It all started back in 2016…. when Joe Casanova and Luis Guajardo decided to partner up on a hotel. This hotel was a leave of absence for expats (Americans who move to another country “ex-patriots”) who wanted to work remote at exotic destinations. Furlough was founded in November 2017 with the acquisition of a Boutique hotel catered for digital nomads in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.

Our founder Joe Casanova seen sitting on the roof top pool

We celebrated the launch with a content creation trip with influencers from across North America for a week’s worth of content creation. Luis’s agency, Prive Travel, sponsored the trip in exchange for the content to use to advertise his business. During this trip, we set time aside to teach the influencers marketing channels besides social media that they were never taught.

Joe Casanova speaking at Paradise Challenge Content Trip in Hawaii February 2018

To our surprise, the influencers were oblivious to this information and were actively inquiring about where they could learn more. The next years were focused building a platform that would bring influencers, brands and fans together. We started with the most impactful approach, the founder Joe Casanova’s background in SEO, and it was to get the word out about who we are.

Olivia Pascale was one of Furlough original team members help coordinate content trips

We did so by going after influencer traffic on Google by featuring them in our publication. Influencers would be famous on social media but not in the search engines. This would help the influencers build credibility with a featured article, give their fans more information about them, showcase their audience insights to the brands that want to work with them and bring more awareness to the Furlough brand.

Furlough acquired Moma Tulum in December of 2019 located in Aldea Zama Tulum, Mexico

In 2020, Furlough expanded its boutique hotel franchise to two with the acquisition of Moma in Tulum, Mexico. When we weren’t housing expats working remote, we curated influencer content trips sponsored by brands hosted at our hotel. The timing could not have been worse as we were met with the COVID-19 pandemic that caused a disruption in the entire travel industry. As Furlough began to redefine its core model the true essence of who we are was discovered.