Author: Staff Contributor

We’ve never made it a secret. Our approach to getting timeshare sellers and timeshare renters the best possible visibility on the World Wide Web for their advertised timeshare property has involved using the best strategies of internet marketing. Sell My Timeshare NOW works to stay on the cutting edge of internet and search engine optimization, so that when you let us advertise your timeshare resale or timeshare rental, you have maximum internet visibility to a marketplace of interested timeshare buyers and timeshare renters.

But the internet continues to change, transforming itself and how people use it. As these changes happen, we keep expanding our offerings to you so that you will always have a timely and reliable resource for the newest and most comprehensive timeshare information. The Timeshare Authority blog has been a frontrunner in timeshare industry communication for almost five years. No one else has a timeshare news and information update, published over 300 times per year, except here at The Timeshare Authority blog.

Timeshare News from a Source You Can Trust: Sell My Timeshare NOW on Twitter

We are also tweeting to you on the following corporate account: @VacationHotDeal. Twitter is a fun, dynamic medium of communication and we hope you will sign up to follow our tweets and that you will retweet our messages.

Web 2.0 and the surge in social media is exciting. It means that advertising and marketing is no longer industry driven, but is instead defined, and constantly redefined — as it should be — by the consumers who use it.

Director of Communications Steve Luba talks about some of the stranger happenings this week.

As another positive indicator that the timeshare industry is, in fact, weathering the economic recession, Bluegreen timeshare announced this week that it is entering into an agreement to provide service and management at four timeshare resorts.

Parkside Williamsburg Resort timeshare in Williamsburg, Virginia; Blue Water Resort timeshare in Nassau, Bahamas; The Soundings Seaside Resort timeshare in Dennis Port, Massachusetts (Cape Cod); and South Mountain Resort timeshare in Lincoln, New Hampshire will soon become part of the Bluegreen timeshare portfolio of exceptional properties.

Bluegreen timeshares was planning several major corporate changes in 2008 when the economy began to plummet and the credit markets dried up. Putting their plans on hold, the company was then forced to make cutbacks and changes, just as companies in many industries have been driven to do during this tight economy.

This new direction by Bluegreen timeshare is interesting on several levels. By providing services (for a fee) to smaller, independent timeshare companies, Bluegreen is expanding its business model. Not only will it service its clients and timeshare owners, but now the timeshare company is selling its skill at providing these services to other timeshare companies.

For each of the resorts, Bluegreen timeshare will provide operations and management, and select fee-based services including sales and marketing, risk management, and title and escrow. In some instances, Bluegreen timeshare will also be providing design and development planning, collections, and mortgage servicing, all on a fee basis.

Through the arrangement, Bluegreen Timeshare creates new income streams and adds four properties to the Bluegreen Vacation Club ® portfolio. The four timeshare resorts that become part of the Bluegreen inventory gain a depth of expertise and a scope of services that would be difficult and in some cases impossible for them to provide on their own.

In the company’s media release, President and CEO John M. Maloney, Jr., said, “We announced in January that we would actively pursue growth through fee-based services, which require minimal capital, if any. We couldn’t be happier with the interest shown in our services and the quality of properties we now have under contract.”

Historically, some of the most exciting changes in business occur because need or atypical stress forces companies to stretch harder, reach higher, and think miles beyond the box.

Are you leaving yourself open to “vacation hacking” during your timeshare vacation and summer travel? Many people are, and they don’t even realize it’s happening.

As you head off to your favorite timeshare resort or other vacation destination, it can be handy to take along your laptop or smartphone. You can keep up with your business and personal emails and your online accounts, but in order to surf safe, you must be selective about where you do it.

A recent FOX News investigation found that travelers and vacationers place themselves at extreme risk for cyberhacking when they fail to use the same levels of internet security they have learned to use on their home computers. Many of the Wi-Fi networks in airports are simply not extremely secure. FOX News studied wireless security in 27 airports, 20 of which were in the US, 2 in Europe, and 5 in Asia. They found that 80 percent of the private Wi-Fi networks in airports surveyed were using Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), a protocol that was hacked over 8 years ago. Even the most inexperienced web hackers may be able to get past WEP.

Other times, the point of exposure is not the airport’s Wi-Fi, but private, peer-to-peer networks that are not official hotspots and are run off someone else’s computer. Cybercriminals understand and exploit this vulnerability among travelers so frequently that the term, “vacation hacking” has been coined to describe the problem. Fake Wi-Fi hotspots abound and the bad guys are just waiting for you to log on, and check your bank balance, pay your Visa card, or buy stocks.

Quoting Symantec, the makers of numerous online security products, the FOX News report offered several suggestions for staying cyber secure when you travel, including this one, that may be the single most important of them all: “Always assume Wi-Fi connections are being eavesdropped on. Never enter sensitive data—Social Security numbers, bank account information, etc—when browsing the Web via a Wi-Fi network.“

Your timeshare vacation should be a time to get away from work and hassles, but don’t let it be a vacation from commonsense practices about internet use. Ask your timeshare about their own security protocol, and as you travel from your home to your timeshare destination, exercise extreme caution about where and how you use the internet.