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TeaThat’s the capital of the mile-high state colorado There are some major, Denver-only miracles.
Union Station has been attractively rejuvenated. The tattered cover, from a theater turned bookstore, adds drama to the printed word. And west of the city, where the rumble of the Rockies begins, emerges arguably the world’s most beautiful music venue.
Red Rocks Amphitheater is built from raw, rusted sandstone that resembles an endless sunset. Sometimes, stevie nicks Moves red rocks. And when the music greats are performing, Larry Mueller will be in the front row.
“Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac is often with us,” he says. “We are her sanctuary. When she needs comfort, she comes to the cuvée world.”
Mr. Mueller is the CEO of Qiwi, the most innovative travel enterprise in the global travel industry.
The QV world is a planet located about as far from the everyday habitat experience as it is possible to be. Qiwi’s core business is long established in the travel industry: an intermediary between property owners and guests.
But the assets are extraordinary – like the guests’ bank balance. The mission of the business, which he founded with Susan Farrugia in 2006, is to provide “the world’s best collection of luxury private villas and immersive cultural experiences”.
QV, which is headquartered in Denver, has 140 properties on its books, with a combined value of $4bn (to save you the maths, that makes the average home value around £20m). The highest concentration is in the Colorado Rockies, but the network reaches to Cape Cod, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Italy, and beyond.
Some are owned by the businesses themselves, but most are owned by high net worth individuals who own property portfolios. Perhaps the essence of the supply side of the cuvée can be summed up by another vintage rock star: Joe Walsh. In “Life’s Been Good” he sings: “I’ve got a mansion, forget the price / Never been there, they tell me it’s nice.”
“Nice” hardly begins to describe the properties I saw in and around Vail and Aspen. While some Cuvée options are laid out in the city grid, the typical Cuvée abode is located far away from the madding crowds on what you might call Billionaires Ridge: high on a hill, wrapped in woodland that opens up to provide spectacular views – including an outdoor Jacuzzi. Abundant wildlife includes the American black bear occasionally wandering onto the veranda.
The interior features an open-plan living area, framed by trestles and the kind of kitchen that would impress the most flamboyant celebrity chef. The bedrooms are abundantly furnished with good taste – and to meet the Cuvée’s detailed specifications.
“We established a set of standards that we wanted Cuvée to have in every home,” says Muller. “Now there are some owners for whom we don’t have to do that. Their taste is excellent and they meet our standards.
“For many of our owners, the home was not up to that standard. So QV had to develop and implement its own construction company and its own interior design company.
“We’re really invested in making sure the home meets those standards — from the type of glassware that’s in the cupboards, to the thread count of the sheets you’re sleeping in, to the finishes you see in the home itself.”
Can QV be summed up as ultra-posh Airbnb? No, says Larry Mueller. “The average nightly rental rate for their homes is less than $200 (£150) per night. QV’s average nightly rental rate is more than $10,000 (£7,500) per night, but reaches $40,000 (£30,000) to $50,000 (£37,000) per night.”
At the top level, this is the equivalent of a week’s accommodation costing a quarter of a million pounds. This is almost 1,000 times more than a self-catered apartment in Benidorm. Muller says that at such stratospheric levels, the cuvée faces no competition.
“The only competitor we have is ourselves. It’s our ability to continue to strive for the standards we’ve set. As long as we continue to do that, there’s no one in our league.”
The essential complement of a high and mighty property are the experiences that go with it. For someone who made his early career in the tech sector, Mueller has long been passionate about technology. While running IBM’s European operation with 100,000 employees from Paris, he “fell in love with the diversity and different cultures of Europe” while traveling around its domain.
“I love architecture. I love different cuisines. I love their attention to their language. So I thought: Why don’t we define something where we can offer very avant-garde places in the world, but combine it with highly curated experiences so people can really learn the culture?”
Designed for ultra luxury; Experiences are specific. For example, in Italy, guests at a Tuscan farmhouse can opt for expert-led wine tasting and pasta making as part of a dedicated guided walking tour of Sienna. They can explore the hills of Tuscany in an original Fiat 500, or fly over the landscape in a helicopter – all arranged by “experience curators”.
Larry Mueller and I met in the penthouse of the Ritz-Carlton in Bachelor Gulch, Colorado. The top floor of the five-star hotel is a Cuvée property, with its own exclusive access lift.
“One of my favorite activities [here] Outside of skiing go sleigh rides into the backwoods.
“We developed an experience where we asked Clydesdale horses to pull a sled in the backwoods.
“There’s nothing more beautiful than being in the mountains in the winter where it’s so still and quiet. These Clydesdales are pulling you through the woods and you hear their breathing, and they just want to do their job properly.
“Then we end up at a cabin in the woods where we have a pretty delicious dinner.”
“These are the types of experiences we create in all our destinations to bring culture to life.”
Every business needs supply and demand. On the supply side, any asset owner would love to be a part of the QV portfolio. But only a few are selected. “At the end of the day we only take one out of every 30 homeowners that come to us.”
However, what’s in it for owners? It’s a fair bet that many of the ultra-high net worth individuals who own these properties could cope without an influx of QV rentals for their private palaces.
“Some of the families we work with are among the top five wealthiest families in the world. And the question is: Why would they want to share it because at that point it’s not money, right?
“I find it really interesting. Even with dramatically lower levels, I love sharing my properties with people who are either friends and family or people who rent them from me.
“I love making them experience the joy of what we offer and that makes me happy. But it also brings the ability to monetize the property and continue to improve the property.” He says that those properties are like people.
“They need to live. They need to be used and they need to breathe. That property that sits idle on mountains or oceans gets spoiled – just like we, right, as humans? We get spoiled if we don’t get off the couch. We get to go hiking up that mountain and then enjoy time in this environment with the people we love.”
How do guests find Cuvée? “In the early days of QV we didn’t do any marketing, because they came to us. It’s a good situation, but as we’ve grown we’ve had to reach out to them.
“People will search for ‘luxury ski in ski out in Aspen’. We have the word and we’ll come out and people will send us an enquiry. You wouldn’t think that someone who’s going to pay $20,000 (£15,000) a night would search on Google, but that’s the world we live in and it’s a world that’s growing.”
Social media is also important. In America, former NFL quarterback peyton manning Similar to David Beckham’s fame in the UK. Manning, who has nearly one million followers on Instagram, is a regular at Cuvée.
“He’s a great lawyer. Peyton wrote us a note after he went to our private island. He’s one of the biggest stars in the world. He went with his dad, who also plays football, and his brother Eli plays football and all his grandchildren play football too and it was his mom’s birthday and he wrote a note saying it was one of the most unique times in the history of their entire family.
“That’s the joy that I get out of it. Really, we’re creating the most beautiful times in people’s lives.”
“What Peyton Manning wants and what Stevie Nicks wants are completely different. Yet you need to deliver it at those levels, and that’s what QV does.”
After creating Cuvée and personally owning some excellent properties, Larry Mueller could have taken an endless vacation. But he chooses to work hard.
“My life has dramatically improved because of QV and it’s truly a beautiful thing. So I always tell my team that right now I can’t believe I worked a day in my life. How many people can say that?”