ChicagoMark

We are proud to announce that on May 27th, Ultimate Resort and Private Escapes will officially launch our new brand, Ultimate Escapes! The fusion of these two leading brands creates the industry’s leading family of destination clubs (Premiere, Signature (formally Platinum) and Elite (formally Pinnacle) and achieves our greater goal of giving our combined club members even more from their memberships: more value, more choices, more destinations and more properties.

Our combined 1,300 club members will now enjoy access to more than 140 residences in approximately 50 leading destinations worldwide. This transaction adds over 80 new residences to the existing Private Escapes portfolio in exciting and frequently asked for destinations including Nevis, Maui, Scottsdale, Oahu, London, Key West, St. Thomas, Sun Valley, Paris, Palm Beach and much more. Further, it adds additional residences and more occupancy in some of our most popular existing locations such as NYC, Kiawah Island, Los Cabos, Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Stowe, Jackson Hole, The Abaco Club in the Bahamas, Orlando, Lake Tahoe, Indian Rocks Beach (Florida) and more. I have seen many of these residences personally and will assure you that they are tremendous additions to our portfolio.

In addition to the new assets and destinations noted, Ultimate Escapes members can also have seamless access to the The Ultimate Collection, with over 130 luxury boutique hotels in many of the world’s great cities. Much more on The Ultimate Collection to come.

The question on everyone’s mind is obviously this: “When can we begin making reservations within the new Ultimate Escapes???”

Commencing June 2nd, members can begin to reserve properties within the expanded portfolio. The actual travel date, ie the date you can arrive and begin to enjoy these terrific new options is June 16th. We realize that there will be tons of questions on everyone’s mind and, if I may ask this, please allow us time over the next two weeks to follow up this announcement with a series of additional communications that will assuredly answer most, if not all, of the questions on member’s minds. If not, we run the genuine risk of fielding the same range of questions from 450 members , which would be very difficult on our resources, especially as we begin the tactical integration aspect of this. The communications plan is thorough, begins as early as next week and will be frequent and comprehensive.

The fusion of these leading brands creates the industry’s fastest growing and most diverse destination club. We passionately believe that the big will get bigger and stronger and that this transaction will allow us to best compete in the growing and ever changing luxury vacation market while consistently meeting and exceeding our member's expectations.

And most of all, I want to thank everyone for the patience you demonstrated in what seemed like an endless process. It was a complex and arduous process, exacerbated by some difficult market conditions, but we persevered in the end and are delighted to share this successful conclusion with you this afternoon.

Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.

RICH KEITH
Chief Executive Officer

314 E. Mountain Avenue

Suite 101

Fort Collins, CO 80524
direct: 970.212.1601
rich.keith@privateescapes.com

Kagehitokiri

good news!

welcome to the forum ChicagoMark, thanks for the post.

17 minutes before this thread >

TarheelTraveler

Congratulations to the PE/UR members on the forum! The merger was not necessarily always handled in the best way, but I am sure that it's not easy combining two large clubs that had some significant policy and operational differences.

I assume that the members are pretty excited. Anyone reserving judgment until the additional communications are made? It seems a little odd to me that the additional information has not been released (it's not like there hasn't been a lot of time to think about these issues). I actually assume the decisions have all been made, but it's part of the communications strategy to get people excited before you release some policy that's going to tick off one side or the other.

So any new speculation on additional mergers?

Kagehitokiri

ive kept some in clubs/members thread >

my only thought on the "communication strategy" is that they wanted to get this announcement out now, which is fine. but if i were a member, taking 2 weeks to finish the updates would be painful. maybe they thought that was better than sending out one big book of docs?

DC4MS

This is GREAT news for the entire Destination Club industry and I want to personally congratulate both PE and UR on their new UE club.

Desties

To put a little more flesh on the bone, Rich sent out an email last week, indicating that a DEFINITIVE statement would be coming out this week (if not sooner).

Obviously I won't get into all of Rich's communiques over the past few months, but there was definitely a sense that he meant it last week after so many hopeful deadlines that came and went.

So I think that there was a certain internal urgency to get this message out, even if the deal itself won't close until Tuesday.

As for the announcements, since it will take a week to get both set of properties into the same system and another two weeks for the bookings to start taking effect, I didn't expect a laundry list of actionable items yesterday.

I don't know what -- if any -- of the previous perks I'll have to give up, but I have enough faith in Rich Keith that he wouldn't have done this if the end result wouldn't be a net positive.

Kagehitokiri

indeed, i found it very interesting that PE had 2nd highest name recognition after ER, one of the best satisfaction ratings, and was much larger than UR. (before UR took on the former T&H members)

jimhemak

I note that Richard Keith's announcement does not use the word "merger".??

Kagehitokiri

welcome to the forum jimhemak

vineyarder

Very interesting observation...

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Living in a vacuum sucks!

vineyarder

Looks like the public UE website is now live: Ultimate Escapes

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Living in a vacuum sucks!

NeilGoBlue

There was an ad in Robb Report announcing the merger and I received the magazine several days ago...

Kagehitokiri

what was the wording in the ad?

summary of partner info from new website >

* firstagain anythingloan - 7.49 > 7.99 / $7.5K > $100K
* bombardier skyjet - 2% off charters
* american express membership rewards - 2X points on club payments

other club use options >

* "to escape to"
africa, mauritius, seychelles - including north island (rates from $5328/nt)

* "ultimate escapes collection" (worldhotels) including
- las alamandas - puerto vallarta
- monte carlo bay hotel and resort - monaco
- hotel de sers - paris

NeilGoBlue

Just your basic DC ad... something like 'announcing ultimate escapes'... and then it said something about UR and PE coming together.. my point was that the ad deadline was probably 3-4 weeks ago if not longer.. the merger closed a couple days ago ...so, just interesting..

Kagehitokiri

so that would have been in line with "second quarter 2008" as stated in the may 1 press release about the london university partnership.
Ultimate Resort - exclusive destination club of University College London

TarheelTraveler

Is it just me or is the new website pretty weak? I wish they had chosen the PE website vs. the UR website for the base. I always thought the UR website was one of the worst ranking right up there with Portofino. It doesn't seem all that aesthetically pleasing like the ER website nor is it all that informative like the Lusso website? Seems crowded, but yet has little information on the houses. In contrast, the PE website was pretty informative and I thought one of the top 5 or so DC websites.

travelenthusiast

Well ... what does this say about where the club is going?