Marriott Vacations Worldwide has rolled out a couple of new marketing programs in the past year, aimed at boosting customer engagement and brand loyalty.
During the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday, CEO Steve Weisz spoke about those programs.
“I would say pretty much on an equal basis, both our call transfer program with Marriot and our new enhanced universal Encore Program have both contributed very meaningfully to that 20,000 tour increase over what we saw same time last year,” Weisz said, according to Seeking Alpha. “When you think about where those customers come from, clearly from the call transfer program, you can say 100%, but I would say a vast majority of those customers will be first-time buyers. They will be new to us, people we haven’t talked to before that will come through and take a tour and hopefully make a purchase.”
Weisz also addressed the universal Encore Program.
“I think that will be a mix between first-time buyers, they came through and decided not to buy on their tour, but want to come back and take another bite at the apple,” he explained. “And some existing customers, that for whatever reason, are owners, they say, ‘Yes, I want to buy some more. I just want to buy some more right now.’ So that would be the balance that I would see, but I would tell you both of those programs that we began work on late last year have really performed very well for us.”
Weisz offered some updated on the company’s longer-term strategies through its contract sales.
“We view this as a two-pronged approach,” he explained. “First, to grow tours through the ramp-up with certain marketing programs; and second, to grow our top-line sales through new sales locations at exciting new destinations. As it relates to our new marketing efforts, early last year, we began a deliberate and focused effort to invest in new programs as well as enhancements to existing programs that are targeted at building our pipeline of tours. Such programs include our call transfer program with Marriott International and our enhanced Encore program. We are very optimistic about these programs given the tremendous growth we have seen in our tour pipeline since these efforts began. Our pipeline of tours through these two new programs alone has grown by almost 20,000 packages when compared to the same time last year.”
This pipeline, Weisz said, represents more than $60 million in potential future contract sales volumes.
“As it relates to our strategy to grow contract sales through new sales centers at new destinations in Washington D.C. our owners are already enjoying access to our Marriott Vacation Club units at the iconic Mayflower Hotel,” he added. “We are currently preparing to sell the inventory from those 71 units through our Points Trust, and we expect the sales center to Mayflower to open in the middle of next year. In California, we began the conversion of 264 units at our operating hotel in San Diego, with the first phase of these units along with a new sales center expected to be delivered in the middle of next year. In Hawaii, we continue to have discussions for potential capital efficient structures as we move toward closing on the purchase of 246 hotel rooms at the Waikoloa Marriott on the Big Island of Hawaii. We intend to convert these hotel rooms into a 112 time-share units and also plan to convert a portion of the hotels’ meeting space into our sales center.”
Weisz is optimistic about the company’s full-year results, projecting adjusted EBITDA to be toward the high end of $222 million to $232 million.