Luxe living

• Love staying in nice places when you travel, but don’t want to own them? Stephanie Chai, founder & CEO of 500-backed The Luxe Nomad, can relate.
• Stephanie launched The Luxe Nomad in 2012, a luxury vacation rental management company. While there were multiple trusted hotel brands at that time, she realized there was a pressing need for a trusted ‘villa’ brand.
• “What I felt was a sweet spot was the villa industry, because they’re more high touch and they require a bit of personalized service,” she explained.
• The company started managing villas in Bali, taking over a small company there, and then moving into Thailand with 50 villas in Koh Samui. Today, the team manages more than 1,300 keys in their portfolio in Indonesia, Thailand and Japan, ranging from affordable luxury to very high end.
• “My long term goal was to go into Niseko, Japan,” she shared. “In 2023, we took over a company called Nisade and now we’ve got 900 rooms there and about 20 buildings. We’re the biggest ski-in/ski-out management company as well, and that’s been doing phenomenally well.”
• Next for the company is Australia and New Zealand. Stephanie said this expansion made a lot of sense given her New Zealand lineage, and with Australians being a key customer base for the group.
• “Our dream really is to be the brand, globally, for luxury vacation rental. So when someone thinks of a villa rental or they want to go skiing at a condo hotel, they say, ‘I trust The Luxe Nomad, I love what they do, they have amazing service and beautiful properties,’” she said.
• Read the full interview here.