Ridgeback Lodge: The Year-Round ‘Glamping’ Getaway
New Brunswick has no shortage of possible nature getaways. But for those who want to enjoy what nature has to offer without necessarily roughing it, there’s the happy medium of glamping.
When Christel Postel and Robert van de Straat moved to New Brunswick from the Netherlands in 2012, glamping was a relatively new concept, at least in this corner of the world. They took advantage of the untapped market and established Ridgeback Lodge, a series of domes and cabins on 180 acres of land in Kingston, New Brunswick.
We caught up with Postel to see how things have been going since.
How did Ridgeback Lodge get started?
We’re immigrants. We’re from the Netherlands and we immigrated in 2012. Before that we also had a tourism business, which was the business of my family. If I were to stay in the Netherlands then I would have been the sixth generation in that business but we decided differently. [The family business] was a bakery, a petting zoo, a restaurant, a shop, a lodge, a fishery pond. It was numerous areas of hospitality … We went on a holiday in Canada once in 2005 and fell in love with the country and started going again on a holiday. At one point it was starting to get a little bit more serious so we started thinking, “if we want to move here, what do we want to do and where?”
Eventually, it was our immigration consulate who suggested New Brunswick so we simply looked on realtor.ca and that’s how we found this business. We purchased it in 2012 and went from there. Once we set our mind to New Brunswick, we visited a couple times.
It was an existing business and it was here for probably about 25-30 years. It had the log cabin so at least that gave us a start of something to begin with and, after a half year, we started with the dream domes.
Why did you go with the glamping concept? What’s the attraction of glamping?
For us, it was a bit of a gamble because we brought the idea over from Europe. Glamorous camping was a [concept] that already took off in Europe and in Africa and such but North America was a bit behind. We started with two dream domes but immediately it was a huge hit.
Apparently, there was a big need for something like that here too. Specifically for New Brunswick, it’s something completely different. You bring people back into nature camping-style but like a five-star hotel. It attracts a lot of people, people that go camping or used to go camping but reached an age where they don’t want to go through all that fuss again. So for them it’s a good opportunity to kind of go camping again, but without all the negatives that come with it. If you get the diehard campers that normally don’t leave a stone unturned, well they want to treat themselves sometimes too.
Who are your target visitors?
It actually attracts quite a broad audience because our setup, it’s only meant for two people so we focus on adult couples. In our case, we have a specific target group, which are couples. It’s a secluded couples getaway with a private hot tub and everything. For us, it’s focused on quite a specific group. We don’t cover anything like TV or internet. The philosophy behind it is really more of a disconnect and reconnect with each other. That’s what we often hear from our guests, is that they’re very happy that they had a chance to get together, just the two of them, and really had time to spend together. Our goal is to keep up with that for the two adults because of course, most businesses are more family-oriented so we definitely took a different direction but it was quite a hit…
We actually have no marketing budget. We’re lucky in a way that social media works really well for us. That’s actually our advertising. It’s word of mouth from previous guests that post things on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and that gets picked up by their friends and family and they spread the word. That’s kind of how it goes around…
We’re a small business so we don’t have a real budget for something like that, and we’re very fortunate that in this way we don’t need to.
When are you most busy?
We’re open year-round. Actually, the winter is the most popular. That’s because it’s extra unique to go somewhere in the winter and a lot of other businesses close. But people still want to go out and you’ve got a lot more activities in the winter with snowshoeing, cross-country skiing. The dome, it’s a white, round shape so it already kind of looks like an igloo. It works really well.
In the summer, of course, it’s busy because it’s when a lot of people have their holidays, but the summer is usually more oriented for family getaways and we’re not really tapping into that group anyway. All other seasons are for us way more popular than the summer.
What’s unique about what you do compared to other glamping locations?
I’m always browsing around the internet [to see] what other people do, what else is there and I think what makes our concept unique is that we maintain a very high level of quality inside and out. We’ve got a huge property, very private. It’s a small setup. If we’re fully booked, we only have eight couples on 180 acres so imagine the type of privacy we can offer … The whole idea that it’s focused solely on couples, which is pretty unique.
Do you have any plans for the future?
There will always be an expansion in the back of our minds. So far we have steady growth. We just built two more this past summer so this year no bigger projects are planned, but hopefully next year we can think about another one or two more. It’s a slow but steady growth.
You’re also looking to sell Ridgeback Lodge. Why is that?
We would be selling the entire business operations, including future bookings. We have a personal preference to live in the Alberta Rockies and combined with an offer of starting something similar over there made us decide to sell Ridgeback Lodge. We don’t think it will happen anytime soon though. This is a multiple-year plan.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.