Perhaps not too much. Most of the clubs have used this ratio extensively in their sales and marketing efforts over the past couple of years – the benchmark seems to have been 6:1, and then clubs have moved up or down from that number. It’s not an easy number to get a handle on:

• What’s a member? Most clubs have several plans, with different booking rights.
• What’s a home? Most clubs also lease as well as buy homes. For how long do they lease the home for? You can lease a few homes in the winter so the ratio looks good during ski season, but happens in the spring?

At Helium, we think the discussion about availability should not be anchored in the member to home ratio – it really does little to inform the consumer as to what their availability experience will be like when they join.

We would rather talk about planned occupancy across the whole network of homes. Meaning what useage % is the club planning across all homes in any given year – which for peak periods is probably 100% or close to it, for non-peak should be somewhere between 60% and 80%. Ask your club, or the one you are considering joining what occupancy levels they plan their real estate acquisition for- see if they even understand this concept.

If you do want to some analysis (or you can ask us since we are doing it for you), use these definitions or values:

• Member – should be FME (first Helium acronym – stands for “Full Member Equivalent”), which means how many members do you have that have full membership rights, and that can stay in one home at a time.
• Home Capacity – what is the number of days available total in the system across all homes during a given year.
• Member Usage – we are using an average of 28 days – meaning that the average FME will use 28 days of plan usage.

We will publish over the coming weeks some analysis of club membership plans, using these definitions. But at the end of the day, consumers should realise that the decision to join a club should be based on both sound analysis and trust – ratios, occupancy rates etc. can all change, be manipulated or even become meaningless.