airbnb or hipcamp experience?

I was curious if anyone has a airbnb or hipcamp spot on their property? What is your experience and is it profitable?
I have been toying with this idea for a long time but I would like to see some success stories. Thanks!

Taylor Cleveland wrote:I was curious if anyone has a airbnb or hipcamp spot on their property? What is your experience and is it profitable?
I have been toying with this idea for a long time but I would like to see some success stories. Thanks!

What is a hipcamp? I was hoping to do an air BnB for campers and RV's on my property.
Still negotiating my way through the county zoning regulations to see how much it would take to get everything permitted.

We listed our off-grid yurt on AirBnB and Hipcamp. The AirBnB side worked pretty well - booked up on most weekends, as well as scattered week days for the entire 5 months we had it up. No business at all from Hipcamp, but I'd say it was because our price was set higher than what a typical camper would pay. We had a pamphlet that described our water and electricity conservation tactics, as well as how to use the compost toilet and what to do if they couldn't figure something out. We usually had some homegrown veggies and/or eggs and/or flowers waiting for the guests when they arrived. The reviews were good and a lot of our guests commented on how much they enjoyed the off-grid homestead experience.

One of the places I volunteered at a few years back ran primarily on airBnB income.

Middle of nowhere, but only a few miles up a logging road from a major highway near the oregon/cali border.

They had 4 small cabins, all different; a tiny A-frame, a two-story tower, a half-circle, and a treehouse. Also had a huge three story roundhouse, half a mile up on the top of the mountain. The treehouse was a big draw, the big roundhouse often empty. Guests were nearly 100% couples with no kids while I was there.

1 shared bathroom with composting toilet, propane heated gravity flow creek-water shower. Steel double garage canopy with tables and a 2-burner coleman. Zero power supplied to guests beyond the loan of a flashlight. No wifi, bad to nil cell signal.

Business was booming all summer and into the shoulder seasons.


I was left with the strong impression that the off-grid aspect plus the modest difficulty of access was filtering guests quite effectively, and the owners seemed to agree.


One difficult to duplicate piece of this success story was a total lack of anywhere else to stay nearby. Despite the highway proximity, just one campground maybe 30 mins south, and nothing anywhere nearby on airBnB..

We have had some success with people camping on our farm.

As I speak I am putting in an Inlaw Suite, in part for my inlaws when they come up from out of state, but also for others. I think we will get quite a few hunters who want to hunt deer and whatnot here, along with snowmobilers and ATV'ers.

My brother had a bad experience with an air BnB.... the landlord listed the property on multiple sites and didn't bother to take it down when it was rented. Brother had the place booked a week out and the guy never bothered to contact him, so he had nowhere to stay and had to wait for a refund. It seems like a better deal for the renters than the guests because there's a lot of risk involved when you're traveling and putting up a lot of money in advance.
Anyway it seems to me that the air BnB places don't have much difficulty finding customers.

A southern Oregon Hipcamp
My young cottage tenant, Vanessa, and I (an 85 yr. old widow with a life long passion for gardening and nature) set up a Hipcamp last May on my 5 acres of woodland that includes an acre of of gardens.  We started with 3 rv sites that I had created back in 2022 to bring in some extra income.  I had originally planned to rent the sites monthly to long term renters with RVs, but the county restrictions kept me to one.   When my last tenant moved on last spring, Vanessa suggested that we might try doing a Hipcamp with the sites instead. I liked the idea of sharing my 17 yr. old permaculture project and beautiful woodland with people, so we that is what we did.  

We already had an "outhouse" with a built in sawdust bucket toilet and compost bins for the waste, and each site had water and electric hook-ups.  

We added a firepit sitting area to one site, and I bought a propane firepit since most of the camping season here is also "Fire season" so wood fires would not work.  We added an outdoor table and chairs that I had and wasn't using to the site, and Vanessa painted some signs to help guide people from the road to the sites.  We had 66 bookings our first 7 months. Most of them were couples and families, often with a dog which we allowed on leash.   The guests were nearly all really nice folks who were grateful to have a nice peaceful place to camp.   Many were traveling and used us as a simple place to park for the night.  A few stayed a bit longer and enjoyed the area... We got some wonderful reviews!

In mid-summer we created a tent site on a level area in a very private part of our 5 acre woodland, with a picnic table, two hammocks, a firepit and a combo outhouse and cold water shower that we built with recycled materials I had on hand.  Campers had the whole site to themselves with no other campsites nearby.  This immediately became our most popular site.   I really think if you have space to do this one type of site - totally private - that is could be a simple way to make extra money from your land.

I did a couple garden tours early on (for a small extra fee), but then had to stop for most of the summer after a fall that took several months to heal from.  

I am now working on turning a small storage building next to the rv park into an overnight rental, with a combo shower (this one will be a hot shower) and bucket toilet setup.  This will increase the work a little but bring in a whole different range of guests - those NOT camping. The building already has water and electric brought to the outside.  

All in all I would say that this has been a positive experience for us as well as for our guests.  I have wanted to find a way to share my "permaculture" project with people who are interested, and this was a very nice way to do it. And I love that we are giving people a truly peaceful camping experience.   The guests always left things tidy, and we had no unpleasant experiences with any of the perhaps 150 or more people who stayed here the last 7 months.   I think Vanessa meeting them and talking to them for a few minutes - making sure their needs were met - made a difference.  People didn't see us as a faceless entity. We were a couple women sharing our space with them...      

If you would like to look at our Hipcamp website to get an idea of how they set things up - here is the address:  https://www.hipcamp.com/en-US/land/oregon-wild-azalea-eco-camp-mxvhxz95?adults=1&children=0&srid=b3d966a7-8c17-4c2d-908b-12070920492c

One of the things we found especially nice about this experience was HIPCAMP!  They brought the people to us - they collected the fees, and took a small percentage for themselves - and sent a payment to my bank account every week.  They will even send out a professional photographer to help you get good pictures of your site.  AND they have wonderful insurance to cover you if anything goes wrong!    

Although it's a bit of a learning curve getting the whole thing set up - they are nice to work with and really make the whole thing doable!  I highly recommend it if you have the space and the desire to share what you are doing on your land with others - as well as make a bit extra from your land.   Keeping it natural and rustic is appreciated...

The market is really changing for Airb@b at the moment. It has a LOT to do with the current housing market.

It depends where you are of course, but with housing costs so high, a lot of people without down payments, and the high cost of property taxes, a lot of people have reverted back to renting. That has really driven up the cost of apartments and houses for sale, so those that were doing Airb@b's are now renting out their places instead just because they can net so much more money.

I live on a river just a few miles away from both an indoor and outdoor wedding venue, and the house next to me was an Airb@b. The woman tried to sell the house but it would not sell, so she turned it into an Airb@b. She did pretty well at first, most weekends it being occupied, but this past summer she might have had four people all summer. A month ago they started renting it out as a rental house property.

But that is for permanent dwellings. I think for sites and glamping, the lack of Airb@b's to go too, might make these places more attractive for people who just want a place to stay. It just stands to reason; if a lot of formerly Airb@b's have been swapped to rental places, so the law of supply and demand comes into play. The need for a place to stay is out there still, just less places to go.

We have an airbnb on our property in West Texas.

At the present time there are two units and our daughter bought a RV looking unit at an auction which will be the third unit.

The profits from these units have been reinvest in the business to provide a future retirement income.