The Timeshare Vacation Ownership Bounce Back

It turns out: The skeptics who where ready to make funeral arrangements for the timeshare vacation ownership industry were wrong.

Five years after the economic downturn (plummet), the global economy is intact and the timeshare industry is bouncing back. Preliminary data from Ernst & Young, presented this week at ARDA World 2013, shows that vacation ownership sales increased to $7 billion in 2012, up 7.6 percent from 2011. While still below the $9.7 billion in timeshare sales recorded in 2008, it is obvious that timeshare ownership is far from dead.

Howard Nusbaum, president and CEO of ARDA called the economic decline of timeshares, “incredibly humbling,” adding, “We thought we were recession proof.”

Don Harrill, chief executive of Holiday Inn Club Vacations and chairman of the American Resort Development Association, noted, “Some of the things we had to give up, we learned we could do without. We had to readjust strategies and maybe lose our egos.”

Simon Jaworski, senior vice president of the Research Intelligence Group, which tracks the consumer market, made one of the most telling observations. “It is an industry with an aging population,” explained Jaworski, “They have to find a way to attract the next generation of timeshare buyer.”

That’s it guys. Yesterday’s solutions will not fit tomorrow’s challenges.