Your C.A.R.E. QuickConnects Newsletter

MAY 2020

MONTHLY NEWS & UPDATES

As I’ve told you before, no matter how late I am, we will send a monthly QuickConnects Newsletter! It just so happens that this month you’ll get two, to make up for me missing a date on a calendar in May!

INTUITION recently facilitated an industry wide survey and we’ve shared that information in this issue. There are links to industry wide results, C.A.R.E. segmented results, as well as a link to complete the survey if you have not already done so. While they are no longer promoting the survey it is still live and results are up to current date. Thanks to INTUITION (and C.A.R.E.’s Preferred Media Sponsor Perspective Group ) for facilitating this survey and allowing C.A.R.E. to segregate its own data for its members. One of the survey comments that resonated with me most was one person that said “use this time as a hard reset”. I was also happy to see so many of the comments on positive outlooks of our future. Be sure to check out the results, while the numbers and negative financial impact data might be staggering and frightening in the moment, we all have much to work on and look forward to as the future of travel evolves again.

Shout out and thank you to Brandy West with RSI Vacations who has shared some great insight on “Coping with COVID19 Crisis” in this issue and we hope more of you will share your insights for future issues of QuickConnects.

I’ve heard from a few of you regarding my call to be #CARESTRONG during this pandemic, I hope the rest of you are staying well and navigating your way to a new future. I’m still open to hosting a forum of C.A.R.E. members to talk about how we navigate all this turmoil in our businesses, just let me know if you want to participate. I’m always available to anyone needing one on one direction too; if we stick together we can get through this together. Cheers to surviving another month of chaos and moving one month closer to our new normal.

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INTUITION RELEASES

COVID-19 SURVEY RESULTS

INTUITION, a business strategy agency for the vacation ownership industry specializing in sales, marketing, customer engagement and reputation management solutions recently conducted a survey on the impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on the Vacation Ownership Industry – and the results are in.

With feedback from more than one-hundred companies around the globe that are active in the vacation ownership industry, the survey represented the economic impact on those businesses that represent more than 21,000 employees and service more than 8 .3 million members and guests. Results can be viewed HERE .

Based on just over 100 companies that have participated in the survey so far, the results show that 63% of businesses are currently closed and others are seeing heavily reduced occupancy / transactions due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

This is costing those businesses collectively a staggering $17.6 million in lost revenue per week – with the majority claiming a loss of 75%-100% of typical weekly revenue – and most have been closed for at least 4 weeks so far.

When travel will begin to return is very difficult to predict at the moment, and will vary by destination, but most participants are bracing for a period of 3 to 6 months before most vacationers will be able to or are comfortable to return to their resorts. That represents a collective revenue loss for those companies of $211 – $422 million during that time frame.

With that in mind, businesses are working hard to accommodate huge volumes of customers, with 37.1% providing full refunds, and a further 54.3% offering credit for future travel, with or without specific book by dates.

The Vacation Ownership industry however, is expected to rebound faster than traditional hotels due to their membership model that provides a loyal customer base that is already committed to future travel with the companies, and many timeshare resorts are easier to adapt for social distancing due to larger resort accommodations and spacious common areas. Some resorts that offer cottages, townhouses, beach houses, villas, lodges and campgrounds have remained open throughout the pandemic due to their unique resort living structure .

Participants in the survey also provided useful suggestions, recommendations and tips for surviving the crisis, which included references to increased communication with customers, moving to online and video-conferencing sales, focusing on drive-to and local marketing, selling to existing members and trying to keep staff employed on payroll or temporarily furloughed to be able to reopen quickly. Other comments focused on the opportunity to create the new future during this slow time, to evolve and innovate.

The study also provided segmented results for members of Cooperative Association for Resort Exchangers (C.A.R.E.) and Canadian Vacation Ownership Association (CVOA) for internal association use as they work to better serve their active members.

While the initial results have been reported, the survey is now is open again for additional participants including results updated hourly.

To take the survey click HERE . To view C.A.R.E. segmented survey results, click HERE.

About INTUITION:

INTUITION offers business solutions for vacation ownership companies that help to increase performance and revenue in the areas of sales, marketing, product development, branding, customer engagement and reputation management. For more information visit https://intuitionbrandmarketing.com.

COVID-19 and C.A.R.E

By: Brandy West, RSI Vacations

The past three months have been a challenging time for us all. We have seen the travel industry make everyone's list of most affected by the pandemic and has us all scrambling for understanding and answers. There are no easy answers at this time because things are a balance of regulation and customer confidence; we are all just doing the best we can. Here at RSI Vacations, we have found that getting in front of issues and being as proactive as possible has been the best solution. We had to be experts on all things travel and provide some leadership for our members that are all looking for answers.

We were handling calls while we moved 100% of our offices to working from home. Our focus was and is being the voice of reason and de-escalating the high volumes of calls coming in from travelers that were nervous and needed some guidance coming from confident and calming voices.

We started with the travel team of 28 well-trained travel agents and managers. We divided into groups of four handling cancellations, training, booking, and customer service outbound calls. Each team had a manager so that they could hyper-focus on the team they were leading. We created new habits and took the concierge level up a notch. We had more company meetings and added in a Wednesday focus that was nothing but built to have fun!

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Our Marketing/Vendor team worked diligently researching what to say and how to carefully start talking about travel again without raising expectations beyond what is realistic and possible. Our company is a full-service travel agency and because we deal with the Cruise and Tour Industry, we needed to be extremely mindful. Our team members had to be fully capable of handling future credits and successfully handle member cancellations in a way that left our customers feeling optimistic and looking forward to the day that we would all return to traveling. We found it very important to stay in front of problems and be able to communicate the members' choices in light of the pandemic and assure for our members that we would be available to help when this subsides and people return to some travel.

In summary, the most important thing that has provided the most help is proactive communication with our members as well as continued support for all our employees. We felt that it is essential that we offered to our membership a sense of hope and painted a picture of how nice it would be when we all finally returned to whatever the new normal would be. Travel continued to play a significant role in our human experience. Being proactive when travel was shutting down and reaching out via phone call and email and just listening to the members played an important role.

Moving forward, I believe, like most, that domestic travel will pick up quickly as all the pent- up market energy releases and people return to travel. The short future for cruise and International travel will be a harder one to rebound or predict. I think this will be the year of resort stays at more remote, drive-to locations and long term some people will change their travel preferences forever, appreciating the simple pleasures in life and realizing that beauty and memorable life experiences are everywhere!

HOW YOUR COMPANY HAS DEALT WITH THE

COVID-19 PANDEMIC?

SHARE YOUR STORY IN JUNE'S ISSUE OF QUICKCONNECTS.

CONTACT BONNIE KOSCO FOR MORE INFORMATION

WYNDHAM PHILADELPHIA HISTORIC DISTRICT

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

OCTOBER 24-OCTOBER 27, 2020

REGISTRATION COMING JULY 2020

BOOK HOTEL RESERVATIONS NOW!

C.A.R.E. to ELECT TWO VICE PRESIDENTS IN OCTOBER

Two Vice Presidents will be elected for three-year terms at C.A.R.E.'s 68th Conference in Philadelphia from October 24- October 27, 2020.

Incumbent, Brandy West, was previously nominated. Nominations will also be taken from the floor at the conference.

Additionally, nominations for C.A.R.E. President, Secretary and Treasurer and two Vice Presidents, will also be accepted for the elections that will take place in May 2021 at C.A.R.E.'s 69th Conference in Sarasota, Florida.

In accordance with the Bylaws for the Regulation of the Cooperative Association of Resort Exchangers,

Article III, Section C, each Director shall be the Authorized Member Representative of a voting Membership, as defined in Article II, Section A and will have successfully completed Level 1 of the C.A.R.E. Accreditation program.

For more information, contact

Linda Mayhugh .