This clever business, introduced in October 2014, combines the best aspects of services like Groupon and LivingSocial and offers New Jersey DaycationToday.com members, called "daycationers," affordable access to getaways like spa treatments, wine tastings, tea parties, cooking lessons, lectures, workouts and more. Best of all, members don’t have to travel to the city because all the experiences are offered right here in communities like Millburn, Short Hills, Maplewood, South Orange, West Orange, Livingston, Chatham, Madison, New Providence, Berkeley Heights, Summit, Morristown, Cranford, Montclair, Westfield and Garwood.
Think of it as a "Club Med" type of lifestyle service without the price tag. Get this: Once you sign up on DaycationToday.com and pay $195 for a package of 10 adventures, you don’t pay anything else. So that means you can browse a menu of experiences and choose, for example, a $150 massage, a $75 cooking class, a $125 facial, plus up to seven more adventures without taking more money out of your wallet. How cool is that? Sign me up!
"We encourage women to break free of the same old, same old by allowing themselves a few hours of ‘vacation’ in their daily lives. So we created a service that encourages them to schedule at least one guilt-free day each month to do something exciting and adventurous," says founder and CEO Debra Olshan Cooper of Short Hills. "Two years ago, when I moved to suburbia, I felt like the only way to have fun was to go into New York City. That’s why I started a local service that offers busy women the opportunity to take a break from their daily lives."
Sadly, Cooper’s research shows that many women work hard at home or at the office or both, but females of the species rarely carve out time to nurture themselves with stimulating social and fitness experiences. And, when New Jersey moms and businesswomen finally do take some well-deserved time off, many of them don’t even know where to have a cool lunch, where to find the newest shops or how to access the best in fitness activities. That’s why DaycationToday.com is growing in popularity as Cooper continues to scour the Garden State for lots of unusual opportunities, many of them best-kept secrets that daycationers discover only through her service.