Waking up overlooking the Andes mountain range or in the middle of the Jujuy Salt Flats, venturing to spend two days on a houseboat on a river in Brazil and pitching a tent in the Joshua Tree desert in California. These are some of the dream destinations that Andrea De León (34), better known in her social networks as Drea León, the first glampinera of Argentina, traveled alone.
Her passion for nature is what prompted her to leave the world of fashion and dedicate herself to visiting glampings, an expression that combines the words glamour and camping: they are well-equipped tents and often have the shape of a dome (a transparent bubble).
"The fashion environment wasn't my place. It had to be mask and change. I always wanted to show the products I promoted in my networks in the countryside and not in the city. Nature threw me," says Drea in a Palermo bar hours after landing in Buenos Aires.
For this Marketing graduate, her professional career changed radically after the pandemic. He analyzed what he wanted to do and started again. She was determined to unite what she likes most: traveling and being in contact with nature.
Drea visiting Buenos Aires. He settled here 14 years ago. Photo Emmanuel Fernández
At 22, two years after arriving from her native Montevideo and long before creating the "glampinero" universe, she was a marketing manager at an aesthetic center and there she discovered that brands were looking for influencers to sell products.
"I thought, 'I'm missing something that's going on.' I contacted Andy Clar, creator of Chicas de Viaje, and closed an agreement with her and a brand of suitcases as a travel influencer, "he recalls. This is how she took her first steps in the networks, where she shared her looks and her plant-based diet.
She quickly got the sponsorship of airlines and clothing brands that invited her to New York Fashion Week and the Coachella music festival and even participated in a reality show of a hair cosmetics company. She surrounded herself with celebrities from abroad and Argentine influencers, but something wasn't right for Drea.
"After two years of living in that world, I felt anxious because it demanded me to be super skinny. I weighed 45 kilos, my minimum weight for my height, 1.57, and despite that there were brands that asked me to have one size less. 'If you got the XXS it would be perfect', they told me," he explains while his coffee is still not drunk.
And he emphasizes that "those who go to events are super skinny and do not eat." That's why, "I went to events but locked myself in the bathroom until my husband told me he didn't want to accompany me anymore because I wasn't having a good time." Those alerts were what made her realize that this was not her place.
Give again
Moved to Paraguay during the pandemic because of her husband's work, she watched "Africa Mia," the film with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep that won the Oscar in 1986. And he knew what he wanted to do: "The film shows the first safari-style glampers and an adventurous woman, but at the same time well looked. When I saw it I said 'I want that', and I started taking pictures in a store that I set up with four wooden sticks and a cloth, "says laughing the Uruguayan who feels Argentine and has tattooed the country that saw her grow in her professional career.
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A shared publication of DREA LEÓN (@bydrealeon)
She changed the aesthetics of her Instagram account away from fashion and close to green, rethought her digital strategy (which includes cooking recipes) and was soon contacted by a London brand that sent her a glamping tent that costs $ 1,000. "It's not cheap to do your own glamping because all instruments are expensive, especially heating, and it's also expensive to spend a few days in a glamping," he acknowledges.
Although she was quickly able to get into the world of glamping, she confesses that she was "afraid to start from scratch", but she bet "on authenticity" and what represents her. Although he was born in the capital of Uruguay, his family had fields and that made him soak up other types of traditions.
He has already toured 10 countries in America as a glamping influencer. She travels alone for 20 days and then returns home for a month, although after her trip to open a tiny house in Bariloche she will stay three months in Paraguay "to recover the routine". "I want to stop a time like this when I return in the second part of the year I do it with all the passion because everything then affects the metrics," says León, who has more than 300,000 followers on his Instagram account and more than 170,000 on TikTok.
How a travel influencer works
But not everything is rosy as a glamping influencer. On the one hand, Drea explains that the "economy is cyclical" and on the other, the climate and loneliness of this type of work challenges her on every trip.
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There are very good months in which you can charge 4,000 euros, but in the next ones you do not close with any brand, "he says about the salary swings. Given this, he explains that many influencers invest in capsule-type micro-enterprises and collaborations, to diversify the work.
Before getting fully involved with his project, he analyzed the market. He saw who glamping influencers were, the brands with which they collaborated, studied the target and the target audience, and put together a marketing plan. Then he looked for his own differential and third he did something he is passionate about: "That's the engine that allows you to create."
Choose which places to visit and send them a job proposal with their services to the brands. He included cooking "because food brands pay the most." Although he acknowledges that he makes "profitable trips and others that go to loss". However, he always sees that there is a gain in the networks, for example by growing in followers, even though it is not economic growth.
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He also talks about side B, the hard part, he says, of his job: the weather. "A glamping does not have the amenities of a hotel. It is cold at minus 10 degrees in Ushuaia in a dome, but it is also complex to be with 40 degrees setting up a tent, "he acknowledges. The key for her is to adapt. If it is hot go to a nearby river and if it is cold set an alarm to add fuel to the fire every two hours.
His glamping days are for working in solitude. First assemble the contents and then relax. He spends at least two days and maximum four, "but not because it is a lot of loneliness and I start to feel bad."
Although he doesn't think about the dangers, his surroundings let him know. Days ago he was on a houseboat on a river in the Brazilian jungle in the company of a radio that only spoke to him in Portuguese. People close to him have come to tell him that pirates could pass through the place and thus the fears of others become their own.
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But nothing stops her. "The second part of the year is full of work. I'll go to stores in Brooklyn overlooking Manhattan, then I'll travel to the Bahamas, Bariloche, China, Bali and Thailand," he says.
Drea imagines the next two years traveling and then returning to live in Argentina. With everything he has learned he would like to put together a glamping in Bariloche, his place in the world and from which every time he arrives he does not want to leave.
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