf, Founder and CEO of Clear Summit Investments, an outdoor wellness investment firm. Zander is a seasoned real estate developer with experience in both residential and commercial projects, and now his focus is on developing RV & Glamping Resorts nationwide.
In the conversation, Zander shares how he transitioned from multifamily housing to the untapped niche of RV and glamping resorts, how he identifies great locations for RV resorts, and how he integrates wellness amenities to create a 5-star guest experience. He also explains why RV and glamping resorts are the next big investment trend and shares tips for those looking to start a smaller-scale glamping business.
Press Play now to discover why Zander left traditional multifamily investing and how he scaled his portfolio to 5 glamping resorts that generate long-term cash flow.
If you prefer to read the highlights, we’ve got a summary of the key takeaways below.
Why Invest in Glamping Resorts
Zander points out that there are different ways to make money in real estate, and a lot of them are viable—you need to pick a niche, stay with it, and get really good at just doing that one thing. Yet he believes that outdoor hospitality is one of the most exciting opportunities in real estate today.
Zander explains some reasons for transitioning to larger resorts rather than smaller individual short-term rental units.
“We can have a high volume of these units on one property, and we can build in all the efficiencies that come with that—one website, one set of marketing, one set of guest communications covering a much wider footprint. It also lets us add revenue streams, which isn’t something you can really do with a single house. On a resort, we can sell food and beverage. We can sell advertising, local tours, and other adventures nearby. If our resort amenities are nice enough, we can even sell day passes. We have hot springs as well, so we can sell day passes to those—and that ends up being a significant amount of revenue on top of the nightly stays.”
How Zander Started Developing and Acquiring Glamping Resorts
Zander started in real estate 9 years ago with traditional multifamily investing, and he had 23 apartment buildings when COVID broke. “There was all this mania in the multifamily world. Cap rates were crazy low. Interest rates were low. Everybody was overbidding, and the numbers didn’t make sense to me in that space.”
So Zander sold his portfolio of rental properties and shifted his focus to developing and acquiring glamping and hot spring resorts across the country. He notes that RV parks and glamping resorts are “a very unsophisticated industry,” and there aren’t many big players in the space.
“Most are mom-and-pop owned, which often means it’s not professionally managed. They don’t have great amenities. They don’t have great marketing. They might’ve owned it for 30 years and haven’t changed it since. So it leaves a whole lot of opportunity. We started finding really good deals with big upside and very little competition on what we were bidding on. So we dove all in, built a whole company around it. Now we’re vertically integrated, with in-house construction, in-house property management, and a whole team to raise capital and asset-manage these resorts.”
What Does Clear Summit Investments Do?
“We are an outdoor wellness resort investment firm, so we buy glamping resorts and hot spring resorts,” Zander explains. Now they have 5 properties—3 in Arizona and 2 in Colorado.
“Two of them we built ground up; three were already existing. These are properties where people come and stay for the night. They’re landscape-style, spread out in nature, with hot spring pools, cold plunges, and saunas. Everything has a wellness component. It’s a world of difference from a white-box hotel, and we’re near either national parks or other major destinations.”
Zander shares that they plan to continue expanding, aiming to acquire another 5 to 10 resorts this year and do so every year.
“We’re building our portfolio to have all the economies of scale that come with managing a large group of these resorts. From there, we can either hold them for the long term or bundle them together for a large portfolio exit down the road.”
About Choosing Locations
Zander reveals that, for them, choosing locations for glamping resorts is about finding high-potential investment opportunities for sustainable long-term growth. They started in Arizona because they “had a pretty big footprint” there with some of their previous ventures, so they had a good understanding of the local market. They also had connections with the municipality for the development side and were backed by the market.
“We have all the major metros in that area—Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Denver are all rapidly expanding, with a lot of population growth and job growth. Those are good local demographics to lift us. Ideally, we want to be at least 2 or 3 hours from a major metro, and we also want to be near a major destination.”
Zander emphasizes that they always want to be in a growing market, so they check if the local population is growing and monitor local supply. If there are a lot of other resorts being built in the area, that means the market’s going to be flooded with inventory, so it’s a red flag.
About Amenities to Create a 5-star Experience for Guests
Zander emphasizes that it’s the amenities that differentiate their RV and glamping resorts from the competition, help attract guests, and enable them to charge decent nightly rates, ensuring higher ROI.
“A lot of places don’t have these nice health and wellness amenities. It’s even something that differentiates us from the more institutional players. You go to a big-name hotel like Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott, and those places feel very sterile compared to a small mom-and-pop boutique bed-and-breakfast, which feels warm and cozy. That’s the feeling we want to bring into our properties.”
Listen to the full episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast to hear valuable insights from a successful real estate investor and developer.
Table of contents
Why Invest in Glamping Resorts
How Zander Started Developing and Acquiring Glamping Resorts
What Does Clear Summit Investments Do?
About Choosing Locations
About Amenities to Create a 5-star Experience for Guests