Travel DRD is on Staycation, the five-time Emmy Award–winning travel series — and the producers did something genuinely cool with it.
The full episode, as it aired.
It was a bright, wind-off-the-Gulf day in Cape Haze — the kind Southwest Florida hands out in the spring and everyone else pays airfare for. The crew rolled in, the palms did their thing, and the producer pitched something that had nothing to do with the usual property tour.
He wanted the episode to feel like a sitcom. Specifically, he wanted it to feel like Seinfeld. So the title card came up in that unmistakable yellow oval with red script over the front of the house, and the show opened cold — on a phone call.
“Hello? This is Evan Michael. You think you can keep Staycation out of Florida? We’re moving in, lock, stock and barrel. We’re going to be in the pool. We’re going to be playing putt-putt. We’re going to be all over that volleyball court. And I dare you to keep me out.”
The reply, delivered completely straight: “Actually Evan, we’re pretty excited to have you here in Seaside Boca.” Beat. “Oh. Well in that case, I’ll be right there.”
He arrives by golf cart. There is a running bit about the pronunciation of “golf cart.” There is a tea that is handed over specifically so that someone can say they’d like to tee it up on the mini-golf course later. And when Evan finally sees the whole property, he lands the joke the whole thing was built toward:
“Seaside Boca — it feels like I’m at Boca Vista.”
If you know, you know. Del Boca Vista, Phase One. That was the day.
Marketing & Productions
Leads the Marketing & Productions division at Travel DRD, and co-founder of MentorMe and Acromatico. On camera he hands Evan “a special tea” — the setup for the mini-golf pun that runs through the episode. “See what Italo did there?”
Host, Staycation
Emmy Award–winning journalist and television presenter with more than two decades on camera, including co-hosting and producing This Is Golf on CBS. He opens the episode with a phone call and a threat: “You think you can keep Staycation out of Florida?”
Owner, Travel DRD
Born in South America, based in South Florida. Seaside Boca is one of five handcrafted properties he has designed with his partners, each built toward the same goal: a stay that is genuinely unique and unforgettable. Months, not weeks, went into this one. “We put a lot of love in this property,” he says, smiling to the camera. Away from the homes, his payments and banking ventures are built in the corner of small business — giving independent operators the kind of tools the big processors reserve for everyone else.
Seaside Boca sits in Cape Haze, on Florida’s Gulf coast, where tarpon season brings hundred-pound fish and the sunsets do most of the marketing. The house was designed to look and feel like Key West — high ceilings so the light pours in, coastal colours, original artwork on the walls.
The choice guests notice first is one they were never meant to notice at all: there are no televisions in the bedrooms. That was deliberate. As Nicolas puts it in the episode, the point is for people “to enjoy in family and gatherings” rather than scatter to separate screens. The kitchen is open for the same reason — so nobody is cooking alone in another room.
What replaces the screens is a genuinely absurd amount to do. A private miniature golf course. A pool and hot tub. A sauna. A volleyball court and a soccer field. And downstairs, a game room with skee-ball, foosball, air hockey and ping-pong — enough that Evan proposed “the Olympics of Seaside Boca.”
Why Cape Haze matters. This is old Florida, the part that never got paved over. You are minutes from Boca Grande and Gasparilla Island — a barrier island with a lighthouse that has stood since 1890, a village of banyan trees and clapboard storefronts, and the tarpon fishery that made it famous. There are no high-rises here. Travel DRD chose it on purpose: you come to Cape Haze to slow down, not to queue.
The episode closes where the island does: the historic Gasparilla Island Lighthouse at sunset, glasses raised “to the best of Florida, the best of friends, and to sun, sand, family and fun.”
Staycation is where Travel DRD showed up first. It will not be the last place. As new features, interviews and appearances run, they will be collected here.
