November 18th...

"Incremental becomes core"

When marketing a fractional project the added advantage is to have a project that controls the flow of customers like Snowbird, Purgatory/Durango and Kirkwood/Lake Tahoe. These developers own their ski mountain, all or much of the housing and food, beverage and retail operations, so their databases are the primary customers for the fractional purchase. What a great position to be in!

Well, what up if this is not the case. Our experience has shown that in way too many cases the marketing plan shotguns so broadly that it is ineffective.

Ron Frank, marketing and sales guru, coined the opening line. Incremental pockets of interest, small targets collectively become the core and primary market and the foundation of the overall marketing plan.

We see this at Meriwether Ranch in Montana, and building at Saguaro Ranch in Tucson. It takes discipline and innovation to find the small markets and aggregate them to make a major market to sell the fractions at a brisk pace.

Tatanka Spirit, Black Hills, has opened up their first fractional home. Being an owner at Tatanka I plan to use the home in January for a quick get-a- way. Jim Farmer, developer, has done a magnificent job with the FF&E including original ironwork and art. I can taste the juicy Buffalo steak right now!

November now. What a year it’s been so far!

The fractional world has exploded with new projects in all parts of North America. Destination clubs have taken a real ‘hit’ with the ‘bk’ filing of Private Retreats, nee, nee, nee.

Tom Fulton, ex Private Retreats and now Ephinany Club is still offering guaranteed access. Learned his lesson? I guess not.

Dave Bansmer strikes at Sea Island, where he headed after getting the Registry Collection back on track. They are offering a membership with use nights for a mere $875,000, founder’s pricing, with a 100% buyback guarantee. They can do it, and who would ever back out of Sea Island and risk loosing their reputation for being elite down there in Georgia?

Birth of a true 5* resort taking place in NW Tucson at Saguaro Ranch. Talk about ‘doing it right’ with the infrastructure, the sites, and now the village core including condo hotel casitas that will be gorgeous and expensive….how does $4-5 million sound?

Snowbird, Mt. Superior Residence Club, the survey returns are flooding in, huge response numbers and very, very favorable for the $2000 per foot sales price for the three and four bedroom condos.

Why is it so hard to get sales reporting systems straight? At almost every project we have it seems that there are kinks to getting fractions presented and closed in a straightforward manner. There are good reasons, sure, but ‘clear the decks’ has been our task over and over again as other realize that fractions are not an add-on product that the general sales line can sell as an after [or fore] thought.

Star’s sales manager ‘Sales Management 403’ will debut in December, with all our manages coming for this ‘senior’ level course before going on to a grad level program in 07.