INNESS: The Country Club Where Belonging Isn’t Included
Told from a year inside the velvet rope.
From a distance, Inness looks like exactly what the pandemic promised the Hudson Valley might become:
a pastoral refuge where harried city people could trade subway grit for wild grasses and artisanal butter.
You crest the hill, see the Catskills unfurl behind the cabins, and feel a release —
Oh, so this is where I’ll discover inner peace.
Then you step inside, breathe deeply, and realize the fragrance isn’t transcendence at all.
It’s Aesop, wafting from every sink, communal or otherwise, like a potpourri-scented mood stabilizer.
And the spell begins to wobble.
A Hospitality Philosophy of Aristocratic Absence
Inness does not openly mistreat guests.
There is no shouting, no slammed plates.
Just a calm, practiced non-recognition, the kind of disengagement normally reserved for uninvited gallery-goers or interns in office buildings with especially high ceilings.
A online review summarized the vibe neatly:
“They make you feel like they’re doing you a favor by letting you be here.”
Another:
“Beautiful, but relieved when we left.”
A third:
“Embarrassingly overpriced… and that’s before the attitude.”
Still another:
“You know it’s an Instagram trap when the website leads with [their] soap.”
Inness isn’t hostile—it’s politely dismissive.
Detached.
Breathlessly aristocratic.
A hospitality business built on the fascinating premise that hospitality is optional.
Turning Guests Into Members
At the core of the paradox is the membership.
Because at Inness, the question isn’t whether the service delights you – it probably won’t.
The question is whether you’re willing to pay annually for the chance to feel like a houseguest who’s stayed a bit too long.
The numbers are simple enough:
~800 members
$2,500–$5,500 per membership
≈ $3,000,000 in recurring dues
And what do these dues guarantee?
Not belonging.
Not recognition.
Not warmth.
It turns out you’re purchasing access to the idea of belonging, carefully walled off from the practice of it.
That old elitist slight-of-hand:
If we treat you like a stranger every time you arrive, you will cling harder to the fantasy that someday you won’t be.
What Members Actually Get
On paper:
Sauna
Gym
Spa access
Grounds
Programming
Dining privileges
In practice:
A sauna that’s the current temperature in Miami if it’s working at all
Showers that take turns malfunctioning
Spa offerings who’s prices even offend guests paying $2k a night
A gym that feels like a boutique hotel had sex with a morgue
A programming calendar that reads like the world’s first wellness raffle
(movie night, dog walk, possibly tea if someone remembers to schedule it)
And meanwhile, grand opportunity sits untouched.
Members I met include:
chefs
musicians
healers
designers
photographers
people desperate to connect, collaborate, and contribute
Inness’s use of this cultural goldmine could not be more cursory.
Its most consistent community-building initiative appears to be members marinating in the luke-warm-sauna commiserating over why none of the other initiatives exist.
Even the Staff Are Unwelcome
It takes more than soap and cedar shingles to create continuity or top-notch-service for that matter.
Over a single year, I befriended seven managers across the spa and restaurant who came and went almost as quickly as the guests they aimed to serve. Of those I got really close to they all spoke of the immovable objects at the top of management who were unwilling to head their feedback. The staff, by and large, seemed hip to the observations of guests and even felt unwelcome themselves, in spectacular poetic irony.
Turnover at this scale doesn’t happen in places where the culture is coherent.
It happens where the front-of-house warmth is a marketing concept, not a lived reality.
The Hudson Valley in Microcosm
Three hundred thousand New Yorkers left the city during the pandemic years, drawn northward in search of life, breath, and space.
Some hospitality projects rose to the occasion:
Wildflower Farms: remembers faces, not just credit cards
Troutbeck: builds community as if it matters
Mohonk: eccentric, but somehow still human
Inness, by contrast, feels like a curated dream of the Hudson Valley rendered by someone who has never spoken to a local.
It sells escape from the consumer culture of the city while delivering a boutique version of the same thing – just outdoors and with better knitwear.
The Punchline
The irony is almost too perfect:
Over $3,000,000 a year in membership dues
for the privilege of not being seen.
Belonging is the one thing members can’t seem to purchase here, no matter how many zeros appear on their invoices.
The view is spectacular.
The brand is immaculate.
The fantasy is compelling.
But until someone at Inness decides that hospitality is more than Aesop-scented hand soap and a hilltop view, the member experience will continue to feel like a kind of haute purgatory: A place so committed to looking inviting, it forgot to be.
Inness will keep making money. The design magazines will keep swooning. The Aesop will keep pumping from every spigot like a chemical incense for the spiritually dehydrated. And members will keep signing checks hoping that this year they’ll finally belong.
But the truth is simpler: Inness does not want you.
It wants your dues, your dinner tab, your credulous belief that elevated design reflects elevated care. It’s a club that perfected the art of taking your money while rebuffing your existence. The Hudson Valley may be full of refuge. This just isn’t one of them.