From Hops to Hospitality: Crafting a Curation of the World’s Top Glamping Sites

Meet Jake Pontius — Co-Founder of Nook, a collection of North America’s most remarkable landscape hotels and outdoor accommodations. 

After working as a business analyst at a timeshare company, Jake left the corporate world to pursue his passion of brewing craft beer and it was during this season of his life where he first fell in love with hospitality.

Now while Jake fell in love with the industry while working in food and beverage, his family is no stranger to hospitality. Jake’s father, David, actually spent his career working in executive capacities at RCI, Hilton, and Bluegreen Vacations.

In this episode, Jake and I discuss:

• Why he and Michael Goldin from Storied Collection and building Nook
• The value of building soft brands in hospitality 
• What his predictions on the future of experiential travel are
• Why he’s bullish on landscape hotels and outdoor accommodations 
• And so much more

Connect with Jake on LinkedIn

Learn more about Nook 

This episode is brought to you by Summer. 

Summer takes the headache out of owning a vacation rental by taking care of sourcing, designing, furnishing and managing your home.

What makes Summer especially unique is the pathway to ownership that they offer — think of this as an option to “try before you actually buy an Airbnb” 

Here’s how Summer’s Gradual Ownership model works:

1. You work with Summer to find the perfect vacation rental — one that’s in a market that you want to vacation to and also in a market that makes sense for a vacation rental.
   
   
2. Summer guides you through the whole discernment process of where, when and what kind of home to buy.
   
   
3. When you find the right home, put down a downpayment of 15+% but Summer buys the home for you and holds it for up to two years — during this time you can buy back the home from them any time you are ready or, after the two year period you can decide you DON’T want the home and get a full refund of your down payment.
   
   
4. Also, Summer covers all of the closing costs and fees for the upfront purchase on the home, as well as furnishing and design. This means you pay far less out of pocket than you would if you bought the home yourself from day one.

So if you’ve been looking for a way to beta test the whole Airbnb game, this is your sign. Go and chat with my new friends at Summer and tell them that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way.

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About the Show

Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.  

You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com. 

Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.