Abercrombie & Kent are billing their forthcoming venture, Abercrombie & Kent Residence Club, as the “next generation of destination club.” Given that the Abercrombie & Kent brand was attached to the greatest failure in the first generation of destination clubs-the collapse of Tanner & Haley-it’s not hard to see why the company would be keen to give the impression of a rupture. Indeed, much of the work that Abercrombie & Kent have been doing as they promote their club is in the form of explaining what limited responsibility the firm had with that aborted club beyond the loan of its imprimatur. But beyond simply abjuring any culpability Abercrombie & Kent claims that the Tanner & Haley debacle has given them a unique understanding of the challenge at hand.

Halogen Guides sat down with Abercrombie & Kent’s founder and CEO, Geoffrey Kent and Residence Club president Jarvis J. Slade, Jr. earlier this week in San Francisco while they were in town to meet with “friends and family” potential members. Slade was forthcoming in telling us how the new club, slated to launch in the early fall, had taken the lessons of Tanner & Haley to heart. While Tanner & Haley was highly leveraged, Abercrombie & Kent will own 100% of its properties outright. While Tanner & Haley operated without financial transparency, Abercrombie & Kent will present members with audited financial statements and conform with the best practices of the Destination Club Association, which the firm recently joined.

But beyond merely wishing to differentiate themselves from Tanner & Haley, Abercrombie & Kent are intent on building a destination club different in kind from the industry as it stands today, one which has matured of light through a string of consolidations and steady growth. As Kent sees it the destination club is a fantastic idea, but one whose ultimate promise is misunderstood by those who are leading the industry. “These are real estate people in the leisure industry.” Kent said. “We’re not looking to sell properties. This is more than a real estate play.”

Kent sees the edge of Abercrombie & Kent’s destination club will be its ability to deliver the ultimate vacation experience to its members, drawing on the firms forty eight years of experience in the luxury travel field. This experience extends not only to the exotic and far-flung tours the made the club famous, but also to the practicalities of travel: the logistics of transit to and from homes, coordinating family schedules, organizing sight-seeing and so forth, all of which Kent feels his firm’s expertise surpasses that of the existing clubs. “We’ll be able to leverage our world wide organizational structure in ways other clubs simply can’t.” said Slade.

If Kent and Slade see an opportunity to deliver a greater member experience than the current crop of clubs, they are equally ambitious regarding their club’s ability to more effectively market their product. For all of the ample marketing efforts of destination clubs, their membership base are still for the most part limited to western United States suburbanites, while marketing efforts still depend greatly on member referrals. With the luxury travel bona fides of the Abercrombie & Kent brand (despite the false start in destination clubs with Tanner & Haley), and the marketing savvy of Slade, who comes to Abercrombie & Kent from American Express’s card member services department(Black Card, anyone?), Kent’s club should have an appeal with the more sophisticated, urban, wealthy, eastern US demographic the other clubs have so far struggled to crack. Indeed, while the clubs initial efforts will focus on the United States, Kent foresees a global club with membership in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.

Will Abercrombie & Kent revolutionize the industry? Sound off in our comments and tell us what you think.