Spoke to a reader from Silicon Valley last month who was about to make his final decision on what club to join and wanted to get our thoughts on the industry.

We think he was in some ways very typical of a destination club prospective member: successful entrepreneur, married with two kids and was thinking about buying a home in Hawaii, but his wife preferred the idea of being able to visit different locations and not being tied to one. He began investigating all the clubs via Google, quickly realizing there were were too many of them and they all looked alike. But he had a buddy who was a member of Quintess, so he at least knew something about that club.

Since our Decision Guide is not yet published, our reader decided to put Quintess on his short list and then compare it to the industry leader, Exclusive Resorts. We got the impression that Quintess became his first choice quickly, based on strong referrals from Bay Area members, a great stay that he had in the Quintess home in Napa (courtesy of his buddy who is a member), and the fact that one of the Quintess founders met with him three separate times.

By contrast, our reader for some reason, had a hard time making contact with senior management at Exclusive Resorts, and did not know of any other Exclusive Resorts members in his own personal network to talk to. In fact, when Exclusive Resorts did contact him, it was “a junior level sales person.”

Helium’s take:

Clubs like Quintess are early stage clubs (our definition of an early stage club is under 100 members and less than 250 reservations completed), so they will appeal to “early adopters” that will accept more unkown (eg. How will the club handle peak holiday reservations for 500 members, not 50) in return for a sense of participation in the club’s development and more direct contact with management decisions.

As we have said, we think it’s critical to talk directly to club founders/CEO before joining any club, especially newer clubs. If you are having a hard time getting a CEO or club founder on the line, email us at info@heliumreport.com and we will get you in contact with the right people. We know from personal experience that almost all of the clubs are very responsive and their most senior management (including Exclusive Resorts) is willing to talk to anyone thinking about joining.