Everyone dreams of going on a luxury vacation, with champagne dreams and caviar wishes. But for most of us it is remains a dream due to insufficiently large pockets. But Inspirato has come up with a business model that can make luxury trips affordable and be profitable for the company at the same time. The fact that it raised $15.5 million from DAG Ventures and Millennium Technology Value Partners is ample proof of that. For those of you who have stumbled upon this great company for the first time should know that Inspirato is basically a luxury travel club with the added feature of peer-to-peer rental. So you get something like a mixture of Exclusive Resorts or Quintess and Airbnb respectively.
The joining fee is $15,000 and then you have to pay $2,500 annually. From then on you can avail their luxury home rental service, which lets you stay in Tuscan villas, Napa cottages, just to name a few places. What saves money for the clients and the company is the fact that they do not go through brokers whose commissions usually raised the total cost by almost fifty percent. Might sound like an exaggeration but the facts are coming from the horse’s mouth, chief executive Brent Handler who was the co-founder of Exclusive Resorts. Another unique feature of Inspirato is that they themselves operate each property for around four years, and provide their own furniture, concierge service, linens, among a long list of amenities.
They are already renting out hundreds of properties all over the world and are rapidly adding new ones in the repertoire. This success is reflected in the confidence being shown by investors. They raised $17.5 million last fall from Kleiner Perkins, Access Venture Partners and Chrunchfund, and then around $20million in January from IVP. As part of their expansion plan, they will also add yacht rental facilities by next July.
Via: TechCrunch
