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MOR Vacation is the newest travel club to arrive in the marketplace and it is quickly passing up long time king of the industry, Global Resorts Network. MOR Vacations is new, but it’s membership company is not. In fact the parent membership company has been around for over 23 years and has more than 100,000 active members.

Global Resorts Network has not had any real competition for the past two years. While YTB and Coastal Vacations have always been out there, they have never really been in the same league as Global Resorts who has simply dominated the Travel Club industry since it was introduced in 2007. The reason is pretty simple, most people don’t like the hassles of coupons and travel vouchers or having to become a travel agent in order to take advantage of great travel discounts.

But the window of opportunity that Global Resorts has enjoyed is rapidly closing and MOR Vacations (the M.O.R. is for Members Only Resorts) is on track to surpass Global Resorts as the most sought after Travel Club. How has MOR Vacations been so successful so quickly?

Americans love financing. The Founder of M.O.R. Vacations, Jon King knows that and although Global Resorts Network has been very successfull, it has never chosen to offer in-house financing for their product. This has left the door wide open to competitor MOR Vacations. By ignoring this bread and butter consumer, Global Resorts drove many sales away.

In today’s tough economic times, a $3000 luxury travel club purchase is not as easy of a sell as it used to be. Several of the top affiliates in Global Resorts had been pleading the company for in-house financing for several months. GRN’s refusal to offer financing drove many sales away from it’s sales force and drove many customers to experiment with more affordable alternatives such as YTB or Coastal Vacations.

Fast forward two years and in steps MOR Vacations. The first thing that MOR Vacations announces is that they will offer in-house financing requiring only a small down payment and easy financing terms open to anyone with at least a 450 credit score. This was the dagger in the heart to Global Resorts and affiliates began a mass exodus from GRN to the fledgling MOR Vacations. Such a large scale switchover has stunned the market, showing just how in tune MOR Vacations President Jon King is with the average consumer.

But financing and trade-in programs were only the beginning of the changes that MOR Vacations introduced. They priced their “Hot Weeks” at half of those of Global Resorts - starting at just $149. But, even more importantly, they focused their inventory such that the majority of those Hot Weeks would be available in the U.S. so that it’s members would not have to purchase last minute international airfare just to take advantage of a discount travel week. They also introduced high end diamond level resorts into their inventory - something that Global Resorts does not offer.

Different yes, but both are more similar than different - similar number of resorts, similar no fee structure, both offer lifetime memberships and guest weeks (though guest weeks at MOR Vacations are unlimited as opposed to only three weeks with GRN).

There are other differences between the companies. MOR Vacations offers a more affordable starter package (only $1298 as opposed to $1500 for GRN) with a longer term (5 years as opposed to 3 years for GRN). MOR Vacations also has about 10% more resorts in its registry and its weeks range from half of the cost of GRN’s up to Diamond level accommodations - something GRN does not offer.

Is there a clear winner? Well they both have large membership companies with more than 22 years of service - you really can’t go wrong with either company. But today the question remains why would you choose Global Resorts when feature by feature they are either matched or surpassed by MOR Vacations?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Business.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.