In the last year I have come to learn much about the inner workings of event dome suppliers, and it is a messy, disorganized business where the cost of the mistakes is passed on to the client and many with good intentions are stuck in the middle. Imagine a bad soap opera but with geodesic domes. Here is the short list, believe or not:
- Suppliers trying to expand outside their natural market with disappointing results
- Overseas effort to flood the market with Asian event domes, passing them off as locally built
- Suppliers trying to expand their product line without decent knowledge of what they sell
- An event dome employee arrested abroad on alleged drug charges while on a job
- Accountant embezzling funds
- Direct personal attacks by professionals to discredit their competition
- Competitor knocking up a friend of the competition’s owner (a warped Romeo and Juliet variation)
- Near or soon to happen bankruptcy of a major event dome manufacturer
- Stolen copyright material and client lists to start a competing outfit less than a mile away
- Blatant lack of quality control, clients getting old event domes when promised new ones
Despite this summary list of ridiculous situations (and they really did happen, by the way), clients continue to purchase domes without doing the basic legwork, then suffering the consequences, though one event dome supplier derives a large portion of its business from dissatisfied customers emanating from the competition’s incompetence. The irony here is that the one getting the bonus business is alleged to be using stolen engineering plans from their competition …
If it looks like a dinosaur, walks like a dinosaur….
Domes and extinct dinosaurs: Best Friends Forever?
Those currently in the event dome business, and we can also include many geodesic home builders, do not want to change at all, bend to different ideas or accept innovations. They are set in their ways and do the business a disservice. They live in the past and don’t want to pass the torch to the next generation.
For the event dome client, the onus is on you to do your homework because the typical approach of many event dome vendors is similar to the one used by car salesmen. Geodesic event domes are expensive, more than a traditional tent because they have advantages other event structures do not possess. But this is no reason to pay unjustified expenses.
Click on the image below for our Geodesic Event Domes Checklist. If you see something we can add, contact us
The idea of the domes came from the ancient Kaweskar tribes’ huts, which were set up throughout the park as the nomadic tribe wandered. The idea was to create a hybrid hotel, with the traditional elements of camping such as being immersed in nature, but with the comforts of a modern day hotel. Thus EcoCamp, the world’s first geodesic dome hotel in the world, was born!
For Javier Lopez, Yerko Ivelic and Nani Astorga their way of life and way of doing business makes sense because being immersed in nature provides a source of transformation for everyone. They believe you should take your job as close to the arts as possible and provide a meaningful experience for all involved.
Guests carry back home the experience of living in such close quarters to nature yet with all the coziness and comfort of a ‘regular’ hotel and sociable nature of the EcoCamp community. Looking up at the stars from inside their dome, walking through the night air to get to the bathroom during dinner, sleeping in a low-impact sustainable structure where they can hear the wind rushing through the sky – These are all experiences that classic hotels do not offer and that guests relish in the moment and treasure in the years that follow.
