This summer is looking to be an interesting time in the destination club industry. Ultimate Escapes will settle into its position as the second largest club, hot on the heels of Exclusive Resorts. Abercrombie & Kent Residence Club will prepare to kick off its membership efforts and rollout a new pricing structure. Additionally a slew of new start up clubs are looking to get their feet wet in the club world, targeting new members with boutique offerings.

Toronto-based Moncasa Capital just announced it is launching a new destination club this fall. The spin on this new club? It’s all-Caribbean, all the time. The Moncasa Caribbean Experience, aims to build an equity-based destination club with some 80 homes in 50 destinations. The collection will be made up of villas, homes, and resort suites in the Caribbean. While the club is based in Canada, it is aiming squarely for an American membership, touting that most properties will be accessible via a three-hour flight (or less) from the East Coast.

The first property will be on the Dominican Republic, a country that club developers, according to their website, see as undervalued and ripe for vacation home real estate development. It is also eyeing Jamaica, St. Lucia, Grand Cayman and the Turks and Caicos.

The Halogen Guides Take

While it’s not hard to be enchanted by the video-heavy Moncasa club website, complete with gratuitous shots of hammock lounging and expansive swaths of bright blue Caribbean waters, the question remains whether an all-Caribbean club can get off the ground. After all, most successful destination clubs pride themselves on variety (you can have the beach house, the ski chalet and the urban crash pad), rather than offering a one note club. That said, the Caribbean is perennial popular and the variety of the islands may be enough to satisfy the traveling needs of this group of sun worshipers.

But we see a few red flags. Moncasa Capital’s website lays out its home acquisition plans and membership projections aiming for four properties the first year and ten properties by the third year. However, it plans on maintaining a member to home ratio of 13 to 1, which is more than twice as high as the industry standard of 6 to 1. Given peak travel times to the Caribbean, this ratio may lead to accessibility challenges.

Additionally there is the issue of seasonality. The six-month long hurricane season kicked off June 1, with the official projections calling for six to nine major hurricanes. While June and July are typically seen by travelers as low risk times for travel to the region, can the club convince travelers to book trips in August, September and October? Historically those months see the most storm activity and present the greatest chance of having a vacation blown off the calendar.

We’ll be follow-up with this club in upcoming weeks and taking a closer look at their rollout plans. For a closer look at the growing destination club industry, download our Decision Guide to Destination Clubs.