When Nina Alexander pictured the next chapter of her career as a Reiki master and manifestation mentor, she didn’t see a rented studio or a soulless community hall. She saw a yurt — and she turned that vision into The Shiny Happy Yurt, a flourishing new wellness venue in leafy Camberley, Surrey.
We love hearing how our customers put their handmade Mongolian yurts to work, but every now and again a story comes along that genuinely makes us stop and take note. Nina’s is one of those stories. In a matter of months she has gone from concept to fully operational hire space, complete with a packed events calendar, a growing roster of resident practitioners, and a brand identity that radiates warmth before you’ve even stepped through the door.
Here’s what she got right — and why it matters if you’re thinking about launching a yurt-based business of your own.
She Started with a Clear Purpose
Nina didn’t just buy a yurt and hope for the best. She identified a gap in her local market: wellness practitioners in the Camberley area needed a beautiful, affordable, purpose-built space to host their work. Studios were either booked up, characterless, or priced beyond reach for independent teachers and therapists.
The yurt solved every one of those problems. Its circular form creates a natural sense of intimacy and safety that a rectangular room simply can’t replicate. It seats up to twelve comfortably for yoga, meditation and workshops, or up to thirty for talks and gatherings. And at a hire rate of just £22 per hour, it’s accessible to practitioners at every stage of their career.
She Created an Experience, Not Just a Venue
What really sets The Shiny Happy Yurt apart is the attention to atmosphere. Before opening the doors Nina carried out a full Reiki blessing of the space, infusing it with a calm, grounding energy that visitors notice the moment they walk in. The yurt sits tucked among greenery, away from traffic and noise, so the sense of sanctuary is genuine rather than staged.
That matters commercially as much as it matters spiritually. In the wellness sector, environment is everything. Clients return to spaces where they felt something shift, and practitioners want to host in a room that does half the work for them. Nina understood this instinctively and designed every detail around it.
She Built Multiple Revenue Streams from Day One
Rather than relying on a single income source, Nina structured The Shiny Happy Yurt around three complementary revenue streams — and any aspiring yurt entrepreneur would do well to study the model.
The Three-Stream Model
Practitioner room hire — The bread and butter. Local yoga teachers, sound healers, breathwork facilitators, massage therapists and coaches book the space by the hour for their own classes and sessions. This generates steady, recurring income with minimal effort from Nina herself.
Her own events programme — Sound baths, Reiki healing circles, full moon gatherings, guided meditations and transformational workshops. These are ticketed events that build community, raise the profile of the venue, and generate premium income per session.
Community & private hire — The yurt is also available for one-off bookings: special events, circles, celebrations and group gatherings. This catches overflow demand and opens the space to audiences beyond the core wellness market.
It’s a textbook example of how a single yurt can support a genuinely viable business rather than a side project.
She Got the Branding Right
The name alone — Shiny Happy Yurt — is doing serious heavy lifting. It’s memorable, joyful, and immediately conveys the energy of the space. Nina paired it with professional photography, a clean website, an online booking system, and consistent messaging across social media. The result is a business that looks established and trustworthy from the very first click, which is exactly what both practitioners and their clients need to see.
She also invested in a time-lapse video of the yurt’s construction, which is the kind of content that stops thumbs on social media. People are fascinated by the process of a traditional Mongolian yurt going up — the lattice walls expanding, the crown wheel being lifted into place, the felt layers wrapping round. It’s inherently shareable, and it tells a story that no stock photograph ever could.
Why a Handmade Mongolian Yurt?
Nina could have chosen a modern canvas tent, a geodesic dome or a timber-framed garden room. She chose a traditional handmade Mongolian yurt — and that choice is central to the entire proposition.
An authentic yurt carries centuries of meaning. These are structures that were designed for gathering, for community, for shelter and for ceremony. When you step into one, you feel the weight of that heritage in the curve of the roof poles, the warmth of the felt, the gentle diffusion of natural light through the crown. No factory-produced structure can replicate it.
For a wellness business, that authenticity isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a competitive advantage. Nina’s clients aren’t just renting a room. They’re stepping into something real, something handcrafted, something with soul. And that’s exactly the kind of environment where transformative work happens.
What Other Yurt Owners Can Learn
Nina’s success didn’t happen by accident. If you’re considering a yurt-based business of your own — whether it’s wellness, glamping, events or education — there are clear takeaways from what she’s built.
First, start with the market, not the yurt. Identify who needs a space like this in your area and what they’re currently missing. Second, design the experience end to end. The yurt is the centrepiece, but everything around it — the setting, the atmosphere, the booking process, the branding — matters just as much. Third, build more than one way to earn from the space. Hire, your own programming, and private bookings is a proven combination. And fourth, invest in content that tells the story. A time-lapse build video, beautiful interior photography, and genuine testimonials from happy clients will do more for you than any amount of paid advertising.
Inspired by Nina’s Story?
Our handmade Mongolian yurts are built by skilled craftspeople using traditional methods passed down through generations. Whether you’re planning a wellness space, a glamping site, an outdoor classroom or something entirely your own, we’d love to help you find the right yurt.