Hey, I'm Sarah Dendy. She's here live at the Skift Global Forum and we have been interviewing some of our speakers today. Very excited for this conversation. We've got Steve Case here from Revolution and Steve, thank you so much for joining us. I know, right? It's a very busy day here.
It's a great day. It's great to see all the energy.
Exactly. No, definitely. So, um, what I kind of like start a little bit from tying in a bit of your background and to bring us into like where we are today. So, obviously you helped bring millions of people online with AOL. Um, and what drew you from that world basically into investing in the world of travel and hospitality?
Well, it was a little bit of an evolution. I, you know, I co-founded AOL 40 years ago. I did the internet for about 20 years.
And it's amazing how far we've gone because when we started in 1985, only 3% of people were online.
85. And those 3% only used the internet about an hour a week. So, it went from if not many people knowing or caring or using it to suddenly, you know, kind of it dominated every household.
That was the first chapter. And then sort of the second chapter was, yeah, I started Revolution as an investment firm about 20 years ago. We've invested now in a couple hundred companies across lots of different sectors. But, the last few years, the real focus and passion has been on travel and hospitality. I think it's just an exciting industry, as you well know. It's got a right for disruption. Some things are going to change. Some things are going to stay the same. And figuring out how to, you know, get that balance right is where we're focusing a lot of our time at Revolution.
So, it's obviously an industry that's always evolving. And it's not going anywhere.
Which is great. Um, so, let's talk about Exclusive Resorts.
So, um, why bring Exclusive Resorts, Inspirato, and One Fine Stay together now? What are you kind of seeing as the business opportunity?
Well, the focus that we created this holding company called the Exclusive Collective, which is those three brands you mentioned: Exclusive Resorts, which is more of a club that we started over 20 years ago; Inspirato, which is a subscription service started about a decade ago; and One Fine Stay, which was a division of Accor, but we acquired it from Accor, kind of focused on the super high-end luxury villa rentals, you know, kind of space. And our belief is that these high-end luxury customers want flexibility, want choices. And some will prefer a club like Exclusive Resorts, some would prefer a special service like Inspirato, some would prefer something like One Fine Stay. Many people actually will use a mix of them. And so having more options for people in this kind of...
Yeah, luxury collective, I think it makes a lot of sense. And we do have a $500 million business now, 70 million in EBITDA, so it's got some scale to it. But we think it can grow significantly from here because particularly high-end customers, their precious thing is time. And so sure, they want good value, but they want to make sure somebody is looking out for them. And AI can help in some of the discovery, but you ultimately want to be able to trust somebody who knows you, knows your family, knows your preferences, knows your taste.
So if you're doing a trip to Aspen or going to Hawaii or Europe or what have you, there's some degree of personalized curation and also a real deep sense of connectivity and community. And so those are some of the things that we've really focused on. I think it's a great time for that kind of business because it is kind of fragmented. People sometimes on some of the booking sites, you know, it's a little bit luck of the draw. There's even with AI some issues with fake reviews on some of the platforms. So it's sort of a lot, you know, it's who do I trust? It's almost a decision fatigue. There's so many decisions I have to make, so much searching I have to do. I just want somebody to make it easy for me. And that's what we're trying to do with the Exclusive Collective.
I think that's great. And you bring up a really good point as far as decision fatigue because obviously we have so many options at our fingertips. And I mean, I actually work with a lot of ultra-high-net-worth clients that stay in these types of properties and I know every trip is going to be different. So depending on their needs, whether it's business, whether it's family travel, whatever. So it actually makes a lot of sense.
More options is not necessarily a good thing. You know, fewer options that are perfectly curated. No, you want choice, but it's like if you go to a restaurant and the menu has like 500 items on it, it's kind of intimidating. You want more than one, but [laughter] you don't want an infinite number. And so, and that's true with travel. And people do spend, you know, a lot of time. Some want to spend time on, you know, planning and searching, which is fine. But they also just want to make sure if they're going to go with their family or friends for a week and they're busy people and don't have a lot of time, that's going to be a perfect week. The home's going to be perfect, the services are going to be perfect. And that's, you know, really the goal for Exclusive Resorts Collective.
Yeah, absolutely. So now that you're kind of talking about this, have you found that the travelers that you already sort of have in the ecosystem are using more than one of these or staying in more than one of these brands?
Yes, yeah. So it's relatively new that the acquisition of Inspirato and One Fine Stay were over the past 12 months. So it's gone from a single brand to three brands over less than a year. So it's evolving, but absolutely there's some that are using two of them. Some of them even use all three of them. And we think giving people that flexibility is important. And there's clearly some, you know, cross-marketing synergies. There's also we are looking to bring in real estate into the platform, whether we own it, which is typically the model with Exclusive Resorts the club, or we lease it. You know, having a broader ecosystem, having about 25,000 high-net-worth families in our ecosystem gives us more buying power. You see more opportunities. You can partner with more companies. We partner with some great companies like Rosewood and others and we'll expand those partnerships in the years to come.
Yeah, and you're, I mean, obviously you're tapping into, you already have the clientele. You know, we've already got the clientele and they know from previous experience the discernment factor that's like, okay, well, I know that I've had great experiences, let's say, with One Fine Stay properties. And so it almost will make it easier for them to at least pique their interest to explore some of the other options.
But as long as we continue to execute on the strategy, you're never going to be disappointed, whether it be on the Exclusive Resorts side or the Inspirato side or the One Fine Stay side. 100% confidence that you're going to have a great home that's exactly what you expected when you walked in and you're not going to be surprised and not going to be disappointed, and a whole set of services in terms of initial planning and before you get there, when you're on site, that are delivered hopefully flawlessly. And you're also getting a good value. So you don't have to spend a lot of time shopping around to make sure you're not being taken advantage of. Even luxury customers, they can afford things, but they also don't want to be nickel-and-dimed. They don't want to be taken advantage of. They just want to make sure they've got a fair value.
Correct. I always say that there's always a budget, you know, and some there might be a little bit more flexibility, but even if there's a larger budget, everybody is still also mindful of the value that they're getting for it. So, um...
And they want us at Exclusive Resorts to use our buying power to give them value as opposed to having them feel like they have to spend their time shopping around comparing what's the price here, what's the price there, which is, you know, this decision fatigue dynamic, which is true in a lot of aspects of people's lives. There's almost too many choices and how do you make things a little simpler but assure them that every decision they make is going to be a great one.
