# 2021: Firelight's strongest season yet!  | Firelight Camps

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/146012
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:146012
- Published at: 2021-06-17 21:33:48 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-13 13:01:36 UTC

## Author
Robert Frisch

## Subject
Firelight Camps

## Content
Hi everyone – this is Bobby Frisch, CEO of Firelight Camps. I’m here at Firelight Camps in Ithaca NY on a beautiful cool sunny day in June.Emma and I started Firelight Camps in 2014, which makes this our 8th operating season here in Ithaca. So we have deep experience in opening, operating, and marketing a tented hotel, and there are just a handful of other operators here in the US that have been doing it this long. And before we started Firelight, Emma and I both consulted for one of the 1st glamping companies in the US doing large setups of 400+ glamping tents for large events and festivals all over the country.Back then, luxury camping was not nearly as well known, at least in the US, and it’s been really exciting to see the entire industry grow at an incredible pace over the last few years, and especially through the pandemic.Even in the years leading up to the pandemic, we saw strong occupancy rates in the mid to high 70s, and rates climb every year up to a $262 average rate in 2019. We are very fortunate to have seen a huge boom in demand for outdoor hospitality in the last 2 years, and 2020 was our best year ever. 2021 is shaping up to be even better.Compared to this time last year, our revenues are up 93%, our reservations are up 82%, and our rate is up 7%.Now granted, 2020 was a very unusual year – we saw an extremely short booking window for example which skews that YOY comparison, so it is also useful to compare this year YTD over 2019 which was more of a stabilized year.Compared to 2019, our revenues are up 64%, our reservations are up 44%, and our rates are up 7%.So, its is going to be another great season here, and we’ve made some exciting upgrades like this beautiful new lobby tent with hand-hewn ash timber supports, and we’ve expanded our F&B program with wood-fired pizza and hand-pies which we serve out of this cute little food trailer to go along with our full bar and live music events. More on that to come.Thanks everyone and just a reminder – we’ll be closing out the campaign this summer so please consider investing with us! THANKS!