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>> Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here with theCUBE.
We are at Zuora Subscribe in downtown San Francisco
talking about the subscription economy.
What's different about the subscription economy?
Why is it taking off?
And how does it really change the relationship between
the provider and their customer?
Or in this case, a club member.
So, we're excited to have somebody
that's been doing this for a while,
Sebastian Gnagnarella,
he's the SVP Tech in IT for Inspirato.
Did I get that right, Inspirato?
>> Yeah, you got that right.
>> Awesome, so first off, welcome Sebastian.
>> Thanks, Jeff. Glad to be here.
>> So what is Inspirato?
>> So, Inspirato's a private luxury destination club.
We try to provide the affluent consumer
a single trusted source for all their travel needs.
>> So it's private, it's luxury, and it's destination.
>> Exactly.
>> But the big thing, it's also a club.
>> It's a club.
>> And you said it's been a club since the beginning.
>> It's a club.
>> So what makes a club a club versus
having a regular kind of client/customer relationship?
>> Well, absolutely. We think that traveling with the club
gives the customer a more intimate experience.
People are used to buy vacations one by one.
With us, they salvage their relation
with their personal vacation advisor.
When they join the club,
they get a personal vacation advisor
that knows everything about them,
everything about their family,
and everything around their travel patterns.
And we also give them curation.
We give them certainty when you travel with us.
And we also give them an extremely great care team.
>> Can you share any numbers
in terms of number of destinations?
Is it your own private destinations?
Do you just help them arrange to go to destinations
that anyone can go to?
How does that work?
And give us a little bit of the size and scale
of the company.
How many trips, members, whatever you can share.
>> Absolutely, so, we have 15,000 members right now.
When you join the club, you get access to different things.
One of them is you get access
to our 290+ members-only properties.
Properties that we fully manage and control
and they're only accessible by our members.
You get access to our portfolio of hotels.
We have curated deals with different hotels
around the world.
And you also get access to what we call Bespoke Experiences,
which are tailored experiences only for our members.
Imagine if you wanted to go on that safari to Africa,
you come to us and we take care for you.
>> So, then you'll put it together?
Or do you usually have a safari to Africa?
Or you'll put a custom package together?
>> We put it together either with partners,
our network of partners, or in some cases,
we have member-only trips already in the schedule.
Like last year, we did a members-only cruise
to Antarctica with I think it was like --
we took like 200 members
to Antarctica on that trip.
>> So, do people use the service more frequently
as a club member?
How does it actually change your engagement with them?
>> So, I do think they use it more frequently, right.
They have that personal relation
with their vacation advisors,
with their personal vacation advisors.
So, we give them extremely good service
around where to go, when to go,
tips on when is the best time to visit a place,
and what is a great occasion to visit a place.
We also try to think of ourself as a lifestyle club,
not just as a destination club,
so we try to be present 52 weeks of the year
with local events.
So, you are a member, you get access to Superbowl tickets,
you get access to backstage tickets for a concert in town,
or you get access to members-only cooking classes.
>> That's interesting.
So not just the big destination vacation.
But you've maintained an on-going relationship
with a number of smaller events as well.
>> Exactly, exactly.
>> So, that begs a question,
which I think is really interesting one here,
about having a relationship with someone
through a subscription, or as you say, a club,
as opposed to a transactional deal.
Because it's not really --
there's transactions within the subscription,
but the transactions don't define the relationship.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
And I said this during the panel few hours ago,
is that for us, a subscription has two components, right?
One component is the company component.
The subscription give us and allowed us to forecast
and to scale and build that platform to give more
to our members.
On the members' side,
the membership is their commitment
to spend time with the loved ones, right?
For us, subscription is that ongoing power
that help us help our members to spend time
with their loved ones.
>> And do you guys promote that?
That's a great concept.
>> Absolutely, absolutely.
It's like for us there's nothing more important
than our members spending time
with the people they love.
>> Right, right.
And they're probably very busy,
or they couldn't afford the service.
>> Absolutely, absolutely. You're exactly right.
>> (laughing) That's great.
So it is a defined commitment,
and that's very different relationship
than just buying a vacation package.
>> Totally, totally.
>> Very cool.
Alright so you've been at this for a while.
Why Zuora?
How long have you been a customer of Zuora?
You've been in the club space forever, but why Zuora?
>> So, Zuora, we've been customers since 2016.
Since last year.
Since April last year.
And we were managing our subscription charges
through a home-grown system.
And that worked good, right?
When we had 5,000 members, when we had 7,000 members.
We knew that the day that climbed to 50,000 members
in the future we needed something else.
So, we started searching different solutions
and we knew we wanted something cloud,
we knew we wanted something with strong APIs,
so the strong foundation.
And we also knew we wanted someone
that was strapped into business,
because that's how we felt about ourselves, right?
We feel that we are strapped in the travel business,
and we wanted to partnership with a likewise company,
and that's how we picked Zuora.
>> Alright, Sebastian, great story. I love it.
>> Alright, well thank you so much.
>> Absolutely, so show your commitment to your family
by signing up with Inspirato.
That shows that you're going to take them
on really nice vacations.
Alright, thanks a lot Sebastian.
>> Thanks Jeff, thank you so much.
>> I'm Jeff Frick, he's Sebastian,
you're watching theCUBE from Zuora Subscribe 2017
in San Francisco.
Thanks for watching.
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