Mega-rich offered $10m 'timeshare'

Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times, 28 August 2005

The property market may be wilting but there was good news last week for the owners of 50-bedroom castles. An American entrepreneur with $500m (£277m) to spend is looking for a landmark property for the world’s most exclusive travel club.

Tim Blixseth of the Montana-based Yellowstone Club inspected two castles in Britain last weekend, but neither met the standards required for a club whose membership fees will start at an introductory rate of $4m and will eventually rise to $10m.

Blixseth made his fortune in timber. He has already snapped up 243 acres of prime Scottish land in the golfing mecca of St Andrews, where he plans to build a golf course for the Yellowstone Club World. It intends to accept no more than 150 members.

The club has also acquired 1,600 acres of beachfront property in Mexico, a fishing lodge in Alaska, a spa in Palm Springs and a castle in Ireland. All will be for the exclusive use of club members who, in addition to the world’s highest joining fee, will pay up to $100,000 in annual charges.

Blixseth is also looking for a villa in Tuscany but last week he was keen to dispel any notion that his project is a glorified timeshare for busy billionaires. “Other resorts offer a house on the beach. We will own the beach,” he said. For their money, members will get year-round access to up to 10 ultra-luxury properties on a first-come first-served basis. They will be able to travel on one of the club’s two yachts and its fleet of private jets.

“We’re simplifying the entrepreneur’s life,” said Blixseth.

“However rich you are, you’re not going to buy 10 of these places around the world. It takes people to run them, it takes effort and staff and we’ll be doing all that. Now our members will just pick up the phone and they are taken care of. It’s easy.”

The project marks what many US travel consultants regard as a quantum leap in marketing holidays to the mega-rich. In recent years a new breed of exclusive travel companies has targeted multi-millionaires who want luxury and privacy at popular destinations.

Several other timeshare-style clubs have been formed, some offering limited stays at private mansions worth up to $8m. But the financial scale of the Yellowstone project dwarfs its mostly American competitors.

“There are lots of people who can afford $250,000 to join a fancy club,” said a New York travel consultant. “But $10m is a different ballpark. For $10m, you’ve got to be special.”

The 225-member Yellowstone Club was founded by Blixseth as a skiing and golf resort in the mountains of Montana. The club claims that its two privately owned mountains will eventually offer members more space to ski than at either Vail or Aspen, the popular Rocky Mountain resorts. Inspired by the globe-trotting lifestyles of Sir James Goldsmith, the late entrepreneur who sold his US timber interests to Blixseth, and Peter de Savary, former owner of Skibo Castle, the Yellowstone Club decided to seek properties, yachts and planes that would give even jaded billionaires holidays to remember.

“The challenge is to transform the mansions and boats into some phenomenal ongoing experience that will justify the fee,” said Russ Alan Prince, a luxury travel specialist. In Britain, Blixseth said, the club still hoped to find a castle that has already been extensively renovated. “We don’t want to put more than $10m into renovations because it takes too much time,” he said.

He paid tribute to de Savary for his restoration of Skibo Castle — now a resort hotel where Madonna and Guy Ritchie were married. “If I could buy Skibo, I’d do it tomorrow,” he said. He has commissioned Sotheby’s International Realty to find suitable alternatives.

Blixseth declined to identify potential club members but New York consultants said the concept might prove attractive to security and privacy conscious executives and celebrities. “At those prices you’re looking at Oprah Winfrey [the television presenter], Michael Jordan [the retired basketball star] and George Clooney [the actor],” said one consultant.

“You’re also looking at high-tech types who don’t take many vacations and who want to be sure that if they take a week off they are going to be treated right. Maybe the Google guys,” he added, referring to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who became billionaires after the flotation of their internet company.

According to Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, the number of people in the United States with more than $30m in financial assets grew by 10% last year to 30,000. Blixseth said he was stunned at the response to a mention of his plan in The Wall Street Journal.

“The next day we had 300,000 hits on our website,” he said. “You can’t believe how many qualified buyers have called from around the world.”

At the level his club is aiming at, Blixseth said, the fees were “the least of these people’s worries . . . I’m literally shocked at the number of people waiting to spend the money”.