Bluegreen Vacations Smoky Mountains – What To Expect Without Bass Pro Guest.

As of Saturday, May 25, 2019, Bluegreen Vacations was no longer permitted to market vacation ownership interests in Bass Pro stores. This is a lot more significant than will be let on to the Bluegreen sales associates.

Almost certainly, the Director Of Sales and the management team have had several meetings discussing what can be disclosed to the sales reps, and what should or shouldn’t be allowed to be discussed regarding the Bass Pro topic while at work.

There will no doubt be update meetings with the sales associates and the usual “It will be ok, it will not affect anything, so let’s just keep it business as usual” propaganda for some time to come.

However, Bluegreen relied on Bass Pro guest quite heavily. A simple guestimation of over 30% of their guest was Bass Pro marketed. This is a big deal. For the next 6-9 months, it may not appear to be a big deal because there’s a pipeline of guest that was booked months earlier and are still scheduled to arrive. But when that pipeline runs dry it will be a different story.

What makes it worse is that ever since the relationship between Bass Pro and Bluegreen began, Bluegreen relaxed almost completely on contracting OPC locations in the area and has allowed the competition to gobble up all of the prime spots. This could be the biggest challenge for the company in the near future.

Re-claiming or finding OPC locations on the fly in the summer with all the prime locations already contracted by the competition will be a daunting task, to say the least. It could actually prove to be impossible for years to come.

Even if they could jump right back into the prime locations, it would still be a challenge to adjust to the new normal. Bass Pro guest was considered premium and pre-qualified guest.

Normally within the timeshare industry that would mean they offered much higher “volume per guest” and “Closing” percentages than the traditional OPC guest would. Replacing a 30% premium guest count with OPC marketing from sub-par locations is a huge financial back step.

So from where we stand, unless something major changes, and soon, it appears that it could, and most likely will be a very bumpy road to start 2020 for Bluegreen Vacations. Not only could guest count drop dramatically, especially in the off seasons but so could the overall sales volume and efficiencies of all the Bluegreen Vacations Resorts.

Although there may be a team of people scurrying to seek out a marketing alternative, it will be a difficult task to prevent financial losses as the pipeline of Bass Pro guest is draining at this very moment. Every day that passes without an immediate replacement is one more “future day” of uncertainty.

Although we wish them all the best going forward, it doesn’t look so good at the moment.

Simple math suggests – Less guest, less qualified, more recisions and more pressure to get every deal possible