Podcast
Episode 4: Traveling The World With Exclusive Resorts
James Henderson sheds light on the popularity of experiential travel and why community is one of the best parts of traveling.
I headed over to the Exclusive Resort’s headquarters in Denver, Colorado (just a quick 15 minute drive from AZDS) to connect with the CEO, James Henderson, whom I’d met when he was the President of our partner, XOJET. With terrific views of Coors Field and Union Station from their Lower Downtown office, we dove right into the offerings of Exclusive Resort, the world’s foremost members-only club specializing in luxury travel and curated experiences. This includes the recent portfolio growth and strategic partnerships James has spear-headed since he began his tenure at the company nearly six years ago.
The overall model for Exclusive is simple – they strive to provide exceptional getaways for their members. Having been around for about 20 years, Exclusive executes about 20,000 vacations each year and owns about $770,000,000 in real estate around the world. A membership (which will run folks an initiation fee of between $195,000 to $295,000 for 10-year or 30-year membership plus annual fees) functions like a virtual country club. The average liquid assets across the membership base, per family, is about $25 million. Exclusive’s whole goal is helping members live richer lives and find better ways to travel.
Upon its foundation, the idea was to provide access to a network of homes in incredible places (to mitigate the risk of potential unknowns of a short-term rental), and to provide a really high-level of high-touch service. Exclusive Resorts has since evolved to also include members-only travel itineraries – called “once-in-a-lifetime journeys” – which has grown the overall sense of community across its members.
“We were sort of like a vacation club in the early days and now we’re very much a membership community.”
This is what James loves most about the premise – you get to meet incredible people who have done really interesting things, on top of having a love for travel. Members may join for the travel, but they really stay for the community. And the data backs this up with a substantial shift towards experiences over the company’s bread and butter of residential rentals. Some event highlights include Around the World by Private Jet, and curated experiences with Formula One (Monaco: Grand Prix at Sea), the Kentucky Derby and the Masters.
Personalized concierge services help to begin the vacation-experience upon arrival. The Exclusive Resorts app (which rolled out about three years ago after an extensive engineering process) is undergoing updates to include plans of layering in AI with the goal of providing even more custom itineraries. But the human-to-human interaction is where the real magic lies, according to James. While the app may ensure automatic Wi-Fi hookup and grocery stocking planning pre-arrival, a new feature James teased will allow members to locate other members based on their destination. Perhaps you’re booking a private ski instructor for your kids, or maybe you want to share a sailboat with another family. The prioritization of community continues to evolve throughout all aspects of Exclusive Resorts.
A partnership highlight James spoke about is with National Geographic on a trip that focuses on off-the-beaten-path destinations. About 75 members travel via a private jet to nine countries in 21 days for about $250,000 per couple. And it sells out within 24 to 48 hours. James has prioritized partnerships with people and companies that he knows and trusts, ensuring that if something goes wrong during a trip, he can pick up the phone and get someone on it to fix right away. Wherever a value-add is possible, James is determined to implement it.
Our conversation finished with the three signature LTI questions, and James’ answers were right on-theme with my previous interviews in Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3. For upcoming personal travel, James is headed to Tokyo and Korea aboard The World, a residential ship within the Exclusive Resort’s portfolio that’s fondly known as a floating home-away-from-home. He’s also traveling to Rwanda via helicopter for a guerrilla trekking – which sounds like an incredibly unique experience. Looking at the past “glamour days” of travel, James remarks on how disconnecting from the digital landscape and living in the moment while traveling is the current trend, and how it fits as both a nod to the yesteryears of travel while also holding space as a shift for the future.
“We talk a lot internally about this concept of 4,000 weeks. So, if you live to 77.8 years of age then that’s the average amount of time you have with family or parents. And when you look back, it’s not the things that you brought home from those trips, it’s the memory of that moment on the beach or the picnic you shared. I think that’s the luxury of travel.”
When asked about innovation for the future of travel, James spoke about the change that AI will bring to hopefully enable Exclusive Resorts to provide much more customized and bespoke experiences, while at the same time giving guests the opportunity to get away from technology on that vacation.
Thank you James for such a wonderful conversation, available to listen on Spotify and Apple Music today.
