July 19, 2012

Exchanging weeks for use of facilities not related to a home base is a real value. However, discussions on this site and others highlight the difficulties one encounters when there is an imbalance in equivalency.

The Grand Luxxe Residence Club offers users wonderful experiences, which are hard to duplicate. In our view, one of the reasons for this difficulty is related to the maturation process of the industry. Wikipedia says the first to use shared ownership was the ski resort developer Hapimag, who started shared facilities ownership in the 1960's. The first in the US was Caribbean International Corp. out of Ft Lauderdale, Florida in 1974; the company offered a 25 year "Vacation License" rather than ownership. Just think about the way resort facilities have changed since 1974 and earlier.

A compounding factor is the economy. Grupo Vidanta began a building campaign in 2008 when it broke ground on new resort complexes at a time when other developers were pulling back. Consequently, the industry is full of rooms that are substantially smaller than the 2,300 to 3,000 square foot units that are offered by the Grand Luxxe Residence Club.

That is not to say other high-end facilities do not exist today in the industry. It is just the industry is changing rapidly in some ways and lagging in others. The Grand Luxxe Residence Club facilities are leading the way to new heights in luxury and offering memorable vacations at a time when other facilities are rapidly aging.

These are our views. What do you think? What experiences have you encountered? Our section called Exchange Companies is where we start this discussion. If you are a Subscribing Member, please feel free to share with us your experiences and thoughts. If you are not yet a Subscribing Member, please feel free to read what others have to say.

Its a changing world, and we, as Aimfair, feel duty bound to explore options to expand the value of our prepaid vacations.

Stay tuned...