The most memorable part of a luxury trip is often not the suite. It’s the unique experiences and access that make a journey truly exceptional. This is where travel memberships are increasingly distinguishing themselves, moving beyond just offering beautiful properties to connecting stays with curated experiences and services.
Access: The New Luxury
Luxury hotels have long excelled in amenities, but with so many properties competing at the highest level, differentiation can be challenging. Travel clubs and membership-based hospitality, however, have another asset: access. Instead of focusing solely on in-room comforts, they’re creating value by offering private hospitality communities built around flexibility and carefully curated experiences.
This could mean member events, hard-to-secure reservations, private excursions, or concierge assistance that simplifies complex trips. For instance, private hospitality communities are increasingly emphasizing wellness retreats, culinary experiences, or sports-related events that cater to their members’ interests.
Sports: A Case Study
Sports fans often travel long distances to attend matches, making it a significant factor in their vacation choices. Sports Illustrated Resorts, for example, incorporates sports-focused spaces and offers game-day gatherings, VIP tickets, and even sports-related events for its members. By blending accommodation with sports-centric experiences, these resorts make the stay an extension of the event itself.
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The attraction is not exclusivity simply for the sake of saying something is exclusive. It is having access to something relevant enough that it changes the trip.
The best experiences make sense for the club A generic calendar of cocktail receptions is unlikely to justify joining a travel membership. The experience works better when it connects naturally with the identity of the brand and the reason its members travel. A wellness-oriented club might build around retreats, visiting practitioners and restorative experiences. A culinary membership could use chef-led dinners and destination food experiences. A yacht club can make access to vessels and private onboard events central to its proposition. Sports provides an especially clear example because people already travel significant distances around it. Fans plan trips around rivalry weekends, opening days, championships, motorsports, golf tournaments and major international events. In those cases, the sporting event is not an amenity added to a vacation. It is often the reason the vacation exists. Sports Illustrated Resorts is applying a vacation ownership model to that audience. Its resort concept incorporates sports-focused spaces including the Hall of Champions, Trophy Room, SI Fit training areas, The Stadium dining and viewing concept and The Outfield Pool, although the combination of amenities varies by property. The more interesting part, however, is what happens outside those spaces. The brand also promotes game-day gatherings and sports-related events, while its VIP Ticket Concierge helps club members seek premium seats for games and entertainment. For a sports fan, that is much more closely connected to the purpose of the trip than adding another generic resort amenity.
Destination choice still matters Experiences can make a membership more interesting, but they cannot compensate for a network travelers cannot realistically use. For anyone comparing vacation club membership benefits, the number of destinations should therefore be examined alongside the experiences themselves. Sports Illustrated Resorts Club currently gives members access to over 45 U.S. resorts and 3,600 global resorts through its portfolio.
