Summer is winding down, but with rising airfares, most travelers are already looking towards the holidays. Similarly, destination club members need to think about holiday plans far in advance, often booking stays at homes up to two years prior to traveling.

Holiday reservations have been the Achilles’ heel of the destination club industry. After all, clubs target their plans to families, who often want to travel during the same school holidays. Exclusive Resorts acknowledged this capacity crunch when it revamped its plans this spring and began to sell holidays à la carte.

Each destination club tackles the holiday challenge differently. Most offer a larger number of advanced holiday reservations to those members with more expensive plans, but the specific details of securing a home in the prime travel seasons vary by club. If you are on the hunt for a destination club and want to use your plan over the holidays, use this cheat sheet to guide you through the various offerings.

Exclusive Resorts

The basics: The largest destination club, Exclusive Resorts, now sells holiday reservations as an add-on to plans. A one-time fee of $79,000 will secure the right to book one week a year over any holiday, including Christmas, New Year’s and President’s Day weeks. A $49,000 fee allows you to book one week annually over spring break, the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving.
Timing: Bookings can be made up to two years in advance and are done on a first-come, first-served basis according to Exclusive Resorts’ director of communications, Christina Schleicher. The one exception are newer properties, which are handed out on a lottery system.
Bottom line: Holidays are at a premium and you’ll pay extra for that access.

Ultimate Escapes

The basics: Each of Ultimate Escapes’ mix of 15 different plans include either one or two advanced holiday reservations. Members with the entry-level, 14-day Bronze level plans get one advanced holiday reservation every other year.
Timing: Bookings can be made up to two years in advance and cover trips that last from three to seven days. Reservations are first-come, first-served. If the trip includes a Saturday stay, the club requires that the vacation start or end on a Saturday. Trips that cover a holiday but include a stay of longer than seven days will require a member to use a regular advanced reservation in addition to an advanced holiday reservation.
Bottom Line: Straightforward booking process, but to conserve those advanced reservations plan on seven-night trips that start on a Saturday.

Quintess, LRW

The basics: Quintess uses a lottery system covering primary and secondary holidays to divide its reservations.
Timing: Lotteries for primary holidays, like Christmas, are conducted 13 months in advance of the date of the holiday, while the lottery for secondary holiday reservations is conducted once a year in January and determines reservations for the following calendar year (i.e. a stay during Thanksgiving 2010 would be scheduled in January 2009).
Bottom line: Good for long-term planners. You will know where you are going at least a year in advance and in some cases more than a year and a half ahead of the trip.

High Country Club

The basics: Reservations are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. How far in advance a member can book a holiday reservation is directly linked to their plan. Also, members can only snag the same holiday every third year, so members who booked Christmas in 2007, would not be able to do so again until 2010.
Timing: The highest-level Private plan, with a membership deposit of $80,000, allows members to book holiday trips up to a year in advance. Members with the $60,000 Affiliate plan can arrange a holiday trip six months out, while the two entry-level Associate and Companion plans can only book holidays four months in advance.
Bottom line: Since you can’t book the same holiday every year, flexibility is key.

The Lusso Collection

The basics: This boutique destination club divides holidays into three groups and gives members priority access to a different set each year. Groupings consist of Christmas and New Year’s weeks; President’s Day and the four spring break weeks; and Thanksgiving and the summer holidays (including Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day). When members join the club, they are assigned priority status in one group and rotate through the others in the following years.
Timing: Reservations are made six months in advance. The priority group gets first dibs on reservations for a given holiday cluster—picks are made by lottery—before it is opened up to the rest of the membership.
Bottom line: Dividing up the holidays ensures that all members will get a holiday trip at least once a year, but don’t count on getting that same holiday year after year.

Distinctive Holiday Homes

The basics: With six plans, Distinctive Holiday Homes doles out its holiday reservations on a first-come, first-served basis.
Timing: Bookings can be made up to two years in advance, but if you want to book a holiday reservation this far out, you will have to use two advanced reservations. Homes can also be booked with a space available reservation closer to the date. Additionally, you can’t book the same home over the same holiday for more than two years in a row.
Bottom line: Since holidays can require using up to two advanced reservations, a member’s cache can go fast. However since Distinctive Holiday Homes is still a small club (it topped 50 members this year), with fewer members jostling for the same homes, space available reservations can still be a good bet.

Solstice

The basics: The club, which offers three levels of membership, runs a lottery to distribute its holiday reservations.
Timing: The lottery takes place once a year. The next, in October 2008, will determine 2009 holiday bookings. Unlike other, larger clubs, Solstice designates fewer weeks as holidays. Only Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Spring Break weeks are considered holidays. Members submit their top four choices, which can be for the same home over four separate holidays, different homes over the same holiday or any mix of the two. The picks of members with higher-end plans are weighted, so they are more likely to get their first or second choices each year. Jeffrey Scult, Solstice’s co-founder, said that in the last lottery, all members got one of their picks. After the lottery, any unclaimed holiday weeks go into the open reservation pool.
Bottom line: With fewer weeks designated as holidays, prime weeks like President’s Day and the Fourth of July are fair game to all members.

Abercrombie and Kent Residence Club

The basics: Depending on the plan, members will get a specific number of holidays reservations each year. When a member joins, they will be assigned to one of two booking groups. First dibs on holiday reservations shifts from one group to the next each year, a system that essentially gives a member holiday booking priority every other year.
Timing: The club will conduct holiday bookings twice a year, in the spring and fall. The club has been testing out the new system with legacy members from BelleHavens and Crescendo.
In spring of 2008, the club was booking holidays for the first four months of 2009. This fall’s booking period will cover the remaining holidays in 2009, starting with Memorial Day. Members in the 2009 priority group may submit up to five choices. A computer-based system makes the matches. If a member doesn’t get their picks, they move on to the second round of holiday matching, which is also opened up to non-priority members. There is a third round as well, which operates on a first-come, first-served basis.
Bottom line: The system sounds confusing (the club has dedicated a one page fact sheet to explaining its details), but club executives say that early testing has gone well. “We conducted it a few weeks ago,” said Darin Gilson, the club’s senior vice president of sales and business development. “ Eighty-five percent received their first request and 15 percent had their second request fulfilled.”