Would Travel Club Membership Work For You?
Apr 15th, 2010 | By admin | Category: Travel News
The popular opinion on travel club membership is that it’s just not that useful unless you travel or lot or have very specific traveling tastes. The truth is that nothing could be further from the truth. Belonging to a travel club can be especially beneficial if you are traveling with a family. To illustrate some of this I will give examples of how a travel club membership could be useful to you and I also provide a few different scenarios.
Scenario #1 – Two adults and two kids
WITHOUT TRAVEL CLUB MEMBERSHIP
This family of four travels about 2 times/year and spends about $2400 a trip. Let’s assume there vacations are about a week long at a decent (i.e. 3 star) resort. They get two rooms at about $200/night or $1400. They are also able to find airfare at about $250/person or $1000.
Trip #1
| Airfare: | $1000.00 |
| Accommodations: | $1400.00 |
| Total: | $2400.00 |
WITH TRAVEL CLUB MEMBERSHIP
They choose to join a travel club for a one-time life-time price of $697.00. This allows them a 10% discount on airfare ($900.00) and up to 80% off of the accommodations (i.e for this example we will use 60%) or ($540.00). And this will be a four or five star resort! After one trip they would have spent $263.00 less then before AND paid for travel club membership for life. Every following trip will cost them about $960.00 out of pocket LESS then before. Add to that the fact that they now get access to personalized trip assistance (before and during vacation), cruise discounts (40%-60%) and last minute vacation deals (up to 90% discount)!
Trip #1
| Travel Club: | $697.00 |
| Airfare: | $900.00 |
| Accommodations: | $540.00 |
| Total: | $2137.00 |
Trip #N
| Airfare: | $900.00 |
| Accommodations: | $540.00 |
| Total: | $1440.00 |
Scenario #2 – Two adults
WITHOUT TRAVEL CLUB MEMBERSHIP
These travelers have the time and financial assets to take advantage of last minute vacation deals. They are retired or independently wealthy so they have TIME and MONEY. Even so they would still like a way to spend less then they need to to end up at a really nice place and have a great luxurious experience. They choose to join the travel club for $697. As a member they get access to the travel clubs “personal travel agency”. They ask about International destinations. Once they explain there situation they are directed to this clubs “Hot Weeks”. This is a list of constantly updated luxury destinations located around the world that members can stay at for as little as $100/week. They find a luxurious resort in Fiji and use their travel club to get the airplane tickets. Because this is an international flight they end up paying the discounted price of around $600/person. That means so far they have spent about $1897. But since they have access to “Hot Weeks” they were able to book the accommodations at a five star resort for seven days at a grand total of $100.
Trip #1
| Travel Club: | $697.00 |
| Airfare: | $1200.00 |
| Accommodations: | $100.00 |
| Total: | $1997.00 |
Trip #N
| Airfare: | $1200.00 |
| Accommodations: | $100.00 |
| Total: | $1300.00 |
This means they were able to take advantage of last minute travel and stay at a place that would normally run $400/night for $100 for an entire seven day stay. BUT, they also have gained lifetime access to travel club discounts. Each subsequent seven day trip will cost them about $1300 for International or as little as $600 for domestic get-aways. Their lifetime travel club membership also gives them access to personalized trip assistance (before and during vacation), cruise discounts (40%-60%) and regularly scheduled luxury resort deals (40% to 90%).
