Abercrombie & Kent Residence Club Lowers Membership Fees 40%

Abercrombie & Kent, a Destination Club (non-equity use of vacation homes) announced that they were lowering membership fees by 40% in an attempt to attract new members.

Sherpa Reports has an excellent article on the subject: http://www.sherpareport.com/destination-clubs/ak-residence-club-lowers-fees-1209.html

What’s interesting to us are the amount of dues involved in being a member — almost $1000 per night of use!  For a member spending 45 nights (roughly a stay of 1/8 year), the annual dues are $42,000. For the same amount of join money, we wouldn’t someone purchase a 1/8th interest in a fractional home and enjoy annual costs of perhaps $6,000-12,000 per year (fractional homeowners dues)?

The benefit of Abercrombie & Kent, Exclusive Resorts, Ultimate Escapes and other destination clubs is that you have a wide selection of homes to use and concierge services to arrange the use and enjoy each home.

Using FractionalExchange.com, owners of fractional and vacation properties can effectively have an entire collection of homes available to them, worldwide. With a little bit of legwork required (actually, keystrokes), it’s not exactly the same experience as a destination club but the keys to your home can unlock the doors to their home, worldwide.

Fractional owners enjoy a quality experience and equity, for a fraction of the cost of either whole ownership or destination club membership. It’s ownership that makes sense.