Pros and Cons of Discount Travel Clubs
If you love to travel, but can’t do it as often as you’d like, you should consider looking for a good travel club.
My wife LOVES to travel the world as I am sure many of you do, but it was always very expensive. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be.
This is how travel clubs work.
When you think about it, owning a tourist property is like any other business. They need a steady stream of customers to be profitable. Their unique challenge is that they also need a steady stream of customers preferably evenly spaced throughout the year, otherwise a lot of problems start to turn into problems for them. For many clients, all at once is a lost business, probably to the competition. Not having enough clients means empty rooms and loss of business and income, making staffing and many other things very difficult.
The challenge is maintaining a steady stream of customers, preferably evenly spaced throughout the year. But how do they do it?
One way resort owners have discovered to help with this is by joining travel clubs to offer club members deeply discounted, unreserved rooms. This helps maintain a steady stream of customers throughout the year and helps the owner keep a business running with the right staff.
Think about it from your perspective, would you rather have an empty room and NO income, and have staff to pay with no clients to serve or generate income? Or, to keep a good quality staff busy, do you have clients who may be paying enough to cover their expenses with little or no profit?
It doesn’t take long for a business owner to realize that “when possible” he sells at full price, when necessary he gets a discount and less profit, and when the time comes to push at least cover expenses to avoid losses.
Even taking a loss is acceptable if it helps with personnel issues, inventory, food shelf life, advertising, budgeting, display, and many other business issues. As long as it is not the norm, obviously.
Now, keep in mind that NOT all travel clubs are the same.
The travel club owner is also doing business. You want to offer your members an attractive offer to create membership, but you also want to make money in YOUR business, which IS the travel club. If the owner is more concerned with profit than with value to his members, that club has a limited future.
The saying that came to mind was: “It is better to have a little bit of something than a lot of nothing.”
Resort owners constantly negotiate deals (discount level) with hundreds of travel club owners.
The owner of a particular travel club may have negotiated with the resort owners for the best prices for their club, but if you are trying to make a lot of profit with your travel club, your members will NOT get the best deals!
However, it is very difficult to negotiate without something the other party wants. So the more members you have in your club, the easier it is to negotiate big deals. But getting a lot of members is not an easy task in itself.
The most successful travel club owner has figured out how to build a large following (at minimal cost) so that they can negotiate great deals that other clubs can’t, but due to their low overhead, they can spend most of the savings to its members.
We all know that the BEST form of advertising is word of mouth. Luckily, it is also the cheapest. (free) So, if you (as a club owner) were to pay your current members (for new memberships) to advertise by word of mouth or however they choose, and generate members for you just by telling members potentials on your club and the huge savings they had received, you would have a growing membership with minimal expenses, therefore, you could pass on dramatic savings to your members, which in turn would help generate more members more easily and get better discounts.
As I said before, not all travel clubs are the same, as it is with any other business. You should do your research to find a club that offers a large inventory of locations, heavily discounted for its members, without charging too much for your membership. That travel club will continue to grow in size and value, bringing you a lifetime of deeply discounted travel for minimal cost so you can travel the world and enjoy what the world has to offer.
Travel clubs can be a great opportunity to save your hard-earned money. Just make sure you do your research and find the right one, otherwise you won’t get the most value for your money.
Good luck and see you on the beaches of the world.