How to choose a sauna site in the UK

Every good sauna site sits somewhere on a line between two models. A footfall site puts you where people already are: a busy beach, a promenade, a gym or padel club, a market town car park. A destination site asks people to travel specifically for you: a quiet field, a woodland, a private corner of a farm.

Both work. But they are very different businesses, and Tom is clear about which one is easier to start with.

Destination sites can be magical, and operators do make them work, with a stronger brand and more marketing effort. If it's your first site, start where the people already are, and earn the right to go remote later.

Most first sites don't come from an agent or a listing. They come from a conversation. Vicky Burgess-Pierce of Sauna in the Wild found her farm site by asking everyone she met: “It was the farmer’s wife overheard me at a yoga retreat saying, if anyone knows anyone with any land, can you let me know? And she tapped me on the shoulder and she’s like, we’ve got loads of land if you, if you want to come around.” Read Vicky's story.

The deals themselves are usually simple: a monthly pitch fee, or a revenue share with the landowner, agreed over a cup of tea. Private landowners can say yes in a week; councils and other public bodies take months and can change hands beyond your control. That's why Tom starts private every time.

What to bring to that conversation: what the sauna looks like (photos win arguments), how many cars it brings, what insurance you carry, and what's in it for them, whether that's income from a quiet corner or a reason for people to visit their land.

Look at the operators on the map and the pattern is obvious: the coast is sauna country. Cold water gives your customers the contrast that makes the ritual work, the setting sells itself, and a beach brings steady walk-past trade most fields never see.

And the coastal numbers are honest ones. These are Tom's own rural, coastal, weekends-only community saunas, the quiet end of the scale, not a best case. They match the benchmark bands in our profitability guide.

A coastal pitch has its own checklist: exposure to weather, winter access, seasonal crowds vs empty Januaries, and who controls the foreshore. But as a starting point for a first sauna, it is hard to beat.

A sauna site needs less than people assume, but it does need two things thought through:

• Water. “The one thing I would say you always need is, is a water source because you kind of can’t get away without that,” is how Tom puts it. That can be a tap, the sea, or water you bring in: “A lot of our seaside sites we simply don’t have access to a tap. So make it work with what we have.”
• Power, or none. A wood-fired sauna runs completely off grid, which is what makes remote beaches and fields possible at all. But where mains power exists, Tom's advice is consistent.

Beyond those two: think about parking, a place for people to change, and how a delivery lorry gets in on day one. None of it needs to be fancy. All of it needs an answer.

Tom's first site came from spotting an absence, not an opportunity brief. He moved home to the North Norfolk coast and noticed what wasn't there.

That instinct became a checklist he now runs for operators before they commit:

• People already nearby: footfall you can see, not footfall you hope for.
• Cold water or space for it: the sea, a plunge, or room for one.
• A private landowner who can say yes quickly and means it.
• No sauna already serving them: be the first, not the third.
• Room to grow: somewhere a second unit or a bigger one could follow.

If you're weighing up a specific site, tell us where it is and we'll give you an honest read on it. We've seen enough sites by now to know which ones work.

Here is the part that takes the pressure off: with a mobile sauna, choosing a site is not a one-shot decision. A horsebox tows behind a 4x4; even a 10ft container moves on a lorry for a few hundred pounds. If the pitch is wrong, you move.

Operators use that freedom constantly. Vicky outgrew her first space after nine months and simply moved to the farm where she's now, in her words, “always fully booked”. Tom ran his the same way.

So choose well, using everything above, but don't let the search for a perfect site delay a good one. The sauna can follow the demand.