Vacationbetter.org, the vacation website of the American Resort Development Association (ARDA) has rolled out a new look and feel to its website. Focusing on bringing you more stories directly from timeshare owners and timeshare vacationers, the new website design for Vacationbetter.org now includes on its homepage, video testimonials directly from owners.

The website describes it saying, “The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) is partnering with its members to bring the passion of the owners to other vacationers through its Timeshare Fans Program. These Timeshare Fans will explain – in their own words – why timeshare is a better way to vacation.”

The new look of the website puts the emphasis on timeshare the way the world should be seeing it: as a valued choice for family vacations, with spacious accommodations and easy vacation planning. The redesign also helps showcase how many, many families find timeshare vacations to be a tradition that they anticipate and enjoy year after year. And to help get more timeshare owners share the real truth of timesharing, Vacationbetter.org has made it easy for owners to add their photos and written or video stories to the website.

Millions of Happy Timeshare Owners

ARDA and Vacationbetter.org see their new-look website as part of their commitment to their Timeshare Fans program, through which they can help show the world the enthusiasm and passion that so many timeshare owners feel for their vacation ownership products.  With nearly 8 million timeshare owners worldwide, there are a lot of raving fans. ARDA and many others in the timeshare industry think it’s time you heard more about and from these happy owners.

And what better place to start telling the story of satisfied timeshare owners than at Orange Lake Resort in Orlando, Florida… as the owners in this video explain…

Holiday Inn Club Vacations has added its seventh timeshare resort destination with the addition of a 36-unit resort on the Rio waterway in the City Center District of Marco Island.

Don Harrill, president and CEO of Orange Lake Resorts, the timeshare developer that manages Holiday Inn Club Vacations properties, explains,  “As part of our alliance with IHG, we said we’d grow Holiday Inn Club Vacations in places where our Holiday Inn Club Members have said that they want to vacation. Our Members have asked for another drive-to destination in Florida, and Sunset Cove Resort delivers just that, with a unique and upscale experience for all owners and guests who visit.”

Beautiful Marco Island, located on Florida’s southern Gulf Coast, is an extremely popular Florida timeshare destination with pristine beaches and a unique but elegant island lifestyle. The new Holiday Inn Club Vacations Sunset Cove Resort offers three-bedroom timeshare villas ranging from a spacious 1667 to 1900 square feet, with views of either the Gulf of Mexico or Smokehouse Bay.

In keeping with Holiday Inn Club Vacations standards, the timeshare villas will be renovated to include such details as granite countertops and fabrics and furnishings that are consistent with the company’s Signature Collection décor. Amenities for Holiday Inn Club Vacations owners and their guests include a pool with sundeck, bar, boat dock and fitness center. The property is part of the RCI Registry Collection^® (Resort Condominium International).

Holiday Inn Club Vacations Timeshare

The expanding locations of Holiday Inn Club Vacations include:

• Orange Lake Resort, an Orlando timeshare.
• Panama City, a Panhandle area, Florida timeshare.
• Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
• Brownsville, Vermont.
• Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
• Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
• New expansion with a Las Vegas timeshare destination.
• And member access to Holiday Inn Club Vacations resorts and IHG’s network of more than 4,400 hotels worldwide.

“At Holiday Inn Club Vacations, we offer great resorts where families can create their own vacation experiences,” said Del Ross, vice president, U.S. Sales and Marketing, IHG. “We offer our guests the flexibility to vacation when, where and how they want to, all under the comfort and security of a well-known and trusted brand like Holiday Inn.”

After a long hot summer of economic turbulence and a long hard week in which the eastern seaboard, from the Caribbean to Canada, has dealt with earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding, this Labor Day weekend holiday comes as a welcome respite to many.

As we head into this last traditional weekend of summer, it’s a good time to look at the top timeshare resales and top timeshare rentals in demand with consumers. These resorts that made this list are timeshares that consumers have made popular with their offers to buy or rent as timeshare resales here at Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services.

HOT 100 Timeshare Resales and HOT 100 Timeshare Rentals

Download your free copy of the Hot 100 Timeshare Resales Report

Download your free copy of the Hot 100 Timeshare Rentals Report

Who made the top 10 on the Hot 100 Timeshare Resales Report?

1. WorldMark by Wyndham – Multi-Destination
2. Grandview at Las Vegas - Las Vegas, Nevada
3. Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club –  Maui Hawaii
4. Paradise Village Beach Resort & Spa - Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico
5. Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas – Maui, Hawaii
6. Marriott’s Grande Vista – Orlando, Florida
7. Manhattan Club - Manhattan, New York
8. Ocean Beach Club – Virginia Beach,  Virginia
9. Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club – Oahu, Hawaii
10. Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort- Orlando, Florida

Click the image to download the report.

Who made the top 10 on the Hot 100 Timeshare Rentals Report?

1. Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club – Palm Beach, Aruba
2. Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club - Oahu, Hawaii
3. Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas – Maui, Hawaii
4. Harborside Resort at Atlantis – Nassau, Bahamas
5. Marriott’s Newport Coast Villas – Newport Coast, California
6. Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club –  Maui Hawaii
7. Marriott’s Ocean Watch Villas at Grande Dunes – Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
8. Manhattan Club - Manhattan, New York
9. Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake’s West Village – Orlando, Florida
10. Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort- Orlando, Florida

Click the image to download the report

Over the next few days we will look at these resorts and I’ll share more information with you about the current trends we are seeing in timeshare resales and rentals.

The big news in timeshare today is that vacation resort developer Orange Lake Resorts is expanding both to the Gulf Coast beaches of Marco Island, Florida and to the bright lights and glitter of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Joining the Holiday Inn Club Vacations® brand of Orange Lake Resorts will be the Sunset Cove Resort at Marco Island and the Desert Club Resort, which is located just one block off the Las Vegas Strip. Although both resorts have been part of the Summer Bay Resorts network, other properties under the Summer Bay timeshare brand will not be involved in this acquisition.

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) operates the following hotel brands: InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo®, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites® and Candlewood Suites®.

In September 2008, Holiday Inn Club Vacations was created through a strategic alliance between IHG and Orange Lake Resorts, an established leader in vacation ownership. Currently other Orange Lake Resorts timeshares include: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; Panama City, Florida; Brownsville, Vermont; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Gatlinburg, Tennessee along with Orange Lake’s flagship property in Orlando, Florida, near the vacation destination attractions of the Walt Disney World Resort.

Holiday Inn Vacation Club members enjoy access to Holiday Inn Club Vacations resorts and IHG’s network of more than 4,400 hotels worldwide.

Related News from The Timeshare Authority Blog:

Timeshare CEO of Orange Lakes to become new ARDA Chairman

Another Timeshare Company Honored as a Great Place to Work

Holiday Inn Timeshares Not Slowing Down in this Economy

Another Major Hotelier Entering the Timeshare Resort Industry

Guest post by Brooke Doucha, who manages corporate communications and media relations for Orange Lake Resorts, home to Holiday Inn Club Vacations.

The “Social Media Brass Tactics” session at ARDA’s Northeast Conference in Providence, RI last week was fun, energetic and full of ideas. Though I’d planned to share our Q&A in this post, instead I’m going to share an important concept that came out of that session. In one word, collaboration.

As I mentioned in my previous post here on The Timeshare Authority, our social media session on June 7 offered three breakout workshop from which participants could choose. One focused on customer service and listening / reaching out to owners through social media channels. Another was about using monitoring tools to manage social media monitoring and report back with metrics. Last, my session focused on how to use social media as a PR pitching tool and the idea of creating a “Guest Blogger” program.

As panel presenters, we utilized the space of the room to do something different: converse openly with groups about tactics that have worked for us, and may also work for others in the industry. Each session, whether focused on customer service or marketing and communications, emphasized the importance of the central concept of collaboration when it comes to social media.

When adopting a social media program for your company, it’s important to remember that it’s not just one person’s responsibility, but rather a company-wide decision to welcome communication through new channels and to treat it with just as much respect and dedication as all other channels (phone, e-mail, print and electronic communications).

Here’s how collaboration works, as it applies to the three topics we discussed:

When it comes to customer service, social media can provide opportunities for real-time resolution. Follow me here: Your brand has a Twitter or Facebook account. You receive an inquiry about points usage via tweet or post. Luckily, the “collaborative model” you’ve adopted as an organization has one person in customer service or communications monitoring the mentions of your handle(s) on these two social channels. That person decides to either directly respond to the inquiry, or, because it’s more involved, the workflow dictates they assign the response to the club communications team member who will follow-up with more detail. Voila! Real-time customer service.

Social media “brass tactics” panelist Sara Bader Little, Director of Corporate Communications for Festiva Hospitality Group, advises: “Spend time on social media, but don’t let it overtake any one person’s time. Be sure it can be closely and constantly monitored for immediately responding to customers. It should enhance your existing customer service, not replace it.”

The monitoring of your social mentions may be a task that one person initially handles, but as you grow to expand your brand’s presence to more social media channels, let that number of “official monitors” grow, too. There are great social media monitoring dashboards out there, like Radian6 and Hootsuite that make it easy to assign specific mentions and inquiries to other team members. As panelist Philip Brojan of RCI discussed, it’s important to monitor your mentions daily so that you can be responsive—and it’s equally important to establish workflows that spread that responsibility among team members who can be various subject matter experts on behalf of the organization.

When it comes to public relations outreach via social media channels, it’s about getting teams involved in the execution of special moments and events that create great stories. For a Guest Blogger program, for example, you may want to establish a lead who will create new connections with bloggers, work with the operations to set them up with special activities or experiences available on-site, then have your social media champions create excitement around the blogger’s visit to the property, pre-, during- and post-stay. You can always get more traction when you have more hands on deck.

Say it with me: collaboration. If you find yourself having to do more with less and the idea of adding a social media program is overwhelming, look around you. You have talented experts that can contribute great content and ideas, and social media is the perfect place for that.

If you couldn’t make the ARDA Northeast Conference but want to participate in the post-event discussion in 140 characters or less, tweet your questions to @ARDAOrg and use the hashtag #SMbrasstactics. You can also contact me directly on Twitter via @BrookeDoucha.

Brooke Doucha

Brooke Doucha
Guest Post for TheTimeshareAuthority.com
Submitted 6/02/11

The next social media session, webinar, workshop – I bet there’s one coming to a conference near you. But how many of them will discuss not only how to get started, but also tactics to make your program more engaging? And how many will really hit home for professionals in the vacation ownership industry?

At next week’s ARDA Northeast Conference in Providence, RI, your industry friends will get down to social media “brass tactics.” Breakout sessions on June 7 will cover the following topics:

Putting social media to work to boost customer satisfaction and communicate with members

Sara B. Little, Director, Corporate Communications for Festiva Hospitality Group and David Meier, Vice President Products and Partnership for Interval International will discuss:

• Contest ideas for encouraging member feedback; identifying your most “vocal” fans
• How to provide valuable, rich content
• How to turn a “foe” into a “fan”

Using Monitoring Tools

Philip Brojan, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Group RCI will help you develop tactics for using social media monitoring tools, including:

• Internal workflows for social media monitoring and response
• Putting social media metrics to work
• Gaining a competitive edge

Creating New Connections

I’ll be sharing how to build a social network and make it work for your brand’s public relations outreach via:

• Using Twitter to create story pitches and source leads for PR outreach
• Using LinkedIn to create dynamic connections
• Creating a “Guest Blogger” program

If you can’t make the ARDA Northeast Conference but want to participate in the discussion in 140 characters or less, tweet your questions to @ARDAOrg and use the hashtag #SMbrasstactics. We’ll answer these questions at the session on June 7 and will share the answers—and other resources—back here on The Timeshare Authority on June 15.

ARDA Northeast Conference

June 6-7, 2011
Marriott Providence Downtown

Providence, RI

Brooke Doucha manages corporate communications and media relations for Orange Lake Resorts, home to Holiday Inn Club Vacations.

The American Resort Development Association, (ARDA) announced this week that Don Harrill, president and CEO of Orange Lake Resorts, home to Holiday Inn Club Vacations, has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The announcement was released during this year’s 2011 ARDA Convention and Exposition, currently being held in Orlando, Fl.

Howard Nusbaum, RRP, ARDA’s president and CEO, says, “I couldn’t be more pleased with having Don as our industry leader especially at this unique moment for vacation ownership. Don has been a long-time advocate and tireless voice for our industry, as well as someone I’ve learned so much from during these challenging economic times. With his strong business, financial, and management skills, he is poised to be a truly effective leader for ARDA.”

Holiday Inn Club Vacations is part of the resort brand Holiday Inn, and includes six Holiday Inn Club Vacations timeshare resorts. The vcation ownership brand is a result of a strategic linking between IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), one of the world’s largest hotel groups, and Orange Lake Resorts timeshares.

Don Harrill says, “I’m ecstatic and honored to take on this role with ARDA.As America emerges from an economic crisis, it’s a great time for us, as an industry, to have pride in our product and integrity in the process by which we share our product with consumers.”

Jim Lewis, president of Disney Vacation Club timeshare is the past Chairman of ARDA. Other ARDA officers includey Wyndham Vacation Ownership president and CEO, Franz Hanning (chair-elect) and Baker Hostetler law partner Robert J. Webb, Esq., RRP (treasurer).

Follow this link to read the ARDA media announcement.

More on the history of the Orange Lake Resorts timeshare alliance with IHG:

More Orange Lake Timeshare Resorts Join the Holiday Inn Club Vacations Brand

Holiday Inn Timeshare Unveils New Orlando Timeshare Resort

Another Major Hotelier Entering the Timeshare Resort Industry

This week the PGA Tour wrapped up its annual Qualifying Tournament (Q School) to determine 25 players (plus those tied with the twenty-fifth spot in the tournament) who will receive their playing card on the Tour for 2011. The competitors played six challenging rounds at the Orange County National Golf Center just outside of Orlando, Florida.

If you are a golfer, you would have no doubt enjoyed seeing this firsthand, but you might be even more interested to play the courses yourself. Panther Lake and Crooked Cat, the two championship courses at Orange County on which the qualifier was contested, are part of a public fee golf facility—meaning that you, too, can access these courses and play. And they are not the only top quality golf courses in the Orlando area that are open to public play. Many of the resort and timeshare courses have available tee time bookings, even for golfers who are not staying at that resort at the time.

Orlando Timeshare Makes it Easy to Golf Where the Pros Play

Orange Lake Resort timeshare offers a total of four outstanding courses, including championship quality, The Legends and The Reserve. At the Disney Resorts and Disney timeshares, you will find four courses, two of which are The Magnolia and Lake Buena Vista Golf Courses, where the PGA Tour plays a late season event each year. Other top area golf courses include those at Grand Cypress, where the LPGA played their Tour Championship last week; Falcon’s Fire; ChampionsGate; The Celebration Course; Grande Lakes; Mystic Dunes; and numerous others, all of which are available for public play.

The snow may have already blanketed your home course, but if you own an Orlando timeshare, the sunshine and the great golf courses are waiting.

You’ll love this happy moment when an eagle on 17 secures Michael Thompson’s spot on the 2011 PGA Tour.