DC4MS

A Running Start
Skye Mayring
06/01/2007

A Running Start | Vacation Homes Magazine

For some, choosing the right destination club can sometimes feel like playing a game of financial Russian roulette. The last place you would want to find yourself is shackled to the next Tanner & Haley, a destination club founded by one of the pioneers of the industry that filed for bankruptcy in summer of 2006 (see Robb Report Vacation Homes, Oct./Nov. 2006).

Minnesota-based destination club Lusso addresses this concern with their Deposit Trust initiative. Through this innovative act, all of the club’s property assets will be held by subsidiary LLCs and a semi-annual financial report that outlines the use of member deposits and the ability of the club to repay them will be published for and distributed to members.

"We have just as strong a commitment to corporate governance and financial transparency as we do to making you to feel like you are on vacation 52 weeks a year," says the company’s founder and CEO Steve Greer, who started planning the club in 2003.

In the winter of 2005, Lusso began selling memberships within the personal networks of its 30 investors. "We wanted to deliberately fly under the radar so that in June 2006 we could take the wraps off," says Greer, who says membership has grown to 75. "This way, we were able to demonstrate our substance in members, properties and infrastructure, instead of being a start-up company like our peers."

At present, the club offers 17 properties in 10 destinations, with five additional properties—in locations including Panama, Lake Tahoe and the Bahamas—that are slated for completion in 2007–08. A European acquisition is also in the works, as the club scouts Tuscany and Umbria. When making property and location decisions, Lusso keeps in mind their long-term goals of reaching a member cap of 550, after acquiring 100 properties spread among 25 to 30 locations.

Lusso maintains one class of individual memberships at $375,000 with annual dues of $26,500—a structure he says offers members equal access rights to properties, with a cyclical holiday priority reservation system. "Members find it comforting that not only does Lusso have a level playing field," Greer explains, "but our membership guarantees at least one holiday reservation every year and priority access to all holidays over a three-year cycle."

Spending Labor Day weekend at the club’s golf-front villa on the Big Island of Hawaii—complete with plantation ceiling fans cooling the spacious living room and plumeria trees blossoming in the front yard—is one option for members to create their own endless summer. But if all good things must come to an end, perhaps the best way to bid adieu is with a private New Year’s Eve celebration from one of the club’s two Manhattan penthouses, where members may enjoy a toast of Champagne as rare as Moët & Chandon’s L’Esprit du Siècle provided by a personal concierge while looking down at the crowds in Times Square below.

Lusso further expands their range of services with recent partnerships with MedJetAssist, a medical evacuation jet service, and JDCS, a full-time concierge service connected enough to procure last-minute Super Bowl or Academy Awards tickets.

Regarding concierge service, Greer believes that the only limitations are your imagination, which is probably why one of his concierges took a 22-mile boat ride to Kiawah Island, S.C., to personally deliver a copy of The New York Times to a Lusso family by 8 a.m. daily.

Kagehitokiri

speaking of JDCS/Luxury Attache, it costs $50K a year if you want to join