The geography of private membership is being redrawn. Aspen, long the winter anchor for a certain American UHNWI elite, is now expanding its summer programming to retain members year-round through the Aspen Institute’s expanded calendar and the Caribou Club’s evolving offerings. Soho House operates 45 locations with a single membership that covers all of them. Aman’s Aman Members programme operates similarly across its 35+ resorts and city properties. Six Senses Place opened in 2023 in London as a members-only urban anchor to a hotel network spanning 28 properties. The fixed-location membership is becoming the exception. The portable network is becoming the rule.

What unifies the shifts is a single underlying behavior. UHNWI principals are extending their seasons. The traditional rhythm of two or three primary destinations (Aspen winter, Mediterranean summer, perhaps a fall in New York) has fragmented into continuous mobility, with principals moving across six to ten locations per year, sometimes staying as little as two or three weeks in each. The Ultra-Mobile owner archetype Knight Frank identifies in its Wealth Report 2026 (a principal spending fewer than 90 days per year in any single residence) generates a parallel mobility demand for sociability and infrastructure (Knight Frank, 2026).

Private clubs and members-only properties have responded by extending their calendars. Some have introduced shoulder-season programming. Others have built portable membership across multiple locations. The Aman Members programme is the most architecturally complete of these: a single membership grants access across all Aman properties globally, with integration into hotel residences for those who own them. Six Senses Place applies a similar logic. Soho House operates 200,000+ members through a single global membership. The portable model is structurally different from the fixed-location club model that dominated the 20th century.

Caroline Knowles’ framework for understanding how the very rich produce social standing applies directly. The destination club worked through scarcity of access: only certain people could be in a single physical location, and the location itself signaled membership. The portable network works through credential consistency: the member is recognised in any of the network’s locations, with the membership itself signaling status. Knowles describes how this shift has gradually transformed elite sociability from a place-based to a credential-based system (Knowles, 2022). The Aman or Soho House member walking into a foreign city is not anonymous. The membership credential is recognised within minutes.

Economics work for both members and operators. For the member, a portable membership of, say, 100,000 dollars annual fee covering 30 properties is cheaper than 30 separate local memberships. For the operator, the network membership creates substantial cross-property revenue (restaurants, spa, programming) and provides marketing reach into peer networks that no single property can achieve. Soho House’s 2024 reported revenue exceeded 1.2 billion dollars across the network (Soho House Group, 2024). Aman’s hotel residence integration model has driven the company’s expansion into 35+ properties globally with development pipeline doubled since 2020.

The implications for fixed-location clubs are non-trivial. The Birley clubs in London (Annabel’s, 5 Hertford Street, the Mark’s, the new Carrington) retain their position through extreme curation and physical exclusivity. The same applies to the most established New York clubs (Knickerbocker, Brook, Century). But the mid-tier of fixed-location clubs (single-property memberships at the 5,000 to 50,000 dollar annual fee tier) faces pressure from the portable networks that can offer wider access at comparable prices.

Geographic expansion of the portable model is visible. Aspen’s evolution from winter-only destination to year-round members infrastructure is the clearest case. The Aspen Institute’s summer programming, the renovated Hotel Jerome and Little Nell, and the broader integration of Aspen Skiing Company’s properties with year-round members benefits have extended Aspen’s relevance well beyond the December-March window. Comporta, on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, has emerged as a summer member destination with Quinta da Comporta and other private developments. Mykonos remains active but is increasingly complemented by Paros, Antiparos, and the Sporades for principals seeking less-saturated peer environments.

The model that wins in the next decade is the network membership with carefully calibrated location strategy. Aman is positioning itself most aggressively here, with its hotel-residence-club integration extending across markets the network previously did not serve (Aman New York, Aman Tokyo, Aman Bangkok, Aman Beijing, with planned expansion to Miami and California). Six Senses is pursuing a similar architecture with a different aesthetic. Soho House remains the broadest network, though structurally more democratic in its membership profile.

For brokerages and advisors operating in this space, the implication is direct. Static membership offerings tied to a single location are losing relevance for the most mobile clients. The portable membership network is becoming the structural answer. Real estate developers building branded residences are increasingly integrating club memberships into the residential proposition, mirroring the Aman model. Yacht brokerages serving the Ultra-Mobile cohort are partnering with portable membership networks to deliver an integrated lifestyle offering across the principal’s full footprint.

The historical pattern is worth noting. Each previous generation of UHNWI mobility (the 1920s European grand tour, the 1960s Atlantic crossing, the 1980s Pacific Rim integration) eventually produced its corresponding membership infrastructure. The current generation’s distinctive feature is not just geographic mobility but the speed of movement: principals expecting 24 to 48 hour transition between physical locations, with the membership credential providing immediate access in each. The Aman Members programme is structurally designed for this transition speed. The traditional country club, with its multi-week onboarding and local social vetting, is not.

For service providers, the operational implication is to think of the principal’s membership portfolio as part of the asset architecture. A complete UHNWI advisory relationship in 2026 includes mapping the principal’s club memberships, identifying gaps in the geographic coverage, and proactively connecting the principal into emerging portable networks where coverage is missing. The traditional advisor focused on transactions and financial assets is increasingly outflanked by the advisor who recognises that membership infrastructure is itself part of the client’s wealth architecture.

References

• Atkinson, R., Burrows, R., and Rhodes, D. (2016) ’Capital City? London’s Housing Markets and the Super-Rich’, in I. Hay and J.V. Beaverstock (eds.) Handbook on Wealth and the Super-Rich. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 225-243.

• Harrington, B. (2016) Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Hay, I. and Beaverstock, J.V. (eds.) (2016) Handbook on Wealth and the Super-Rich. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78347-403-5.

• Knight Frank (2025a) The Global Branded Residence Survey 2025. London: Knight Frank Research.

• Knight Frank (2026) The Wealth Report 2026. London: Knight Frank Research.

• Knowles, C. (2022) Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London. London: Allen Lane (Penguin).

• Paris, C. (2016) ’The Residential Spaces of the Super-Rich’, in I. Hay and J.V. Beaverstock (eds.) Handbook on Wealth and the Super-Rich. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, Chapter 12, pp. 244-263.