# Exclusive Resorts members useage



## Steamboat Bill (Jun 14, 2007)

In a letter to their members, Exclusive Resorts, the world's largest destination club, disclosed results of a study they conducted to identify patterns in reservation requests and critical bottlenecks. Here is a summary of their findings:

Members travel extensively with the Club

Exclusive Resorts' members take an average of 7 trips per year with the Club

All members, on average, use 80% of their available days each year

There is significant availability for future travel, both short and long term 

75% of total inventory is still available to book for travel in 2008

The Club works for both advance planners and last-minute travelers

50% of reservations are advanced reservations, and 50% are space available reservations

The average advanced reservation lead-time is just under 7 months

Although peak travel will always be tighter, most members travel in peak periods

85% of members who have priority holiday privileges traveled during a holiday period in 2006

70% of all members traveled to beach or ski destinations during the peak Q1 period in 2007

The Club needs to improve mountain availability during peak winter ski season

80% of the mountain inventory is booked for the ski season of Q1 2008

However, mountain residences are the least used overall and are 85% available Q2-Q4 2008


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## Steamboat Bill (Jun 14, 2007)

Steamboat Bill said:


> All members, on average, use 80% of their available days each year



This is pretty amazing that 20% of each members allotment goes unused and they still have issues with hot property availability.

Exclusive Resorts plans to substantially expand its real estate portfolio in the next two years, while creating more off-peak travel opportunities for members. *In addition, the waitlist to join they recently implemented will continue to hold back new members from activating their membership.* Effectively, this mechanism allows the club to time its development growth with its active members.


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## travelguy (Jun 14, 2007)

Steamboat Bill said:


> This is pretty amazing that 20% of each members allotment goes unused and they still have issues with hot property availability.



I believe that 80% usage is significantly higher than what I have seen as the DC industry average usage rate.


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## puffpuff (Jun 14, 2007)

Steamboat Bill said:


> This is pretty amazing that 20% of each members allotment goes unused and they still have issues with hot property availability.
> 
> Exclusive Resorts plans to substantially expand its real estate portfolio in the next two years, while creating more off-peak travel opportunities for members. *In addition, the waitlist to join they recently implemented will continue to hold back new members from activating their membership.* Effectively, this mechanism allows the club to time its development growth with its active members.


Its standard in the industry that 25% of subscribed inventory go unused. That is why they can sell out 320 days a year on a member-equivalent basis per house and still have total usage of 240 days  or 65%. Some clubs are selling out 350 days, because they know the actual usuage will be less. The member-per - club ration is somewhat misleading because it all depends on how you define what a member equivlant is ,and this has been covered in various other posts. 

The real problem is that the majority of people wants to vacation at the same time (during holidays), and no body wants to be in the desert or mountain 9 mohnths of the year. This inbalance skewed the statistics. 

Members thinking about joining any club should pay close attention to availabilty in real terms ( by looking in real time the actual reseravation system) and not draw linear projections based on "averge occupancy rate".  

Everyclub will tell you the same story on how easy their system is to use and how easy it is to get booking ,- but if you look at their reservation system real time, the story is quite different. Christmas 08 for almost all the clubs that allow two years booking is essentially full.


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## Elsway (Jun 17, 2007)

puffpuff said:


> Its standard in the industry that 25% of subscribed inventory go unused. That is why they can sell out 320 days a year on a member-equivalent basis per house and still have total usage of 240 days  or 65%. Some clubs are selling out 350 days, because they know the actual usuage will be less. The member-per - club ration is somewhat misleading because it all depends on how you define what a member equivlant is ,and this has been covered in various other posts.
> 
> The real problem is that the majority of people wants to vacation at the same time (during holidays), and no body wants to be in the desert or mountain 9 mohnths of the year. This inbalance skewed the statistics.
> 
> ...



Exclusive Resorts is adopting some creative ways to ease the congestion for peak demand periods:

1)  They are adopting a wait list.  A wait list will help ensure that membership growth does not out pace property acquisitions - thus benefitting overall occupancy levels.

2)  They have developed a "once in a Lifetime" vacation program which enables them to offer "experience-based" vacations during peak travel periods - thus reducing demand for club properties during these periods.  For example:  They are offering Medetarranean cruises in the summer months to satisfy demand for popular European destinations, such as Tuscany in July.

3) They are experimenting with changes in their reservation cancellation policy to deter members from over booking peak period travel which is subsequently cancelled.

4) They are scheduling "member events" intended to boost travel demand in shoulder seasons.  For example: An off season member poker tournament in Lake Tahoe - A Harry Potter inspired weekend offseason in an English castle.

5)  They are considering moving from annual to quarterly leases (first Quarter) for some mountain properties - enabling them to satisfy peak demand without having as many underutilzed mountain properties during the warm weather months.

6)  They are adding properties at a fairly rapid clip.  Other clubs claim to be the "fastest growing" on a percentage growth basis - ER is the fastest growing in terms of numbers of members and properties.

ER reports a 97% customer satisfaction rate.


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## BocaBum99 (Jun 17, 2007)

Steamboat Bill said:


> All members, on average, use 80% of their available days each year



This is just what I expected.  On average, any type of accommodations needs 70-90% average occupancy to be viable.

80% is completely reasonable and expected.

So, when a potential DC owner wants to do a financial comparison of a membership vs. renting, they should use a conservative number like 80% expect usage of their days.

There is ALWAYS breakage.  ALL products that have expiration dates have breakage.  Vendor of such products proactively use breakage estimations in their business plans.  If you want a realistic cost of your DC purchase, you should do so as well.


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## TarheelTraveler (Jun 18, 2007)

A lot of the destination clubs budget 50-70% occupancy max.  I think you end up with higher member satisfaction rates, because the members stand a better chance of getting the times that they want.  Of course, the trade off is expense, because you've got some unused inventory.

Based on personal experience, Crescendo deals with this in an interesting way, essentially using a credit system, where low season and short-notice gives you a discount and holiday usage or long term advance reservations require more credits.  Seems like it works pretty well in my experience.


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## timeos2 (Jun 18, 2007)

*Another case*



TarheelTraveler said:


> Based on personal experience, Crescendo deals with this in an interesting way, essentially using a credit system, where low season and short-notice gives you a discount and holiday usage or long term advance reservations require more credits.  Seems like it works pretty well in my experience.



Another system turns to POINTS (credits) to balance things out. It's really the only way to handle disparate resorts/use dates/units.  Doesn't matter if it's timeshare, DC or rent - varying the cost makes less demanded time more attractive and higher demand time less attractive and balance supply to demand.


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