King of Clubs

Luca Del Bono’s Onda membership platform offers access to private social and coworking spaces across the globe

- Melinda Sheckells

FINDING A PRIVATE club that matches your business and leisure interests while also being geographically advantageous isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. But what if you could subscribe to a platform that puts you inside hundreds of clubs across the globe with just one membership?

Luca Del Bono is propelling this idea with Onda (“wave” in Italian), an app and website that grants globe-trotting bons vivants, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts and creators access to membership clubs around the world. Launched in 2018, the Onda community now includes more than 250 member clubs and spaces in 75 cities and destinations on five different continents. “The principle is that every wave around the planet is connected through the ocean, but also every wave is unique in its shape and energy,” Del Bono says.

The Italian-born, London-bred hospitality entrepreneur, who cofounded luxury lifestyle concierge service Quintessentially in the early 2000s (and later the South Kensington Club in London), started Onda after he migrated to L.A. to build a members’ club. Del Bono saw how many clubs in development all had the same issue: How do you attract the right people with common interests to create a true community? The solution was to create a program that would appeal to digital nomads and offer them the flexibility to discover clubs and coworking spaces without the barrier of entry of a complicated and lengthy application process or the perception of elitism.