The Calgary based equity destination club recently shared some details on the reservations and usage of their homes. The numbers provide some good insights into which homes their members prefer and when they like to stay there. Here’s a walkthrough on the uses and preferences.

Types of Reservations

Before getting into the details of how members are using the homes, we’ll do a quick run through on the main reservation types that members can book. Each member can make a certain number of these reservations, depending on the level of their shareholding ie the bigger the share size, the more reservations of each type.

• Long-term reservations are reservations made between 91 days and up to 2 years in advance, of the first nights stay.
• Short-term reservations are those reservations made between 31 days and 90 days in advance.
• Space available reservations are any reservations made within 30 days of the first nights stay. One of the nice perks of the Destination M membership is that these short-term reservations don’t count towards a members annual plan nights.

For all the above, members can reserve a home for up to 7 nights, and for some of the homes, at off-peak seasons, members can make reservations for up to 14 nights. Members may stay at a property for a maximum of 21 consecutive nights if they combine several of the reservations.

Planning and Reserving Ahead

Looking at the overall, trends, Destination M members tend to make over 50% of their reservations as long-term and just under 30% as short-term reservations. Last year 900 days, of the total 4,200 days of use, were booked using free space available days. That is 21% of days as space available.

The most popular homes that had the most reservations booked in advance, included Provence (pictured above), London, Hawaii and La Quinta. Part of that trend is because members are using the homes in France and England for major trips and want to plan well ahead for these and also probably lock in their long-distance airline reservations at the same time.

London is also the home with the smallest proportion of space available rentals, largely because it is booked up well ahead of time.

The two homes with the highest proportion of short-term rentals are Las Vegas and Victoria BC. It seems that the Destination M members like the ability to go on short notice trips to Vegas.

Seasonal Usage

The home in St Remy, Provence is the one that sees the most use in Spring and Summer (about 88% of the occupancy is these two seasons), but little use in the winter and the fall/autumn. For members who want to go to France during these quieter seasons they can book a 14-day stay – in effect, the club is encouraging members to make use of these quieter times.

Several of the homes see fairly balanced use throughout the year including New York, Victoria, Kelowna, and Hawaii, with steady demand from season to season.
The homes in warm places see the most use during the fall and winter when many of the Canadian members want to have a break from their cold weather. For instance, the houses in Barbados, La Quinta, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley, AZ see over 75% of their use in these two seasons.

Trip Lengths

The average length of trips varies with the type of reservation. When members make long-term reservations their average trip length is 6 days, short-term reservations tend to be slightly shorter at 5 days average and space available trips average 4 days.

Those members with B level shares were taking an average of 7 days, a whole week, of (free) vacations on the space available basis.

When they make their reservations, 45% of the time the members call in and speak to Ashley or Keri on the member services team, and 55% of the time the members make their own reservations through the club online reservation system. So there's a couple of ways to reserve and the member services team is there to help with any questions or assist with any trip planning.