Apr 14, 2008
Sundance Vacations Execs Attend ARDA Conference
Sundance Vacations executives attended the annual American Resort Developers Association (ARDA) convention that was held in Las Vegas last week. ARDA is the vacation industry trade group. Many years ago, ARDA attendees were solely timeshare developers. In those early days, it was lonely being one of the first wholesale vacation companies. It wasn’t just a perception of being an outsider. It was reality.
The Witchhunt
I remember attending a round table discussion (1994 approx) where a boisterous timeshare developer stood up and called his colleagues to action. “What are we going to do about these new groups? We’re building resorts and real estate, what are they building?” He was clearly referring to us and the message was clear that we were a “cancer” that needed to be dealt with.
Better Method for Sundance Vacations
He was right about one thing. We weren’t building new resort properties. While he was building x number of units in one location, we were searching and buying on the whole ownership condo market including a couple of oceanfront condo’s in Brigantine Beach, NJ; several townhouses at a ski area in the Poconos and many units at a resort in Myrtle Beach. To this day, we believe our method is better for client choice. He had units in one location but was dependent on someone else to help his customer’s trade. We on the other hand had built our own network of properties.
We’ve grown quite a bit since then and so has the industry. Attendees at this year’s convention represented a wide variety of vacation companies including luxury residence clubs, points programs, cruise clubs, new companies to service the easy exchange or trade of inventory and of course, wholesale sales companies like Sundance Vacations.
We haven’t focused on buying single units one at a time. Recently, we’ve added several entire resort properties to our inventory. A thirty-unit complex, Esplanade Suites in Wildwood, New Jersey was added in late 2006. A twelve-unit oceanfront complex in Daytona (Sierra Suites) was added in summer 2007. Nineteen quaint cottage units at Woodfield Manor in the Poconos were added in February 2008 and many, many others were added through Travel Advantage Network.
I haven’t seen the mentioned developer in quite a few years, I wonder how much inventory he built since 2006?
-Tina Dowd
I think it is amazing how Sundance Vacations can offer so many oportunities to their clients by offering many different vacation destinations. But, not only do they offer a number of different destinations, they also allow for different experiences to those clients who chose to travel to the same destinations more than once. For example, if a client chose to travel to Woodfield Manor once a year, each time they traveled they can stay in a different type of atmosphere. Each suite and cottage is decorated in it’s own unique style. One thing is for sure, variety is the spice of life and the more choices you give your clients gives them more reasons to keep coming back.
If they think we are big now just wait!!:)