Wyndham taking over Club La Costa

[JeffC]

Hi all, I'm sure most of you are unfamiliar with CLC. It's a European based system with weeks, points and fractional ownerships. They also operate a fleet of canal boats in England and yachts in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Most of their resorts are in southern Spain. They also have resorts in the UK, Canaries, Turkey, Austria, Florida and Portugal. AFAIK I'm the only TUG member who owns with them. Here is the email I received:

Dear Member, After many months of challenges and uncertainty brought about by COVID-19, I am pleased to write to you with some truly exciting news about your membership. CLC World have recently signed a new international brand partnership with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, one of the world's giants in hospitality. During November, all of CLC World's properties will evolve to become one of the following branded resorts: Wyndham Grand Residences, Wyndham Residences, Ramada Residences by Wyndham, and Ramada Hotel & Suites. Your membership, usage and conditions will not alter in any way, but you will see significant investment in the coming years to ensure all of the resorts maintain the prestigious standards of this global brand. You will also see the rollout of cutting-edge technology with new functionality being brought in to enhance your holiday experience, both before and during your stay. There will be significant expansion, and we hope to announce the first new acquisition in the coming weeks, which will bring UK members more staycation options to complement our now well-established partnership with DeVere. Additional new hotel suites have been built at Trenython this year, with a further 23 deluxe sea view lodges coming online from Autumn 2022. Further planning is currently being sought at Trenython for Woodland Eco-Pods, which will add a new experiential style of accommodation for the more adventurous of members. In addition, Duchally will also soon have additional lodge developments underway. And that's just in the UK! There will be more exciting news about our forthcoming international developments in January's members newsletter. Your dedicated team, as always, remain at your service. The only differences you will see and feel in the coming months will be improvements as we rollout our planned projects. My team and I look forward to continuing our hospitality journey with you and welcoming you back soon to your newly branded and upgraded resorts.​

​ Roy Peires Founder & Chairman

The first thing I noticed was that the agreement is with Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. I was under the impression that Wyndham had spun off their TS business from the hotels. The brands they mention in the release don't correspond to any of the Wyndham TS systems I'm familiar with. So this may be a big nothing for Wyndham points owners.

 

[Ty1on]

They are branding their timeshare resorts as Wyndham Hotels. That's doable, Club Wyndham is, after all, branding some of its timeshare resorts Margaritaville. It's just a matter of licensing. It looks like a big nothing for Wyndham points owners, and frankly would look the same even if they were contracting with T+L to manage their system.

 

[chapjim]

Club La Costa goes into liquidation - Covid crisis and Brexit blamed (1/20/2021)

Club La Costa goes into liquidation - Covid crisis and Brexit blamed

The Club La Costa World Club, that has its headquarters in Mijas on Spain's Costa del Sol, has announced that it has been placed into liquidation.

www.surinenglish.com

Wyndham picked up a cripple.

Another article about Wyndham-Club La Costa: https://legalexits.com/fi/wyndham-takeover-of-club-la-costa/

And, a simply precious paragraph from the legalexits.com article: "More disturbingly, there is even the possibility of CLC members being required to attend presentations by Wyndham sales staff in order to change their memberships over to the new club. Which you can probably be almost certain will come with some seemingly essential new 'upgrade', designed to get owners to put their hands in their pockets."

 

[Eric B]

Wyndham picked up a cripple.

Another article about Wyndham-Club La Costa: https://legalexits.com/fi/wyndham-takeover-of-club-la-costa/

And, a simply precious paragraph from the legalexits.com article: "More disturbingly, there is even the possibility of CLC members being required to attend presentations by Wyndham sales staff in order to change their memberships over to the new club. Which you can probably be almost certain will come with some seemingly essential new 'upgrade', designed to get owners to put their hands in their pockets."

Definitely a possibility, but it's on the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts side of things not the Travel + Leisure (Club Wyndham) side of things. It will most likely not result in any changes to Club Wyndham. This article makes it sound like its more of a branding/franchising thing:

Wyndham Adds 12 Resorts in Europe through Collaboration with CLC World Resorts & Hotels

LONDON, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest hotel franchising company with approximately 9,000 hotels across nearly 95 countries, and CLC World Resorts & Hotels – one of Europe’s largest independent resort operators with a growing collection of properties – today announced plans to...

www.hospitalitynet.org

I believe legalexits might be jumping the gun on their assessments as having Wyndham Hotels & Resorts sales staff at those spots would kind of defeat the purpose of splitting off the timeshare side of the business - I suppose that Travel + Leisure could get involved with sales staff, but if they did it would probably be under the Club Wyndham South Pacific umbrella because that's where the other European resorts are.

 

[chapjim]

Definitely a possibility, but it's on the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts side of things not the Travel + Leisure (Club Wyndham) side of things. It will most likely not result in any changes to Club Wyndham. This article makes it sound like its more of a branding/franchising thing:

Wyndham Adds 12 Resorts in Europe through Collaboration with CLC World Resorts & Hotels

LONDON, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest hotel franchising company with approximately 9,000 hotels across nearly 95 countries, and CLC World Resorts & Hotels – one of Europe’s largest independent resort operators with a growing collection of properties – today announced plans to...

www.hospitalitynet.org

I believe legalexits might be jumping the gun on their assessments as having Wyndham Hotels & Resorts sales staff at those spots would kind of defeat the purpose of splitting off the timeshare side of the business - I suppose that Travel + Leisure could get involved with sales staff, but if they did it would probably be under the Club Wyndham South Pacific umbrella because that's where the other European resorts are.

Yes, good possibility that they don't have it right yet. It's all pretty new. Regardless, they have a good handle on Wyndham's sales practices.

Europe-South Pacific. Sounds like someone had trouble with geography!

 

[JeffC]

CLC is a strange entity. The company that went into administration (their term for bankruptcy) was the sales and marketing arm. The other clubs; legacy weeks, vacation club points and FPOC's are spread into 8 other separate companies. Currently none of them are in administration. I'm a member of an English based board for CLC owner's. Their read on this is that the bankruptcy was forced on the CLC marketing company due to the obvious COVID shutdowns and the potential liability from lawsuits currently pending. Brexit doesn't seem to be an issue. CLC had switched to marketing fractional ownerships around 5 years ago(?). They stopped selling points at that time. I noticed in the rebranding that the Costa del Sol resorts rebranded were all the older resorts. These were never sold as fractional. I'm not sure about the legacy weeks but in the points system you can get out by simply notifying CLC by September. I'm sure the number of owners who've given up their memberships has gone way up due to COVID. It looks like the rebranding is going to utilize these weeks as rental's. As to the new marketing strategy I don't really see what they're going to sell. They could possibly combine the CLC owned weeks in the legacy resorts into some kind of FPOC but it would be overly complicated. The older resorts are a mix of legacy weeks, weeks owned by the points clubs and weeks owned by the marketing division. I read somewhere that Spanish law prohibits the selling of points based TS's. Legal Exit is a party to a number of the pending lawsuits, they advertise to CLC owners like Timeshare Exit Team and the like. I don't know if they require upfront payment.