Gordon McClendon and Erica Gause
Making exchange simple
“Money, not COVID, is the largest hurdle for summer travel,” said Erica Gause, director of global marketing and operations at the 7Across timeshare-exchange company. Citing Destination Analysts’ quarterly survey, The State of the American Traveler, she said that “in June, 36 percent of people surveyed stated that inflation led to a trip cancellation.”
Nonetheless, six in ten are keeping leisure travel as a priority, and timesharing helps to make that possible. “In inflationary times, your costs are set, you’ve paid your maintenance fee, you can go back to your home resort,” she noted.
7Across began in Australia as Dial an Exchange and later DAE. After being acquired by RCI’s parent, Travel + Leisure Co., it was rebranded as a worldwide exchange company—a direct-to-consumer exchange provider that works with a resort’s owners/members.
“We ask, ‘Is it simple?’ Gause said. “We do a simple one-for-one model. You give us a week, you get a week. Our motto is, ‘We want to help you get your travel on.’ We try to keep a very low fee structure. We want people to get out there, go more places, and experience the timeshare industry and the product.”
Traveler priorities
Gause listed the reasons why leisure travelers travel. “Number one Is spending time with loved ones,” she said, followed by going places they haven’t been before, enjoying nature, getting away from crowds, and budget travel.
In May of 2022, flight bookings had increased slightly over 2019, and people were paying about 20 percent more than before. The top flight destinations included Palm Springs, CA; Ft. Myers, Orlando, Pensacola, and Tampa, FL; Kona, HI; Savannah, GA; Charleston, SC; and Austin TX.
“7 Across is seeing the highest demand in outdoors destinations, with the highest trend in the U.S. South—anywhere on a beach or open water—followed by the U.S. Southwest and Hawaii. Seventy-nine percent of bookings are within 300 miles—a drive-to destination. The typical lead time is three to four months.”
Fix-It or Flex-It
Gause said 7 Across has two ways of booking: “Fix-It is a final transaction. You book it, and you go. Our Flex-It product allows you to cancel within 24 hours before check-in, and you get your full monetary fee or exchange deposit back. For rental, it allows members to cancel 35 days before the check-in date and get a full refund. Seventy percent of our bookings are Flex-It.”
For rentals, 7 Across also has a flexible cancellation policy, with members receiving a full refund until 35 days before check-in.
Owners who deposit a week with 7 Across have three years in which to book. “We will take deposit weeks from members or resorts at 14 days before start date,” she said, “and they still get the full one-for-one exchange from that. Resorts that have a rental or a last-minute cancel have been able to deposit that with us and get a credit they can use for one of their owners or members in the future. We’ve had such a high rate of utilization that it has allowed us to be flexible and take that close date.”
Transitioning to text
“The contact with your members is absolutely crucial to the success of any resort. That’s our strategic focus, that’s what we do,” declared Gordon McClendon, chief executive officer of software company Systems Products International Inc (SPI).
SPI has been in the software business for 40 years. It specializes in all aspects of timeshare software, including sales, property management, and finance. “In the last year, I’ve changed the pricing to make it software as a service. We are leasing the software to make the acquisition of our software palatable to everyone. We continue to upgrade and renovate and improve the software based on the operations of the resorts that we have and the resorts we anticipate having.”
One SPI enhancement is the use of testing to improve contact with owners/members beyond what is possible with postal mail, telephone, in-person contacts, and e-mail. These other contact modes can be lost in transit, or ignored, but “everybody pays attention to the texting,” McClendon said.
“You’re also paying by text. Half of your bills are now paid automatically, either with a hook to a website, or paid directly.” McClendon said SPI is developing direct-pay credit-card links within its texts.
“With SPI you’ll communicate with your owners in their texting language,” he said. “There will be no gap in terms of the information you’re trying to get across, and the follow-up.”
Texting case study
In 2018, McClendon said, one resort sent a membership billing by mail at a cost of $30,000, followed by email reminders. About half of the members paid in response to the mailing.
In 2019 the resort also sent out text reminders with a payment feature that linked them back to the resort’s website. The response was 83 percent.
“As recently as five years ago, only 60 percent of people had a cell phone,” McClendon said. “Now there’s nobody that doesn’t have a cellphone. Your cellphone is your ID. You check into the airport with your cellphone. I have one credit card in my wallet, just in case of a disaster. I pay everything with my cellphone.”
Data: Key to promotion
In the Q&A session, a participant commented that hotel companies “are doing great things with digital marketing”—using digitally customized exclusive offers to invite past customers to return. “If you have the technology that can go back through the database for the last two or three years and look at some seasonal situations, you might be able to touch some of the past users and pick up some good revenue.”
“We have the data,” McClendon replied. “If you want to research what your owners, or guests, or customers have done, that data is collected. You can then do marketing and PR campaigns that are tailored exactly to the past activity of those people. The real key is having the data.”
Gause agreed. “We’ve implemented a couple of tools. It allows us to understand and segment members and create specialized journeys for those members based on past activities they’ve had. Get your data organized and get it in a product that allows you to identify those trends and automatically trigger communication in their preferred method based on their past activities.”
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