The complete guide to adding a sauna to your glamping site

Glamping lives and dies on the review. Guests do not write five paragraphs about the mattress; they write about the moment that made the trip feel different. A sauna glowing in a field at dusk is that moment, and it photographs itself.

It also changes booking behaviour. A sauna gives guests a reason to choose your site over the one two fields away, a reason to book the colder months, and a reason to come back. It earns twice: once in the nightly rate, and again as a bookable extra.

Most sites sell the sauna in one of two ways, and the strongest do both:

• Per-stay sessions. A private slot sold at booking or on arrival, typically priced per session per unit rather than per person. It is the easiest upsell on your site because the guest is already there, already relaxed, and already paying for experiences.
• In the nightly rate. Fold sauna access into a premium pitch or a winter package and the sauna lifts every booking it touches.

For sites that open the sauna up as a bookable amenity in its own right, our benchmark for a horsebox or 10ft container sauna in a rural or seaside setting, based on hours open each week:

• Around 10 hours a week: roughly £45,000 turnover a year
• Around 20 hours a week: roughly £65,000 turnover a year
• Around 30 hours a week: roughly £85,000 turnover a year

Where those figures come from: From our own operators. This is where we have by far the most data. Rural and seaside sites are the setting we know best.

Take-home after running costs is typically 60 to 70 per cent of turnover, and the sauna seats 8 people at a time.

We build three saunas: the horsebox sauna, the 10ft container sauna and the 20ft container sauna. For glamping the choice usually comes down to the landscape.

The horsebox sits beautifully on grass, moves with your seasons and needs no groundworks: it is towed in, positioned, and earning the same week. The containers suit sites with a settled wellness corner: they arrive built, sit on a simple level base, and are made for years of high-traffic use. All three are wood-fired or electric, and all three are designed to look like they belong in a field rather than beside one.

Most owners think about the cost monthly, the same way they think about the revenue. Financed through Johnson Reed, a sauna starts from around £1,000 a month. Set that against per-stay sessions and a lifted nightly rate and the arithmetic is short.

There are two routes to a sauna on your site:

• Buy. From your own funds, or spread the cost from around £1,000 a month through our finance partner, Johnson Reed. You own the asset and keep everything it earns, from the month it arrives.
• Partner. For select opportunities, the no-capital route. We place and maintain the sauna, you provide the site and the guests, and we share what it earns.

This is one decision inside the bigger picture for venues: our complete guide to adding a sauna to your business covers it in full.

Outdoor stays are where our saunas started, and they are all over our operator map: coastlines, farms and hillsides across the UK.

Fowey Hall in Cornwall added a horsebox sauna on the lawn for guests who were already there. It filled, stays lengthened, and the group has gone on to order two more. Read the Fowey Hall story for how a stay-somewhere-nice business turned heat into a reason to stay longer.

The first step is a 20-minute call. Tell us about your site, your pitches and where a sauna might sit. Before we speak, we send a revenue model tailored to your site, so the call starts from your numbers rather than ours.

Everything you need is on our page for businesses, or start with the form below.