An Open Letter to Demeure

As one of the nearly 1,300 members -- former members, I guess -- of Ultimate Escapes, thank you for being the only company willing to bid on the club and acquire interests in enough of its former properties to provide the closest travel experience to that which we were once accustomed to.

Thank you.

Now go away.

I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth -- even if Ultimate Escapes is metaphorically a dead horse that we're beating -- but I don't think you get us.

Few of us were paying the dues that we were paying, simply for the benefit of travel. More than half of us are former Tanner & Haley members, diligently paying our dues to earn back our original deposits that we forked over to the Abercrombie & Kent-licensed club that filed for bankruptcy. Three more years and we could have made it onto the resignation list. Hundreds more of us came from Private Escapes. As part of the merger, we had to stick around 18 months after the merger's completion. This would have opened the resignation floodgate come February of next year.

We paid our dues because it was the right thing to do, and it helped keep the club going -- selfishly -- under the now obliterated hope that a renaissance in luxury travel and related real estate would restore value in our properties and populate the pipeline with potential new members to cash us out.

We never had the choice to downgrade our plans, as many of us probably would have as perks dried up and the last minute scrambles to use up remaining travel days got old.

After attending tonight's webinar, it's clear that you have either overestimated our loyalty to the model or our desire to pay as much as we have to travel as much as we have.

We were just protecting the Lost island, going through the motions until we can kid Hurley to take our place.

I'm sorry if we somehow made you believe that we'd be willing to collectively put up $60 million over five years to keep this charade going. There's no deposit to protect anymore. You certainly didn't take it, but surely you have to understand why most of us will likely spend LESS -- and in some cases far less -- to travel in 2011.

Give us the option to spend less. Give us the option to become traditional Demeure members, without the $2,500 initiation and allow us to pay as we go. When nostalgia hits, I wouldn't mind revisiting one of the UE properties you acquired -- but I'm certainly not going to do it on a prepaid model with expiring travel dollars every year.

I can't speak for all of my fellow members. Your plan may sound enticing to a handful -- if not more. However, you have to keep in mind that just as Quintess offered Lusso members their original deposits back after five years and Ultimate Escapes offered T&H members their original deposits back after seven years, you're trying to get us into making Demeure the center of our luxury travel plans for the next five years without a carrot at the end. Obviously the counterargument there is that UE went bankrupt making that offer and that Quintess may or may not be around to honor its own deal.

Yes, but that still doesn't make YOUR deal a good one. UE members are actually getting a worse deal than non-UE members, and that's unreal. Waiving $3 million in initiating fees in exchange for $60 million over the next five years is not a sound trade, especially when we both know that more than $3 million of that $60 million will go squandered because we can't choose lower committments and unusual annual prepaid travel gets zapped. Even gift cards aren't that cruel anymore.

Hopefully you will realize that you're dealing with a lot of folks who can appreciate upscale travel experiences but are too jaded to pay for the sake of paying.

Sweeten the pot. Allow for members to prepay for a fraction of what they used to pay. If the product is good enough, we're upgrade soon enough.

If not, we've just wasted one another's time here.