The two destination club have announced a strategic alliance to allow members use of their respective clubs.

Quintess Beaver Creek

Quintess, LRW has luxury vacation homes and offers travel experiences in 40+ destinations worldwide, with most of these centered around North America. Oyster Circle, is headquartered in Dublin, and has 10 luxury vacation homes in European, U.S. and Caribbean destinations. As a result of the alliance, members of each club will have reciprocal access to the homes of the other club, creating a choice of luxury vacation homes and experiences in more than 50 destinations worldwide.

New vacation destinations available for Quintess, LRW members include Cannes, St. Tropez, and Chamonix in France, Sotogrande in Spain, Umbria in Italy and the Bahamas in the Caribbean. The Oyster Circle members for the first time will have access to vacation homes in several new destinations including Aspen, Jackson Hole, Kiawah Island, London, Maui, Paris, Napa Valley, Tuscany and Vail/Beaver Creek.

Paul Crowe, the CEO of Oyster Circle, told me that the two clubs had "been working hard on this partnership since last August". As he noted, the two clubs have very similar property types and styles.

Paul continued "Early in our discussions we quickly realized holiday periods rarely conflict, apart from Christmas and New Year," so members in the two clubs can have more access to travel during their respective holiday periods. He also commented "We announced this to members last week and got a very good response."

In the press release that the clubs put out, Paul stated "We believe that it (the alliance) offers a wonderful opportunity for our members to extend very significantly the variety of homes and holiday experiences that they and their families can enjoy inside The Oyster Circle. Quintess leads the destination club industry in innovation, quality and customer service and we look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with them over the coming years."

Todd Miller VP Marketing at Quintess told me "We think Oyster Circle is a great fit for Quintess. They are a great club and we hope it's just the beginning of a long relationship with them." He continued "We know their destinations are highly desirable. We know this is going to be very popular with our members, so we will be running a lottery which starts this thursday and goes for a couple of weeks. It will then be open to general reservations".

The nature of this partnership is an exchange of time between the two companies, which is limited to a certain number of days each way. Both companies sounded very flexible about expanding this relationship. Quintess members currently call in to book one of the Oyster Circle properties, and the club is working on putting those properties up on the Quintess member website.

Other destination clubs have had similar exchange partnerships in the past and these appear to work very well. For instance The Markers Club and BelleHavens (prior to its acquisition by Abercrombie & Kent Residence Club) had an agreement for a mutual use of each others homes.