A new luxury travel pass means unlimited stays in glam five star locations around the world. What’s there not to like?
How much?
I’ve just been reading about the new Inspirato Pass which claims to be the first luxury travel subscription service promising ‘endless travel for $2,500 per month’, (just over £2,000), with ‘no nightly rates, taxes or fees’
Sign up and you can book luxury hotels along with experiences like river cruises and safaris.
Who’s this for?
Well clearly at this price it’s not a service for budget travellers, who are happy stashing a week’s holiday togs into a cabin bag, (that’ll be me!), to save some cash. And it’s not being marketed this way.
But even if you do have a stash of cash to shell out the equivalent of £24K a year for a membership; (pretty much the average annual wage), that’s not the end of the bill.
Oh no, it’s just the accommodation that’s covered as part of the deal, so you’ve still got to book your flights, cough up for any car hire and shell out for all your meals and drinks while you’re away. Well ok, this is luxury stuff, so you do have the services of a concierge while you’re away, along with a travel planning service to help make all your arrangements.
Where can you go?
There’s a whole heap of places to choose from with 150 locations around the world and 60,000 places to stay across the USA, Europe and Asia.
I did check check out whether there was an option to sign up for a month, bag some great ‘once in a lifetime’ trips and then pack it in. But minimum membership is six months so we’re talking £12,000.
Can you always be ‘on holiday’?
You can book as many trips as you like for your monthly membership, but you can’t ‘stockpile’ holidays. Rules say you can only book another trip once you’ve checked out from the first.
So aside from the, ahem, obvious hefty price tag…….is this all plain sailing? May not be great news if your ‘dream holiday’ isn’t available when you are, you may have to settle for somewhere closer to home.
And if you’re looking for far flung destinations, then flight prices aren’t going to be cheap if you come back from one trip, and fancy another within the next couple of weeks.
I checked out New York…
I wanted to see what you’d you get for your money in terms of hotels so I went on the Inspirato site to see what was on offer within the next few weeks. I spotted a 2 night stay in New York in one week’s time staying at the Beekman Hotel in the Financial District close to City Hall Park.
Looks a great luxury hotel, but just how much would you pay for a last minute flight to New York at such short notice? Though once again, maybe the folks that are going to be going on these trips will just hop on their private jet rather than be trawling cheap flights to New York with Norwegian Airlines where you can bag return flights from under £250 if you book in advance.
Booking the advertised 2 night stay at the Beekman through Inspirato means you get a ‘Deluxe King’. Book direct with the hotel and this would set you back the equivalent of £460. So while the room rate may be covered under your monthly membership, to get value for money from your monthly £2,000 membership fee you still need to knock up a few more trips to break even.
Think I’ll stick to budget flights and Airbnb………