Spark · Issue 4
The Experience Gap: What the Glamping Show Revealed About Our Industry's Next Challenge
Scott Bahr from Cairn Consulting Group just shared seven insights from the 2025 Glamping Show Americas, and one finding jumped off the page: “Many still wrestle with blending authentic hospitality into curated experiences, which is what creates true guest value.”
This isn’t a throwaway observation. It’s the central challenge facing outdoor hospitality right now.
The industry has solved the accommodation problem. Walk any trade show floor and you’ll see stunning domes, beautifully designed cabins, and thoughtfully laid-out glamping tents. Manufacturers have delivered innovation in spades.
But Scott identified something more troubling: “ADR Struggles – Guests show fatigue with higher rates if not matched by meaningful experiences. Pricing must reflect value delivered.”
Translation? Pretty structures aren’t enough to justify premium pricing anymore. And loyalty? Scott’s research shows that “experiences—not just accommodations—bring guests back.”
The experience gap is real, measurable, and growing.
The Maturation Problem
Scott noted that developers at the show were “more informed” and arrived with “clearly defined visions.” That’s great news—it means the industry is professionalizing. But it also raises the bar.
When your competition understands hospitality fundamentals, has done their homework, and shows up with refined concepts, you can’t win on accommodation innovation alone. Everyone has access to the same manufacturers. Everyone can create Instagram-worthy structures.
The differentiation now happens in what guests actually do at your property and how they feel while doing it.
This is where most properties struggle. Not because they don’t care about guest experience, but because they lack a systematic way to design, validate, and deliver experiences that create loyalty and justify premium ADR.
You can’t workshop your way to great experiences with Post-it notes and good intentions. You need frameworks, data, and proven methodologies.
The Three Gaps Scott Identified
Let’s look at what’s really happening in the industry through Scott’s observations:
Gap #1: The Hospitality Gap
Properties know they need to “blend authentic hospitality into curated experiences,” but they don’t have a repeatable process for doing it. They’re improvising, hoping staff personality and natural talent will carry the day.
Gap #2: The Value Gap
Guests are pushing back on rates that aren’t matched by meaningful experiences. Properties set pricing based on comps or costs, not on the actual experiential value they deliver. When guests feel the mismatch, they don’t return.
Gap #3: The Loyalty Gap
Scott’s research confirms what many operators suspect: accommodations get guests to book once, but experiences bring them back. Without intentional experience design, you’re stuck in an expensive acquisition cycle, constantly chasing new guests instead of nurturing repeat visitors.
These gaps compound. When you can’t systematically create hospitality-infused experiences, you can’t deliver consistent value. When you can’t deliver value, you can’t justify premium rates. When rates don’t match expectations, loyalty evaporates.
What Successful Properties Do Differently
The properties that thrive don’t just have better structures. They have better systems for designing experiences.
They approach guest experience the way manufacturers approach product design: with intentionality, prototyping, testing, and iteration. They don’t leave magic moments to chance or rely solely on staff intuition.
They ask better questions:
- What should guests feel within the first 30 minutes of arrival?
- Which experiences create the strongest memories and emotional connections?
- How do we sequence activities to build narrative and momentum?
- Where are the natural opportunities for surprise and delight?
- What specific touchpoints justify our premium positioning?
And most importantly, they have frameworks for answering those questions systematically across their entire guest journey.
The Experience Builder System
For the past year, I’ve been developing and testing a tool that addresses exactly what Scott identified at the Glamping Show: a systematic way to design experiences that blend authentic hospitality with curated programming to create true guest value.
The Experience Builder Cards are a practical workshop tool—a 12-card deck that helps you systematically design the experiences that create guest loyalty and justify premium pricing.
Each card tackles a specific aspect of guest experience design: from defining your target guest and unique promise, to crafting arrival magic and signature experiences, to building the connections and memories that bring guests back. The cards work as structured prompts that move you from strategy (who are we serving and why?) to execution (what specific moments will deliver on that promise?).
The 12 Cards
The deck walks through the complete experience design process:
Foundation Cards (1-3): Target Guest, Unique Promise, The Invitation — defining who you serve and what you offer that no one else can
Arrival & Place (4-5): Arrival Magic, Authentic Place — creating those critical first moments and understanding how your location tells your story
Experience Design (6-8): The ‘Wow’ Moment, Signature Experiences, Real Connections — crafting the specific moments guests will remember and talk about
Sensory & Memory (9-10): Sensory Symphony, Forever Memory — designing multi-sensory experiences and identifying the peak moments that define a stay
Loyalty & Return (11-12): Epic Stories, Return Journey — turning guests into advocates and creating reasons for them to come back
Each card includes focused questions that move teams from abstract concepts to concrete plans. They’re designed for workshop sessions where you need alignment, clarity, and actionable outcomes.
Connecting Vision To Execution
Here’s how this fits with the other tools I’ve shared:
The Pioneer Vision Canvas helps you define your strategic positioning—who you serve, what makes you different, why guests choose you. It’s your North Star.
The Experience Builder Cards translate that strategy into tactical reality—the specific experiences that deliver on your promise and create the differentiation your canvas describes.
Together, they bridge the gap Scott identified: properties that know what they want to be but struggle to execute the experiences that make that vision real for guests.
What’s Coming
Over the next few weeks, I’ll share how these cards work in practice with real property examples. You’ll see how the framework connects to business outcomes—ADR, occupancy, and repeat bookings—and why systematic experience design matters more than ever in a maturing industry.
The Industry Moment
Scott’s insights from the Glamping Show make it clear: we’re at an inflection point.
Accommodation innovation is table stakes. Development costs are rising. Guests are more sophisticated and more selective. Competition is more informed and more capable.
The properties that will thrive aren’t the ones with the most beautiful structures. They’re the ones with compelling answers to the question: “What will guests experience here that they can’t get anywhere else?”
The Experience Builder Cards provide a systematic way to answer that question.
I’m making the first 6 cards available to readers [LINK HERE] —the foundation and arrival sequence that gets you from strategy to those critical first guest moments. It’s enough to run a productive workshop session with your team and start closing the experience gap.
Matt Small helps real estate developers and hospitality owners turn projects into distinctive destinations that drive premium returns. The Experience Builder Cards are workshop tools used by resorts to design memorable guest experiences that justify premium pricing and drive repeat visits.
Want all 12 Experience Builder cards? Email msmall@rviplanning.com with “Experience Builder” in the subject line.