Get to Know Pleasant Holidays New Luxury Brand, Evoke | Inspire

There’s a new luxury brand in town delivering FIT trips through a portfolio of high-end hotels, private villas, yachts, jets and rail journeys. Evoke | Inspire, which debuted April 1, is a sibling company to Pleasant Holidays and replaces the Journese brand, which was phased out on March 31.

Journese is being sunsetted primarily because travel advisors were confused about how it compares with Pleasant Holidays. The brand had significant overlap with the hotels offered by Pleasant Holidays, according to James Kareka, vice president and managing director of trade brands for Pleasant Holidays and Evoke | Inspire.

Kareka was brought on last year to work on developing the new brand, which will have a dramatically different portfolio than Journese.

In short, Evoke | Inspire will be an all-out luxury brand without gray areas. Gone are the 3.5- and four-star properties that Journese carried; now, only 4.5- and five-star properties will feature in the new brand’s accommodations portfolio. Current hotel partners include Fairmont, Rosewood, Belmond, Como and The Ritz-Carlton, and that list will continue to grow. Evoke | Inspire also offers its own concierge services and 24/7 customer service provided by U.S.-based support staff.

James Kareka, vice president and managing director of trade brands for Pleasant Holidays and Evoke | Inspire. (Photo Credit: Northstar Travel Group/Ruthanne Terrero)

Luxury Is in the Details

In line with its luxury ethos, Evoke | Inspire will provide private transfers in all its destinations, as well as private drivers and guides. The brand’s reservationists will be able to work with concierge teams within a destination to fulfill requests for dinner reservations, theater tickets and spa appointments.

"We are also paying much closer attention to that space between arrival and departure; the logistics are important," Kareka said. "How you get there and the ease of getting there is important — the arrival experience is critically important."

What happens in the destination is equally vital, he says, noting that DMCs have been added in Europe to fill gaps the company identified.

The brand has also added services from Rail Europe to help piece together itineraries. Private jets, private yachts and private residences are also available in the portfolio.

"We are creating a brand with great intention and making sure that we’re servicing the luxury advisor the way they need to be serviced," Kareka said.

The Evolution of the Brand

The launch of Evoke | Inspire comes about a year after David Hu took the helm at Pleasant Holidays after the retirement of Jack Richards, who ran the company for some 17 years. Pleasant Holidays, which has been in business for more than 50 years, is under the ownership of AAA of Southern California, as is Evoke | Inspire. The companies all work under holding company A | T Collective.

Before stepping down from Classic Vacations in 2022, Hu had led the brand for 13 years. After assuming his role at Pleasant Holidays in 2025, he brought on Kareka — his former Classic colleague —who has been working on launching Evoke | Inspire since he was hired.

Evoke | Inspire will customize clients' luxury FIT trips through a portfolio of high-end hotels, private villas, yachts, jets and rail journeys. (Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/Yevhenii)

Kareka, who has three decades of travel industry experience, began on the agency side at Casto Travel and most recently served as the senior director of sales for Apple Leisure Group.

The executive says he did a series of discovery calls internally and externally to determine the paths for the two brands.

"We ultimately decided that Pleasant is our legacy brand and is very well-known, and it does a very good job in the premium space, but Journese needed some work to compete in the luxury space," he told AGENTatHOME.

Thus began the start of an entirely new luxury brand rather than just a revamp of Journese.

For this reason, Kareka sees Evoke | Inspire as a startup with a new portfolio of products and services. Some of the reservations consultants who were with Journese have been transitioned to the new brand, and the company has also hired eight new reservationists, bringing the team to 16 in total, plus three supervisors.

Relying on Advisor Input

Evoke | Inspire was initially soft-launched to some of Journese’s top advisors before its official April debut, and all bookings made through Journese were serviced by its existing team through their end travel dates.

"It was important to us that we had a period of collaboration with our best customers to make sure that there were no gaps," said Kareka, noting that Evoke | Inspire is purely B2B. "They’ve been hugely instrumental so far in guiding us."

Evoke | Inspire is not using third-party sources for any of its inventory, he adds.

"Everything is directly contracted, and that’s very important," Kareka said. "So many companies are trying to scale, and they use OTAs or bed banks to source inventory; we do not. The hotel knows the bookings coming from us, then we feed them the agency name, ARC number and consortium. That makes a big difference, because the last thing you want is to have a client show up at a hotel and be told they were booked through X, Y, Z and not have any idea who that is or why."

Additionally, he says, Evoke | Inspire’s reservations team is hired, trained and managed internally.

"We don’t outsource any of our services," Kareka said.

Only 4.5- and five-star properties will be featured in the new brand’s accommodations portfolio. (Photo Credit: Adobe Stock/moofushi)

Understanding Clients Better

One of the simplest additions to Evoke | Inspire is an in-depth questionnaire that travel advisors can share with customers to determine their preferences, with questions such as, "What do you hope to get out of this experience?" and "What’s most important to you?"

And if there’s a special occasion for a trip, the brand will help make grand things happen.

"If clients are celebrating any milestones, or if a family or couple wants to have a picnic in the park, we’ll help arrange that," said Kareka, who emphasizes that it’s essential to know what clients want out of a trip.

Kareka tells AGENTatHOME that launching Evoke | Inspire has been one of the most exciting projects he has worked on in his career.

"Creating a brand from the ground up is great," he said. "Our team has been awesome. They are all 100% in and are making sure that our vision is executed well."

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