Startup Stage: OutReserve wants to make outdoor travel easier to navigate

Outreserve

OutReserve was founded in 2026, aiming to help travelers discover and book outdoor stays and improve connectivity and distribution for operators.

In May, the startup launched an app in ChatGPT to help travelers find campgrounds and RV parks.

What is your 30 second pitch to investors?

Outdoor travel remains highly fragmented. Inventory is spread across too many websites, booking systems, government platforms and maps. Travelers struggle to discover, compare, trust and book the right experience. Meanwhile, outdoor hospitality operators struggle with connectivity, distribution and demand generation.

OutReserve is building the booking and operating platform for outdoor hospitality. We are starting with stays, including campgrounds, RV parks, outdoor resorts, cabins and other outdoor accommodations, because this is where the traveler pain and operator opportunity are most visible.

Our goal is to make outdoor hospitality one of the best-run categories in travel.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

OutReserve is a platform for outdoor hospitality. Travelers use it to discover and book outdoor stays, while operators gain better visibility, connectivity and distribution.

Our business model starts with bookings. We earn a commission or transaction fee when we drive incremental reservations to operators.

Technically, we are building a connectivity and standardization layer for a category fragmented across property management systems, reservation platforms, public inventory, independent operators and inconsistent data formats. OutReserve aggregates, normalizes, enriches and distributes that inventory across multiple demand surfaces.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths

We are focused on a large, fragmented and underserved travel category with clear traveler and operator pain points. The founding team brings deep marketplace, travel, growth, SEO, distribution, analytics and outdoor industry experience.

Timing is also important. AI is changing travel discovery, but AI products need structured, reliable, bookable inventory. OutReserve can provide that infrastructure for outdoor hospitality.

Weaknesses

We are early and need to continue increasing supply density, awareness, operator trust and traveler demand. Fragmented systems and inconsistent inventory also make standardization technically challenging.

Opportunities

Outdoor hospitality remains digitally underdeveloped compared with hotels and vacation rentals. Significant opportunity exists across discovery, booking, distribution, data quality, benchmarking, optimization and operator tooling.

Over time, we can expand beyond stays into activities, RV rentals, permits, protection, local services and other outdoor trip components.

Threats

Large travel platforms could expand further into outdoor hospitality. However, the category requires vertical expertise around RV and tent sites, physical site constraints, rules, amenities and traveler questions that traditional OTAs do not handle particularly well today.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspectives?

For travelers, planning outdoor trips still requires searching across campground websites, government systems, maps and booking platforms. Inventory and availability are inconsistent, while basic questions can be surprisingly difficult to answer: Will my RV fit? Are pets allowed? What hookups are available? What are the rules, fees, cancellation policies and nearby activities?

For operators, inventory often remains trapped inside individual reservation systems or websites, limiting access to modern distribution channels. Operators also need better tools for merchandising, data quality, visibility, optimization and performance insights.

We want travelers to book with greater confidence while helping operators reach more demand without adding operational complexity.

Now that the product is built, what is your strategy for customer acquisition?

Traveler acquisition starts with web, SEO, AI, content, reviews, partnerships and distribution.

Outdoor travel is an intent-rich category. Travelers search by destination, campground type, amenities, routes, RV requirements, pet friendliness, family needs, seasonal stays and specific experiences. Structured inventory gives us a strong foundation for organic acquisition.

Over time, we expect growth to compound through inventory depth, SEO, AI distribution, destination content, reviews, loyalty, partnerships and repeat demand.

Tell us what process you’ve gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

The need comes from direct industry experience and market conversations. Before founding OutReserve, I spent seven years at RVshare and saw both the scale of outdoor travel and how fragmented its infrastructure remains.

Since starting OutReserve, we have spoken with operators, technology providers, travel companies and other industry participants. The pattern is consistent: travelers want more complete discovery and easier booking, while operators want better distribution and connectivity without additional operational burden.

The addressable market spans private and public campgrounds, RV parks, cabins, glamping, outdoor resorts and eventually adjacent categories including rentals, activities, permits and protection products.

How and when will you make money?

We are making money through bookings first, earning a commission or transaction fee when OutReserve generates reservations. This aligns our incentives because we make money when operators do.

Over time, additional revenue opportunities include operator tools, premium distribution, data and benchmarking products, optimization features, protection and insurance and other outdoor trip components.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

OutReserve was founded by Martijn Scheijbeler, a marketing and growth executive with deep experience in marketplaces, travel, distribution and scaling consumer platforms.

Before founding OutReserve, Martijn served as SVP of marketing at RVshare, where he helped scale one of North America’s leading RV rental marketplaces and worked across both the supply and demand sides of the business.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

We want outdoor travel to be easier to navigate for a wider range of travelers. That means helping people understand which experiences fit their needs across family travel, pets, accessibility, budget, location, amenities, vehicle requirements and experience level.

The operator market is similarly diverse, ranging from independent family-run campgrounds to large resorts and public agencies. Our goal is to make modern digital distribution accessible regardless of an operator’s size or technical sophistication.

What’s been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Fragmentation: Outdoor hospitality includes many property types, reservation systems, operating models, rules, fees, amenities and physical site constraints such as RV length, width, surface type, hookups and accessibility.

The challenge is standardizing this complexity while moving quickly enough to prove the market and building a foundation that can support the broader category over time.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact. Why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

We do not think success should depend on luck. Travel startups often struggle when they enter broad categories without a clear wedge, depend heavily on paid acquisition or fail to solve an important supply problem.

OutReserve starts with a focused category, clear traveler pain, a meaningful operator distribution problem and a founding team experienced in marketplace growth and outdoor travel.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

We expect meaningful supply coverage across our initial categories, active operator relationships, growing traveler demand and multiple distribution surfaces beyond our website and ChatGPT app.

We also expect to have identified the highest value operator capabilities across connectivity, inventory quality, merchandising, benchmarking, optimization and distribution.

The goal is not simply to prove that travelers want another place to search for tent sites, RV sites and cabins. It is to prove that OutReserve can become important infrastructure for outdoor hospitality.

What is your endgame? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

The endgame is to build a durable, category-defining company in (outdoor) travel. The ambition is to build the platform layer for outdoor hospitality and outdoor travel. If we do that well, strategic options will become available, giving us optionality.