The Hotel Conversation chats exclusively to Barry Robinson, President and Managing Director, International Operations, Wyndham Destinations about the strong growth of the company’s Asia Pacific vacation clubs and its managed hotel portfolio. In his role leading the company’s international growth, Barry runs two different types of businesses within Wyndham Destinations — a consumer-facing leisure travel business, and a B2B hotel management business.

You’ve significantly expanded your operations in Asia over the past five years. Now that travel restrictions are lifting, how confident are you feeling about Asian travel markets?

As a whole, Asia has been slower to return compared to other markets like Australia, Canada and the USA, and we won’t see visitor numbers return to pre-covid levels until China opens its borders to outbound travel. Recovery in Thailand and places like Bali has been slower than anticipated, considering that Thailand’s two biggest markets were Russia and China. The war in Ukraine has stopped many Russians from travelling, and China continues to act conservatively in its response to Covid-19.

We believe a strong wave in Chinese outbound travel will begin again in 2023. In Japan, with tour groups now able to travel there, we anticipate this market will be extremely popular with Australian travellers as soon as borders open fully. Just prior to the pandemic, we acquired 18 resorts in Japan, and while these properties have continued to enjoy domestic demand, our international club members are very keen to get there.

We have been using the quieter time to secure our first-mover advantage. We are renovating our Wyndham Sea Pearl property in Phuket and have significantly expanded our club marketing operations across Indonesia, China, Japan and Thailand. Chinese are eager to travel abroad and we are ready for the resurgence of Chinese travel.

You have been expanding the reach of your vacation clubs across Asia. Now that travel is picking up, is momentum picking up on the growth of these clubs?

In 2020, we launched the Innovative Holiday Club (IHC). This is a completely new model of vacation club, developed as a direct response to evolving consumer preferences. It provides an option to join a club with much shorter term, and unlike most vacation clubs, members of IHC only pay annual levies if they holiday. Another unique feature is that the club’s assets are sold at the end of the club term and the net proceeds flow back to members. Having pre-paid for their holidays, members secure their future holidays at today’s prices and own a slice of the assets in the trust, which is highly desired value proposition in today’s inflationary economy.

We purchased Sundance Resort Club in Japan in 2018, and many of these club members are now transitioning across to IHC, because it gives them access outside of Japan to a collection of resorts across the globe.

Club Wyndham South Pacific, which we established in 2000, is also seeing strong demand with sales once again increasing month on month.

With close to 71,000 club members across our Asia Pacific clubs and with dedicated sales and marketing teams now established in Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan and China, we expect to see our member numbers grow significantly over the coming months.

In addition to your expansion in Asia I understand you have rolled out a number of refurbishments across Australia. Can you tell us about these transformations?

Late last year, we completed a $25 million development of Club Wyndham Resort Flynns Beach in Port Macquarie, New South Wales. The resort doubled in size after we added 53 x one to four-bedroom villas, with 20 designated as Deluxe, 25 as Grand and eight as Presidential. The four-bedroom Presidential villas in particular are an unparalleled product within the region.

We also recently completed a $16 million upgrade to Club Wyndham Airlie Beach, including the addition of two spectacular 3-bedroom presidential suites, each with a spa on the balcony. That property is extremely popular and is running at over 90 percent average occupancy.

A $5 million upgrade to Club Wyndham Dunsborough in Western Australia is now underway with 85 apartments getting a complete makeover. Plus, we have more refurbishment works slated for Ramada by Wyndham Golden Beach, Ramada by Wyndham Marcoola Beach and Wyndham Hotel Melbourne for later this year.

To keep them in ‘as new’ condition, we spend close to $4 million on every one of our vacation club properties every five or so years.

What new properties do you have in the pipeline, and where are you looking for new opportunities?

The 124-room TRYP Pulteney Street Adelaide is a brand-new building set to open later this year. This will be a beautiful property and we look forward to its completion as Adelaide’s first TRYP flagged hotel. The 205-room Ramada Playford in Adelaide’s north is also under construction. We will manage both these properties as pure-play hotels under management deals we have with Wyndham Hotels and Resorts as their preferred management partner.

We are always on the lookout for more hotel management opportunities, along with mixed-use developments to assist with the growth of our vacation clubs. We are actively scoping markets where we see great potential including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, China and the Middle East.