The Pod Part III
Today is late April and the we are 1 month in to our first proper season. HMRC have been informed, I have registered self employed – now the croft has a chance of being a business not a hobby.
Typical of this time of year, by 9.45am we have already had a spring sunrise, summer dawn, autumnal school run, and now rather predictably the snow has just started to fall. The bed sheets with a picture of a galloping horse, and extra blankets are drying all over the house ready for the next guests. We have now added in a movable fire pit and BBQ; we are just keeping the extras free and the price at Hostel rate and flat across the year. It helps us work out different aspects of the market better if we know that choices haven’t been made around pricing.
So has it been successful?
Yes. Yes it has.
In fact I am blown away by how successful it is – not as much as The Great Dane, he’s genuinely impressed with me right now and I am basking in the “know it all glow” it allows me.
My target for bookings was to have it available from end of March until end of October. We had opened it at the end of last year for about 5 or 6 weeks and we had someone in it every weekend, even though we’d done zero marketing and it was completely out of season. We just bunged it on a couple of OTA’s and went for it.
This led me to believe that I should aim to have it let at least one night per weekend in our first season. Then I got cold feet and opted for 25 nights in our first season, 75 in our second as I hoped by then I would have the time to really push the marketing, and finally by the time we were in year 3 I hoped to top out and maintain with 100 nights a year.
I didn’t have a lot to base these targets on in terms of expectations or market research. Since I last worked in this sector there had been incredible changes, like the internet – that wasn’t a thing back then let alone Glamping. No one would pay you to stay in a horse trailer the last time I let out or dealt with self catering. The Great Dane had no conviction that anyone ever would.
It appears that I was probably way out with those targets. One month in and yesterday was the first time that we didn’t have someone staying in it, meaning we have blown the first years target out of the water in the first month. In fact we are not far off our second years target already, so I am confident we can meet our year 3 target in this season.
However the true mark of success is how people enjoy it, and so far it has been only 5 star reviews. The real proof being with guests reporting it’s the best place they have stayed, and saying they want to return next year. Long term stays are being enjoyed as much as one night “experience” stays. Hardcore campers are enjoying a shower bag under a sky roof, and absolutely everyone is getting a lot out of cutting up wood and having fun with the stove and the fire pit.
On a totally personal level it has done more than that though – it has given us hope.
I said in my other posts this was about finding a way to live where we love with enough time left over to love it. However since I last posted about the pod our personal situation changed a lot. In October I woke at 4.30am in agony in my hips, and from there progressed a winter of troubling symptoms, a loss of mobility, no real answers from the NHS so far, terrifyingly the loss of two jobs and finally becoming registered as disabled.
Our position changed from wanting to live where we love to wanting to keep any kind of roof over our heads. We looked at moving but nothing that was available was going to make us better off. We were going to end up with less space and a larger mortgage.
I couldn’t afford to keep my beloved Muscle Man on the road, and I had to give up breeding our gorgeous cobs because I could no longer handle the youngstock.
My lowest point was when my eldest daughter had to leave school to care for me. We went into a freefall of bewildered panic, and I couldn’t understand what was happening far less how to fix it.
In all honesty I had lost my enthusiasm for everything – I didn’t know if I would do any of my hobbies (rock climbing, riding and mushing) ever again and with 10 dogs and 10 horses to care for that was going to be a problem. I had bred the dogs, or owned them for 14yrs, I had bred the horses and some I had rescued from abuse or neglect and I had a one off bond with them. Being so specialist in terms of their needs there was nowhere for them to go except a large hole in the ground and I couldn’t consider that as an option. I couldn’t see the answer, I couldn’t see where the money for their feed was coming from, where the help with their care was coming from. I knew every penny would count in 2017 and if the pod could make enough to pay the bill for the feed they’d eaten over winter I would have one less stress.
We started to get ready for the opening, and hauled the mattress out of the hallway. We’d stored it there in its bag to stop it going damp and mouldy over winter in the empty pod. However it was up against the glass pane by the unused front door and condensation had run down and pooled on the top of the bag, eventually making its way inside. As my daughter went to take it from the bag I saw it was soaking wet and very mouldy. In a panic I started looking for a replacement – we had only a couple of weeks until opening and I knew deliveries to the North can take that long on large items. One company sold a cheap replacement but it wouldn’t deliver for less than £70, another guaranteed to be in your home in 5 days for £15 but it was twice the price. To have peace of mind I had it in time I went for the expensive one, which actually arrived 17 days later, just 2hrs before our first guest checked in. Our first guest was staying 5 days, and the weather was rough – I anticipated a poor review…..
Thankfully she loved it, and I felt like I could exhale a deep sigh of relief. From then on the bookings came thick and fast and The Great Dane and I began to worry less and smile more.
We realised that this daft wee idea I had last year, and the last bit of cash and mobility I had, had been very well used. This pod was going to get us out of some very tough times, and if we could make another we’d be able to actually make this croft work and stop worrying about losing our home – a place we love. Thanks to this pod, and the fact I am not able to reliably work elsewhere any longer, I finally have the time to enjoy it.
We have started work on the next pod, which is a horse lorry this time. It’s going to accommodate up to 5 people and will be on grid so if some of those people are kids you can look after them easily with electric showers and gas hobs, running water and an electric stove you don’t have to cut wood for. Now we have to start branding, websites, paper based advertising and so on. After all those years running all those businesses and working all those crazy jobs with crazy hours it looks like we might finally have got it right.
Thanks to all our guests so far for their lovely reviews – If we keep getting guests like this we’re going to be blessed.
Big thanks to friends, family, children and partner who sponsored this event with their enormous hearts.
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