Vacation home trends for affluent individuals in America and Europe may be surprising in this tumultuous time for the housing, credit and stock markets. The next 12 to 24 months might not see a huge upswing of second home purchases, but a recent survey by Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank predicts much growth over the next decade.

The newly formed destination club has just joined the Destination Club Association - the trade group that sets best practices - but at the same time Abercrombie & Kent's flawed former business decisions are still around to haunt it.

Ultimate Resort and Private Escapes announced their merger last year, and have now officially announced the new name for their destination club - Ultimate Escapes. The club has three separate clubs, with homes in 50 global destinations.

Located just seven miles outside of Florence, the new Quintess villa is located on 23 acres of vineyards and olive groves.

Enhancing its Caribbean collection of homes, destination club Lusso just announced two new villas on the tropical island of Anguilla.

A European experience in the making. The new destination club, Botiga plans on launching its initial portfolio of homes to members by winter 2008. Botiga is already showing signs of promise. The club is on target to reach 20 Founder Members by the end of June 2008. They currently have three properties secured in their portfolio and three more are on the near horizon for purchase.

Solstice has just announced that its founder, Graham Kos, and unnamed outside investors have purchased a controlling interest in the company. The purchase essentially buys out the holdings of the Parallel management team, with which Solstice merged in late 2006.

Miami, Florida is a vacationer's paradise. Beautiful beaches, lively nightlife, world-class restaurants and shopping and a wealth of cultural venues make this a highly sought-after vacation destination.

Last week Ultimate Resort and Bombardier announced a strategic marketing agreement. With this new partnership Ultimate joins several other destination clubs that provide their members with special access to private jet companies. Here's a run down on the clubs and their private jet partnerships.

Is the terminology starting to get confusing or are the larger destination clubs really starting to transform into luxury vacation clubs. Many of the leading destination clubs now offer their members a variety of unique tours and travel packages, and have partnered with luxury hotel groups to offer more destinations to their members.

Effective today the luxury vacation club Exclusive Resorts has realigned and unpackaged its membership plans to provide a broader array of options.

Fractional or shared ownership vacation homes are a rapidly growing segment (over 30 percent in 2006) of the real estate market. Fractional real estate sales were about $1.6 Billion in 2006 and are expected to continue to grow over the next several years. Most of these fractional real estate sales may be attributed to resort and niche fractional projects rolled out by large hotel operators, such as Marriott, Four Seasons, Starwood, and Ritz Carlton (“resort fractionals”).

In theory, the condo-hotel purchase sounds like a solid investment. Pay an amount up front, and get money back monthly when the hotel rents out your unit. Many investors couldn’t wait to get into this market. They whole-heartedly believed that their monthly costs would not only be covered, but that they would have money to put back in their pockets.

In a continuing trend amongst destination clubs, High Country Club is raising both its Initial Membership fees and its Annual Dues for all its membership plans. The new prices are effective from 1st June 2008.

Luxury destination club Quintess announced a new round of $210m of equity funding. We spoke to Ben Addoms, Quintess founder, to find out how the club would use these new funds.