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The story of Club Las Calas starts in the early 1980’s with a group of friends from the United Kingdom, who were in the habit of taking holidays together on the island of Lanzarote. In late 1983, a number of them jointly purchased a partially completed 19-apartment resort in Puerto del Carmen. This opened in April 1984 as Club Las Calas and now forms the area of the Club known as Las Calas 1.
In the face of a greater demand for apartments than could initially be satisfied, a small group of individuals got together and raised loans to purchase an adjacent plot of land, on which to build a further resort – the area now known as Las Calas 2. Shortly thereafter, a third plot of land was purchased, on which Las Calas 3 was subsequently constructed. To manage their affairs, they also set up two companies: called Las CalasSales and Circle Holidays, respectively, which were also used to market the four resorts in both the United Kingdom and Norway.
Over the next five years, although great efforts were made to turn the resort into a viable operation, including the incorporation of the adjacent Club Mimosa into the Las Calas resort, the combined Clubs faced increasing cash-flow problems, largely because insufficient apartment weeks had been sold. Just before Easter 1990, one of the Club’s creditors demanded that Las Calas Sales and Circle Holidays, plus the then existing four Clubs – Las Calas 1, 2, 3 and Mimosa - be placed in administrative receivership, with the intention of selling off their assets and recovering as much as possible of the money which had been loaned to them.
At this point, an accountant, who had been acting as Secretary to the respective Owners’ Committees of the four Clubs, made an approach to the Official Receiver in Edinburgh, Scotland. He suggested to the Receiver that it ought to be possible to continue to operate the four Clubs and, following extended discussions on Good Friday 1990, his business plan was accepted and put into operation at once.
Under the plan, the four original Clubs were all formally closed down and then reopened as a single, combined Club Las Calas, under the direction of a joint, elected Owners’ Committee. New companies were formed in the UK and the Canary Islands to own and manage the Club’s assets and a meeting of the Creditors of the original four Clubs was held, at which it was made clear that the new companies would not assume responsibility for the debts of either Las Calas Sales, Circle Holidays or the former Clubs. That said, the two existing major creditors – the Royal Bank of Scotland and First National Commercial Bank – both retained property assets on the Club Las Calas site, as surety against recovery of some or all of the loans they had made.
The accountant, meanwhile, had formed a resort management company – TMSI – which began the twin tasks of managing the resort itself and of dealing with the administration on behalf of the thousands of timeshare owners who had a stake in the Club. A Resort Manager and an Accountant were hired in Lanzarote – both of them are still there – while, at Market Harborough in Leicestershire, England, TMSI set up a management office to handle members’ accounts, billing, bookings, rentals and the like.
Thereafter, the first priority was to sell apartment weeks and, in this, the Club was greatly assisted by its major Trustee – the Royal Bank of Scotland – who agreed to offer weeks for sale to its own staff, many of whom subsequently became members of the Club.
The twelve years since those events has been the story of how Club Las Calas has paid off its debts, repurchased all outstanding assets from its creditors, sold off all 7,200 of the available apartment weeks and built up its financial reserves.
The Club undertook a total refurbishment of all apartments at the resort in 1999/2000, funded by £400,000 from Club funds and a £200 levy per apartment week owned, which raised a further £1.4 million.
As part of the refurbishment, both of the on-site bars and restaurants were also given a complete make-over and a brand new leisure complex, together with a range of other facilities, was constructed in former storage space, underneath Las Calas 3.
Thanks to these improvements, guest satisfaction scores improved greatly, with the result that, in 2001, Club Las Calas was formally recognised by RCI as a Resort of International Distinction. Further improvements over the following 12 months enabled the Club to achieve RCI Gold Crown status in 2002, an accolade that it retained in 2003 and 2004.
In 2001, TMSI was purchased by Resort Solutions Limited [ Europe ] and they took over the task of looking after the Club’s affairs. However, the core members of the original management team are still there.
As the Club goes forward in the new Millennium, its finances are in a healthy state, it is fully sold out, all apartments are safely held in Trust and the Club has control of all of its assets. The future looks bright.
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