LAS VEGAS— CEO Kenneth May told HOTEL BUSINESS® he sees three ways for Resort Condominiums International (RCI) to grow: through segmentation, branding and new channels. He also sees the resources of parent company Cendant Corp. as an asset and expects to leverage them to grow. To that end, RCI unveiled its new RCI Holiday Network at this year’s International Resort Development Convention & Exposition. The new distribution system will help RCI grow its inventory offering to members and non-members, and, in turn, will help RCI expand beyond the three-million-member milestone it hit at the end of last year, said May. May noted that the new RCI Holiday Network is taking RCI timeshare inventory and going through Cendant channels, like Galileo and Trip.com, on a global basis. He said RCI has “80,000 weeks of inventory” in the new network. “Normally, we rent out inventory to other members. [But with the new network], we are now going out and attracting other sources of inventory and bundling it up in the RCI Holiday Network. It’s a web-based distribution system, and we can bundle up airline tickets with various other accommodations [by leveraging other Cenndant channels],” he said. He pointed to Cheap Tickets as a key to this. The RCI Holiday Network is expected to bring in new prospects to RCI developers, said May. “We are looking to establish a core competency— master networking I call it— in the travel and leisure area, and take that to other areas,” said May. That is “taking the basis of timeshare exchange with property management and with a massive leisure rental market, and looking at other segments and taking other inventories” to the public, he said. He referenced RCI’s recent deal with Abercrombie and Kent, which is a “very high-end embellishment to the high-end marketplace.” He said the company is known for its African safari offerings. Under that agreement, unveiled at this year’s show, RCI “has licensed Abercrombie and Kent’s name, and is utilizing their call center— or what they call their ‘personal concierge center.’ ” “We have developed a product for high-end residence clubs and fractionals… that’s an alternative to the second-home marketplace.” As previously reported, RCI is looking to identify well-known “leisure brands,” like Abercrombie and Kent, and Ralph Lauren, with which the public is familiar and create a resort timeshare product around them. Bringing more brands into the RCI fold will be a focus going forward in order to create more opportunities to travel for members and to add value to well-known brands, said May. While he declined to comment on what other brands beyond Abercrombie and Kent RCI is eyeing currently, May indicated that there are talks underway with several brands. As far as segmentation goes, May indicated that “RCI is very interested in hotel condominiums” in the middle and high-end. He believes it’s an area “for branding, and for [RCI’s] expertise and distribution.” Overall, RCI will “look at various segments, various channels and various brands to create a new set of what I call travel currencies. These will begin to intertwine over time, and through various distribution channels on the Internet and working with our various developer partners, homeowners associations and travel distribution companies, we can come up with an interlocked marketplace that’ll give great value to consumers, to us financially and to our partners,” said May.
Ken May