Melissa Xides was named president of Exclusive Resorts earlier this year after nearly three decades in fashion leadership. She says the leadership lessons she learned at brands like Bergdorf Goodman and Kate Spade are guiding her new role.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
After nearly three decades in executive roles at Bergdorf Goodman, Kate Spade, Tory Burch and Gap Inc., Melissa Xides is bringing the leadership lessons she developed in fashion to a very different kind of business. Earlier this year, she was named president of Exclusive Resorts, overseeing all aspects of the invitation-only luxury travel club, which serves more than 4,000 ultra-high-net-worth member families and has a $1 billion portfolio of private residences around the world.
Founded in 2002, Exclusive Resorts has spent more than two decades building a loyal membership by offering something that goes beyond a vacation rental. Members pay an initiation fee and annual dues for access to more than 400 private residences and can also participate in rare journeys (African safaris, Formula 1 weekends) and curated experiences centered on passions like photography and culture. Dedicated Vacation Ambassadors handle everything from itinerary planning to restaurant reservations.
Earlier this year, parent company Exclusive Investments launched The Exclusive Collective, expanding its portfolio of luxury travel brands to include onefinestay and Inspirato. Meanwhile, Exclusive Resorts continues to grow its own portfolio of luxury private residences, most recently adding destinations including Martha’s Vineyard, Aspen and Nova Scotia.
Exclusive Resorts gives members access to more than 400 private residences around the world, along with curated travel experiences and dedicated Vacation Ambassadors. Pictured here: Bradbury Farmhouse in the Cotswolds.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
Throughout her career, Xides has built a reputation for helping established brands evolve while preserving what made them successful in the first place. “What I have developed is a knack for coming into a brand at an inflection point, where it needs some transformation while preserving what makes the brand so special,” Xides told me in an interview.
Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and chairman of Exclusive Resorts, believes Xides is the right person to help guide the company’s growth. “Melissa is an exceptional leader who understands that the future of luxury hospitality is built on personalization, trusted relationships and memorable experiences,” Case told me in an interview. “As a longtime member and investor, I know she is the right person to lead Exclusive Resorts into its next chapter.”
Matt Marcotte, author of Built on Belief and a former colleague who worked with Xides at both Tory Burch and Bergdorf Goodman, says that’s exactly what has distinguished her as a leader. “Melissa has an extraordinary ability to connect strategy, operations and customer experience in a way that creates both business results and lasting loyalty,” Marcotte told me in an interview. “The respect she has earned throughout her career comes not only from what she has accomplished, but from how she has accomplished it.”
Here are five career lessons Xides learned while helping grow some of retail’s best-known brands and how she’s applying those concepts to luxury travel.
Exclusive Resorts members participate in curated journeys around the world, including private cultural experiences like this members-only evening in Japan.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
1. Protect What Makes A Brand Special
For many executives, a new leadership role comes with pressure to make an immediate mark. Xides has built her career taking a different approach. She traces the philosophy back to her years helping scale founder-led brands including Kate Spade and Tory Burch. As those companies expanded rapidly, she learned that successful growth wasn’t about reinventing a brand. It was about preserving the qualities that made customers fall in love with it in the first place.
That same mindset shaped her approach when she arrived at Exclusive Resorts. Rather than reinventing a company with more than two decades of history, she first wanted to understand what members and employees already valued. “I’m not trying to make my own mark,” she says. “I’m really trying to hone in on what was there already.”
James Henderson, CEO of The Exclusive Collective, says that Xides’s philosophy is one of the reasons she’s such a natural fit. “Luxury, at its best, has never really been about products or places. It’s about relationships, knowing someone well enough to anticipate what matters to them before they ever ask,” he told me in an interview.
He adds: “Melissa understands that instinctively. At Bergdorf Goodman, she helped steward one of the great relationship-based businesses in the world, where loyalty is built quietly, over time, through trust, taste and extraordinary care. That sensibility translates beautifully to Exclusive Resorts, because the business we’re truly in is not travel, it’s taking care of people and the lives they’re trying to build around the people they love most.”
Members enjoy exclusive culinary experiences, including private dinners hosted by acclaimed chefs such as this evening The French Laundry with Thomas Keller.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
2. Don’t Assume You Have All The Answers
One of Xides’s first priorities in any new role isn’t making decisions, it’s asking questions. When she joined Bergdorf Goodman, she spent her first 90 days meeting with roughly 900 employees, from sales associates and restaurant staff to alterations and housekeeping. The goal wasn’t to explain her vision. It was to understand theirs and to learn what made the 125-year-old institution special.
She brought that same approach to Exclusive Resorts, spending her early months visiting properties, meeting employees in the field and speaking with more than 150 members.
“That’s the fun part of the job. I don’t come in with any preconceived notions,” she says. “I’m on a fact-finding mission, listening to as much as I can about what makes the chemistry of this club.”
Exclusive Resorts members have access to private residences around the world, including this four-bedroom villa at Rosewood Mayakoba in Mexico.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
3. Grow The Team You Inherit
One of Xides’s leadership principles is that a new job shouldn’t mean a new team. Rather than surrounding herself with familiar faces, she prefers to invest in the people who already know the business. At Bergdorf Goodman, all 12 of her direct reports remained with her throughout her tenure.
“I don’t love to bring new people in,” she says. “I really love to retain and develop the existing teams that are there and make sure they’re ready to evolve and be modern and future-proof the business.”
For Xides, the way Exclusive Resorts treats its employees directly shapes the experience it delivers to members. “The teams are also my members,” she says. “If I have an expectation of how we treat the members, it starts with how we treat our employees.”
Highlands Lodge is one of several Exclusive Resorts residences in Aspen.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
4. Leave While You’re Still Curious
Many people wait until they’re burned out or unhappy before making a career change. Xides believes that’s often too late. When she left Bergdorf Goodman after seven years, she wasn’t looking to escape. She was looking to grow.
“It wasn’t that I was unhappy,” she says. “It was sort of like, ‘What is it that I want to learn, and how do I get out of my comfort zone and get into travel?’”
The move meant leaving an industry she’d spent nearly three decades helping shape for one where she had everything to learn. But rather than viewing that as a risk, she saw Exclusive Resorts as an opportunity to stretch herself while applying skills she had already developed in luxury retail.
What made Exclusive Resorts compelling was the similarity she saw between luxury retail and the club’s relationship-driven model. Both depend on knowing customers well, anticipating what matters to them and creating highly personalized experiences. “I thought there was a lot of similarity,” she says.
Exclusive Resorts members also travel on private journeys, including Northern Lights expeditions in Norway.
courtesy of Exclusive Resorts
5. Know What to Change (And What To Leave Alone)
One of the hardest parts of leadership is deciding what deserves to stay and what needs to evolve. Xides encountered that balancing act almost immediately at Exclusive Resorts.
While touring one of the club’s homes, a longtime member walked Xides through every detail of the property, including one feature he was determined to protect. “Don’t move that table by the pool,” he told her.
She laughed, but she also had some news for him. “I had to tell him, ‘Dr. Maloney, I hate this couch. It’s got to come out. We’re removing the couch—but we’ll keep your table by the pool.’”
The exchange reinforced an important leadership lesson. “How do I listen to what they love, but then also politely push a little bit too on that evolution?” Xides says.
It’s a balancing act Xides has encountered throughout her career and one of the most valuable pieces of career advice she has to offer: Listen closely enough to understand what people value, but know when it is time to move things forward.
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