Everyone should self-impose a limit on the number of stories they write on glamping. Like one a month and maybe ten in a lifetime. So apologies, but two things have crossed my desk that demand to be relayed to anyone who has read this far:
First, you need to see the array of products now being offered by UK-based Boutique Camping, which proclaims, “We lovingly make and distribute a range of luxury bell tents and beautiful accessories that will turn any campsite into a home from home.” The tents are pretty cool; I can’t confirm they are lovingly made. I seriously doubt it. One lovingly makes very few things in this life, and one of them shouldn’t be a canvas tent for a stranger.
Also, I doubt they are “more like a hotel suite than a tent” but I haven’t tried one.
What really drew me is the catalog of glamping accessories: India-print cushions, dream-catchers, vanilla-scented flameless candles, bean-bag chairs and strings of fairy lights. In short: this is a company formed on the proposition that people will spend real money and haul stuff into the woods to replicate your freshman year dorm room.
Not to put too fine a point on this but: Dream-catchers.
Next, Glamping Hub draws your attention to this, the most alluring hospitality pitch of 2012: “Quirky Zen-Tipis Pitched at Charismatic Woodland Retreat.”
There’s no denying the magnetism of this evocative conflation of a religion (Japanese Buddhism), a form of ethnic shelter (the tipi), and an enticing natural setting (woodland retreat). No, it is not Glamping Madlibs. It is advertising poetry. Adveroetry. In the future, we’ll look for other stanzas on Methodist-Yurts and Islamic-Quinzhees. At the beach, on the mountaintop. And in charismatic wine country.
