Resort suites
From $85,000
Sleeps two to six in 220 to 480 sq ft, on a deck 12 to 30 ft up. Insulated, plumbed and wired for four-season letting, with a real bathroom and a bed you can make without ducking.
60+ resort suites in the canopy. Not one host tree lost.
Highwire engineers, permits and builds treehouse suites and rope bridges for glamping resorts, hotels and camps. You get a stamped drawing set, a permit package your county can read, and a unit that is rated, insured and bookable.
- Resort suites from
- $85,000
- Rope bridges from
- $18,000
- Units built for resorts (sample)
- 60+
Revenue per tree
Do the payback math before anyone picks a tree
Every operator asks the same thing on the first call: how many seasons until a suite pays for itself. Set the sliders to your resort. The cost ranges come from our recent commercial builds, and a site walk turns them into a fixed quote.
Your resort
Most first phases are 4 to 10 suites.
Average across the year, before taxes and fees.
Share of nights booked across all 365. Our resort clients report 60% to 85% (sample).
- Room revenue a year
- $774,000
- Revenue per host tree
- $32,300
- Build cost range
- $752,000 to $1,240,000
- After operating costs
- $426,000 a year
Payback period1.8 to 2.9 years
Estimates with sample numbers, not a quote or a forecast. Build cost assumes $85,000 to $140,000 per suite and excludes land, roads and utility runs to the site. Operating costs are taken as 45% of room revenue for housekeeping, linen, power, maintenance and booking fees. Revenue per host tree assumes 3 trees carry each suite.
Send these numbers with a site walk requestA suite from $85,000. A bridge from $18,000. Here is what that buys.
Rope bridges and canopy walks
From $18,000
Spans up to 120 ft between platforms. A galvanised cable core does the work under a rope and cedar skin, and every bridge carries a posted limit on how many guests cross at once.
Suites on posts
From $78,000
Where the trees are too young, too few or in the wrong place, we raise the same suite on peeled timber posts. Guests call it a treehouse. Your insurer calls it a deck.
Every bolt on the drawing sits under an engineer’s stamp
Commercial treehouses stall at the planning desk long before anything goes wrong in a tree. So we solve the planning desk first, and the insurer second.
- Attachment bolts sized per tree
- Forged steel treehouse attachment bolts, 1.25 in and up, specified by species and trunk diameter, with floating brackets so the tree can sway and keep growing.
- An arborist grades every host tree
- Health, root zone, lean and wind exposure are logged tree by tree before we draw a line. Trees that fail are left alone and the plan moves.
- A posted load rating
- Each suite and bridge is rated for people, snow and wind. The rating goes on a plaque by the door and into your insurance file.
- Drawings under an engineer’s stamp
- Structural calculations and drawings sealed by our engineer of record, licensed in the state you build in. Lic. #000000 (sample).
- A permit package in the county’s order
- Site plan, sealed drawings, calcs, fire egress, accessibility statement and the arborist report, bound in the order your planning desk asks for them.
- A spring inspection, signed
- Each spring we re-torque every bolt, check every cable and send you a signed report to forward to your insurer.
Three resorts, and what their trees earned in season one
We report every build the way an operator reads it: units, trees, weeks on site and the first season’s bookings. Figures shown are samples for this concept.
Fernhollow Glamping
Oregon Coast Range
- Suites
- 6
- Bridges
- 2
- Host trees
- 17
- Weeks on site
- 19
Season one: 81% occupancy in its first season at $420 a night.
Cedar Loop Camp
Puget Sound, Washington
- Bunk platforms
- 4
- Bridges
- 3
- Host trees
- 11
- Weeks on site
- 12
Season one: 1,900 camper nights in the first summer, rated for 40 campers on the walk at once.
Larkspur Lodge
Sawtooth foothills, Idaho
- Suites
- 8
- On posts
- 5
- Host trees
- 9
- Weeks on site
- 24
Season one: 74% occupancy in year one at $340 a night, with a waitlist for October.
Site walk to first paying guest in about 24 weeks
01 Site walk and tree survey
Weeks 1 to 2
An engineer and an arborist walk your land with you, tag candidate trees and note access for a crane or rigging crew.
02 Unit plan and cost range
Weeks 3 to 4
You get a unit count, a site layout and the revenue sheet from this page filled in with your real rate and season.
03 Design and engineering
Weeks 5 to 10
Floor plans, finishes and the sealed structural set. You sign off the suite once, then we repeat it.
04 Permits
Weeks 8 to 16
We file the package, answer the planning desk and attend the hearing if your county holds one.
05 Build
Weeks 14 to 24
Suites are framed on the ground, lifted into the trees and finished at height. The rest of your resort stays open.
06 Handover and first guests
Week 24
Load plaques installed, inspection signed, housekeeping walked through every suite. Then you open the calendar.
Riggers first, carpenters second
Everyone on a Highwire crew is rope-access certified before they pick up a saw. Most of our carpenters came from boat building and timber framing. Our engineer of record spent twelve years on pedestrian bridges before she ever designed for a tree.
- Units built for resorts
- 60+
- First commercial suite hung
- 2011
- Host trees lost
- 0
Sample figures for this concept.
Operators, after their first full season
Our county had never permitted a treehouse suite. Highwire walked in with a bound package, answered every question on the spot and we had approval in eleven weeks.
Their planner put our eight suites at two to three years to pay back, before land and roads. Two seasons in we are on track, because the tree suites book first and at a higher rate than our cabins.
Forty kids on a rope bridge makes a camp director nervous. The posted rating and the spring inspection report made our insurer relaxed about it.
Send us a site map. We send back a unit count.
Tell us where the land is and what you have in mind. Within ten working days you get a first look at how many suites your trees can carry, where the bridges would run and a cost range to take to your lender. The site walk that follows is free inside our service area.
(555) 014-20121180 Mill Race Road, Alder Falls. We build across the western states and travel further for resort phases of six suites or more.