“We're all Star Wars nuts,” Barry Ray says as his wife, Melissa, and daughter Evie play nearby.

Evie knows all the Star Wars characters from multiple readings of the Little Golden Books series. She’s wearing a Princess Leia costume so, in keeping with the canon, her parents are dressed as Darth Vader and Padme Amidala.

They’ve travelled from Granbury, Texas, to celebrate Evie’s sixth birthday in the middle of a 40ha dry lake bed that’s the next best thing to Tatooine. The previous night, they’d watched the 1977 original, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, inside a two-bedroom cave.

“We’ve had a great time, and it’s an experience she won’t ever forget,” Ray says.

“It” is OutpostX in Utah, the United States, a swath of raw desert flush with science-fiction iconography that founder Travis Chambers refers to as “a film-set hotel with a story”.

The whole thing feels like it’s part of a different galaxy, even though it’s not all that far, far away.

Post-apocalyptic sanctuary

During a 2013 visit to a pirate-themed Airbnb in California, something clicked inside Chambers. He started travelling the world, racking up 30-something countries in short order.

The ‘zen dome’ looks very cool.

“I got to the point where I’d rather stay in a shack in the jungle in Belize than go to a Four Seasons (hotel),” Chambers says. “Luxury just does not do it for me.”

That same year, he founded the digital ad agency Chamber Media, which would land him on a “Forbes 30 Under 30” list. Ultimately, he says, the company was a means to an end.

In 2021, Chambers cashed out with a reported US$17mil (RM73.5mil) to fund his real dream.

OutpostX is a whole lot of nothing, and that’s by design. Imagined as a “post-apocalyptic sanctuary”, the retreat covers nearly 100ha yet feels significant­ly larger given the lack of visible borders. You can see for miles there without recognising anything other than mountains and scrub.

Chambers identifies luxury, service and location as the three elements on which most hotels compete. “We didn’t follow any of those,” he boasts.

There’s no gift shop, no restaurant, not even a vending machine. You could complete your stay at OutpostX without interacting with another soul.

The accommodations consist of three cave dwellings, four “zen domes” and a handful of tents. Whether you purchase the ingredients from OutpostX or bring your own food, you’ll be cooking for yourself – either in your kitchenette or the firepit in the common area.

Instead of a staff to pamper guests, there are hot tubs, a cold plunge and a sauna with a wood-burning stove. A solitary hammock offers its occupant a silence most will never know.

In keeping with Chambers’ tastes, OutpostX is aggressively anti-luxury, and guests are more than happy to pay for that vibe. Ahead of its opening in 2023, the retreat was sold out for its first year.

“We’ve gotten comments on the Internet like, ‘You want us to pay to stay in a Third World country?’,” Chambers says. “And we’re like, ‘Yep. Exactly. A Third World country 2,000 years from now’.”

Most of the units at OutpostX are located far apart, so guests can be completely isolated if they choose to.

A mythology of its own

Not only is OutpostX reminiscent of the Skywalkers’ home planet, guests can explore its outer reaches from inside sand cruisers, custom-built vehicles that greatly resemble Luke’s banged-up landspeeder – minus the hovering.

Just don’t expect anyone involved in the enterprise to mention the words “Star Wars”. (It’s a bit like the episode of The Simpsons in which the family hires a singing British nanny named Shary Bobbins who insists she’s “an original creation, like Ricky Rouse and Monald Muck”.)

Instead, the retreat comes with its own backstory involving brothers Maa and Naa Hyer, who were separated at birth to avoid being recruited into the galactic military. What you experience at OutpostX is the settlement as it’s being rebuilt after The Empire destroyed it with a solar flare.

That story plays out in the multi-episode podcast that’s sent to guests so they’ll have some­thing to listen to during the drive from Las Vegas or the 160km trip from Zion National Park.

Signs around OutpostX tell more of the tale, the way a state park might showcase its flora and fauna. The caves, they inform the guests who notice them, were built with materials hauled out of far-off granite quarries by giant Armaados, while the zen domes were constructed from the blast glass salvaged from a crashed ship.

Guests typically break down into thirds, Chambers says. There’s the “sci-fi geeks and nerds” who’ll take to the origin tale and rent the corresponding costumes; those looking for seclusion; and the Burning Man/hippie crowd. The communal “Kaan Lounge” offers Frank Herbert’s Dune books for the former.

For the last it also houses a guitar, drums, a sonic energy handpan and a “Sound Bowl Experience”.

The interior of a ‘cave’ unit. (Right) You can get in one of the sand cruisers at the site to add to the galactic experience.

More on the way

“Every very smart person told us that it was a horrible idea,” Chambers says.

They’ve started coming around, though. OutpostX is 90% booked six months in advance. Similar locations are planned to open in Moab and Puerto Rico this year.

By then, potential guests may have figured out whether the minimalist concept is right for them.

“I’ve seen people show up in a Maybach or a Bentley and get out,” Chambers says, “... then get in their car and leave.” (Maybach and Bentley are ultra luxury cars.)

The OutpostX clientele, he adds, isn’t so much a demographic as it is a personality: someone who’s creative and imaginative – and willing to pay a premium to exercise those attributes.

“I think when everyone is at OutpostX, they’re experiencing what you would build with your friends if you were 14 years old,” Chambers concludes. – CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service