82. Titans of Tents: Four Founders, Four Continents, One Honest Conversation

What if the people who actually build the foundations of this industry, the ones who've spent decades engineering structures in the Okavango Delta on 45 degree slopes in Thailand in the middle of the Australian Outback, in the Middle East and on the shores of the Bahamas? What if they've all sat down together and just talked, honestly, about where this is all going? That's exactly what you're about to hear. Welcome to Titans of Tense, a brand new series sitting inside the Glamping Business Podcast where I'm bringing together four of the world's leading glamping structure and luxury tentative villa founders for a conversation that frankly doesn't exist anywhere else. Four companies, four continents, for very distinct positions in the global supply side of outdoor hospitality, from engineering-led tensile structures to old-cature-tentered villas and battle-tested eco-result structures built to withstand category five cyclones. And yet these four people genuinely like each other, respect each other's work deeply and share something that I find more rare than any of their individual achievements, a real desire to raise standards across this industry for everyone in it. That's what this series is built on, friendship, honesty and a guiding mission to make this industry better. So let me introduce you to the Titans. We have Brendan O Maloney, who is the founder and CEO of Tenthouse Structures. He's spent past 15 years building one of the most innovative, full-service tent architecture firms in the world. We have Yulie Wick, who leads escape nomad, and has delivered more than 450 luxury-tentered structures across 55 countries. Individuals, celebrities and businesses have all been his customers. And we have Tom Butterfield from EcoStructures out of Western Australia. When the owner's resort was flattened by a category five cyclone and had to be rebuilt from scratch, Tom joined to help make that happen and his epic global story starts from there. And David Patrick Court, who brings 25 years of actual living and operating in the African Safari industry before he crossed to the supply side. His work now spans luxury safari lodges and award-winning tentative resorts across Africa, the Gulf, Middle East and the Far East. If you've ever wanted to sit at a table with people shaping out your hospitality worldwide, this is that table. In this first episode we cover how each of them got here, whether we're dealing with one global glamping market or a series of very different regional stories, what COVID really did to this industry, why tentative structures might be perfectly positioned for an AI-disrupted world, and what's still misunderstood about what these structures can actually do. This is episode one of Titans of Tents. Let's get into it. Glamping and unique holiday rentals are surging in popularity with the growing desire of customers to book holiday, set deliver and experience. They are also the new business of choice for those wanting to improve their work-life balance. So how do you build a strong business like this that gives you the life you need and a great investment? I'm Sarah Riley and I want to share what I've discovered after being immersed in this industry for over 20 years, to inspire you to find out more about what's going on. Welcome, this is the business of glamping and unique holiday rentals. Before we start with the episode, I want to share something with you. For years I've been guiding people to launch and grow their own unique glamping businesses and transformational retreat events, and honestly I've lost count of the number of times someone said to me, "This is great, but can you just do it for me? For a long time my answer has been no, but not anymore." 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And let's get some of those to do off your plate. But be aware that we only have capacity to work with a handful of people, so if you're interested be sure to get in touch. All right, back to the episode. First of all, I'm going to start with a few observations from me because I, from the outside, looking in, I see four founders, four companies and four countries and it's really genuinely unique, multi-voice perspective on the global supply side of tentative structures around the world and this does not exist anywhere else. And the other thing that I really love about what I see, what I observe about you guys, is that you have a really strong, competitive respect for each other. And this is second to none. In fact, I don't think I've even seen it anywhere else in the industry and you are the go-to experts in this space. And the fact that you actually really enjoy each other's company and you're really good friends is quite crazily unique. But the thing I find most interesting about all of you is that you are with a genuine desire to help raise standards across this industry, across this world. And that's rooted in your friendship, it's rooted in your honesty. You seem to have a guiding mission to try to help the industry and make it become better and achieve better, everyone in it to achieve better. So first of all, I'd really like to go around the table as it will, around the room and allow you all to have a little intime for introduction. So tell us the moment that you knew that this is what you were going to do and what your company looks like today. Brendan, let's start with you. Tell us the moment you knew this was what you were going to do. I was in my 20s when I started working for myself really and I was in finance of all things prior to that, which I hated, not as do you. And at friend of mine, you're coming help me rig some tents on a weekend. We were young and some fun to do. South Africa was changing and just to open up, it was crazy. Movies being made here and events going on all the time and it's a big exciting time to be back in South Africa. I'd been setting abroad. So I went out and we were slamming up pigs into the ground and putting up these big tents for movie sets of all things. And I kind of got the bags being outdoors and I got an opportunity to build a tent, a custom tent for a project in the Mubia for 20th century Fox. And it had to be, it had to disappear in the background because they had no way to hide it. It was for the catering and big catering team. So I had to camouflage it and it had to be taken up and taken down really quickly. And it was quite an exciting, interesting challenge. And I came up with this idea using horse riding paths fabric for for Doddbus, right? Which are stretchy but very tough to make this stretchy tent thing. And that's how stress tents began and it's a world on industry now. But from that time, and I spent in the Mubia, I would say that was my kind of, my bug for Africa, putting up tents there when I was 26. And building this kind of, these custom really cool different tents. And I, yeah, that's really how it started and then evolved into wanting to combine design and experience and structure as one. And my, my, my interest and business in this field evolved. It's amazing. So, you, how about you? In my case, it was more of, after a banking career of 20 plus years. For the back, I was even in, I did the apprenticeship as a landscaper then I went into fishing gear industry, which is a hobby of mine. And then I always saw something else. So, I saw this end topreneurs in the bank, all these CEOs. And I thought, okay, that's kind of cool. I want to invest in a company. So, it was more entrepreneurial driven and then I got connected through a friend that's also a client to our founder, Unicvan Walsper. So, the company is a bit older than when I joined 14 years ago. And it was the entrepreneurial challenge to invest in a company and build it. And of course, when I went to the show side, which is quite interesting story. So, she bought a land and she want to build a house. And then she won a lift in a tent to see the construction. destruction of the house. And in essence, you never built the house. You just built the bed, then the bed to tent. And then people came and she entertained them for afternoon, high tea and so on. And then Uma Turman came along somehow as she was in this circles and she bought a tent for the Bahamas, which is still there, I think 18 years later. And so it became a business. And then she did some installation for wealthy individuals and so on. And then I popped up and saw that showroom and I said to Anika, you're like a jewel in the jungle, so what's your website? And she's like, I don't have a website, I'm scared people copy me and then I don't know. And so I was an investment consultant in the bank and I figured that I really did the research. And there were like four people talking to me about luxury tents in the span of three weeks. So I believe in those signs and then I really looked into it and thought, okay, this is, I was thinking I invest and we hired a general manager. But the general manager didn't last. So I had to jump in because I already put the money and then we started to build the company. So that's the brief story, hi, I got this. There's more end to Perniel Divin, but I have to say until today I love the product. I cannot sell if I'm not convinced about something. The tents are beautiful in all the shapes and forms that we're all are doing. And of course they have evolved quite a bit. And in our case, we do more concepts with the tents. So we're being pushed by obviously China and all this. But that was how I came into this business actually. I wanted to become an entrepreneur for some form which could have been something else, but by sort of accidents and by signs from people that are talking with me about luxury tents. I ended up and then the opportunity came and I think 14 years later now we're here today. And I became the CEO of the company, but also because I put the money and I couldn't go back. So that's the story. - I often find actually if you're on the right path, everything opens up towards you. And the fact that you believed in the product so much as well was the reason why you saw those signs and you followed that path. So how about you then David? - One of the advantages I would assume of Africa is I started to basically in the Safari industry. I was an adventurer's traveler since I can remember. I basically started a mobile Safari company and in Botswana, Oka-Vongo Delta and the mobile Safari company, grew and they grew into developing basically getting property and actually having my own tents and lodges in the Oka-Vongo Delta, creating both stations. And the interesting part was that the tents at that stage were from a total different entity. And I did not even actually understand the tentative industry, but I understood the tourism industry, the hospitality side, the Safari side. And also the other aspect that was the absolute love was the mobile safaris because you had to take a group of people into a piece of land in the middle of the jungles and I'm talking across the set of Africa and arrive at a piece of land with nothing. And then basically put up eight tents for your 16 guests and cook for them in a period of a couple of minutes. And I'm not joking, we should put up 18 to eight minutes. It's another story, but it was a great adventure. The sad part of having the tourism industry, there's this thing that affected everyone of us in the world in tourism was COVID. COVID kindly came and took it all away. So that was the end of that. But then once it's under a tree and you think to yourself, what do I know? I know tourism, I know Safari. I actually know Tented camps. And that's how my marriage into the Camelacentine group Hans Bustek arrived where Bustek was looking at creating a turnkey division called Bustek creations. So basically, elistically looking at a total different division in the group. And I thought myself, hang on, I know that tents, I loved in them, had them, did them. I could do this. And basically put up my hand and said, pick me, I'm going to hit this department and this division for you. And that's how my love grew from being a provider of services to the industry, to now being a provider of the actual solution. And it, if any part was, it's supposed to be short term, eight years later and you're real still. That is so often the case isn't it, when you find something that you really love, you end up being there so much longer than you ever expected. But yeah, wonderful, thank you. And Tom, finally Tom, Tom, we've known each other for many, many years. You've been a guest on the podcast quite some time ago and yeah, what you do is incredible. All of you, what you do is incredible. But Tom, tell us a little bit about what you do and where you are. - Yeah, okay. I guess from the company, it was born from an necessity to rebuild our resort. So, strong as category five cyclone, Tython, Haritan, depending on where you are in the world, what do you call it? To cross the Australian coast, directly hit the E.K.B. Resort, which was a timber built on Stunc's single and double room cabins. And there was nothing left of it. The idea was born to, how do we take the sister company, which was a construction company with remote construction skills? How do we take this and rebuild faster, efficiently, cost effectively, and not have a glow down again? So, we started designing the cabins and then we had the brand new idea to start looking at tents. Then we're like, what are we doing? We're crazy. We're supposed to be building it to stand cyclones, but we started prototyping and came up with a structure first and then cladded it in canvas to make it look a bit prettier than just the steel structure. During that journey in prototyping, a client came past, saw it, and we ended up building a 50-key resort in the middle of the Australian Outback before we started rebuilding our own resort. And that's when the kind of the ball dropped. And I was contacted. So just like Boole, I think 14 years now, a little bit over 14 years. I've been doing this. I was contacted out of nowhere, came from a very small town, knowing Karl, and he just asked me if I wanted to do this one day. I think within four weeks I was in Oman at a turtle reserve building tents and looked at experience, culture, and someone loved it right there. So I've been doing that ever since. What's not to love? Goodness me, Tom. You really got the life, haven't you? You're traveling the world. All of you are traveling the world. It's just incredible really what you do. The fact that you're so good at it. And each of you provides different elements of either design, how it looks, how you actually build it, bring it together, what your strengths are, particularly, Tom, you've created something that is with standing very high winds. And each of you are very unique. So you were all together at E.C.O. Resort Network recently in Thailand with Steph Curtis Raleigh. And you were having a conversation there where you were talking about the global market. And one of the things you were talking about was whether you're dealing with one global market or a series of very different regional stories. So what do you think that? What's your view from your perspective each of you? I mean, open discussion, who'd like to start? Well, I don't think it is that different. I think being outdoors, having that connection to nature is universal. I think different parts of the world. The pace has been different. It's all started in Africa, Southern and East Africa, with the Safari industry for sure. So we've had a bit of a head start on other continents, if you like. And that experience then just expanded into-- I would say that the US and the European glamping thing is in a way its own thing. It was always very accessible to people. It was just nice camping, right? Black street camping. Where Africa was always more real destination experience. You're going to see lions eat zebras and stuff. It's a whole different-- it's a whole different kettle of fish. People pay a pretty penny to do that. So there was always that budget to start making things look better. But I would say even Dave, let's go back to not even 15 years ago. There was no luxury class beautiful tentacam. So we're all just basic kind of tents. And then you'd have a lot of lodges, which are like thatched lodges. Correct. I remember building-- it was Duma Tower in the Lennian tea. And that was the first luxury tented lodge that was really in the whole wilderness system, so the ecosystem. And when they first did it, they thought they were going to put it in this sort of adventure category, very quickly that went into the ultra-prinium. And then they started saying, this is more of these. And I think out of that southern African space, we started from my experience anyway. We started seeing interest outside of Africa. And we started seeing interest in the US. The Armanra's out there, which we built, and started building in 2016. [BLANK_AUDIO] some years after we'd established. But and from there, I think that our mind was all just quite interesting. It was a huge postcard for us, the world's most luxurious in the campus you're like. And from there, the Middle East for us picked up. And from there, four seasons and six senses and all these high and brands trying to get it. So it was quite an interesting in the luxury space. The kind of glamping space, something that is not really something we serve so much. We don't really do that. It's far more design engineered turnkey type of solutions. Although over the years, we've started making solutions, products for more readily accessible to people. But it's still quite upscale. But what I could say is today, when I look around, and I look at my colleagues around the table here, is that whether you're in Oman or whether you're in Indonesia or whether you're in Australia or in Mexico, Costa Rica, nowadays, the demand for this outdoor experience, the demand for really well put together structures is universal now. It's not specific. Europe is still waiting for it to see. I know stuff's happening there, and I'm sure it will. I guess it's less-- I guess it's probably very regulated, and there's not as much space available to people. But outside of that, it's an industry now. It's a proper worldwide industry. Never mind China. I don't know how much work you guys have done in China, but mine. I mean, that is-- that's our world on its own. And you largely serve through the turn markets. But it's big. And Asia is so interesting. I'm probably most entrenched out of the four of us in that part of the world. I like to spend a lot of time there, and I'm starting to do work out there. And I'm very happy to see the uptake and interest in Asia. Like four years ago, five years ago, it seems to me like-- maybe it's just generational, right? Asia, like being outdoors, getting sun on my beautiful, clearly white skin. Thank you. I'd rather be under an umbrella. That whole thing is fundamentally shifted. And I guess that just speaks to a worldwide interest in connecting with nature. That's what it is. In style. How about you, Tom? What do you think? Yeah. And global or regional. I actually like something I read recently that Luke of Frank had posted on LinkedIn, which was-- before he starts any project, he has a luxury to do so. But he sees the place. If the place doesn't work, then the experience, the result, the whole doesn't matter whether they're tensile cabins or anything, that you have to be able to go to a place and say, wow, I think. So that doesn't matter whether it is in many regions or Pacific, South Pacific, South East Asia, or Europe, I think. So yeah, I think from what we're seeing and what we're doing, we can be anywhere from the Bahamas to Mexico, to Zambia, Australia, and the Pacific and South East Asia. It's wherever there's demand and growing tourism needs and the space to do so. I think Brennan definitely nailed it on space. The whole idea of doing something like this isn't to be in a three-by-three hotel room. It's all about space. And in that sense, he can be quite limited to finding that, property. So although it's a global thing that we're doing in many different parts of the world, it is not something that is-- we come across every day-- is I had this beautiful piece of land on the beach. At least lately, not that isn't on a 45-per-week slope, at least. Yeah, I think all regions-- and we should take geopolitics out of it because there is something we quite often forget about, which is domestic tourism. And domestic tourism is very big business. And I learned a lot about that during COVID, which David touched on. Some people didn't do too well out of COVID and some people didn't very well. What I discovered in COVID was international tourism kind of to ride up, or at least inquiries and leads and conversations. But domestic tourism, because you couldn't travel outside that country, actually boomed. So I think that's one of the first twig that all countries have domestic tourism. And sometimes you forget about that. But that will take away from how luxurious the end result is going to be, because you look at the room rates. And the room rate dictates what you can spend on the actual product or the full cost of building a result. Like that old COVID thing, that domestic tourism, it was almost an incubator for the industry to the next level. So suddenly, everybody was getting out and wanting that need. The ordinary man, like me or you, we wanted to get out there and just experience stuff. And yeah, sure, like ultra luxury tourism was always quite unaffected by these things to some degree, to economic cycles and black swan events. But it was quite-- I think that was a net. It was a strangely necessary shock to the system for our industry. That's when this whole outdoor travel just went. That's when it started doing this. That's actually interesting, because it's one thing I've brought up before. And this is always sometimes very careful with my words. But as bad as COVID was, it actually changed the better for tourism. And exactly what it did is it created an entire new industry that also didn't realize people don't want to go to the city anymore. The city people want to get out of the city. And that's where slash clamping slash luxury tends has just boom. So in our case, I can pretty much relay on Dave's. It was about to take off before COVID. And then, of course, it was a screeching halt. And then he really took off. So our best years were 22, 23, 24, where we could hardly cope with the production and also in this region. And also the quality of tents was increasing. The concepts are getting more and more. And the general interest-- so I think it takes me about half the time to explain the product and make a sale than it used to be 14 years ago. And that's probably an underestimation. So that's what we feel. And I also think it's there to stay. So the trends that were in there scraping up before COVID were accelerated to recover it, where people move out of towns. I think we had one of the few resorts here in Bali that actually made money to recover it, because people just even from then, even the local one, there was a price on how many domestic tourists, like Tom said, that they had. They discovered something new. And I think it's there to stay, because the experience itself brought them over the line. And it's so much better than those concrete bonkers. I think they will struggle. But from that perspective, I think the trend that we have, or we're in on the industry, or the niche, is going to grow. It's really interesting, because back in the day of the financial crash in 2008, 2009, there was, soon after that, a bit of research done on what industries survived that, and what industries became stronger. And it turned out that camping and specifically glamping was one of the industries that seemed to come out better from a result of that terrible time. And what I'm hearing you say is very similar from the pandemic, a terrible time, but actually glamping did okay as an industry coming out of it. And so I have to ask the question, we are going into a new time of, there's lots of question marks, we don't know where this is going, we don't know what's going to happen, AI. What do you see could be a potential outcome of people becoming more overwhelmed with AI, maybe losing their jobs through AI, maybe seeking places to escape the technology. Do you see this as being another catalyst to the industry? Anyone else got any thoughts over that? Yeah, that's quite an interesting one. I had a number of conversations about that, also with my 16-year-old son, where is this heading? And I cannot think of many things that will employ more people or better, but I have a feeling that if it turns out that somehow, either governments can keep a lot of people with money, with German burger-gale, or I don't know, the English term is, eventually people will have more time to travel, and it could be that they will spend three months in Somba, a year, maybe buying a unit in one of the tentative resort, or a cabin, or a pre-fire house, and work from there, and they do this every year. So there will be more of these kind of communities, it will be more, even with Starlink now, and the people might can do more with AI agents in the same time, right? So what I keep hearing also from friends that have an AI board now, and just everybody instead of five people, they need three. And then what I see in our company, the first, we have a number of architects, interview designers, and they're not coming to me, saying we want to use AI, but they'll have to, and we put someone in charge now, and it's quite rapidly, but just saw a video before I came to this thing that looks so amazing, so real time, we really think that thing is built already, and we make this now in a fraction of the time. But coming back to your question, so I do think as one of the industries, oh, net, net, net, on this AI thing, I could well have or imagine a scenario where we would actually would benefit. And one of the things I think that also the industry is looking at maybe to create more tentative or tentative operators. So our industry is evolving right from making tents in our case to making concepts to actually build our own resort or have a service that we manage people's resorts. So I think that's where it's kind of evolving and I can go also the off-grid part of it. I had a meeting yesterday with them and what they have now, they can offer an off-grid and waste management and all of that on places that were not affordable couple years ago. It's quite impressive. So yes, I think AI net net I hope or I believe actually that our industry will be beneficial. And as a last to say if I go to resort and spend three or four or five hundred dollar a night, even in five or ten years, I want to be served by a person at the reception and the waiter and have a joke with stuff and whatnot and not buy some robo. So I think they will still be maybe people even pay a premium. They might be a robo at the back doing the laundry and God knows well during the kitchen, I don't know. But I think people will still have and there has to be places where people are being employed. And this could be one of the industries which especially in villages. So the stuff ratio on a resort that we have is maybe two to one or three to one. So there's a lot of people employed in the wedding resorts. We delivered the tents here. I think they've 168 employees and other one has 145 and this is a lot of people and this kind of high. There will be less people yes, but even in ten years I think there will be a high number of people being employed in this industry. David, I can see nodding your head there. Tell me what you're thinking. Yes, the aspect of AI is that there will be basically a growth and enhancement on design, your engineering aspect, whatever. But for my manufacturer, because as our sales as a manufacturer, we do joke even today about it. We still want to see AI manufacturer tents because it's not a dead stock standard thing because when it comes to bespoke tents, it's the design and the client changes all the time. So the AI component can help on the one side, but we should actually enhance in employment on the other side because everything's not just done machine development. It's basically hand cut in. It's stitching. It's certain angles that that AI, we do not see AI do not use the word yet. So we actually see the advantage in the design aspect, your marketing aspect, your promotion stuff. Yes, AI push a button, give me a brochure, boom. There's some brochure, but that brochure can create an opportunity where the factory gets fuller and it created a job grid suggestion where we get more, so we can enhance the staff compliment to compliment the AI, pushing from the other side. It's like a sausage procedure. So we actually see that happening. And I think also that disrespect to the wonderful continent of Africa, Africa's Africa. And it's whenever we also go into any of the countries, especially Africa, one of the key things of installation of a result is job creation. So we always, it's always local workforce and the projects are always based on job creation, especially rural areas. And there is no AI guide is going to come around walking through a swamp and all my colleagues on this panel know some sites are you walking through mud, water, swampy, whatever areas that robot one step into that swamp, he's going to sizzle and he's not going to go any further. David, there is David the robots can go to that one and I'll do the Bahamas project. I will keep your eye out and what's happening in China. Because our guarantee they'll have been the first guy who will have a team of robots called intense and making. Yeah, I mean, the making of the tents to me with all due respect to good manufacturers out there is absolutely it's all on the sides of the industry. If you're producing large huge volumes of things robotics, of course it can do the job, but you need volume. And when you do more good focus and stuff, maybe not you can have certain tools and whatever. But I just kind of feel like what is the industry servicing we're not serving robots, we're serving humans and the reason I'll point of glamping luxury tinted adventures new tent architecture, well, at the point of it is to provide a human experience for people to connect to nature, not for robots to connect to nature. And so to at least point, I'm with you early, I really feel like a natural evolution for our maybe got all of us, but certainly where I'm looking at is we design incredible stuff engineer design and grow stuff. And it is it's a real labor of love putting something out with all kinds of interesting terms, remote sites are just fundamentally there's no comparison to buildings happening in the city or even just next door in the country. There's no comparison. There's none. Your risks are fundamentally the front. The installation is needs very special ask kind of people know they're doing the materials need to be durable and the engineering needs to be steady and reliable for our clients to get a return. So in doing that and building something like that, it just seems to me if we could do that for ourselves where we want to do it, where I like designing and the way my team can put their passion into and teaming up with the right partners. That makes a lot of sense. Tom started out in that space, right? You could put your own largest. I guess it's got its own challenge and hospitality itself, but there's definitely a kind of end to end opportunity there. And I think it's also this whole shift in tourism from from the state day of our era. Uli, I'm keeping it out of that from I still think you're a young guy. But we it was two weeks ago, get a guard for two the time. Maybe other kids with you. It was a bonus campaign and that was your own. What's that? What happens in COVID is that the blitz is morphed into a living and working and playing and experiencing yourself is becoming one thing. So I almost see that tourism is changing into the new way of living if you could put it that way. And I think we've got the perfect platform to to make that happen. A sort of quasi residential experiential concept is community-based concepts are really interesting. I'm still early in that space. And like right now, if you were to talk to a big hotel group and they may say to you, "Yes, residential, when in my mind, I think a residential, I think of a wall that's that kind of roofless bag and it's home and whatever." But much the same way several years ago, early when you don't have to spend twice as long explain to somebody what the benefits are, what you're doing. I think that's going to shift to. So there's a really interesting space space is to explore out there. There's the conversions of living and working and playing. There's a new way of living. Wouldn't it be nice to spend six months of your year or three months of your year pottering around in your wild space, your Therong on and being your work and you've got a community of people around you and living healthily and engaging in adventure and active tourism. I just think the word "curism" is almost as a in a way now. So Tom, as the young gun of this luxury tent family, what are your views on this? From this perspective is AI is definitely helping us to give information faster to the person that is wanting the information. But at the same time, I'm finding myself a lot busier with people wanting connection with someone real. So there's a lot more video teams meetings, Zoom meetings. There's a lot more even in person meetings. Can you please fly across the globe to come and sit down and have a meeting? You can do it as a change meeting, but they want to meet you and they want to absorb your passion and experience and depending on who this client is and what their background is, they may have built a lifetime of wealth in manufacturing something. They know nothing about tourism and experience and where to start. Yes, you can chat to be tiered if you want, but I think so that's what I'm finding. I'm finding it's making my life easier. It's getting, show me a photo of your site and let's do a render that used to take three, four weeks to get back. They cost seven or eight thousand dollars. Now I can get it back to you in a couple of hours. So things like that, it's definitely easier, but I'm definitely finding just like people want to do when they go to these places. They want to disconnect or reconnect and I think that's where we're finding anyway. We're finding that we're doing a lot more in person meetings and a lot more of these video type meetings to deal with real people. I think that will continue to grow. Do you think that's being fueled by the fact that people are seeing so much AI content and there seems people produce so much professional looking but not realistic content that they're concerned about what's real and what's not. And so in order for them to feel more confident about that, they're wanting to see you in person, they're wanting to speak in person and to actually really tangibly touch and feel the structures or at least test your knowledge and test your company's knowledge. Is that something you think is evolving as a result of the AI? So people can't fake it until they make it and they're just testing you as a company. Is that something that you think? There's always a counter trend, like what Tom mentioned. So we have not less since this AI came up or so, we don't have actually less meeting in person. And we build a new show site for the free-fab housing and we're going to build one for the 10th concept next year and I think people, yeah, even myself, you know, sometimes you get so much information overflow right? You don't even know what is true or what is not true. So the real thing to meet people to touch, that's the counter trend to me. And I always say in our industry, nobody will buy not even for a 100K or 300K, tens unless they have seen one or they talk to myself or our sales guys or engineers and so on. It's a product that is still until today needs hand holding and they got to see the real thing. Very rarely, it's not that you click on some, I don't know, website and you say, "Oh, 2/10, 5/7 and a half within a year." And you never talk to anyone, it's impossible. Because also, of course, all the other things, the technical, the delivery, the MEP, and so the product itself brings a complexity. But yeah, again, I think that's not going to disappear. You might can create leads with beautiful renders, beautiful videos, but at the end of the day, the real product is a must and the real people is a must too. I think the AI gives us an advantage in that it allows, like you were just saying, it's a complex delivery. Putting those stuff together is, it's a cross-functional multidisciplinary design and hardware and human thing. It's a deeply human process, not just the end experience where you're about in guests to do it. And people respond to human creativity, which is flawed and not perfect, and that's why it's so great. It's unique, it's not, I have often come up against the guys who are putting out these amazing renders. And probably achievable, not what we're doing without engineering is insane, with AI. Really incredible. But you still got to make it happen. And that requires human ingenuity and idea to say that it requires our flaws. It requires that in a weird way. You need to be able to look at things in an unlogical way sometimes to create a great design or to think out of the box about how to do something. So it's inside our space. I think it does certainly facilitate things, but everybody's doing it. So I don't think we're going to work any less. But I don't think. I don't see it because competition's competition. And if your name is going to be a tool, you've got to get that tool. And so I don't think that's going to change. But I do feel it'll give us opportunity to get more and more into what our customers want, which is that, just that, that thing that a picture doesn't really show. When you stand in front of that tent that Tom's got behind it, right? Or that Dave's got behind it. We stand in front of it. It has a whole different perspective to the human eye. It's not, but it actually feels grander and bigger and more solid. And either it's the sense that's all brought together in one. And that's not something that a robot gets, I don't think. We're not standing to robots. So standing to people and looking to the creases on Dave's tent behind him. Fix it. What do you, what is that? It's why do we like that? What is it about that we like? Is something very primal? About being outdoors. That is in our biology. It's not just, it's not just contrived magazine words. We really just, we respond to it very well. So I think our industry is healthy. And I think that AI is a fantastic tool. But it's a deeply human execution and a deeply human experience to go and stand these tents. So it's got great legs. So one thing I've noticed as one of the co-directors of the Gamping Show Americas conference is that there are individuals who are selling their software companies to big companies like Microsoft. And they are moving that investment into this luxury-tented hospitality space. So it's a really interesting shift. So obviously those people in the industry and the software industry are also seeing the strength within this industry. So I think that bodes really well. And it's very reassuring at a time when things are quite, we don't know what's happening, we don't know where we're going with it. But there are signs and signals that we are in the right space, which is fantastic. So David, I'm really interested in, will there a time for you, and this is an open question to everyone as well, where was there a time for you specifically when you didn't need to explain what you did quite so much at a dinner party? So people started really understanding what the industry was about, what it meant, what it looked like, what it, you know, maybe if they could invest into it as an individual, as a business, whatever. Was there a time when you just had, you didn't have to explain it anymore, suddenly people got it? That's interesting because dinner parties and I guess it also depends on the diversity of the friends you want hangs around with. But at dinner parties, before I could answer a question, approach from anyone, and if one of my daughters was with me, and the question was, what do you do, or what are you about? My kids would answer and says, he's a ten-child's man. That's it. Okay, our dad's house tends, and then immediately the response was, oh, we will be going camping the weekend. Do you, and you just check your head? But the tourism, hospitality, safari industry, and it is very powerful in Africa, is that you can clearly see that, and we've all touched on the suspect, that people not understand, and this is wonderful word that has come up, and it's not stuck, glamping. When you mention glamping, people get it immediately. And I think Brennan spoke touched on this, prior to COVID, and at 15 years plus one, I say, they're, there was this understanding of luxury tents. But media, social media, even I think the strongest is your tentative environment. It's now world-known. So, add it to the party, and brands, it is interesting, is people associate also yourself with a brand. So, bush tech is a strong brand. But at the same dinner party, you will be, oh, so you will say that tentative structures people, or eco-structural, we've seen it, or it's okay. So, it is interesting, our brands, and I use it with our brands, will get discussed at the same dinner party, because the benefits of think of this industry has grown so much that the informed traveler understands, and this is the other part, informed travelers, rather book, into a luxury tentative resort, then they would enjoy brick and mortar hotel. And Tom, why do you think that is? Is that something that you've seen as well on your part of the world, your side of the world? Yeah, it's education. Definitely, I think early said earlier, maybe only spends 50% of his time, and that's overstating. Probably talk. It really depends on the client and their education level on the subject, but I would say on normal conversation to a client, I'll probably talk about the tentative of that our conversation, because it really is, I don't know what your business plan is, you want a big one, a small one, a long one, a square one, you want a big bathroom, a small, that's irrelevant, that's part of your business plan, your budget, and what you want to spend a key. And then, so we shift almost directly to tell me your plan, tell me where you're at, have you seek the necessary permitting processes, or approvals, or environmental studies, or because it really is the easy part, at least for them, for us, obviously not so much, because especially if they want to design something new and different, and we've got to spend the time to do that, but for the client, that's the easy part. And it's like, how much is that one? Yeah, I can afford that one, because I'm going to get that much for night. So, that I find is very refreshing compared to the initial, say, three, four, five years. I'm sorry, primal solution. Absolutely and you you've got some quite interesting views around the terminology, glamping, the word glamping. Even though as David was just saying there, it really helped people to understand what it meant and what you provide, but you've got some thoughts around that. He shared that briefly. Of course, initially, as I'm from Europe, the term "tent" or "glamping" is cheap on the floor and so on, and we had to do, it's been evolved. I think the people that are looking to buy something like that, they have done the homework and they know, of course, the differences, but then the ground, I mean, the folks that are still going to camp right, they don't necessarily know, so they may be never seen actually attend with an AC in it or a toilet and a shower, they don't even know that they succeed. So what we came to was tentative villas and we did spend hours and hour thinking of something else. And as the moment you say, "villa," of course, it has an auto price tag. And in our region, of course, there's tons of villas in Bali and in those places. So that's how we got around. But yeah, I had longer discussions with our founder back then, we actually hated the word "glamping" and then every time people wrote in choir, he said, "I'm looking to build a glamping resort." And then you go to angry and they're like, "Okay, yeah, but also when they search, they look for glamping tents that are which is concave around, a voucher is a voucher, how do you, how do you, it's very hard." And we still struggle with that, so in our case, it was tentative villas, then it's prefab luxury cabins or prefab housing for the Gaza model also. And that's that's what we did. Yeah, it's a difficult one. I know it's a debate. It's definitely up for discussion as to what would be a better term. But in terms of the user, the guest, the customer, they all understand what glamping is. So Brendan, what's the one thing you think is about tentative structures and the industry, the oil in, that is still misunderstood by people, even those people who are buying your products. Have you seen anything that is still questionable in terms of what they understand about it? Two things. This may apply to me particularly or not, but more and more we're, in fact, almost always now, we have to design structures to meet, to be code compliant. This is an interesting, very interesting area, an area of engineering largely architecture too, but code compilality basically means that it can be signed off and permitted and so forth. But codes are largely designed for traditional buildings. And so code is not really caught up with Latwa structure. The Germans and the French and the British are probably, I would say the Germans actually mostly are kind of world leaders in lightweight engineering. And out of their emanated great visionaries like Friato and Jogen Heineken, all the amazing individuals who created these really cool tensile textile architecture, what we call new tent architecture now. But to understand that this thing can perform like a house, like a building, and you have the lure of a tent is take some explaining and without getting too technical with people, without getting into the nerd engineer that I am and explaining to people the things can be performed in a certain way, that takes some understanding, right? It takes some understanding that a thin envelope structure, something that's less than a millimeter thick can withstand hurricanes if it's designed properly and has to be sometimes or you can govern it and manage it like that. But that that whole performance pieces obviously takes some conversation. Tell us about all these things performed. Now it's fine when you're dealing with somebody on the other side, you say clearly technical, maybe you're dealing with a QS or you're dealing with an architect, an experienced architect, but when you're just dealing with your average panther out there or you invest a short attention span, I just also know she just wants to know cannot do the job to persuade them that this is they like it and they want it, but they want to be pulled across the line. It's obviously easier if you've got a great track record of projects with lovely brands attached to them. That helps and we're probably all fortunate that we have that track record. But still, even today, I've had clients in the stand, it's come to us and they're insist on being able to go and visit something that is exactly like what they want in exactly the same kind of surgery. Maybe we don't have something like that there, but I'll just say to them, it's not relevant. It's designed to code. It gets signed by an engineer record and permitted. It's all there. Go down to Aman Gehri and go and visit Aman Gehri if you want to get a sense of great, it's the same thing. We're just going to make it smaller for you in the sense. The same technology, people who aren't, say, technically minded, they're still a little bit of an education involved in understanding what non-traditional building structures, how they buy it, their advantages, their disadvantages, not everything's perfect, right? Now that's, that to me is something. It doesn't come across my disk every day though. No, more and more today, people understand it. They get these are well engineered things. Lots of people have got them up. All these brands are doing it. It must work. I do think the building code might sound boring, but I think you could do a whole segment on building codes, meeting building codes and performance. What do you want it to perform to? You could go on and on because it's getting harder. The authorities want to know what you're building. You have to get the building permits. It has to be certified and engineered. And rightly, we want our clients' guests or ran-user to be safe at night when it's a week in idle. There's a storm or a rain or whatever it is that's that it's getting hit with. Coastal environments. Interestingly, you would think that I think there was this period of time when the opportunity for 10 structures to get them in there quickly and start earning, start generating revenue for your project was a clear advantage. It's still it's a clear advantage. It's still a little relative, but it's become more and more regulated. One would hope not, but it has become more and more regulated, which I was fine. It's the language we speak, but I think actually what the way the challenges come in play is less around building codes permitting, that's just an engineering exercise. The challenges are we're on getting entitlements on your land and in more sophisticated markets. Can I get an environmental impact assessment done inside 12 months? Can I get my entitlements in California inside five years? Can I get that because suddenly then the advantage of doing something like that, it becomes what it's for the experience. It's not necessarily for the execution speed because in five years you can design in. So there are other pieces there to consider. I think the thing comes down to ultimately is an a land investment perspective. The luxury of camping is the land. It's a luxury. When you in the city you don't have that luxury. So you're actually inside four walls. Pretty much okay. Well, and the courtyard and the pool. But when you're in the wild, that is God's country. We're going to call it right. That is unreplicable. Every view you have is totally unique and it cannot be replicated. And then what happens inside that space? That is the real luxury and we just there to provide a platform for people to experience that. I really cool. So I think what's quite interesting and we talk to investors because of course our clients are largely, it'll be B2B, he really must be. Show this private clients and so forth. But with people of the, it's been easy to see how the funding is working in our industry. That could be an interesting podcast, I think. What's happening with the funding in this industry? Having a piece of land attached to an investment is that's God's value and can be whatever the terms you use and different countries mortgage bond that whatever that sold off at a value and increase in value. That is of course any investors, it is particularly interesting and I would think particularly for example in Asia, that's a big thing, right? In the States, least thing is easier maybe. It's six to one half a dozen than the other but I think that the land that we, that great piece of property has never changed as a day that you said, location is everything and more and more now a couple of hours outside of the city is a very another very interesting space, not necessarily hugely remotely where you can access this kind of thing on the weekend. Those properties of course worldwide are starting to see big booms. I'm sure we all know any secondary or primary city within a couple of hours radius of a city, within the winelands or whether you're in the orchards or just nature adventure cycling. These kind of properties are very interesting and I would imagine the land value has gone up. So this is an interesting tie between property value and what we do and how that might converge. It's different in Okavanga Delta. It can't earn the property. It's all community earn, concessions, garconcessions. But that's not the case in many parts of the world. Exactly on that point, 45 minutes from where I'm sitting, depends on how far should you drive through during 40, is a big five game reserve. It's just up the road. So those pieces of property are privately earned, each piece and is many private owners, all in this big big five reserve. So they've seen the value and exactly like I said, you put up a couple of tents on their property, and each one is looking straight into the absolute unbelievable wilderness, and you've got the big five. So the city, we go back to local tourism, whatever, so the city all of a sudden, for weekends, you can imagine with respect to the rest of the world with these little big five, in 45 minutes, it could be sitting under fire, inattent, sipping a good South African wine and watching the big five. So those unique opportunities create the growth and it comes back to our industry, because each one that gets a little piece seized in the next storm either, I also want a tent. We're obviously African files, right? I mean, I spend a lot of time in Asia, in Thailand, I have a little farm up there, and that we can get away to go into a beautiful part of the world with incredible bird lives. Maybe then there's no tag, that's been more, but there's certainly a whole stunning piece in Asia, which is fertile and fruit scaring everywhere, and the birds are going crazy, and there's incredible community experience in these places, little villages, I know all the locals, they come over, they work with us, or they come to sell something, or they come to set a chest, and they come into the forest to get big mushrooms on the weekends, and this sort of thing is, it doesn't all have to be super high-end, super remote, amazing, but just with general getaways, and also just for spending a month out there at a time. Our industry presents that opportunity, much more so, clearly used to do. How many people have got private lands are buying three, four, five, six, seven cabins, or putting up, we did crazy residential stuff at the moment, that is, I mean, not really, it's into that two super luxury private residences, and now we're getting into the branded residence side, which is real interesting, in our space, it's wait to see how that evolves, but the point is the demand is there for it beyond the original idea of just once a year going on holiday. So I'm aware that David has to go because he's got to travel now, so I think maybe what we realise that there's so much to talk about, there's so many topics to talk about, so what I'd love to ask you is will you come back, and maybe we do a bit of a series where we talk about different issues facing the industry from your perspective, and we dive deep into things like permitting, and everything else that you've mentioned today, is that something that you'd be prepared to do? Yes, absolutely. Wonderful. I'm going to thank you for your time, David, if you have to leave, please leave. It's really so great to see you all. Thank you so much for being here today, and yeah, to the listeners, I will leave all of your contact details, your website, everything else that people can see who you are, see what you do, get in touch with you directly, and follow up in any way that they want to. But thank you so much for your time today, and I really look forward to our next conversation. Thank you. We want to talk about what's, yeah, the doing. Wonderful. Thank you so much everyone. Bye. Bye.