No news is good news, as Director of Communications Steve Luba explains.

 

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Residents of Orlando, Florida and Anaheim, California know something that the rest of the world doesn’t. They know that the month of September is one of the best times to plan a Disney Vacation Club timeshare vacation.

Yes, it’s still hot in both places. And in Florida it’s the peak of hurricane season while in southern California, wildfires are often at their worst.

So what makes it such a great time for a Disney Vacation Club timeshare vacation?

… Because visitation to the Disney theme parks is typically at its lowest point for the year. Families with school age children often try not to take their children out of class when school, clubs, and sports are typically just getting started. Plan a Disney Vacation Club timeshare vacation in September and you will find shorter lines and less traffic both in the parks and throughout the entire Central Florida vacation area.

Never a Bad Time for a Disney Vacation Club Timeshare Vacation

Whether it’s September or the busiest tourist season of the year, anytime you choose to vacation at a Disney park becomes more fun when you choose to stay on property in a Disney Vacation Club timeshare. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. Guests at Disney hotels and Disney timeshares can often take advantage of early entry into the parks, meaning they get a head start on everyone else as well as extra time to enjoy the attractions and entertainment.
2. Even though Disney is designed for kids and kids at heart, we all get tired. When you need to recharge or grab a snack, you can bop over to your Disney timeshare, refuel and recharge, and then head right back out to the park. (Or spend the afternoon dozing by the pool while everyone else rides Thunder Mountain.)
3. Not all Disney attractions and entertainment are for everyone, nor is it suited for babies or toddlers. Disney Vacation Club timeshare owners can (for a fee) schedule babysitting in their timeshare unit, letting the rest of the family avoid the stroller juggle, try the wildest rides, and stay to see the very last of the fireworks at Epcot or the Magic Kingdom.
4. For children who are older, but may not be up to long days in the theme parks, Disney timeshare owners and guests can arrange for these little ones to enjoy a children’s activity center more geared to their age and interest level.
5. Shop until you drop without the hassle of lugging around packages. If you are a Disney Vacation Club member or guest, you can arrange package drop off to your timeshare.
6. No matter how many times you have been to the Disney theme parks, they are still magical places to be, always offering new experiences and new things to discover. When you become a Disney vacation club timeshare owner, for a little while, you leave the rest of the world behind and take up residency in the “happiest place on earth.” You become part of the Disney magic.

To learn more about the opportunities in Disney Vacation Club timeshare resales and Disney Vacation Club rentals, visit these web pages:

• Disney’s Vero Beach Resort Timeshare Resales
• Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa Timeshare Resales
• Disney’s Old Key West Resort Timeshare Resales
• Disney’s Boardwalk Villas Timeshare Resales
• Disney’s Beach Club Villas Timeshare Resales
• Disney’s Beach Club Villas Timeshare Rentals
• Disney’s BoardWalk Villas Timeshare Rentals
• Disney’s Old Key West Resort Timeshare Rentals
• Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa Timeshare Rentals
• Disney’s Vero Beach Resort Timeshare Rentals

Sell My Timeshare NOW welcomes new hire, Chris Ownby as Chief Technology Officer. Chris comes to us with an extensive background in all aspects of computer software, as well as website development, and development and interface projects. His experience in building and managing both small and large technical teams and architecting large service-oriented enterprise systems fit perfectly into Sell My Timeshare NOW’s plans for enhancing and expanding our services and products.

Chris’ twenty-plus years of experience includes positions as the CTO and the Vice President of Product Development for Sapling Systems; and managing the development of Harcourt Assessment’s online platform, which provided formative and summative testing for the United States’ K through 12 education system. Chris is the former Director of Application Development at CreditReport.com, the market leader in providing B2C and B2B online, highly secure credit services and he founded Trapdoor Net Systems, an internet software development company that was successfully acquired in 2002.

Distinguished in his field, Chris lectures and writes about the future of software, the software industry, and the role of the internet. Currently, he is authoring a book on the how to run a successful software business.

As a graduate of California State University at Fullerton, Chris is a fan of the LA Lakers—a detail we are overlooking up here in Celtics country.

Sell My Timeshare NOW, the global leader in the online advertising and marketing of timeshare resale and timeshare rental welcomes Chris Ownby to our team.

Follow this link to read the Sell My Timeshare NOW media release on our new Chief Technology Officer, Chris Ownby.

I wouldn’t think this is the next new trend in timeshare resorts, but the unusual situation in the US economy has brought about stranger things. Have you heard about the Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego – the luxurious resort with spa and championship golf course that was ranked #1 Resort Spa in North America by Condé Nast Traveler?

They’ve been booking rooms for $19 a night.

No kidding.

But there’s a catch. For $19 a night, you get the room, but you don’t get much else. You don’t even get a bed. Here’s how it works: Pay $219 per night through September 17 and you will receive deluxe accommodations and breakfast for two. Skip the breakfast and the rate drops to $199. Leave out the breakfast and the honor bar and it falls to $179.

Now you get to the part where the changes really start to matter. Leave off everything already listed, as well as air conditioning or heat, and the rate is down to $159; omit the pillows and you save another $20; leave off the sheets and you are down to $109.

If you are willing to forgo all of this along with the lights, (expect for a single small light in the bathroom required for safety) you are at $89. Subtract the towels and you drop to $59; no toiletries and you drop to $39, until finally you get to the $19 a night price, which is the absence of all of the above as well as being without the bed.

And did I mention that this deal is completely sold out?

San Diego Timeshare Rentals … And They Come With a Bed

A San Diego vacation offers so much to do, from the famous San Diego Zoo, to the beaches, parks, sporting events, SeaWorld San Diego, and more. And the spacious accommodations of timeshare rentals provide you affordable options, where you don’t have to settle for a room without linens, furnishings, or utilities.

You can choose from a wide variety of San Diego timeshare rentals, some offered at less than $100 a night, often for timeshare units that easily accommodate two families. Invite your favorite relatives or friends, share the cost of a roomy timeshare rental in beautiful San Diego and you could easily be vacationing at under $50 a night. Now throw in the savings of a fully equipped kitchen and dining area, letting you dine as affordably as if you had stayed home, and your overall vacation costs could be just as amazingly low as if you’d opted for a few nights at the Ranchero Bernardo Inn.

… Except your timeshare will come with all the amenities, including a bed, maybe even two or three of them!

If Wyndham had been buying television sports drama, they could not have done better than the Wyndham Championship’s final round on Sunday that offered a first time Tour winner, a three-hole sudden-death playoff, and a one-inch bunker shot miss by Sergio Garcia to keep him out of the playoffs. As Greensboro News-Record writer, Robert Bell put it, “How do you improve upon a tournament that sold out in an economy that has bottomed out?”

The PGA Tour’s Greensboro Open (as the event was originally called prior to Wyndham and others becoming title sponsors) has a long and celebrated history in golf. For years, this tournament was the last PGA Tour stop in the spring before the players headed to Augusta, serving as a warm-up to the Masters. Ask the average golf buff what he or she knows about this tournament and Sam Snead’s name always comes up. This tournament proved to be a history-making event for the legendary Sam Snead who not only won the Greater Greensboro Open’s inaugural tournament in 1938, but won it again in 1946, 1949, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1960, and 1965.

Sam Snead’s eight victories in this event is a PGA Tour tournament record number of wins of the same tournament by a single player. His 1965 win in Greensboro at the age of 52 years, 10 months, 8 days, makes him the oldest winner of a PGA Tour tournament—years before the introduction of the graphite shaft produced lighter, easier to swing clubs. Both of Snead’s records in Greensboro stand after 44 years.

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare’s Future with this PGA Tour Tournament

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare‘s contract with the PGA Tour expires after next year’s tournament, with Wyndham having the option to extend its arrangement for two more years. The PGA Tour hopes instead to get Wyndham to extend its deal until 2014.

Sponsoring a tournament on the men’s tour doesn’t come cheap. Wyndham spends some $26 million to brand this event with their name and then uses it not only to expand their visibility, but as a way to do some serious entertaining of important business contacts. Some speculate that Wyndham chairman Steve Holmes and tournament chairman Bobby Long would like to see the tournament moved to earlier in the season when they reason that the course will be in better shape and their guests more flexible to attend, rather than late August with the start of school approaching in many areas.

For Wyndham, signing that longer deal would certainly give them more negotiating power with the PGA Tour about changing the tournament’s dates. On the other hand, as PGA Tour Network correspondent Brian Katrek pointed out, leaving the Wyndham Championship scheduled for the week before the Tour goes to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, creates exactly the kind of jockeying for position in the FedEx Cup standings and battle to the finish that we saw on Sunday.

Possible Tournament Favorite for the Folks at Wyndham Hotels and Wyndham Timeshare

Adding one more interesting twist to the interworking of the Wyndham Championship is a point brought out in Bell’s article, who wondered if Wyndham officials weren’t quietly rooting for Sergio Garcia. Bell noted that, RCI, a holding of Wyndham timeshare, has 160 Spain timeshare resorts (Garcia’s homeland), and another 700 plus Mexico timeshares and South America timeshares, meaning that an international winner of Garcia’s statue would be widely publicized by the Spanish and Latin media.

…Interesting, but as we all know about golf, the ball doesn’t know or care who hits it, leaving little room for politics and positioning in the game.

See the wrap up of this tournament, and watch the “one inch” that stood between Sergio Garcia and his chance to be part of the play off. This video also includes comments by Brian Katrek on scheduling for this always-successful event.

Last week Fairmont Resort Properties joined the RCI timeshare exchange network. Fairmont Resort Properties, LTD is the largest Canadian-owned vacation ownership developer. RCI timeshare exchange is part of the Wyndham hotel and Wyndham timeshare family of vacation ownership products.

Geoff Ballotti, president and CEO, Group RCI explains, “We couldn’t be more pleased to add this leading developer and their unique properties to RCI’s collection of top vacation destinations. This affiliation is also a testament to RCI’s ongoing efforts to offer great vacations to our more than 3.8 million members.”

Executives of Fairmont Resort Properties, LTD mentioned the excellent timeshare exchange opportunities RCI affords its members and the scope of RCI’s technology and marketing as being reasons that attracted Fairmont Resort Properties to the partnering.

New Timeshare Exchange Means New Hawaii Timeshare and New Canada Timeshare Opportunities

Because of this new relationship, Sunchaser Vacation Club at Fairway Cottages on Oahu, Hawaii and Fairmont Vacation Villas in Fairmont Hot Springs, British Columbia, become part of the RCI timeshare exchange network that includes over 4,000 affiliated timeshare resorts.

Sunchaser Vacation Club at Fairway Cottages is located at the Makaha Resort & Golf Club, on Oahu’s beautiful western shore.

The Fairmont Vacation Villas are located in the picturesque Columbia Valley and provide an ideal location for a ‘peace and quiet’ timeshare vacation. The Fairmont Vacation Villas timeshares offer plenty of outdoor sports, including hiking, biking, boating, horseback riding, and white water rafting.

Follow these links to learn more about the availability of timeshare resales at Fairmont Vacation Villas timeshare.

• Fairmont Vacation Villas at Hillside timeshare resales
• Fairmont Vacation Villas at Riverside timeshare resales
• Fairmont Vacation Villas at Mountainside timeshare resales
• Fairmont Vacation Villas at Riverview timeshare resales

It is not too late to make your last timeshare vacation pay off in a big way. ARDA’s website, www.vacationbetter.org is dedicated to providing information on timeshare, fractionals and private residence clubs with the goal of showing vacationers meaningful ways to vacation better. Again this year, they are hosting the Bring Your Vacation to Life contest, and your old vacation photos and favorite stories could make you a winner.

All you have to do to turn your vacation memories into a $1000 gift certificate is to submit the best vacation short story, photo, or vacation video in the contest. Select a photo, tell a story, or share a video that captures how a timeshare vacation helped changed your life, your health, or your happiness.

You can upload your stories, photos, or videos online at the VacationBetter website. You can submit them via email to:
contest@vacationbetter.org

By mail to:

Each entry must include:

Are you someone with lots of great timeshare vacation memories? That’s okay; you can enter as often as you like.

Here are the rules, exactly as stated by the American Resort Development Association:

“You must own all rights to any photograph, story or video entered in this contest. It is the responsibility of the contestant to ensure that publication and use of photographs, stories or video by ARDA raises no legal claims. Submitted photographs, stories and video are the exclusive property of ARDA. ARDA maintains the right to reproduce and use the submitted photographs, stories and video (with credits) for any legitimate purpose, including but not limited to usage in publications, web pages, presentations and other materials.”

Winners will be notified on Friday, September 25, 2009, by email and the winning story, photos, and video will be featured in ARDA’s Developments Magazine and on ARDA.org and www.vacationbetter.org.

Winners in each of the three categories will receive a $1000 AMEX gift card.

Visit www.vacationbetter.org for full details and watch the following video from ARDA with Jim Lewis, president of Disney Vacation Club and chairman of the American Resort Development Association.

Barbara De Lollis covers business travel for USA TODAY. In a recent series of interviews with Wyndham CEO Steve Holmes she asked some specific questions and received some very encouraging answers.

Although one cannot get around the fact that Wyndham timeshare has laid off approximately 4,000 employees in the past year—-most of whom were employed in timeshare sales—-Steve Holmes says Wyndham timeshare is pleased with its business for 2009.

Wyndham Timeshare Sales Have New Goals

Now the logical question is how can 4,000 layoffs and a 39 percent drop in timeshare sales during the second quarter of 2009 (compared to the same quarter last year), make any timeshare sales company pleased?

The answer comes in the changing outlook at Wyndham timeshare. With credit lines drying up, Wyndham timeshare (as with most timeshare developers) could not finance timeshare sales for as many new buyers as they have in the past. They had little choice but to sell fewer timeshare units, yet try to make their sales efforts more efficient.

Instead of operating on a ‘bigger is better’ approach, Wyndham seems to have taken a ‘better is better’ approach. With a scaled-back business plan for 2009, Wyndham timeshare has approached timeshare sales with reduced goals. Without the need for so many prospective buyers, the company needs fewer timeshare sales people to set up timeshare presentations and tours.

Wyndham timeshare sales for 2009 are focusing on efficiency. The company is trying to drive up the percentage of people who buy timeshare after they take a Wyndham timeshare sales tour, as well as increase the amount of those sales. According to Holmes, “In our business, both (measures) were up in the first half of the year. We continue to be very pleased.”

Here’s an interesting interview with Steve Holmes at the PhoCusWright 2008 Conference where he speaks in detail about Wyndham’s strategies for dealing with the current economy.

Flu season is almost here, only this year it includes the added concern of H1-N1 flu, the name we are supposed to now use instead of swine flu so we won’t offend the pigs or create a bad marketing image for the pork industry. (Okay, fair enough)

It is natural to wonder whether it is a good idea to travel at all with concerns so high about exposure to illness. But before you cancel your timeshare vacation, you might consider just taking some preventative measures to improve the odds that you stay healthy, especially if your vacation is planned for a timeshare you already own (and therefore have already paid for) or you’ve arranged a great deal on a timeshare rental.

And while the threat of flu exposure may give you pause to rethink your timeshare vacation plans, the overall health benefits of vacation and relaxation time probably outweigh the risk of coming down with a bug. According to ARDA, the American Resort Development Association, at their website www.vacationbetter.org, “Men who don’t vacation regularly are 32 percent more likely to die of heart attacks; women are 50 percent more likely.” This single fact alone is an eye-opener to the fact that vacation time is critical, even if it means washing our hands a few extra times along the way.

Simple Steps to Increase the Odds of Staying Healthy During Your Timeshare Vacation

Your timeshare unit should be clean when you arrive, and if for any reason it is not, contact the timeshare management immediately to ensure that you are either switched to a different unit, if one is available, or that housekeeping takes care of your concerns.

But even in the cleanest of timeshare resorts, there are little steps you can take to improve your chances of staying healthy during your timeshare vacation.

1. Worry less about the sink and toilet and more about items such as the on-off buttons on light fixtures. Take along some sanitary disposable wipes and wipe down doorknobs, telephones, light switches, the refrigerator and microwave door handles, salt and pepper shakers, and other places that people frequently handle but housekeeping is more likely to miss in clean-up. This is not major cleaning; you only need to do this once upon first entering your timeshare condo or unit.
2. Some timeshare vacationers routinely load the dishwasher with all washable kitchen items and run them through the hottest or longest washing cycle before they use anything.
3. Deal with the most unsanitary item(s) in the room … the TV and video remotes. Since you can’t bathe the remotes in disinfectant, try taking a zip-closure sandwich bag turned inside out, picking up the remote and then pulling the bag over it, and ‘zipping’ it closed. Great trick, super simple, and you can still work the remote just fine right through the bag.
4. Put a pair of thongs or other slip-on shoes inside the front door, for each family member. Leave outside shoes on a newspaper inside your timeshare, and wear the clean thongs inside the unit. This way, you won’t be bringing more outside germs into your timeshare nor will you be walking around barefoot inside the unit.
5. Author L. A. Robinson (“Keeping Germs at Bay“) suggests a bottle of alcohol for cleaning up tubs and toilets. It is cheap, easy to splash around, safe for most surfaces and you can pick up a small bottle anywhere.
6. And finally, wash your hands. You can’t hear this enough or do it too much. Buy a handful of those little bottles of waterless liquid soap and make it a game with your kids to use the stuff liberally and often.

Finally, if you do get sick, seek medical attention promptly. And if you are traveling outside the US, and you or a family member becomes seriously ill, contact the embassy or consulate for that country. The Department of State Diplomacy in Action website is www.usembassy.gov/

To contact this agency by phone from the US or Canada call: 888-407-4747. From outside the US call: 00-1-202-501-4444.

Imagine a floating city, rising 1200 feet in the air, designed to generate its own electricity, withstand hurricane winds, and eliminate the need for automobiles within its structure. This is the vision for the New Orleans Arcology Habitat, (NOAH) and if you think it looks like something out of The Matrix, you are right.

Now imagine owning timeshare there.

The project has been proposed for placement in the Mississippi River gulf, adjacent to the commercial district of downtown New Orleans. With an estimated 30 million square feet at build out, the NOAH project would include 20,000 rental condos, three hotels, and 1500 timeshare units, with the timeshare averaging 1100 square feet each.

The proposal also includes 3 casinos; 500,000 square feet of commercial space; parking for 8,000 cars; cultural facilities; public works; schools; admin offices; and a hospital.

I can’t say if or when this will come to fruition, but when you consider the visionary construction that has been undertaken in Dubai at “The Palm” and the Dubai Tower, (which both offer Dubai timeshare) we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss this as “overly futuristic”. New Orleans timeshares have always been a popular vacation destination and one can only imagine the interest that timeshares within this environmentally green, hurricane resistant, innovative property could create.

Tangram 3DS LLC, (a firm specializing in visualization and computer animation) is responsible for creating the computer-generated images and partnering with the designer Kevin Schopfer to visualize his concepts throughout the design process. Here’s a video look at a rendering of the exterior of this amazing structure, courtesy of Tangram 3DS LLC: