Zelt Luzern

A tent rental company that grew out of a village festival

Zelt Luzern is the trading name of Airboxx GmbH, a company that rents and sells festival tents and the equipment that goes inside them: seating, wooden floors, tableware, table linen, cooking appliances, sound, lighting and heating. The same company also runs zeltbasel.ch under the name Zelt Basel, with the same phone number and the same text; both sites carry the Airboxx GmbH copyright. For a couple, they are one business with two web addresses.

The "Über uns" page tells the story in a few lines. It started in 2011 with the organization of a village festival, and in 2013 the founders decided to set up their own company. What began on a very small scale kept growing, and the company now describes itself as an SME ("KMU") with countless tent, seating, tableware, accessory, lighting, sound, furnishing and heating solutions, a matching vehicle fleet and a competent assembly team. At first it worked only in the Basel and Solothurn regions; its network now reaches the cantons of Aargau, Zurich, Bern and Zug, and it delivers more and more to other cantons in eastern and central Switzerland.

Weddings in the tent

The company's blog post "Veranstaltungen im Festzelt" (events in the festival tent) is the page that speaks to couples. It says a tent wedding is currently in fashion and that many couples want a beautiful tent for their ceremony, for the apéro, or for the whole celebration. It also offers help with something most tent firms leave to the couple: finding the location. The page names the kinds of place it has in mind, "auf dem Bauernhof, Pferdehof, vor einer Burg oder einem Schloss oder einfach auf einem schönen Feld oder am See" (on a farm, a horse farm, in front of a castle or palace, or simply in a beautiful field or by a lake), and says the team is glad to support the search.

For a couple planning from abroad, that offer is worth taking seriously. The hard part of a tent wedding in Switzerland is often not the tent but the land: a farmer or landowner willing to host it, with access for trucks. A tent company that helps with the search saves a lot of cold calls.

What the company supplies

The homepage lists festival tents, storage tents and construction tents, and event furniture including beer-bench sets ("Festbankgarnituren"), banquet seating, wooden flooring, cooking appliances, sound systems and lighting. For an apéro, it delivers standing tables and bar stools; for the dinner, crockery, cutlery and tablecloths, which the site says arrive "sauber gewaschen und handpoliert" (washed clean and hand-polished). It also takes care of stages, buffets, mobile heaters and other tent accessories.

The heaters run on M99 methanol fuel, which the company describes as sustainable and environmentally friendly; the same heaters are used to heat or dry buildings. The largest structures, its festival halls, are suited to up to 1,000 people or more, according to the homepage, which frames that figure around corporate events. Tents and fittings can also be bought outright for long-term use.

The company says it can organize the whole event as a local partner. On setup, the homepage gives two options: the team assembles tents and furniture itself on site, or it instructs the customer's helpers. That choice affects both the price and the planning, so a couple should decide early which they want.

Beyond events

Weddings sit beside a sizable construction and storage business. The site describes weather covers for building sites, used for sealing work and concrete repairs, covers for basin, fountain and swimming-pool renovations, building drying, heated storage tents and temporary work tents for production expansions, renovations and moves. For a couple, the practical upshot is a company with a fleet, an assembly team and heating equipment that works in all seasons, not a small firm with a single party tent.

References and partners

The references list is long and mostly public events: the Trucker and Country Festival in Interlaken, the Bundesmeile and BEA in Bern, LUGA in Lucerne, AGLAT in Laufen, the Säulifäst in Zurich, the Braderie in Biel, the Badenfahrt in Baden, the Klosterbergfest in Basel and many village festivals. The list also includes events for embassies and residences, private parties and birthdays, company events, and "Diverse Hochzeiten" (various weddings). Partners named on the same page include Schindler Gastro AG in Dornach, JMD AG and Fehrenpark AG in Fehren, Kino Onik in Oensingen and Silent-Power AG in Cham.

Booking and language

Contact is by email to info@zeltluzern.ch or phone on +41 79 406 84 41, and each page carries a button to request a no-obligation quote ("unverbindliche Offerte"). The site is published in German only. It says personal contact and exchange with customers has always mattered to the company, but it does not say whether the team works in English, so a couple writing from abroad should ask in the first message.

What the site does not settle

The site publishes no prices and no deposit terms. It gives no tent sizes or guest capacities for weddings, only the 1,000-person figure for the large festival halls. It does not say how far ahead a summer weekend has to be booked, what delivery costs outside the core cantons, or whether a technician stays on site during the event. Catering is not offered as a service on the pages; the cooking appliances and buffets are rented equipment, and a couple will need a caterer. The Luzern name notwithstanding, the "Über uns" page does not name Lucerne among the cantons it serves by name, so a couple with a venue in Lucerne should confirm delivery there.

Who it suits

Zelt Luzern suits a couple who want a tent wedding on a farm, a field or a lakeshore in northwestern or central Switzerland and want one company to bring the tent, the floor, the tables, the plates and the heating, with help finding the site thrown in. The option of building with one's own helpers suits a family that likes to pitch in, and the partner list includes a gastronomy company in Dornach worth asking about. It suits less well a couple who want a published price, a catered package, or a supplier with an English-language website.