Glamping Underwriting Method: Unit Nights, Rate Evidence and a Loan Record That Shares the Campground Code

A glamping site sells a night inside a shelter it owns, furnishes and cleans: a canvas tent on a raised deck, a dome, a small cabin with the bed already made. A campground sells something narrower, a place where guests set up their own tents, tent trailers, travel trailers or RVs ^[1]. For underwriting, that difference runs through the whole file. Demand has to be counted in unit nights, not in sites. The nightly rate has to be read after lodging taxes and booking commissions. The shelters wear out on a cycle nearer to furniture than to buildings, which bears on the loan term and on the reserve taken before coverage. And when a lender asks how loans to the class have performed, the answer opens with a caveat: the SBA loan record holds no glamping code, so every loan figure printed here for the class is the record of RV parks and campgrounds.

This article sets out the method a feasibility study can follow for a glamping project financed with an SBA 7(a) loan, an SBA 504 loan, a USDA Business and Industry (B&I) guarantee or a conventional bank loan. The series covers the general methods in other articles, and this one does not restate them: see the articles on coverage, on capture and penetration and on the climb to stable occupancy. The full worked example for the class is Worked Example: USDA Business and Industry Loan Glamping Resort Feasibility Study in Ohio; the model in this article is deliberately small. A reader planning a site rather than reviewing one may start with the archived Launching a Glamping Business in the U.S.: A Comprehensive Guide, and the sister method for parks built around RV sites is RV Park Underwriting Method: Site Nights, Seasonality and the Class's SBA Record.

Three industry codes a glamping borrower could carry

The industry code matters twice in a glamping file. It matters for eligibility, because SBA sets its size standards code by code, and it matters for evidence, because the code decides which loan record the project can be compared with. The 2022 NAICS manual offers three plausible homes. The first is 721211, RV parks and campgrounds, an industry built around sites for campers and the equipment they bring ^[1]. The second is 721214, recreational and vacation camps other than campgrounds, which takes in overnight camps such as family vacation camps and outdoor adventure retreats ^[2]; its establishments supply the accommodation themselves, cabins and fixed campsites among it, along with amenities such as food service and organised activities ^[3]. The third is 721199, all other traveler accommodation, which covers short-term lodging other than bed-and-breakfast inns, casino hotels, and hotels and motels ^[4] and lists housekeeping cabins and cottages among its examples ^[5].

A glamping operator can be described truthfully under any of the three. A site that mixes furnished tents with bare tent pitches and a few RV pads reads like a campground. A retreat that sells guided hikes, meals and paddling along with the stay reads like a recreational camp. A cluster of heated cabins and domes with private baths reads like traveler accommodation. The manual draws one more line that matters for long stays: renting out residential mobile home sites, the trailer park business, is classified in real estate, under lessors of other real estate property, not with campgrounds ^[6].

The choice is not cosmetic. SBA expresses each size standard in employees or in annual receipts, and the standard is the most a concern may have, counted together with its affiliates, and still be small ^[7]. For these codes the test is receipts: $9.0 million for 721199 and $10.0 million for 721211 ^[8], and $9.0 million for 721214 ^[9]. The site in this article's worked example, with revenue of $757,200, sits far below those figures, but a sponsor with several resorts, or one affiliated with a larger hospitality group, may not. A study should state the code the borrower reports, say why it fits the business as planned, and test receipts with affiliates against that code's standard.

The code also decides what the loan record can say. SBA's FOIA file gives each loan one NAICS code and its description, beside a franchise code where one applies ^[10]. The Loan Analytics dataset maps codes to asset classes, and its class for this business, RV park and campground, holds 721211 alone; neither 721214 nor 721199 belongs to any of its classes. Two consequences follow. A glamping loan booked under 721211 sits inside the campground record, mixed with RV parks and tent campgrounds in proportions the file cannot reveal. A glamping loan booked under either of the other codes sits outside every class the dataset reports. The record therefore says nothing about glamping as such, and the loan figures later in this article are labelled as the campground code's each time they appear. How codes become classes, and how a shared code is disclosed, is the subject of From NAICS Code to Asset Class: How SBA Loans Are Assigned, and Where Two Industries Share One Code.

Counting demand in unit nights

A glamping study has to reach one number before it can say anything about cash flow: the unit nights the site can sell in each season. A unit night is one shelter occupied for one night, whatever the size of the party inside it. Public series seldom count that. They count people.

The National Park Service shows the difference plainly. It records one overnight stay for each visitor for each night spent inside a park, and its own illustration is a party of 2 on a visit of 3 nights, which adds 6 overnight stays to the count ^[11]. Its categories also split the product a glamping site sells. Guests in concessioner lodges, cabins, motels and hotels are counted as concessioner lodging ^[12], while campers in soft-sided tents at park campsites are counted as tent stays ^[13]. A furnished canvas tent with a bed and a power outlet sits between the two. A study that uses park data should say which categories it adds together, and why, before it applies any capture share.

The demand model has three lines, each with labelled inputs:

• Unit nights demanded = M x s / g, where M is the guest nights in the reference series, s is the capture share the site can claim and g is the number of guests per occupied unit night.
• Season occupancy supported = unit nights demanded / (U x N), where U is the number of units and N the operating nights in the season.
• Capture share needed = (unit nights in the plan x g) / M, the same relation run backwards from the operating plan.

The first two lines turn a public count into an occupancy the market can support. The third checks the operating plan against that market: if the plan needs a larger share of the reference series than comparable sites earn, the plan is carrying an assumption the market evidence does not carry. The guests term is easy to omit, because a public count looks ready to use, and it is not small. A study should take it from the comparable sites' stated occupancy limits and, for an existing site, from its own booking records, and it should show the result at more than one value.

Table 1 lists the inputs of this article's model. Two are sourced, the prime rate and the startup coverage figure from the site's SBA program page ^[14]; the rest are assumptions, and the same inputs carry the worked example later in the article. Table 2 runs the three demand lines.

Rounded as shown; lines may not foot by one unit in the last place.

At the base inputs, a capture of 1.5% of 450,000 guest nights, at 2.4 guests to an occupied unit, gives 2,813 unit nights, a season occupancy of 53.3%. The operating plan assumes 56.5%, which needs a capture of 1.59%. The gap is 3.3 points. It is small, but it means the plan, not the market, is setting the occupancy, and a study should either show comparable sites that earn the higher capture or bring the plan down to what the evidence supports. The sensitivities show where the weight lies. Half a point of capture moves the supported occupancy by about eighteen points either way. Moving the party size from 2.4 guests to 2.0 raises supported occupancy to 63.9%, and moving it to 3.0 lowers it to 42.6%, with no change at all in the market. A reference series one tenth smaller supports 47.9%.

Which series stands in for M is the study's most important sourcing decision, and Table 3 sets out what the national ones can and cannot carry.

The national figures size an economy, not a site. In BEA's accounts, gross output of climbing, hiking and tent camping rose from $6,488 million in 2017 to $13,070 million in 2024 in current dollars ^[24], while RVing peaked at $64,081 million in 2022 ^[25]. A study may cite series like these to show the category is not shrinking, but no national growth rate belongs in a site's occupancy line: the site's demand is the reference series near it, captured at a share its competitors show it can earn. Where park data are used, the Park Service warns that current year figures are preliminary until its staff have reviewed them ^[27], so a trend line should end at the last final year.

Ten measures a credit officer checks on a glamping file

The file a credit officer reads for a glamping loan comes down to a short list of measures. Table 4 sets them out with the evidence a study should give for each and the published rule or series that anchors it.

The reserve and the coverage line need a word of their own. B&I's coverage definition begins with EBITDA, deducts a reasonable expectation of replacement capital outlays, and divides the remainder by a year of principal and interest ^[17]. For a glamping site that deduction is not a formality. Canvas, mattresses, linens, decks and hot tubs are replaced on short cycles, and a projection that books their replacement as a one-time cost outside the operating statement overstates coverage in every year it shows. This article's model takes a reserve of 6% of revenue before coverage, an assumption a study would replace with a schedule priced from the actual unit specification. A study for an SBA or bank loan should take the same deduction, so that one coverage figure serves every reader of the file.

Coverage is then held against two numbers. The first comes from the site's own SBA page: for standard 7(a) loans it puts business coverage at 1.15x, and a startup gets two years after funding to climb to that level ^[14]. For B&I, a minimum coverage ratio enters the conditional commitment's loan agreement where the lender, or part 5001 itself, calls for one ^[31]; how the program's other tests work is set out in USDA B&I Guarantees Under 7 CFR 5001: What the Agency Tests and How a Study Answers.

Conventions. This article follows the conventions of the Loan Analytics worked examples. Coverage is tested against the program floor the site's program page states, where the program has one, and against a stated 1.25x lender assumption, and the higher of the two binds. Equity is measured at the loan the cash flow supports, with fees recomputed on that loan. An acquisition is tested on the seller's historical earnings, not on projections.

The model in this article therefore binds at 1.25x, the lender assumption, since that sits above the 1.15x on the site's SBA page ^[14].

Rate evidence: the posted price against the rate the operator banks

The nightly rate in a glamping projection should be the amount the operator keeps, and a price published to guests may not be that amount. Two deductions can sit between them: the lodging taxes the operator collects and passes on, and the commission a booking channel takes.

South Dakota's revenue department shows both in one document. Its tax guide defines a lodging establishment as a place held out to the public where sleeping accommodations are furnished to transient guests ^[32], and a campground as a place where sites are available for guests' tents, campers, trailers and other mobile accommodations ^[33]. A furnished tent fits the first definition better than the second, though in that state the difference does not change the tax: rentals by either kind of business to a transient guest carry state sales tax, any applicable municipal sales tax, the municipal gross receipts tax and the tourism tax ^[28]. The guide's worked example puts a $100 room charge at $8.70 of tax, a combined 8.7% made up of 4.2% state, 2% city, 1% MRGT and 1.5% tourism, with a reservation service keeping $10 and passing $98.70 to the motel ^[15]. The motel still owes tax on the whole $100 ^[16].

Three rules for the projection follow. The rate is the charge before tax, and tax collected is passed through, never counted as revenue. The channel's commission is an operating cost on a line of its own, not netted silently out of the rate, because it moves with the booking mix while the tax base does not. And the share of nights sold through commissioned channels is itself an assumption the study should evidence, because it moves coverage as much as a rate cut does: in the worked example, six more points of commission and a peak rate cut by a tenth arrive at the same 1.09x.

The same guide marks a second boundary. Rentals of rooms or campsites to the same guest for 28 or more consecutive days carry none of those taxes ^[34]. A site that fills its shoulder season with monthly stays has changed its tax base, and, as the eligibility sections below show, it may also be changing the character of the business a lender is asked to finance.

Rate evidence itself should be ranked. For an existing site, the operator's own booking records by unit type, season and night of the week carry the most weight, once the study has reconciled them to deposits and to the lodging tax returns. For a new site, the published rate calendars of comparable sites are the main evidence, read by unit type (a canvas tent, a dome and a cabin with its own bath are different products), by night of the week and by minimum stay, and recorded on a stated date with the tax treatment noted ^[28]. A study should print the comparable set, the dates read and every adjustment made, and it should treat a rate quoted for a holiday weekend as the top of a range rather than its middle. Where the evidence is thin, the study should say so and widen its stress test, as the worked example does for the peak rate.

Seasonality: several businesses inside one year

A glamping site that closes for part of the year runs as two or three businesses in one: a peak season that earns the margin, a shoulder season that may or may not cover its own costs, and a closed season that carries fixed costs with no revenue at all. Occupancy has to be stated with its denominator. In the worked example the site sells 2,986 unit nights, which is 56.5% of the nights it is open and 34.1% of all 365 nights in the year. Both figures are correct and they answer different questions. A comparison with a hotel's annual occupancy, or with a comparable site that stays open longer, is fair only on the second. The shorter-season column of the worked example shows why: closing thirty nights earlier lifts occupancy over operating nights to 59.5% while revenue falls and coverage drops to 1.12x.

The B&I rule asks for exactly this view. For a borrower with seasonal, cyclical cash flow, the lender's credit evaluation carries a projected operational cash flow analysis by quarter ^[35]. A study for any program should supply it: revenue and costs quarter by quarter, the low point of cash, which for a site that closes falls at or near the end of the closed months, and the working capital or reserve that carries the borrower to the next peak. Monthly series are the evidence for the shape of the season. The Park Service reports monthly figures for every park unit back to 1979 ^[22], so a site near a park can test its planned monthly pattern against the visitor pattern the park records.

Heating, insulation and private baths can lengthen a season, and a study may credit that only on evidence: shoulder rates and occupancy at comparable sites that have made the same investment. The worked example's shoulder column shows what it costs to be wrong, with shoulder occupancy ten points lower taking coverage from 1.28x to 1.14x.

SBA eligibility for a glamping operator

The SBA rules that bear hardest on a glamping borrower concern who uses the assets, who may join, how much space may be let to others and how long each part of the loan may run. None of them names glamping, so a study's task is to set out the operating facts each rule turns on.

Active use comes first. The rule bars passive businesses, meaning those owned by developers and landlords who do not actively put to use, or occupy, the property the proceeds buy or improve, with Eligible Passive Companies excepted ^[36]. On the rule's own terms, an operator that runs its reservations, employs the housekeeping staff, maintains the units and serves the guests is using the assets the loan finances, while an owner that places units on land and leases the whole site to a separate operator is in the position the rule describes, unless the arrangement fits the Eligible Passive Company exception and its conditions. SBA 7(a) Method: What 13 CFR 120 Tests and How a Feasibility Study Answers Each Test explains those conditions. A study should state which entity holds title, which runs the business, who employs the staff and whether any part of the site is let to another business.

Memberships come second. Private clubs are ineligible, and so is any business that caps its membership for some reason other than capacity ^[37]. A glamping site that sells memberships, season passes or priority booking to a closed list should show that any cap on that list follows from the number of units and nights available, not from a wish to keep it exclusive, and should describe the programme's terms and its share of projected revenue.

Space comes third. SBA's measure here is Rentable Property, which the regulation sets as the square footage of every building or facility put to use in business operations ^[38]. Where a borrower lets part of that space to another business, the occupancy rules apply. For new construction, the borrower's own occupancy has to reach 60 percent and permanent leases may cover up to 20 percent ^[39]; beyond those two shares, the rule wants a plan under which the borrower moves into a portion of whatever is left unoccupied and not permanently leased inside three years ^[40] and fills every bit of it by year ten ^[41]. An existing building needs at least 51 percent occupied by the borrower, and leases may take no more than 49 percent ^[42]. A study should present the guest units as part of the borrower's own operation, which is how the plan runs them, and should measure separately any space let to another business: a cafe, a spa, an outfitter's store or a block of units handed to a different operator.

Term comes fourth. A loan's term is capped at ten years unless what it finances, real estate or equipment, has a useful life beyond ten years ^[21]. For equipment or leasehold improvements, an installation or fit-out that needs more time to finish can lengthen the term by a reasonable period capped at 12 months ^[43]. The outer limit is 25 years, extensions counted, though the part spent on acquiring or improving real property may also run for the time construction takes ^[20]. A glamping loan can finance both kinds of asset at once: land, roads, utilities, bathhouses and cabins on foundations on one side, canvas tents, domes, furnishings and hot tubs on the other. A study should state the useful life of each kind of asset and size each part of the loan to it. In the worked example, putting the whole loan on the 25-year term lifts coverage from 1.28x to 1.49x. That gain is a financing choice the term rule permits only where the assets' useful life supports it ^[21], and a study should not present it as operating strength. A single 7(a) loan cannot exceed $5,000,000 ^[44], so a study for a larger resort should show how the rest of the cost is financed.

The 504 program sets its own equity scale. Measured against project cost with administrative costs left out, the borrower's share is 10 percent at minimum for an ordinary project; it rises to 15 percent or more where the borrower, or its operating company, has been running for 24 months or less, or where the project's building is of a limited or single purpose kind, and to 20 percent or more where both hold ^{[45] [46]}. In either of those two cases the third party lending must also come to half or more of the project's total cost ^[47]. A new borrower whose resort has not yet opened has no operating history at all, so the first condition reaches it; an established operator adding a site may stand outside it. Whether a set of domes, platform tents and a bathhouse counts as a single or limited purpose structure is not settled by the passage cited, and a study can supply the facts on which it turns: what else the structures could be used for, and who else could run them, which is also the evidence a B&I lender weighs on collateral ^[48]. The program's structure and job test are covered in SBA 504 Method: The Job Test, the Project Split and What a Study Must Show the CDC.

B&I eligibility and the state licence

The B&I rule names the family a glamping resort belongs to without naming glamping. It lists tourist and recreation facilities among eligible projects and gives examples, from hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts to resort trailer parks and campgrounds, provided they operate as a public or private commercial enterprise ^[49]. Because the list does not mention glamping, a study should show the facts that place the project inside it: a commercial operation with published rates, paid staff, booking channels and guest services. Where an owner lives on the site, a share of the loan proceeds equal to the owner's quarters, valued pro rata on floor area, is struck from the uses ^[50], so the study should measure the quarters and show the deduction.

Two boundaries matter more for this class than for a hotel. B&I will not finance timeshares or residential trailer parks, nor apartments, duplexes and similar housing meant mainly as independent housing, except where the tourist facility paragraph itself authorizes it ^[51], and the NAICS manual treats the lessor of residential mobile home sites as a real estate business, not a campground ^[6]. A site that sells fractional ownership of its units, or lets a block of cabins by the month to seasonal workers, is moving toward both lines. A study should print the stay-length mix by unit and keep long-stay units out of the transient projection.

Location is tested on a map, not on a description. Rural, for these guarantees, leaves out two kinds of place: any city or town whose population passes 50,000, and the urbanized area that touches such a place ^[52]. The second exclusion has its own exception: part of that urbanized fringe still counts as rural where a finding of rural in character has been made for it ^[53], and only Rural Development's Under Secretary can make that finding, which binds just the one project it was made for ^[54]. A study for a site in that fringe should say whether such a determination exists for the project or has been requested, because one made for another project does not carry over. Approval cannot be granted on the promise that a site will qualify later, and the Rural Development eligibility map marks the places next to an urbanized area as not eligible ^[55]. A site chosen for its drive time from a large city can sit close to that line, and a study should put the dated map result for the parcel near the front of the file.

Jobs and newness come next. Start-ups are eligible B&I projects when jobs will be created or saved ^[56], so the study should count the jobs, year-round and seasonal, quarter by quarter. A resort not yet open is a new business, and so is one that has opened but has not reached stable operations ^[57]. Above $1,000,000 of guaranteed debt, a new business's application must carry a feasibility study, written by a consultant the Agency accepts who is both qualified and independent ^[58].

Equity follows. For a new business that none of the rule's other equity paragraphs covers, the closing test is balance sheet equity of 20 percent or more, or a debt to equity ratio no higher than 4 to 1 ^[59]; the alternative is to invest equity or other funds in the project amounting to at least a quarter of its total eligible cost ^[60]. Where a new business building its project has a lender that wants the loan note guarantee issued before the building work is finished, the floor rises to 25 percent balance sheet equity or one of that paragraph's alternatives ^[61]. The study's sources and uses should show which test the borrower meets and with what money.

Term and collateral carry the useful-life point over from SBA. Under B&I the maturity is capped by useful life, the life that can be justified for the project or the assets pledged, and it may never pass 40 years or a shorter state limit ^[29]. Where an appraisal assigns part of its value to the business or the going concern, that part comes off the reconciled market value before any discount is applied ^[30], and the rule tells the lender to consider what kind of collateral it holds, its quality and location, how readily it sells and what else it could be used for ^[48]. A study does not value the property, but it can describe the alternative uses of the improvements and the market for them, which is the part of the collateral question it is equipped to answer. For fiscal year 2026 the annual notice gives a B&I loan under $5 million an 85 percent guarantee, prices the guarantee fee at 3.0 percent and sets the retention fee, charged periodically, at 0.55 percent ^[62]. The study should carry the first fee in its sources and uses and the second in its operating statement.

The state licence is the last gate, and Illinois shows what one can involve. State law there requires the Department of Public Health to inspect and license campgrounds every year ^[63]. The licensing act defines a campground as a recreational area where three or more tents, cabins, recreational vehicles or other permanent or non-permanent shelters are erected and maintained for camping ^[64], or where space is provided for such shelters for 10 or more persons for six or more camping days in a calendar year ^[65]. That reaches a site with only a handful of furnished tents. Campgrounds inside home rule units of government are exempt ^[66], so the parcel's municipality matters. The department reviews construction plans for all new campgrounds and for major expansions or alterations ^[67], and its inspectors check the water supply, sewage disposal, electrical systems, general sanitation, food service and recreational facilities ^[68]. A study should name the licensing authority in the project's state, the threshold that brings the site under it, the plan review the construction schedule must allow for and the systems the inspection will test, each with its source. Other states set their own thresholds and agencies, and the Illinois rules are an example, not a pattern for the country.

A worked mini-example: 24 units, two seasons and a split loan

Everything in this model is assumed, and none of it describes a real project. The site has 24 units, furnished tents, domes and cabins counted together, open for a 120-night peak season and a 100-night shoulder season and shut for the rest of the year. A 7(a) loan finances it in two parts, real property on a 25-year term and equipment on a ten-year term ^{[21] [20]}. The inputs are those in Table 1. A fuller test of the same kind, with a cost basis, a ramp and a B&I structure, is the Ohio case named in the opening paragraphs.

The base case passes, narrowly. Net operating income after the reserve is $278,343 against debt service of $217,756, a coverage of 1.28x. The minimum that binds is the 1.25x lender assumption, so the base case clears it by three hundredths. That income would support a loan of $1,789,526, a little more than the $1,750,000 in the model, and the season occupancy needed to hold the minimum is 55.8% against the 56.5% assumed. That margin, less than one point of occupancy, is what a lender should read first. The base case is not wrong, but it has almost no room.

Six of the seven shocks fail. A peak occupancy ten points lower takes coverage to 1.04x, the steepest fall in the table, because the peak season carries the higher rate as well as most of the volume. A shoulder occupancy ten points lower costs less, taking coverage to 1.14x. A peak rate cut by a tenth and six more points of commission both land at 1.09x, which is the arithmetic case for treating the channel mix as an assumption to evidence rather than a detail. Closing thirty nights earlier lifts occupancy over operating nights to 59.5% yet takes coverage to 1.12x. Two more points of interest take coverage to 1.13x and the supportable loan to $1,586,379.

The last column is different in kind. Putting the whole loan on the 25-year term lowers debt service to $187,139 and lifts coverage to 1.49x without a single extra guest. As the SBA section explained, that is a term question governed by the useful life of the assets ^[21], and a study that presents it as operating strength has hidden the canvas inside the land.

Two checks belong beside the table. The demand test found the plan's occupancy above what the assumed capture supports, so the study's next page should show comparable sites earning a capture near 1.59% or reduce the plan. And the reserve line, $45,432 in the base case, should be traced to a replacement schedule for the actual units, because a lighter reserve would flatter every coverage figure in the table. A break-even line helps a reader here: at 1.00x the site needs 49.5% season occupancy, so the base case stands about seven points above break-even and less than one point above the binding minimum.

The campground code in the SBA record

Every loan figure in this section is the record of NAICS 721211, RV parks and campgrounds, the code glamping shares. The file cannot separate glamping sites from RV parks and tent campgrounds inside it, so none of these figures is a glamping figure. They come from the Loan Analytics loan dataset at its freeze-3 release, approval years FY2017 to FY2026, and each prints with its key.

Under the campground code, the 7(a) record holds 645 ^[69] approvals totalling $842,833,000 ^[69], and its middle loan was $821,000 ^[69]. On the 504 side the approvals numbered 281 ^[70], with $240,245,000 ^[70] in debentures and a middle debenture of $576,000 ^[70]. A 504 figure in the dataset counts the debenture only, so the first lien a bank places beside it is not in these totals. The 7(a) approvals spread across 47 ^[69] project-state codes, with Texas first at 85 ^[69]; the 504 approvals spread across 38 ^[70], with Minnesota first at 67 ^[70].

Few loans under the campground code carry a franchise code: the share is 8.37 percent ^[69] in 7(a) and 4.63 percent ^[70] in 504. The file records that a franchise code exists, not what the brand sells, so the share cannot be read as a measure of branded glamping.

Table 6 gives the approvals year by year. Under the campground code, 7(a) approvals went from 51 ^[69] in FY2017 to 74 ^[69] in FY2025, with a high of 103 ^[69] in FY2021, and 504 approvals went from 13 ^[70] to 29 ^[70] over the same years.

The counts show that lenders booked loans under the campground code in both programs in every year of the window, and the medians show the scale of a typical financing. They do not show how many of those loans paid for glamping units, how many paid for RV pads, or how many bought an operating park rather than built a new one. Table 7 collects the figures the next section reads, each with its basis and key.

Loan Data Behind This Article

Every figure in this table comes from the Loan Analytics loan dataset, analytics-loan-data freeze-3 (commit 360c856), and carries its key. SBA rates are approval-cohort floors and are withheld when fewer than 30 loans stand behind them.

Reading the class floors against the program floors

Every rate in this section is an approval-cohort floor for the campground code, NAICS 721211, which glamping shares, and each rests on at least 30 loans. A floor is the lowest the true rate can be on the data in hand, for reasons The Approval-Cohort Charge-Off Floor: Why a Published SBA Loss Rate Can Only Understate sets out.

Charge-offs first. Of the code's disbursed 7(a) loans approved in FY2017 to FY2021, 0.00 percent ^[69] had been charged off by the data's as-of date, on a base of 274 ^[69] loans, while the program as a whole, taking every 7(a) loan of those years, stands at 6.33 percent ^[71]. In 504 the code's floor is 0.00 percent ^[70] on 109 ^[70] loans, where the program reaches 0.35 percent ^[72]. Fixing the window at five years after approval changes nothing for the code's 7(a) loans, still at 0.00 percent ^[69], while the program's five-year figure is 3.72 percent ^[73].

A zero floor says one thing exactly: no loan in those cohorts under this code had been recorded as charged off by 2026-09-30. It cannot say more. Of the code's 7(a) loans in the cohort, 110 ^[69] were still open at that date, as were 80 ^[70] of its 504 loans, and SBA's data dictionary withholds the status of every loan that was disbursed and has not since been cancelled, paid off or charged off, under FOIA Exemption 4 ^[74]. An open loan can still be charged off later. Nor does the floor speak for glamping in particular: the share of glamping loans inside the code is unknown, and glamping loans booked under the other two codes are not in it at all. The file records outcomes, not causes, and nothing in it explains why the code's floor sits below the program's; this article asserts no cause.

Cancellations read differently. Of the code's 7(a) approvals in the FY2017 to FY2024 cohort, 13.50 percent ^[69] were cancelled, a floor, with a ceiling of 14.09 percent ^[69] if every approval still waiting to disburse were to cancel. The program's figures for the same cohort are 11.24 percent ^[75] and 12.24 percent ^[76]. In 504 the code's floor is 12.16 percent ^[70] and its ceiling 16.22 percent ^[70], where the whole 504 program shows 13.60 percent ^[77] and 16.90 percent ^[78]. The code's 7(a) floor therefore sits above the program's and its 504 floor below. A cancellation is a different ending from a charge-off, and the file gives no reason for either; Cancellation Is Not Charge-Off: The Two Ways an SBA Approval Can End Without Repayment explains why one must not be read as the other.

The B&I side of the record is thinner still. The USAspending award files the dataset holds carry no industry field, so they cannot isolate campgrounds, let alone glamping, as USDA Business and Industry Loans in Public Data: What USAspending Shows and What It Hides explains. Nationally, the files count 256 ^[79] new B&I awards in FY2025, worth $2,382.6 million ^[79] at gross face value and spread across every industry the program serves.

A study can print these floors as context for the class, with their labels: floors, for the campground code, on the stated cohorts. It should not use them as a default probability for the project, and it should not set them against its own stress test as if one could replace the other. The project's risk is shown by its coverage table and its shocks; the cohort record shows only how loans under the same code have ended so far ^[74].

Questions a glamping credit file should answer

A reviewer can test a glamping study against eleven questions.

1. Which NAICS code does the borrower report, and does the size test use that code's receipts standard, affiliates included ^[7]?
2. Is demand stated in unit nights, converted from a named series of guest nights at a stated party size ^[11]?
3. Does the operating plan need a larger capture share than comparable sites earn, as the demand table in this article tests?
4. Is every rate stated before the lodging taxes the state imposes on transient stays ^[28], with commissions carried as a cost?
5. Are season occupancy and annual occupancy both printed with their denominators, and is there a quarterly cash flow ^[35]?
6. Is a replacement reserve deducted before coverage ^[17], and is it priced from a replacement schedule for the actual units?
7. Does each part of the loan run no longer than the useful life of what it finances ^{[21] [29]}?
8. Which entity runs the business and which holds title, and do any leases or memberships stay inside the SBA rules ^{[36] [37]}?
9. For B&I, is the parcel rural on a dated map result ^[55], and are long-stay units kept out of the transient projection?
10. Is the state licence named, with its threshold, its plan review and its inspections ^[64]?
11. Are the loan figures in the file labelled as the campground code's, with every rate called a floor?

A study that answers all eleven gives a lender a file it can check line by line. One that answers only the coverage question, however comfortable the ratio, has left the glamping part of the project untested.

Related Pages on Loan Analytics

• The Loan Analytics methodology series (all articles)
• How a feasibility study is done: the Loan Analytics methodology
• SBA feasibility studies (7(a) and 504)
• USDA feasibility studies
• Bankable feasibility studies for conventional loans
• RV Park Feasibility Study
• Loan data by state
• Loan data by asset class
• Worked examples (case studies)
• Worked Example: USDA Business and Industry Loan Glamping Resort Feasibility Study in Ohio
• Launching a Glamping Business in the U.S.: A Comprehensive Guide

Commission a Feasibility Study

Loan Analytics prepares lender-grade feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry, conventional and EB-5 financing, built on the methods this series sets out. A study is not an appraisal: it tests whether a project's market, costs and cash flow can carry the debt a lender is asked to approve. To discuss a study for your project, contact Loan Analytics.

Daniel Smith, MAI, Loan Analytics