The Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe Vermont is offering a special 2 night stay through December 15, 2007. Visitors can see the new Villas at Trapp Family Lodge - a Private Residence Club, offering both full and fractional ownership.

The Magellan, an 860 ft long, luxury residential cruise ship will be completed in 2009. The ship will offer both full ownership and fractional ownership in a variety of suite sizes. Owners will be able to circumnavigate the globe every two years, with stops at 150 ports of call each year.

This is clearly not your typical Private Residence Club, and is the first vessel we've seen of this size to offer fractional ownership.

The membership levels being offered are shown in the table below:

Just when it looked like Tanner & Haley's members and properties were going to join up with Ultimate Resorts, along comes Joe Ricketts (founder of Ciel and Ameritrade) with a $108m offer. This is $10m more than last weeks offer from Ultimate Resorts. So it's going to be interesting to see where Tanner & Haley ends up.

Preeminent Global Experience, LP (PGE), the parent company for Ciel, is offering all Tanner & Haley members the opportunity to join Ciel, with Legendary Retreat Members receiving a membership with no membership deposit. PGE will also form a New Club for all the other T&H members.

A large part of the Ciel membership experience is not just the exclusive luxury properties but also the once in a lifetime experiences which Ciel offers through it's "Experience Crafting(TM) process".

Ciel was launched this Fall and is an invitation only club with a limit of 100 members.

In another sign of the increasing transparency that's coming to the Destination Club industry, Lusso announced today that all of the interests in its properties will be held by subsidiary LLCs owned 100 percent by the club.

Lusso is one of the clubs that is now highlighting it's annual independent audit and in addition provides members:

• Semi-annual financial reports
• Security interest in all of the Club's real estate, second only to any debt secured against the real estate
• a commitment that 85% of member deposits are either used for Club Property purposes, or held in cash.

All of this is a great move towards the transparency that needs to come into the industry, especially given the large sums that members invest. And these changes have in part been spurred by the Tanner & Haley bankruptcy this summer.

Note: Lusso now has about 50 members and 17 private luxury properties.

As the Destination Club industry consolidates Ultimate Resorts is buying most of the assets of Tanner & Haley, which filed for Chapter 11 about 4 months ago.

This is good news for the whole Destination Club sector and a tidy end to the bankruptcy filing. Tanner & Haley started the whole sector when they were launched in the late 1990s by Rob McGrath.

T&H members should be pleased that their club properties will keep going and that they will be offered membership in Ultimate Resorts on special terms. The newly enlarged Ultimate Resorts will be the second largest Destination Club behind Exclusive Resorts.

Many of T&H's errors came out in the bankruptcy court filings, these include:

• 100% membership refunds,
• leasing too many homes rather than buying them,
• paying short term rental fees to accommodate members at peak vacation times.

Other clubs are already learning from these errors and have started to improve their financial transparency and the good clubs are all having independent audits. This all helps to make their members much more comfortable about the investments that they have made.

These two clubs announced their merger today and have 10 homes valued at an average of $6 million each, plus a luxurious 90-foot motor yacht. They are very much at the super luxurious end of the Destination Club industry.

The members have all the benefits of luxury second home ownership without any of the inconvenience.

The new Solstice offers three different membership levels which vary by the number of days of advance reservations days. It has also combined the exit refund plans of the two clubs and now offers a choice of a 100% deposit return or a deposit return based on the prevailing value of memberships, less a 20% transfer fee.

American Express cardmembers can now get up to one million membership rewards points when they join Exclusive Resorts. This recently announced special promotion runs through 31st January 2007 and the number of points varies with the membership level that you purchase. The one million level is awarded for an Elite Membership.

Exclusive Resorts is the largest Destination Club with over 2,000 members and several hundred luxury properties throughout the world. They have grown at a rapid pace since Steve Case became chairman about 3 years ago.

American Express and Exclusive Resorts have had a partnership for about two years, offering special incentives to various card holders.

A new Destination Club has recently launched with a primary focus on the Asian market but also with properties in France, Italy and the UK. The Banyan Tree Private Collection has an initial joining fee of $120,000 and annual dues of $3,000, which give 7 days of usage. Members can then buy additional multiples to increase their days.

Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, a niche resort developer and operator in Asia-Pacific is the manager of the Club. Members can currently use several villas at Banyan Resorts in Asia.

When we go on vacation, we often feel at our most relaxed if the environment we're in seems like a 'home away from home'. But it's also nice to experience the luxury of a first class hotel. A private residence club offers a combination of both of these things. Located in all the prime vacation settings (beachfront, mountain, leisure resort, vibrant metropolis), private residence clubs offer luxury apartments and freestanding houses. Each property is furnished to the same high quality as a first class hotel.