Tag Archive | "amenities"

After AmEx Deal, Luxury Vacation Club Inspirato Targets Businesses

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Convo

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 has reportedly also taken an investment from American Express.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Square Signs Lease For New Office In San Francisco to Accommodate 1000+ Employees, Will Move In Mid-2013

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square

Square has just announced plans for a new office in San Francisco. The mobile payments company, which is currently located in the Chronicle Building in downtown San Francisco, will only be moving a short distance away to a location in Central Market (1455 Market Street). The plan is to move into the new building by mid-2013.

In the past year, Square has grown from approximately 150 employees to more than 400, says the company, and has plans to employ nearly 1,000 people by the end of next year.

“We’re grateful for San Francisco’s commitment to technology, and we’re thrilled the city will remain our home,” said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Square in a release. “Square businesses have already facilitated more than $300 million in commerce in San Francisco, and there’s so much more we can do to make a difference in the city and around the world.”

Considering Dorsey and Square’s design focus, it should be interesting to see how the new office turns out. There aren’t many details yet on the layout, but according to the release, there are plans to break ground on an “open, collaborative space, a roof deck, chef’s kitchen and other amenities for Square employees.” Square also has offices in New York and Atlanta.

The company has grown in more ways than one over the past year. Square, which made its second acquisition a few weeks ago, just closed a massive $200 million round of funding, reportedly valuing the mobile payments company at $3.25 billion. And in the past three years since it’s been in operation in the U.S., Square has grown from $1 billion in payments processed annually to $8 billion.

The company also landed a major partnership with Starbucks, processing all card transactions across the coffee giant’s 7,000 stores in the U.S. and mobile payments support.



Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Fast-Growing Luxury Vacation Club Inspirato Quietly Brings In $15.5M From DAG and Millenium

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Screen Shot 2012-06-28 at 3.25.19 PM

Collaborative consumption – generally, marketplaces for buying and selling access to products and services — may bring to mind startups like TaskRabbit and Zaarly for tasks, or short-term rental service Airbnb.

But Inspirato is bringing the concept to the luxury vacation market, driving down the cost of renting Tuscan villas, Napa cottages, and even a seafaring yacht coming next July. And it’s doing well enough that it decided to raise another $15.5 million this past month from DAG Ventures and Millenium Technology Value Partners, we learned from a regulatory filing that hit this week.

This money is a rapid follow-up to a $20 million round from IVP in January, and a previous $17.5 million from Kleiner Perkins, Access Venture Partners and the Crunchfund last fall. So the company clearly thinks it is on to a big new trend, given that almost all of its $65 million in venture backing has come within the last 12 months.

Inspirato, as we’ve covered in recent months, is one part luxury travel club, like Exclusive Resorts and Quintess, and another part peer-to-peer rental like Airbnb. You pay a $15,000 one-time fee to join, then an annual $2,500. From there, you can pick and choose a wide range of luxury rentals around the world.

The Airbnb angle comes in on the rentals themselves. Traditional luxury vacation clubs go through brokers and end up paying out large parts of their gross revenues to them as a result — up to half the total cost, according to chief executive Brent Handler, who we checked in with after finding the filing. He’d know as he was the cofounder of Exclusive Resorts. Inspirato’s strategy saves guests dramatic amounts of money while still providing the luxury experience.

Handler is also careful to stress the difference between his company and mass-market rentals. 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.

So, why all the rush of venture money? Inspirato’s approach seems to have been a hit. Handler won’t reveal hard numbers, but its now renting hundreds of properties and adding a new one every other day. The valuations, meanwhile, have been going up healthily as well.



Article courtesy of TechCrunch

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