After announcing a new branding and American Express in March, luxury vacation club Inspirato is debuting a new solution targeted specifically for businesses. The new product, aptly called ‘Inspirato for Business,’ is a SaaS that allows companies to book luxury homes for corporate meetings, incentives and reward travel.
Inspirato, as we’ve covered previously, is one part luxury travel club, like Exclusive Resorts (the company’s founders also founded Exclusive Resorts) and Quintess, and another part peer-to-peer rental like Airbnb. The membership has a number of tiers, but the basic offering requires you to pay a $17,500 one-time fee to join, then $3,000 annually. From there, you can pick and choose a wide range of luxury rentals around the world. The recent deal with AmEx allows cardmembers to get $2,500 off the inititation fee, $400 off the annual dues.
Each property is operated exclusively by Inspirato for around four years. To ensure its well-heeled clients are happy with its offerings, it goes in and provides its own furniture, concierge service, linens and other amenities. These homes are multi-million dollar estates that would cost thousands of dollars per night, but often members can rent these homes for a few hundred dollars. The Inspirato’s strategy saves guests dramatic amounts of money while still providing the luxury experience.
Inspirato for Business is designing to provide corporate clients access to unique, luxury residences and experiences previously unavailable through alternate channels. Companies can book more than 130 private Inspirato vacation residences, valued collectively at nearly half a billion dollars; including properties in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Canada and the Caribbean. In addition, clients an access trip planning, event coordination and on-site concierge services.
As co-founder Brent Handler explains, large companies set aside dollars for company retreats, employee rewards, client entertaining and more. Usually companies do these events at hotels, but Inspirato is now allowing for companies to save money by using luxury homes.
Inspirato for Business can be purchased on a license basis and comes with a customized, co-branded web portal, and back-end reporting. Clients may also choose to develop incentive rewards platforms, tied to individual company campaigns, that enable winning employees to view real-time availability of individual properties and book pre-approved trips online.
Last year, Inspirato raised another $15.5 million in funding, and American Express has taken a small equity stake in the company.