Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Autonomous Tent’s Movable Five-Star Hotels

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Autonomous Tent Co.

Home & Lifestyle

Denver, CO

Website: https://www.autonomoustent.com/

Inspired by the soaring coastal designs of late architect Harry Gesner, Phil Parr launched Autonomous Tent to build the world’s first movable five-star hotels in 2013.

Ranging from 380 to 580 square feet, the customizable tents have evolved as Parr iterated the design and manufacturing model over the decade. With a polycarbonate frame, the company’s prototype tent was installed on the West Bijou Ranch east of Denver in 2013. Parr moved to a steel frame when Treebones Resort in Big Sur, California, became the first paying customer in 2015.

Now with more than a dozen installations from Wyoming to New Zealand, the company experimented with wood and aluminum before gravitating back to steel frames, now fabricated by Monarch Metal Manufacturing in Denver.

“Monarch has been just an amazing partner,” Parr says, noting that the learning curve for both companies has required patience and persistence. “You can sit and draw these parts for months, but until you actually make them and you’re out there in the field and you’re assembling them and you see how things fit together do you see things from a different perspective.”

The minimum budget is usually around $100,000 for an installation, and Autonomous Tent sells the frame and fabric for $60,000. The “vast majority” of inquiries come from resorts and other commercial operations.

Parr continues to work on new designs and is bullish on a model due for release in 2024 with amenities for watching wildlife and stargazing.

“We’re working on a new concept where it has a retractable roof over the bedroom and a rooftop deck over the living room,” he says. “The original idea was that it’d be portable and transportable and you could set it up in a day or two, and that just hasn’t been the case with that original design. It takes a couple of weeks to set it up. But there are so many opportunities where, if we could set up a structure in a day and take it down in a day and easily ship it, it would open up a lot of other doors.”

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].