The Only Inspirato Pass Review That Matters (By Actual Members)

Our Inspirato Pass Review is still offered here for anyone who cares to read it.

Today, we’re coming at you with a new angle to our popular focus on Inspirato’s Pass luxury vacation travel program and how it’s allowed us to explore the world almost constantly without breaking the bank in the process.

Before we tell you our motivations for writing this article, we need to provide some background. You can skip forward if this introduction is old news to you, but let us give a 1-minute overview of Inspirato just to provide a baseline for those of you who aren’t already familiar with that program. Trust us—this part’s interesting, too.

What is Inspirato Pass?

Inspirato—a public company as of 2022—is a luxury travel subscription program. It’s a more modern, flexible and affordable evolution of the legacy membership club models from other luxury travel clubs.

Unlike those, though, Inspirato owns no real estate. Instead, they specialize in long-term leases with hundreds of multi-million dollar homes, celebrity-frequented resorts, high-end hotel operators, and other posh experience/adventure organizations around the globe. People like us can join Inspirato to:

1. Stay at any of those properties for discounted nightly rates

2. Book curated, luxury safaris, cruises, and other experiences for competitive prices

3. And/or pay a flat $2500/month (update: now $2550) + a $2,500 (update: now $2550) enrollment fee to enjoy high-frequency stays within the Inspirato portfolio without paying any additional fees for those stays.

That last component—the flat monthly fee option—is the Inspirato Pass program. But in all 3 scenarios, members also get Inspirato’s premium trip planning and local concierge services that are absolutely off-the-charts valuable—without paying any extra. Don’t think of that part as a travel agent; it’s actually a lot more like having a dedicated concierge with an American Express Black Card. There are a ton of additional programs and benefits included with Inspirato membership, but this part is just a quick overview so we’re not going to dive into those at this point.

This is an Inspirato Pass Review by actual members (us)

We’re the Lockwoods— a family of 5 that’s been traveling the world in semi-nomadic fashion since mid-2020.

The backbone of our travel has been Inspirato Pass. We joined after several years of research and consideration, as well as substantial prior experience working in the industry. 

During our first 6 months in the program, Inspirato provided so much value to our lifestyle that we added a second Pass subscription to our membership (additional Pass subscriptions are discounted) so that we could travel even more frequently. We belong to a group of members referred to as “power users” because we try to take full advantage of Pass by taking as many high-value trips as possible. 

Over the past 2 years, we’ve taken dozens of trips through Inspirato and we’ve spent more than 400 hours working on the ins-and-outs of membership and experiencing every aspect of the program. We know Inspirato.

As you’ll read later, we have countless stories about how Inspirato consistently goes above and beyond to serve us and other members. The lasting memories that we’re creating through their programs are nothing short of life-changing.

Interested in learning how to get the most out of Inspirato travel? Subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we share weekly episodes illustrating how we use Pass to live a life of adventure around the world.

Background on the negative Inspirato Pass review by Yore Oyster

YoreOyster.com is a crypto-currency advocacy and personal finance blog that makes money by writing and posting content that redirects readers to other websites in exchange for commissions on visits, leads, or sales.

Needless to say, there’s a huge incentive for them to write glowing reviews for companies that are willing to pay them, because doing so stands to maximize their commissions. And as for any negative reviews? Those would ostensibly be reserved for those businesses that don’t offer to pay them commissions.

Yore Oyster recently published a scathing, hack-piece review of the Inspirato Pass program. It’s one of the very first links you’ll see if you Google “Inspirato Pass Review” even though the author, Jordan Bishop, has never been an Inspirato member and has never taken a trip through Inspirato. In fact, we can find zero evidence that anyone at Yore Oyster has ever bothered to join, try, or otherwise experience Inspirato in any way, shape or form. Nor can we find any evidence that anyone there bothered to interview any Inspirato team members to generate their claims, validate their assumptions, or finalize their conclusions. If this piece had been written for a reputable publication, it would have been fact-checked right into the garbage before ever seeing the light of day. But this is the Internet.

Why we’re publishing this Inspirato Pass review

Let us be clear that this post is not intended to be a sales piece for Inspirato. They didn’t ask us to write this and they pay us nothing when we send referrals their way.

If we refer people who do end up joining, which does occasionally happen, then we—like all Inspirato members—may be granted certain travel perks as a thank-you, and those perks vary from time to time.

But perks are not why we’re making this video either. As passionate Inspirato members, yes, it bothers us to witness the apparently-intentional spread of misinformation like this, but the main reason we’re making this video is because Erin and I repeatedly preach the value of Inspirato in hundreds of hours of our channel content, where we often focus on how the Pass program makes it possible for us to travel the world in luxury as a semi-nomadic family. And when someone Googles “Inspirato Review” and finds uninformed drivel written by someone who’s never even tried the program, it calls our credibility into question. 

Let’s pull back the curtain on the apparent strategy behind the Yore Oyster review, which seems to be a glib, click-bait hit piece intended solely to attract traffic and coerce Inspirato into paying big-time hush money to take it down. We think it’s obvious that Yore Oyster might have had perverse ulterior motives in writing it from the very beginning, considering the strong evidence suggesting that possibility.

When we caught wind of the article, we spoke to Inspirato and asked for more insight on the nature of the situation. Apparently, Yore Oyster had recently asked to “partner” with Inspirato. This was part of the actual email exchange between them:

“Why would you like to partner with a company that you don’t recommend to your audience? Are you looking for us to pay you to write a more favorable article?”

— Inspirato

. . .

“We do like Inspirato, but the reality is that in running our business, we need to direct our site traffic to partners who compensate us for it.”

— Yore Oyster

Oops. It looks like they may have said the quiet parts out loud. But let’s pretend like that damning admission alone isn’t enough to convince you to discount every single thing written in the article and let’s instead address some of the specific, ignorant claims it contains.

Claims made against Inspirato Pass debunked

Claim: “Properties offered by Inspirato’s platform are primarily located in the United States, with a smaller number of properties in Central America and Europe… If you don’t spend 90+% of your time in the United States, you’re going to be disappointed by Inspirato’s selection of properties”

Reality: First of all, saying that Inspirato’s properties “are primarily located in the United States” is patently false, and considering Yore Oyster’s apparent intent in writing the article, we’d say it’s also potentially libelous.

Second, Yore Oyster seems to be overlooking a little chunk of the planet called “North America,” which consists of 23 nations (including their home country), almost all of which are heavily represented in the Inspirato portfolio. We’ve already traveled through Inspirato to Belize, Costa Rica, The Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands, as well as Los Cabos, Riviera Maya, San Miguel de Allende, Punta Mita, and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico—but those are just a fraction of Inspirato’s footprint in the region.

They also seem to have a desire to understate the volume of Inspirato destinations across the pond. We’ve already had incredible Inspirato stays in Mougins, France; Sienna, Tuscany; the city center of Florence; Barcelona, Spain; and the Dalmation Coast of Croatia; as well as enjoying a week-long river cruise through Provence and Burgundy—and this is all in just the past 10 months.

We could literally stay in a different Inspirato property in Europe alone every single week and we’d never run out of destinations because there are already far too many and they’re adding properties faster than we could burn through them. The biggest challenge for 99.9% of members is trying to narrow down these choices vs. whining about not having enough.

We can agree that you are probably going to be very disappointed with Inspirato if:

1. You really want to travel to more than 6 amazing destinations in Canada

2. You want to travel to Asia but you prefer to avoid some of the best experiences in Asia (Thailand, The Maldives, Dubai, Vietnamese and Cambodian river cruises)

3. You really like the idea of touring Europe but you hate the idea of being limited to beautiful mansions, villas, apartments, and experiences across Italy, Netherlands, Spain, France, Ireland, Croatia, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary, Portugal, England, Greece, Czech Republic, Scotland, and Austria

4. You totally dig South America, but not if it means having to suffer through the beauty of Columbia’s landscapes or Galápagos expeditions in Ecuador, Antarctic expeditions from Chile (on our bucket list), or wine making immersives in Argentina

5. Or, if you want to travel to Africa but you really just want to stay in a chain hotel instead of having authentic experiences like Kenyan, Botswana or South African safaris and Nile river cruises

They also omitted the South Pacific, where Inspirato will set you up in Melbourne, Australia and Fiji.

At the end of the day, this article is attempting to put permanence on a portfolio that’s dynamic and constantly expanding, so their information was outdated even before it was published. 

Claim: “If you aren’t able to physically attend a trip that you want to still book for family and friends, you can add on an additional $500/month Sharing Pass so others can use your Pass without you being there.”

Reality: This is accurate… but also a little outdated.

Inspirato members can now also add a “Select” bundle of trips to their membership and gift and share those stays with anyone. Both options are great ways to extend the value of an Inspirato membership, so no arguments here.

Claim: “The minimum time between two trips is 7 days, and you must check out of your first booking before making a subsequent booking, which means there’s no opportunity for back-to-back travel with Inspirato.”

Reality: Pass hasn’t worked like this for quite a while, which makes us wonder when and where Yore Oyster actually did any research. Maybe in a dusty encyclopedia.

Pass members can absolutely book back-to-back trips with no minimum gap and many of us do that on a regular basis. Our 3 weeks of travel to Pelican Hill and Conrad this month had only one day in between and that was solely to give us a chance to return home for some quick laundry, repacking, and feeding Colt’s pet gecko. And late last year, we did back-to-back trips in France and Italy (no return home in between those).

We’ll be making a YouTube episode that illustrates exactly how Inspirato Pass works in 2022, how we pick our trips, and why this process is one of the most fun parts of our travel experience. But for now, we can just label this claim…

Claim: “An Inspirato Club membership just gives members access to book from Inspirato’s list of properties. It does not include any discounts on nightly fees or other charges; you’ll need to pay all of the standard charges (nightly fees, cancellation fees, food & drink, travel expenses, etc.) on your own. That’s why the Inspirato Club is a bit of a ridiculous offer: for $600/month, you’re simply buying the right to book properties on Inspirato’s site… many of those properties actually cost more through Inspirato than they do elsewhere on the web.”

Reality: Okay, wow. This is where their Inspirato ignorance really starts to shine.

While they’re correct that Inspirato Club is the pay-as-you-stay program where you essentially pay $600 per month (update: now $650) + a $600 (update: now $650) enrollment fee to be a member and then pay nightly rates for each stay, that’s where their guidance starts going off the rails.

Inspirato provides amazing value on nightly rates through Club and members can grab even more tremendous value through their Jaunt Now and Jaunt 52 programs that are released every Wednesday.

We personally monitor Inspirato inventory almost daily and we can say that we’ve never seen a situation like the 2 examples Yore Oyster chose to feature in their article. That’s not to say that they don’t exist—it just means any such anomalies are irrelevant to the Inspirato member experience. They’re essentially trying to sidestep the reality that we experience as members, which is incredible value.

As we began writing this post, we were sitting in a 4,400 square foot, 4-bedroom compound villa at Pelican Hill on the Pacific coast of Newport Beach, California.

Book it through Pelican Hill and it will set you back almost $40k for those same 5 nights. We “paid” just under $2,500 (29 Inspirato Pass days under the older pricing model) through Inspirato. That’s about 94% below retail.

Our Pelican Hill Stay (Last Week) By the Numbers:

• 5 nights (early June) in two 2-Bedroom Garden View Villas

• Book through Pelican Hill:

  • $34,050 Subtotal

  • $3,556 Taxes

  • $650 Resort Fees

  • $38,256 Total Cost

• Booked through Inspirato Pass: $2,417 (29 Inspirato Pass days under the older pricing model)

• Savings with Inspirato: $35,839 (94% off retail)

And this week—just 5 days later—we’re spending 13 nights in a 1,200 square foot oceanfront highrise residence in Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach. Retail value for this one is about $16k and we paid just over $2,000 in Pass days, which is about 85% below retail.

Our Conrad Stay (This Week) By the Numbers:

• 13 nights (mid June) in a 2-Bedroom Ocean/Intracoastal Residence (9th Floor)

• Book through Conrad: ~$16,000 (with taxes and fees)

• Booked through Inspirato Pass: ~$2,000 (27 Inspirato Pass days under the older pricing model)

• Savings with Inspirato: $14,000 (85% off retail)

Unlike Yore Oyster’s examples, this isn’t cherry-picking; these are just our current trips for this month and this is business as usual when you’re an actual Inspirato member taking actual Inspirato trips, vs being an overambitious and under-researching blog that’s publishing a glib review of a product you’ve never even touched.

So, is Inspirato worth the money?

Even for those Inspirato stays that don’t have a 5x or 10x value multiple, they’re failing to understand that every member also gets to take advantage of amazing services offered by Inspirato, like a dedicated care team and local concierges that help them plan and execute almost every aspect of their trips, from booking flights to arranging luxury ground transportation such as rental cars and limos, to conducting all restaurant research, recommendations, and reservations, to booking excursions and babysitters, to planning parties or getting that custom cake for the big event—almost anything else you want or need. Again, we’re not talking about travel agents here because travel agents aren’t locals in every city and country they send you to. This is high-touch, exclusive, luxury-focused concierge planning designed to meet the expectations of millionaires and those who want to travel like millionaires without paying like it.

Inspirato will even shop for all of your groceries prior to your trip and have your kitchen stocked upon your arrival—and this service is included in the membership.

Yore Oyster seems to also be oblivious to the fact that many of Inspirato’s trips include butlers, maids, chefs, Cadillac SUVs, parking passes, and access to private clubs—at no extra cost. I mean, they’re not even comparing apples to apples here. Here’s one more critical note their article doesn’t mention: Inspirato Club is included in Inspirato Pass. That means the $2,500 per month (update: now $2550/month) Pass members like us are also getting the 600 per month (update: now $650) Club benefits without paying any extra. It’s more than safe to say that this claim is… triple debunked.

Update:

Inspirato Pass now also includes JauntLiving, a members-only benefit featuring extended stays ranging from two weeks to one year in select Inspirato accommodations. Members can save up to 80% versus regular nightly rates, with an average savings of 50%.

Claim: “Inspirato Pass costs $2,500 upfront + $2,500/month and that Pass can be canceled at any time, though your $2,500 enrollment fee is non-refundable.”

Reality: We have to give them almost total credit on this one, except that there are ways to avoid paying any enrollment fee at all. If you want access to those deals, go to followabc.com/inspirato-pass and we’ll connect you to our insider who can hook you up with some promotions.

Claim: “How do they achieve such high profits? By giving members far less than what they receive from them.”

Reality: At a basic level, they seem to take offense to the concept of businesses turning a profit.

As members who get far more from the program than we’ve experienced with any hotel/resort loyalty program, Airbnb, vrbo, timeshares or discount lodging aggregator website, we on the other hand are just fine with Inspirato doing well enough to remain solvent throughout COVID and to thrive post-pandemic.

As for it being “so difficult for Inspirato members to just break even on their $30,000 annual membership fees,” remember that we literally just saved over $50k in 18 days of travel and we’re probably taking a dozen other trips with Inspirato this year. If you’re a member who’s not absolutely killing it with Inspirato value, you need to message us so we can help you out.

Claim: “Other online travel agencies offer reasonable cancelation policies that give you 100% of your money back. Inspirato’s cancelation policy may seem better on the surface, but it’s not at all what it seems.”

Reality: Inspirato (which is not an online travel agency) has cancellation policies that are actually a bit complex, but also very reasonable.

They vary between Club, Pass, and Select, but they basically help members recoup costs and value up to the point where Inspirato itself is most likely to incur thousands in costs to cover the cancellation. Personally, we wouldn’t want that policy changed because it would just translate into higher membership fees for everyone. 

We can say from personal experience that over the 30 trips we’ve taken so far, we’ve only had to deal with last-minute issues twice.

The first was when Hawaii decided not to reopen for travel before our trip in 2020, leaving us homeless less than a week from our stay. Inspirato put an entire team on the issue and had us swapped to one of their awesome luxury villas in Cabo for the same dates in less than 24 hours. They charged us nothing. We lost nothing. It was amazing.

The second was when we were on an Inspirato Pass trip on Harbour Island in The Bahamas and learned that the yacht we had chartered to sail through the Exumas for 5 nights following our departure had been canceled by the operator (yacht maintenance issues). In other words, we were supposed to check out of the Inspirato house with nowhere to go and nowhere to stay. Not only did Inspirato’s Bespoke team secure a new yacht for us within 24 hours, but because that charter wasn’t available until the day after our checkout from the house, Inspirato extended our stay by an additional night at no cost to us.

But if you want additional protection for personal situations that cause you to cancel in the last 14-30 days before your trip, then do what people do with every other travel program in existence and buy a little travel insurance.

Claim: “Inspirato Pass members must pay their $2,500 membership fee every month ($30,000 per year), whether they’re actively using the service or not. Even for luxury travelers, this is a non-trivial sum that becomes especially difficult to swallow when borders are closing and the vast majority of hotels—both domestic and abroad—have closed their doors until further notice.”

Reality: Here, they’re really just reiterating the previously-stated details regarding Inspirato pricing and trying to make a good deal sound like a bad one. Yes, Pass members do pay $2,500 (update: now $2550) every month whether they’re traveling or not, but…

Pass isn’t a program for people who can’t afford more than $30,000/year in luxury lodging costs, nor is it a program for people who want to pay for a subscription that they’re not going to use.

This again shows their complete lack of understanding when it comes to Pass and to Inspirato members in general. To be honest, though, we’re not sure if they’re trying to say that if you join Pass but don’t book trips, then you’re not getting value (which should be obvious and irrelevant) or if they’re saying that if you can’t travel for 6 months, then your Pass dues between now and then will be wasted, but neither of these scenarios is valid.

Personally, we always book our next Inspirato trip on the very morning that we’re first able to do so and we’ve typically been planning it for days or weeks in advance. It’s exciting for us and it’s the easiest way to get maximum value from the program. We’re friends with other members who take their time when booking their next trips, but they’re less concerned about getting maximum dollar value from Pass and really just want the Inspirato experience when they do travel.

As for the second potential scenario (booking trips much farther out), just know that booking trips farther into the future is also great because it means that your trip options will utilize the value of the monthly fees you’ll be paying between now and then, translating into more valuable, epic options and/or the ability to have multiple trips booked simultaneously. In other words, there’s absolutely no wasted or lost value by booking farther out.

As for the part about borders closing and MOST hotels in the world closing their doors? Honestly, I’m wondering if they wrote this article in spring of 2020 and just inserted “June 2022” into his headline to fool search engines. Any educated traveler knows that this claim is outdated.

So we’re going to label this section as essentially True, but only because they got the pricing details right.

Claim: “With Inspirato, you can only have one active reservation at a time, which means you need to check out of your first booking before making a subsequent booking.”

Reality: We don’t even have to read the entire section because it’s categorically wrong. Club has never worked that way. Pass used to work that way, so this is just another example of how this “June 2022” review is based on information from prior years—and another example of how a review from a non-member can’t be trusted.

Bottom line: you can absolutely hold multiple Pass trips at once—it all just depends on how far out you book and the associated Inspirato Pass days for each trip.

For example, we’re considering a trip to Deer Valley Montage 4 weeks from now and the cost of that trip is 15 Inspirato Pass days, which means we’ll be able to book another trip two full weeks before we’d even fly to Deer Valley. And if you book farther out than we do, it’s not unreasonable to think you could have 3, 4, or more trips booked at the same time. And with Club, as always, you can have as many trips on the books as you like.

Claim: “One of the things Inspirato members complain about most is its ‘phantom inventory’ problem: essentially, the rooms shown in Inspirato’s search tool (including those with a ‘Book’ button next to them) are often not actually available.”

Reality: This may come as a surprise to you at this point, but this claim is very misleading. Is it possible that you could browse the Inspirato portfolio, find an incredible home in Hawaii and try to book it for the first week of June, only to find that it’s not available? Yes, of course. There’s a trademark Inspirato home in the Dominican Republic that I’ve had my eye on since day-one of our membership but availability hasn’t lined up with our schedule yet. Why? Because it’s an insane mansion on the sea and demand is high. We know that we can either book farther out so that we can stay there—or we can do what we prefer, which is to just pick a different place to stay sooner, for fewer Inspirato Pass days. And the places we stay are still incredible.

There are a few homes in the Inspirato portfolio that aren’t included in Pass, but aside from those, we’ve never come across a home that we couldn’t book farther out. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably not using the search correctly or doesn’t understand that you typically aren’t going to be able to book a $15k/night home for an entire week during the first month after joining Inspirato. That’s no scam, as their article may be implying; it’s just the reasonable, logical balance of value between the program and the dues its members pay. 

Yore Oyster’s Referenced “Inspirato Pass Reviews”

Jordan includes 2 “Inspirato Pass reviews” in his article, along with the statement, “I’m not the only one dissatisfied with the Inspirato experience. Here are two other bloggers who have had similarly poor experiences with Inspirato.”

I find it odd that he claims to be dissatisfied with the Inspirato experience, considering the fact that he has no Inspirato experience. It’s also odd to only list [alleged] reviews from “other bloggers.” Why not reference some from members who have no motivation to write revenue-generating content? There are literally thousands of such reviews available online here.

One of these [alleged] blogger reviews seems to be from 6 years ago (super odd, since Inspirato Pass didn’t even exist then) and the other one doesn’t seem to exist on the website he references (which is a blog dedicated to the positive experience of Inspirato membership, by the way).

Perhaps it wasn’t so much a review as a comment left on an actual post. Regardless, even if both of these reviews are valid, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of positive experiences being shared in the Inspirato Members Facebook page every year.

Conclusion: Is Inspirato Pass Worth It?

Throughout the end of 2022 and well into 2023, we began traveling even more frequently and to more exotic locations. Some of those locations fit into that category of destinations that are lacking in Inspirato’s portfolio. But here’s the amazing thing: we still use Inspirato for those travels. One example is our 2-week tour of India—not a single Inspirato home or resort in that country and yet Inspirato booked the entire thing. From the moment we stepped off the plane in Delhi, we were met by a guide who escorted us through customs, out of the airport, to our dedicated van, and to our first 5-star hotel. From there, we were never left without at least one guide (and sometimes as many as 3). Carrying luggage through airports can be a pain, so our guides would drive our luggage from city to city while we flew hands-free between locales! Every hotel, shuttle, flight, meal, and activity that we featured in those YouTube episodes was researched, planned, booked, and managed by the Inspirato team. And what did we pay Inspirato in extra fees for this service? Not a penny.

Even When We Aren’t Using Inspirato, We’re Using Inspirato.

Jordan wraps up his article by saying, “Inspirato is definitely not worth the $30,000 annual fee. I can say that confidently because I’ve compared Inspirato’s prices with publicly available prices from major online travel agencies like Agoda and Booking.com.” Well…

“We can honestly say that this Yore Oyster ‘review’ is definitely not worth your consideration. We can say that confidently because we’ve been using Inspirato as a lifestyle for the past 2 years and we actually understand what’s included and how it works. Our experience is day-to-day reality, not back-handed theory.”

— The Lockwoods

Ultimately, we hope that our response demonstrates the comprehensive lack of factual information they provide and to convince you that if this is the kind of content they’re putting out on any topic, you may be better off discounting what they publish on every topic. It’s certainly our belief, based on what we’ve uncovered while preparing this episode, that it’s financial opportunism—and not a desire to help consumers—that drives their content strategy.

In addition to our own content, the main navigation of inspirato.com includes a REVIEWS tab (https://www.inspirato.com/member-reviews/) that allows prospective subscribers to easily browse thousands of other real reviews from real Inspirato members.

To conclude and reiterate—Erin and I have no conflict of interest here. We’re not being compensated for writing this article and we’re not going to ask for compensation. For us, the opportunity to provide an accurate perspective on the value of Inspirato membership serves only to reinforce the recommendations that we’ve made over the past 2 years (and continue to make through our video content) and set the record straight on anything that challenges our integrity.