Luxury vacation home club Quintess launches in Boulder

BOULDER ? A dramatic new concept in the vacation industry is being launched quietly in Boulder by a diverse group of private investors.

Quintess LLC, a new company led by five Colorado business leaders and partially backed by serial entrepreneur Pete Estler, is an exclusive private club that provides its affluent members access to multimillion-dollar vacation homes around the globe.

The company, online at www.quintess.com, is positioning itself not only to compete with other luxury vacation clubs like Exclusive Resorts but also to provide its members with an alternative to buying a second home or booking lavish vacations several times a year. Members are given access to single-family homes averaging $3.5 million in value in some of the world?s most popular vacation spots as well as access to elite services including private chefs, spa facilities and valet transportation.

It?s not travel for the budget-conscious, however.

The membership fee for Quintess starts at $165,000 with $10,500 in annual dues for 15 days of vacation per year. Premium members pay $300,000 plus $20,000 in annual fees for 30 days of access. The company has developed a group plan to allow families or corporations to share their membership.

Chief Executive Len Allsup, who managed to attract Pete Estler and his partner Ben Addoms to the project during its initial round of financing, initiated the concept. Estler has long been a player in Colorado startups with expertise in integrated technologies, database marketing, business development and finance. He was responsible for starting dbINTELLECT Technologies and MatchLogic, both of which were sold in multimillion-dollar deals during the technology boom. More recently, he has been involved in financing new ventures through iBelay, a venture capital company and technology incubator.

Estler also brought in Jim Onken, a senior vice president of Intrawest and a primary developer of the Copper Mountain resort village. The fifth founding member and managing director is Dean Gilbert, who is the managing partner of Sandalwood Investments.

Quintess formally was founded in June 2004 and opened for business Nov. 15. To date, the company has recruited 65 members to its program, out of which the first 30 investors are equity investors in its portfolio of homes.

?Members pay a deposit just like they would to join a private country club. That deposit money, along with bank debt, is used to purchase homes,? Addoms explained. ?The home purchase portion is really driven by the number of members and the types of membership programs. When we started the club, we had 35 members, and that effectively gave just under $20 million to buy homes.?

So far, Quintess has purchased seven homes for use by its members and plans to have 10 available for reservation by April. The residences, which are reserved for 210 days per year, include a resort home and a town house in Aspen, a penthouse apartment on New York?s Upper East Side, a home on Costa Rica?s Pacific coast and another on Hibiscus Island near Miami. The group?s experts go into each target market to select the best homes available. Quintess hopes to open locations in Napa Valley and Paris, France this year. Initially, Quintess plans to add 10 to 15 members per month.

?We won?t take more than 75 new members a month, and we will cap the membership total at 800 members. The reason for that is that we want a lot of homes and a lot of diversity in locations available. On average, we purchase a home for every six members that are available to take vacation time, so we will end up with around 120 homes in about 30 locations. We will have between two and 10 homes in each place, which gives people a lot of choice,? Addoms said.

Pete Burridge, president of Boulder brand consulting firm Greenhouse Partners, is an investor as well as a founding member of Quintess. After visiting both Aspen homes, he believes the club has made sound choices in its home selections.

?Quintess is working hard to choose homes that are really set in a natural environment so that you feel like you are part of the community that you are visiting,? Burridge said.

The membership is a sophisticated and selective target market of entrepreneurs, real estate managers, investment bankers and chief executives. The company performed an extensive analysis of the ?destination club? industry as well as primary interviews with households in excess of $1 million in net worth. Memberships are by invitation only, and a founding member must sponsor all new members.

?When a member refers a friend or a business associate, we?re really getting an endorsement from somebody who is already perceived as being sophisticated and intelligent by their friends. That endorsement of the quality and integrity of the club and how our members make their purchase decision makes our lives easier,? Addoms said.

The company employs about 20 people in its Pearl Street office and another 15 across the country who work in regional membership development and provide host services at destination locations.

?This is a very fast-growing market,? Addoms said. ?Two years ago, there were only two of these clubs in existence. At the end of last year, there were eight including Quintess, and there have been seven announced in the past three months alone.

?You have to be good with real estate and property management to be in this business, but it?s also like running a five-star resort. Our members expect that high level of quality in everything from their travel planning to their destination. The level of intensity is very high, and that?s why we have been so focused on bringing in people with great hospitality backgrounds.?
Burridge says that level of commitment makes a difference to potential investors.

?I think that they have some aspects of their program that are significantly elevated to the next level up from their competition. The quality of the homes, the way that the homes are appointed and their services approach are all first rate. I had a lot of confidence in the people running the organization,? Burridge said.