In a letter to their members, Exclusive Resorts, the world’s largest destination club, disclosed results of a study they conducted to identify patterns in reservation requests and critical bottlenecks. Here is a summary of their findings:

Members travel extensively with the Club

• Exclusive Resorts’ members take an average of 7 trips per year with the Club
• All members, on average, use 80% of their available days each year

• 75% of total inventory is still available to book for travel in 2008

• 50% of reservations are advanced reservations, and 50% are space available reservations
• The average advanced reservation lead-time is just under 7 months

• 85% of members who have priority holiday privileges traveled during a holiday period in 2006
• 70% of all members traveled to beach or ski destinations during the peak Q1 period in 2007

• 80% of the mountain inventory is booked for the ski season of Q1 2008
• However, mountain residences are the least used overall and are 85% available Q2-Q4 2008

Helium Report spoke with Michael Beindorff, Exclusive Resorts’ COO. “We want to address our members’ concerns when they say they’d like to get more of the destinations they want, when they want them, and use the Club even more,” said Beindorff. “We plan to address the anomalies our study has unearthed and provide better experiences to our members.”

Exclusive Resorts has already taken some actions to enhance club availability, and they plan to undertake more in the future.

For more information about destination clubs including a cost-per-night analysis and key due diligence questions, download our independent Decision Guide to Destination Clubs.