LUSSO Member, NC

We are a family of five, who love ski and beach vacations, and look forward to traveling to Europe with the family in the next couple of years. Our story is similar to many other families we know. We began to be frustrated with the rising costs of all forms of lodging for our family. A few years ago we were able to stay in nice places near ski lifts, or luxury hotels in Hawaii, for $250 - $500 per night. Now, with our larger family needing more space, and with escalating costs, it became nearly impossible to find anything comfortable for under $1,000 per night, and to really enjoy ourselves, it was more like $1,500 and up per night. This was especially true during holiday weeks, which is when we are most able to travel with school schedules. Good deals became nearly impossible to find. We also became increasingly uncomfortable in hotel rooms and rental homes. Hotels felt cramped, we hated hallways and elevators, and tired quickly of eating all of our meals in restaurants. We were also disappointed many times in rental homes and villas, which we typically found after dozens of hours searching on vrbo. They were often disappointing either for being poorly equipped, providing terrible beds, being poorly cleaned and maintained, or being poorly located. We tired of doing all the grocery shopping and cleaning during our stay.

These frustrations led us to our first search into investing in a second home. We thought it might make more financial sense to be the rentee rather than the renter. We searched Hawaii and Lake Tahoe, which are the two destinations we travel to the most. We figured we would use them a few weeks a year, and rent them the other weeks. A quick review of properties available as whole ownership made us realize that we would need to invest nearly $2 million to get a property we would enjoy. The realities of the time and money associated with maintaining this type of property set in, and we widened our search to include fractionals and other shared ownership options.

We looked at many of the new fractional properties at Lake Tahoe (Northstar specifically). We ran detailed spreadsheets, and looked at a dozen properties. We particularly liked the ones which offered trades to other destinations. But, we came to the conclusion that $250 - $500K to purchase 6 weeks a year didn't make sense. Looking at the calendar, we realized we would probably get 2 weeks and a couple of weekends during prime time each year, with the rest being during shoulder seasons when it is difficult for us to travel. It seemed that it would be difficult to trade time for other locations, and many properties would not allow us to rent weeks we could not use. This reality, coupled with historical resale values of fractionals and the annual fees began to look unappealing to us.

During our search of fractionals at Northstar, we had the good fortune of being able to see the LUSSO unit at Great Bear Lodge. It was much larger and more beautifully decorated than any of the fractional properties available for sale. At this point in our search, we were familiar with DCs through our friends who are members at Quintess. I had had the opportunity to go on two Quintess trips as a guest, to Tahoe and to Paris, and I was quite impressed. However, our impression at the time was that this was a luxury we couldn't afford.

Still, we began to run the numbers, and we began talking to LUSSO, and realized that it was a more affordable option than we thought. We did a detailed analysis of the opportunity costs over 10 years based on the membership fee (100% refundable at LUSSO), and the cost per night based on the annual dues, and decided that LUSSO gave us a HUGE increase in our level of travel, for not a lot more money than we were already spending on hotel rooms and rental homes.

We joined in December '07 and have been thrilled with our decision so far. My husband and I like to say that the "shlep and stress factors" of traveling with the family are gone. It is such a luxury to arrive at the residence, and be able to instantly relax. The heat is on, the fire is roaring, the kitchen is stocked with our favorite foods, lift tickets are purchased, reservations made, and everyone has room to spread out and be comfortable.

The added luxuries that LUSSO offers with free airport transportation (in luxury town cars) and the use of a new Lincoln Navigator at most homes, is icing on the cake. We have visited Tahoe, Cabo, New York and La Jolla this year. All of the properties have the "wow" factor. The homes feel like a real luxury home, with incredible bedding and linens, state of the art electronics, computers with internet access, high-end kitchens, great locations....everything you would want in your own home. LUSSO does a great job making the homes all equally appealing and consistent, so we could travel to any of the residences and know that we'll have a great experience. The other remarkable thing is that we have been able to ski during President's week, and visit beach locations over spring break and July 4 weeks without a problem. Availability over school holidays was HUGE for us, and we have been very satisfied in that regard. We feel lucky that we joined LUSSO when we did. Their prices were a bit better than other clubs, as they are a newer club, and their portfolio of homes is smaller in comparison to some others. But they had the destinations we needed, so it fit for us. Our hope is that LUSSO will add more Hawaii and California destinations, which are on their forecast. We also eagerly await a European destination which we hope will be announced this fall.

We are big fans of the DC concept, and encourage anyone to investigate the options for their own families.