Imagine a life where you head off after a long workday for an oil and vinegar tasting session (because tasting wine and coffee is so mainstream), spend an hour destressing and renewing yourself in an oxygen chamber before capping the night off with a delectable dinner at one of the trendiest new spots in town. For the weekend, you’ll go for a six-hour island excursion, complete with a helicopter drop-off and a sunset dinner by the beach.
There are companies and apps that may offer such experiences listed above individually, but The Revelry is one platform that hopes to become the go-to source for lounges, clubs, restaurants and most importantly, unique experiences.
Currently active in Malaysia and Singapore, The Revelry promises to provide a carefully curated list of eateries and activities they call “Perks” to a discerning audience.
An Air Of Exclusivity
When you first access their main page, you’re greeted by a sleek, elegant few words, with a large ‘Members Only’ right below their name. After clicking the ‘Request Membership’ button, you’re brought to the next page where you fill in your name, email and password. Standard stuff, not really out of the norm.
It’s there where things take a different turn. Besides the phone number, gender, birth date and naming three favourite venues in town, The Revelry also requires the applicant to fill in his or her income range and also provide either a LinkedIn or Instagram link.
At this point, I started wondering if I was even qualified to get in.
Later that day, when I got the email saying that my application was accepted, I started to suspect there was a delay on purpose to make it seem as if membership was that difficult to get and something special. I bet everyone who applies would eventually get approved, I thought to myself.
However Jonas Chelbat, co-founder of The Revelry, clarified this and told Vulcan Post that they actually have a team that goes through each application one by one, and that there are applicants who get rejected. Also, regarding all the information collected, he said, “It’s all used for either vetting applicants, or segmenting and personalising the service once users are inside.”
Experiences Of A Lifetime
The Perks started out from as low as RM60 for a chocolate tasting session to a whopping RM22500 for the island excursion and helicopter dropoff mentioned in the beginning of the article.
The expensive Perks are eye-catching and might feel unaffordable to most, and according to Jonas, “These are sold less often than the more affordable perks, but we do sell them (more often in Singapore). We get a surprising number of yacht bookings.”
Some of the perks looked quite reasonably priced and fun, even to my plebeian tastes, there were even several perks priced cheaper than when going to the actual providers. A quick search to the actual Breakout Game Rooms site showed that a group of 8 would have to pay around RM300. This Perk is available on The Revelry for RM190.
Aspiring artists might be interested in learning how to sketch, smooth and shade with a live nude model (RM80), and adrenaline junkies might get a kick out of learning to longboard and cliffjump with Kieran Brodie, an experience that is impossible to get outside of The Revelry (RM90).
Being less of an outdoors person, the Perks on food and gallery tours were the ones that caught my eye.
Regarding how they select the perks and how they can sometimes offer exclusive experiences and at a lower rate, Jonas told us, “We pay a lot of attention to the company voice and design, and we are careful about who we collaborate with. I think our partners see this as brand enhancing. We take a small commission on what is sold and they always break even. If we are filling an empty seat, we are practically paying them to take our customers.”
These attractive Perks do mean that users might be more willing to spend, and Jonas confirms this.
“We don’t have one single package that has sold dramatically more than all other packages, but we’ve been pretty surprised by the basket sizes. We are averaging above $250 in Singapore and above RM600 in KL.
This indicates that our users represent a higher spend demographic, which typically is very valuable to our partners. Several of our members also come back to our partners and become regular customers.”
For future Perks, The Revelry is planning more adrenaline rich experiences like ostrich racing, and also a more significant and hands on experience at certain restaurants, where you can cook your dinner with the chef and then dine.
Not Another Coupon Site
I tried telling some of my friends about The Revelry to see their reactions, and the most common response I got was, “Oh, so it’s like a glorified Groupon?”
The Revelry teams begs to differ. “We don’t see any correlation between Groupon and us apart from allowing our members access to a lower price than would otherwise be obtainable. Ultimately the use case is very different.
People who use Groupon are ‘deal hunters’. The most important matter for them is that they get a cheap price. 9 out of 10 times they are willing to go down in quality to get a better price.”
One thing that does set The Revelry apart is their offer of exclusive deals. There’s often no comparison or a “better deal”, just the one-of-a-kind experience.
As Jonas says, “Our model is based upon allowing our members to discover unique things to do, and unique places to frequent, while then also giving them better access than non-members would be able to get—either a better price than the average person, or access to something that is exclusive to our members.”
We can see that they feel very strongly about that, and rightly so.
Feature Image Credit: The Revelry