Groundbreaking retirement partnership
A large retirement village operator and COTA have agreed to a new arrangement that will enable residents to receive free membership of the peak body.
Retirement operator Aveo has reached an agreement with the Council on the Ageing (COTA) that will enable its residents to become members of the peak body at no cost.
The partnership, announced at the Retirement Villages Association (RVA) annual conference last week, is the first of its kind for Australia’s retirement village industry.
Through the arrangement, more than 12,500 Aveo residents will be able to access COTA membership benefits which include discounted meal offers as well as access to a travel club and a wine club.
Aveo’s executive general manager, Justin Laboo said the partnership would provide better options for the group’s residents.
“We wanted to start to use the scale of our operations to leverage different options,” he said.
“COTA membership provides benefits to our residents who choose to take it up and it gives us a strategic differentiation from our competitors.”
Mr Laboo said residents had expressed interest in the arrangement in preliminary discussions.
“Obviously the residents still have a choice about whether they want to sign up,” he said.
“But we are saying this won’t cost you anything – it’s something we are doing for you as Aveo residents and the people we spoke to about that were quite excited.”
Aveo and COTA have both expressed an interest in developing further opportunities for residents through the arrangement.
The CEO of COTA, Ian Yates said the peak body would be interested in looking at ways of delivering its health and wellbeing programs to Aveo’s residents.
“The situation is still at a conceptual level,” he said. “At the moment we are offering them the full suite of services that any individual member gets.
“But because Aveo has shown an interest, there could be other services or programs that they might feel are suited to their residents.”
