#…..gay ski week anthem currently

[blogaboutmusic]

all the playlists !

did this a while ago, but my spotify changed so much that i decided to do it again, and also because i have a lot of new followers! thank you & thank you if you follow my playlists! Be sure to check the list out bc i have a playlist for almost every genre & mood!

● ✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ* existential crisis:  everything i have that is sad ● 2019 ; letz getit: music i discovered so far in 2019 / music that is important to me in 2019 ● 20(18)GAYTEEN: every album that came out in 2018 (at least of artists i like) ● 20(19)BITEEN: every album that came out in 2019 (/artist i like :) ) ● 5sᴏs ; complete: i think the title says it all ● ａｌｉｅｎｓ: a mix full of alt. songs. dope. 10/10 recommend to aliens ● all of it ; alternative ?: stuff that is alt but not quite, pop punk but not quite, rock but not quite, etc! ● all of it ; emo music: EVERYTHING YOU NEED. EVERYTHING SAD. EVERYTHING ANGRY. EVERYTHING GUITAR. pop-punk punk-rock emo/rock indie/alternative ● all of it ; k-pop: all the k-pop music that I listen to, stuffed into one mix. ● ᴀʟʟ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴡ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of all time low’s music ● angry k-pop bops: a playlist that was inspired by district 9 of stray kids ● autumn, baby: perfect songs for fall! ● back to the future: idk some albums that i love listening to that go really well together ● bandito tour ; twenty one pilots: a playlist for an upcoming concert ● b͓̽a͓̽n͓̽g͓̽ ͓̽c͓̽h͓̽a͓̽n͓̽: a playlist for my bias of stray kids! ● ʙᴀɴɢᴛᴀɴɢ sᴏɴʏᴇᴏɴᴅᴀɴ ; ʙᴛs: all of bts’ music in one playlist ● best intro's, no argue: okay but really 505 is one of the best songs ever don’t fight me on that one ● bi bops: actually it doesnt matter if you’re gay, straight, pan or bi, these all work. just bops. ● b-sides, : songs i tend to forget about because i mostly listen to other songs on the albums... but they deserve the world so there you go ● 𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝖒𝖊: kinda angry, kinda alternative. ● bon voyage: i listened to this a lot when i went to paris and when i have to travel a lot. travel worthy. ● bop that Bussy ; emo version: FAV EMO JAMS AND BOPS AND BANGERS ● bring me the horizon ; complete : all of bmth’s music ● bts amsterdam 13.10.18: SETLIST ly tour amsterdam but also europe. i miss them a lot & wanna thank them for one of my best nights ever

● calm my anxious ass: what i need when i’m breaking down & alone again ● chanyeol (っ◔◡◔)っ: a playlist for my exo bias, mostly english sung songs though ● chilly billy doobop: so nice to have as background music or for when there’s a friend over. just ever so fckn CHILL ● classical // piano: classical music, mostly piano ● current mood: songs i’m probably listening to right now (lmao still) ● daniel james howell: a playlist for my fav youtuber!!! ● daydream: my playlist with music that makes me dream for a better version of me ● ᴅᴀʏ6 ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: every day6 song ever. stan talent stan day6 ● death / school mix: songs about dying & other relatable stuff for school, ha ha ● dizzy tummy: stuff i listen to strolling through the city or being in a specific trainride ● dope on a rope: no, this isn't a playlist for the growlers' song, it's old beats. ● emo & alternative: sum emo tunes! totally random *insert that one crazy emoji with the tongue out* ● energize this tired bub: upbeat tempo music that really energizes me ● energetic appleflap: playlist for a friend (that i have crush on) ● eɴᴛᴇʀᴛᴀɪɴᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀᴘᴀʀᴋꜱ: music i  listened to before & after my waterparks concert + every waterparks song ever & the setlist ● ᴇxᴏ ; xᴏxᴏ: exo complete. please give us a ot9 comeback ● exploring: stuff i have yet to listen to ● fᴀʟʟ ᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴏʏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of FOB’s music. can you believe i’m still emo trash? ● frickity freck!: fresh alt-ish music ● fuck me up: a ReAlLy gOoD aLterNaTiVe / IndiE / eMo playlist? ● funky dunky business: the bass in these is mostly really mcflipping good ● geez, morty: playlist for fake friends ● ɢᴏᴛ7 ; ᴀʜɢᴀsᴇ: all of got7 their music ● ɢʀᴇᴇɴ ᴅᴀʏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of green day aka my fav band their music ! every.thing. ● grrr. : just metal and grunge. heavy shit ● guitars: really good guitars like guns ‘n roses & beatles and just guitars that i love??? ● guns  n' roses setlist: setlist g ‘n r Europe 2017 ● halsey: indie artist, all her music in a playlist ● happy vibes: music that makes me smile!! ● hoe anthems (k-pop ver.); k-pop bops that make me go wanna hoe the heck out ● homework // calm: music i listen to when i make homework ● hug me pls: acoustic songs i wanna listen to while cuddling ● i’m a mess: a good, short playlist i- lol- unironically made when i discovered Michael Clifford had a girlfriend lmao i hope theyre happy they deserve it ● i, an intellectual: a nerd: music from movies and series i really dig ● interactive introverts: music they played and i listened to before interactive introverts ● jae = bae: this one goes out to jae, guitarist and vocal legend in the band day6 ● jazzin' away: jazz, my friend. ● j-pop ; rock 'n soul: my favourite j-pop songs!! yes, that includes all one ok rock songs. ● journal writings: i attempt to keep up a journal. this gives me vibes. sometimes a bit more uptempo, but mostly a bit softer ● judith.eliza: for a friend ● jughead's tape: for jughead jones, of riverdale ● just guitars, nothing else.: just acoustic guitars of some of my fav songs, really good for while studying i think ● k-grooves: korean r&b and indie ● k-pop ; essential jams: my favourite k-pop songs, which are quite a lot! ● k-pop ; girls: all my girl groups’ music ● k-rock ; you make myday: all my favourite k-rock songs, yes that includes every day6 song because they are just that good sorry ● last young renegade tour: music i listened to before & after my all time low concert + the setlist ●  letters to you: songs that made me think of my crush. i think people can realate? ● let there be luf: some new alt, sum songs about love ● lilacskyjimin ; fav: playlist for a friend ● lone hours: in: feeling lonely? we do, too, dont worry. youre not alone. ● mama: stuff i grew up with / stuff my mother and i both like ● marina & the diamonds: apperantly she’s only called marina now? one of the best female singers i know, indie as f*ck ● ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ; 5sos:  playlist for the 5sos concert, setlist and the songs in between! ● micmicbudgee ; fav: playlist for a friend ● mom jeans, tired eyes: mostly 70s and 80s BOPS ● ᴍᴏɴsᴛᴀ x ; ᴍᴏɴʙᴇʙᴇ: all of monsta x’s music in a playlist ● muse ; complete: all of alt rock band muse their songs ● my chemical romance ; complete: emo rock band mcr all of their music ● my youngblood chronicals: alt rock songs. the reason why i’m still fighting ● nederlandse bodem: my favourite Dutch songs! ● ɴᴇᴏ ᴄᴜʟᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴛᴇᴄʜɴᴏʟᴏɢʏ ; ɴᴄᴛ: nct complete, in a playlist ● nienisneckdeep ; fav: playlist for a friend ● nights: songs i like to listen to before going to sleep ● noa.myg: fav: another playlist for a friend ● non-english bops: jewish, french, spanish, swedish, irish and celtic music like omnia (which is partly english but i think it fits here so tough luck) ● one ok rock ; complete: one ok rock is a japanese rock band that sings in english in their latest work ● ᴘᴀɴɪᴄ! ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪsᴄᴏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of panic! at the disco’s music in a playlist ● paramore ; complete: paramore was a punk rock band with a female singer, and now they make alt rock ● paris: a playlist for a city that i miss, a time that i miss ● ᴘᴇɴᴛᴀɢᴏɴ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: aka all of k-pop group Pentagon their music in a playlist ● pizza punk: waterparks, neck deep, with con and music like that. perfect for skating eheh ● power vocals: beautiful voices ! voices that make me jealous ● problems with sleeping: lovely alt songs, some of them are about not being able to sleep ● queen discography: you know that movie, bohemian rhapsody..? ● rad activist shit: end gun violence. black lives matter. abortions should be legal, pedophiles and rapists should not be able to walk free. oh and love is love, get over it. angry songs, songs about revolution. ● rainbow: love songs, some sad (rain), some ever so happy (sun). together they make a rainbow ● red hot chili peppers: the red hot chili peppers are rock band and if you dont know them, look them up!! ● revolution radio 2017: music i listened to before & after my green day concert + the setlist ● rev up my spaceship, bois: modern hard rock in a playlist! ● sad boi o’clock: another sad playlist, you can never have enough of these ● sᴀʏ ᴛʜᴇ ɴᴀᴍᴇ ; sᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴇᴇɴ: seventeens (k-pop) complete music discography ● skylinn ; khaleesiqoyi: first playlist i made for a friend: my best friend ● slytherin headgirl: this is what the people in slytherin listen to, i swear ● socrates would deffo stan: indie and alt, only for intellectuals (i’m just kidding) ● soft; rock™: soft (old) rock ● soft; k-pop: for if you wanna weep along with exo, bts,, etc ● soundtrack of my life 🌙: the basics to my music ● space jams 🚀: most songs are about wanting to run away, perfect for when you’re in space ● spoopy rave: i secretly listen to this through the year, idec ● starry skies, snazzy beats: mostly cute beats, perfect for studying or staring at the sky ● sᴛᴀʏ ; sᴛʀᴀʏ ᴋɪᴅs !: all of stray kids songs, go stan them already and please stay ● stranger things: songs that give me a stranger things vibe ● supernatural ; rock & grunge: stuff Dean Winchester would listen to, blue oyster cult, aerosmith, black sabbath, stuff like that ● tae tae: a playlist for v of bts, one of my biases ● the 1975: an alt band, latest work: an brief inquiry into online relationships ● the neighbourhood: very chill music. kinda rap, kinda alt ● these physically turn me on: really, really good songs, or nice vocals, idk how to explain ● tits out for harambe: the closest thing i have to pop music / rap i guess, with khai dreams, frank ocean, childish gambino, ari, troye, ya know ● tokyo: a playlist for dreaming about the feeling of a city ● travel back in time: 50s, 60s music, stuff i listen to with my grandpa but also alone cuz its fun ● twenty øne piløts ; complete: all of twenty one pilots their music ● underappreciated alt songs: alternative songs that i think deserve (even more) hype! ● waterparks ; complete: nice new pop punk band that deffo has a lot of talent! ● when the week ends: a mix for the weekend ● wubbalubbadubdub: old bops that make me forget about my sadness ● year in review: 2018: music i discovered in 2018 / music that was important to me in 2018 / songs that came out in 2018 ● yoongi: songs where you can sing yoongi really clearly and songs that make me think of him ● you’re making me feel miserable: songs i listened to after i confessed to my crush and he turned me down sksksksk

please reblog, it helps my blog a lot, tysm

[nexusradiodance]

Guy Scheiman And Amuka channel #metoo movement

Tel Aviv-based label-head, music producer, and DJ Guy Scheiman teamed up with legendary vocalist Amuka for their brand new single titled Stand Up. Guy’s latest production combines house, progressive, tribal, and tech-house for this incredible dance-floor anthem.

Guy recently wrapped a U.S.A tour and will be returning for Aspen Gay Ski Week. Here is what Guy had to say about his upcoming projects:

“I will be heading to the U.S. again next weekend for the Aspen Gay Ski Week. I will be spinning there on January 18th (Thursday). So if you’re down there, I would like to see you. Also, coming up I will be releasing the remixes for Stand Up in a month or two.

There are a couple new singles that I’m finishing up – the first is called Always On My Mind, a Pet Shop Boys cover with my singer Sagi from Denver. Then I’m gonna work on a follow-up single with Michal on another cover, but I will reveal the details later on.”

There is certainly great music chemistry between Guy and Amuka, but what does  Stand Up mean for Amuka?

Amuka shares all the details of this song in an exclusive interview with Nexus Radio. She stated that Stand Up was inspired by current events, notably the #metoo movement and Oprah’s recent Golden Globes speech. “I just wanted to do something to bring us back together… with everything happening with women standing up … it seems to be the right time for this song.”

The right time indeed, while recording the vocals in Detroit at the historic Penobscot Building, women in the neighboring offices started to coming up to the recording studio to find out the name of this track.

Amuka shares her deepest thoughts, she reveals her personal connection to the #metoo movement, her inspiring new book that is currently in the works and so much more.

Guy Scheiman featuring Amuka Stand Up is currently impacting dance radio and dance-floors all across the world!

jQuery(document).ready(function($){ $('.Amuka_Interview_2018').tPlayer({ playlist: '[{"artist":"Amuka","title":"Interview 2018","audio":"http://ift.tt/2FsqjZJ","cover":"http://ift.tt/2ExDBCI","opttype":"","optional":"","radiomode":"false","radiotype":"","radiohost":"","radioport":"","radiomount":""}]', autoplay: 0, showPlaylist: 0, shuffle: 0, shuffleOn: 0, share: 1, twitterText: '', compactMode: 0, defaultVolume: 0.75, promoMode: 0, promo: '', promoTime: '', itunes_cover: 0, }); });

from Dance – Nexus Radio http://ift.tt/2Ez9KKf

[joejstrickl]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, with vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa.

Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-ups are becoming a major driver of growth for Diamond, which is trying to change the perceptions of the timeshare business.

We spoke with Mike Flaskey (right), CEO of Diamond Resorts, about the brand’s strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over 500,000 families that own their vacations with us.

We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage 109 of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80% of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond Resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation and timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model.” Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform.

If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in ski-in-ski-out 12-bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points.

The ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members. We can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

How are you marketing these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between.

So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

When we started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media, 30-minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf—we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours—and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them.

Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3,000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people upgrading to those choosing to become an owner. And today, over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks-and-mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer.

In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get.

As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A via editor@brandchannel.com.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter for more.

The post Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey appeared first on brandchannel:.

[glenmenlow]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, with vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa.

Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-ups are becoming a major driver of growth for Diamond, which is trying to change the perceptions of the timeshare business.

We spoke with Mike Flaskey (right), CEO of Diamond Resorts, about the brand’s strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over 500,000 families that own their vacations with us.

We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage 109 of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80% of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond Resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation and timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model.” Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform.

If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in ski-in-ski-out 12-bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points.

The ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members. We can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

How are you marketing these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between.

So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

When we started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media, 30-minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf—we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours—and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them.

Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3,000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people upgrading to those choosing to become an owner. And today, over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks-and-mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer.

In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get.

As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A via editor@brandchannel.com.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter for more.

The post Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey appeared first on brandchannel:.

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/event-of-a-lifetime-5-questions-with-diamond-resorts-ceo-mike-flaskey-2/ via IFTTT

[markjsousa]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, with vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa.

Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-ups are becoming a major driver of growth for Diamond, which is trying to change the perceptions of the timeshare business.

We spoke with Mike Flaskey (right), CEO of Diamond Resorts, about the brand’s strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over 500,000 families that own their vacations with us.

We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage 109 of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80% of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond Resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv http://pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation and timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model.” Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform.

If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in ski-in-ski-out 12-bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points.

The ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members. We can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings http://pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

How are you marketing these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between.

So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui http://pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

When we started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media, 30-minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf—we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours—and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them.

Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3,000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people upgrading to those choosing to become an owner. And today, over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks-and-mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer.

In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get.

As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A via editor@brandchannel.com.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter for more.

The post Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey appeared first on brandchannel:.

[markjsousa]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa. Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-up are becoming a major driver of growth and innovation for Diamond. brandchannel had the opportunity to speak with Mike Flaskey, CEO of Diamond Resorts, about their brand and strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over five hundred thousand families that own their vacations with us. We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage a hundred and nine of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80 percent of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv http://pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation, timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model”. Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform. If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in a ski-in-ski-out 12 bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points. So really the ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members, we can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings http://pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

How are you marketing and communicating these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between. So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us you know 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui http://pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

We started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited like 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media 30 minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf, we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours, and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them. Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people, upgrading and those choosing to become an owner. And today over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks and mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer. In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get. As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb’s, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that l has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A via editor@brandchannel.com.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter for more.

The post Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey appeared first on brandchannel:.

[glenmenlow]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa. Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-up are becoming a major driver of growth and innovation for Diamond. brandchannel had the opportunity to speak with Mike Flaskey, CEO of Diamond Resorts, about their brand and strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over five hundred thousand families that own their vacations with us. We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage a hundred and nine of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80 percent of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation, timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model”. Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform. If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in a ski-in-ski-out 12 bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points. So really the ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members, we can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

How are you marketing and communicating these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between. So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us you know 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

We started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited like 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media 30 minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf, we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours, and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them. Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people, upgrading and those choosing to become an owner. And today over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks and mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer. In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get. As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb’s, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that l has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

Get more insights in our Q&A series and suggest a Q&A via editor@brandchannel.com.

Subscribe to our e-newsletter for more.

The post Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey appeared first on brandchannel:.

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/event-of-a-lifetime-5-questions-with-diamond-resorts-ceo-mike-flaskey/ via IFTTT

[joejstrickl]

Event of a Lifetime: 5 Questions With Diamond Resorts CEO Mike Flaskey

Diamond Resorts International is a vacation ownership and hospitality leader, vacation destinations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Europe, Asia, Australasia and Africa. Increasingly, the brand has focused on creating memorable experience beyond offering a place to stay. These VIP events, tours, and celebrity meet-up are becoming a major driver of growth and innovation for Diamond. brandchannel had the opportunity to speak with Mike Flaskey, CEO of Diamond Resorts, about their brand and strategy for providing owners with once-in-a-lifetime experiential vacations.

What is Diamond Resorts, and what do you offer?

Diamond Resorts International is a global hospitality company that sells the vacations of a lifetime to our members. In essence, we are a subscription model where people decide how much vacation time they want to use, and then they purchase that from us. Diamond has over 430 resorts in 37 countries around the world, and is one of the largest vacation ownership companies in the world. Currently, we have just over five hundred thousand families that own their vacations with us. We are known across Europe and North America, and we earn our revenue from three distinct channels. One is our hospitality business: we own and manage a hundred and nine of the resorts that are in our portfolio. The second way that we earn our money is through our vacation ownership business, which is where we market and sell vacation ownership and we develop, purchase or acquire companies that already had product. Then the third is that we finance about 80 percent of the families or people that buy their vacation products from Diamond resorts.

The #DRIGolf Invitational returns to @FSOrlando Jan 12-14, 2018!@ChampionsTour @GolfChannel @FloridaHospital @LPGA https://t.co/yWow4oumAv pic.twitter.com/V0mIPfcbwO

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 10, 2017

What is THE Club, and what are the perks of being a member? How is this differentiated from other points-based exchange programs?

THE Club is what I consider to be the “X Factor” for our entire company. In essence, it is a points product that allows you the ultimate flexibility in travel, accommodation, timing. What our points product does that is different than our competitors is that we have a very heavy focus on what I’ll call the “experiential model”. Not only do we have this experiential model within our club, but we also have it in our marketing and our sales of our VOI division through our Event of a Lifetime platform. If you look at the Airbnbs of the world and others that participate in the sharing economy, you’re starting to hear them talk about that. But we’ve been focusing on these experiential models and not just using our vacation ownership products in the form of condominiums, giving our users the ability to turn their points into tickets to high-profile sporting events like the Masters or a Formula One race. They have the ability to go on cruises, take experiential vacations, even do things like stay in a ski-in-ski-out 12 bedroom homes in Vail or Beaver Creek if they want to combine their points. So really the ability to monetize our club points and turn them into cash gives us the flexibility to be able to offer the ultimate menu to our club members, we can offer them the opportunity to do the unthinkable. No one else in the vacation ownership space has gotten to that point.

.@coltford shows off his recitation skills with “Dirt Road Anthem.” #DRISings pic.twitter.com/D5QLuGvday

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 17, 2017

How are you marketing and communicating these experiences and bringing them to life for consumers who might be interested?

We have a whole team of R&D people that are continuously innovating and coming up with new concepts, but when it comes to communicating these, we have a direct marketing model. On an annual basis, we bring roughly 300,000 families through our sales centers or through our Event of a Lifetime platform that wants to come and try one of these cool, unique experiences that money can’t buy. It may be a country music concert with Cole Swindell or Lee Brice at one of our resorts in an intimate setting with 150 people. It could be going to a New York Yankees spring training game and going down on the field and sitting in a suite with Reggie Jackson. It could be a culinary evening with a celebrity chef, and all kinds of things in between. So we try to demonstrate through a discounted mini-vacation offer where they can come in and stay at one of our resorts for four days and three nights far below market value, and in exchange they’ll give us you know 90 to 120 minutes of their time to learn about our club and what we have to offer. And then we tie that into one of our Event of a Lifetime programs that may be going on regionally, to deliver that combination of seeing, touching and feeling the experiences that really gets the message out to prospective owners.

Pool, pyramid and perfect weather. #StayVacationed https://t.co/pL1biikNU7

: @leilanionmaui pic.twitter.com/AO5NgEErXr

— Diamond Resorts (@diamondresorts) October 16, 2017

What goes into designing these experiences? How do you figure out what your audience is looking for and then deliver that back to them—and beyond?

We started the Event of a Lifetime platform, our very first brand ambassador was a PGA touring professional named Brian Gay, and we tested it here in Orlando around Bay Hill at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. We invited like 15 couples to come in on a Wednesday evening and have dinner with Brian Gay and had a no-media 30 minute Q&A and really get to ask the questions that the golf world was really wanting to ask that you may never get a candid answer on. The next day, after they had a chance to meet Brian, we took them out to Bay Hill and they watched Brian play in his first competitive round on Thursday, and then on Friday they would come in and learn about the Diamond Resorts club and what it would be like to become a member.

What we saw was our close-rates triple after putting people through these sorts of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. So it started with golf, we covered all three of the major PGA golf tours, and then from there went into baseball. We have Reggie Jackson and Gaylord Perry, two Hall of Fame baseball players, and three days a week we’re bringing prospective members through the ballpark and they’re going with Gaylord or Reggie down on the field for batting practice and then sitting in the suite and watching a game with them. Then we started moving from sports into other things, and we tested music—music was a real winner for us. We’ve got four country music stars: Colt Ford, Jana Kramer, Cole Swindell and Lee Brice perform as a part of our Diamond Concert series. We do about 55 private concerts at our resorts for our members and potential members on an annual basis. Then we moved into the culinary world. People absolutely love wellness and food, so our work with celebrity chefs has been very successful.

In 2017, we will do over 3000 of these unique Events of a Lifetime throughout the globe. And it really does provide our prospective owners and our existing members a true event of a lifetime—money can’t buy it. When they have the opportunity to go out and experience it, it has a significant improvement in our close rates, from people, upgrading and those choosing to become an owner. And today over 30 percent of our annual revenues come through the Event of a Lifetime experiential platform.

How are customer expectations changing in the hospitality and travel destination industry, and how does this affect Diamond’s approach?

People are less concerned today about the physical bricks and mortar of the accommodations. What they really want is to understand the comprehensive experience of ownership. So it’s a natural part of our five-year plan to integrate more of these experiences into the lifetime ownership of all of our customer. In addition to that, people are taking shorter vacations than they used to. People don’t take the full week vacation that they used to, they may take three- or four-day and three-night getaways and they want the flexibility that allows them to have a shorter stay and ultimately be able to get what they want to get. As the younger generations start to look at products like this, we know we’re going to have to mirror a lot of the things that they’re already used to—Airbnb’s, other elements of the sharing economy—so we’re continuously learning, innovating and evolving.

And I’m really I’m proud to tell you that for an industry that l has been fairly set in its ways, I think you’ll find that our product offering and our marketing is pretty cutting edge.

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