By now, any self-proclaimed jet-setter worth their salt has noticed that glamping has gone from travel trend to lodging mainstay. It's not that luxury gilded suites outfitted with museum-quality art and Frette bathrobes are going away any time soon, but if your taste in travel skews adventurous, you have no doubt seen that more and more properties have cropped up where you can sleep in luxurious tents.
If this is somehow news to you, then let us be clear: These are no ordinary tents. They are bigger than a studio apartment in New York City and come with the accouterments of a very fancy hotel. Take, for instance, ULUM Moab, a luxury outdoor resort nestled in the red rocks of rugged, rural Utah. While there’s a massive heated pool, a sprawling restaurant cooking up fresh fare, and a lobby with a terraced patio, all of the accommodations are luxury tents. “It’s about feeling part of the environment around you while also comfortable and content, something you just don’t get within four walls of a standard hotel room,” says Matt Gaghen, CEO of Under Canvas, which has over a dozen tented hotel sites across the country.
But now, as so many hotel trends do, the luxury tent is coming to private homes—or more specifically, backyards. These may not come with outdoor yoga, crystal sound bath meditations, or an exceptional culinary experience, but they do let you connect with nature in a way you can’t from the L-shape sectional in your living room. For people increasingly eager to get away from screens, alarm clocks, and the constant distractions of modern life, pitching one of these in the backyard might offer a welcome respite.
These are a far cry from the backyard sleepovers of your youth. This Wayfair one, for example, is crafted from all-weather material and comes in five sizes. (The largest one accommodates a dozen people.) All the sizes include a stove hole, so you can have a heat source in the tent.
On the other hand, if you want to go all in, you have options, this Etsy option is two stories and goes for a whopping $27,000. That may be a lot to spend on a tent, but consider what you would spend building a guest house or major backyard feature? Those can easily run into the tens of thousands, so perhaps this isn't such a stretch.
For now, though, we are obsessed with the idea of kicking back in an elaborate, extravagant tent worthy of the most stylish backyards.
