Demeure Secures Membership Funds In Escrow

By: Destination Club News
Date: November 18, 2010

The transition deadline for Ultimate Escapes members joining Demeure is less than 48 hours away and in the 11th hour, the exchange based destination club is continuing to reassure members about their unique vision. To demonstrate how different they are from Ultimate Escapes, Demeure has retained International Escrow Services (IES) to serve as their escrow agent, holding membership funds and appropriating those funds solely for membership travel.

Membership funds will be deposited in an account set up and controlled by IES with funds only released by the agent to Demeure to fund members' travel.

"We believe that this is a necessity for consumers who pay in advance for any service, and is certainly a first in the destination club industry," said Demeure CEO Peter Schwartz. "This is a clear commitment to our members that their money will be used as intended. Members funds are used for member travel, plain and simple. If, for some reason Demeure ceases to operate, escrowed funds are returned to members and not used to pay Demeure's creditors. There isn't another club in our industry that can make the same statement"

"I don't know how else to say it, but we are the only destination club where your membership funds truly are safe," Schwartz added.

Without a large membership deposit required to join, Demeure is certainly a different brand of destination club, but the club has repeatedly told us that they would like to champion destination club regulation and Schwartz has informed us that this escrow component is just one of the pillars in this focus. The misappropriation of membership dollars has long been a problem for many first generation destination clubs. Tanner & Haley used membership deposits to pay for leasing properties. High Country Club rewarded executives with large salaries coming out of membership funds. The LUSSO Collection used membership fees to pay for operations. The common thread between all three? All have filed for bankruptcy with hundreds of members left wondering where their dollars were spent.

Over the past several weeks, Schwartz and the rest of the Demeure team have continued their outreach plan and have contacted hundreds of Ultimate Escapes members about their custom offer and special incentives, including waived annual dues increases for members, complimentary extended family travel privileges, and the ability to reduce their annual travel commitment.

Stay tuned over the next several days to see how these continued efforts pay off as we approach the transition deadline and click here if you would like the full details of the Demeure escrow announcement.