Hat Tip to RCI Ventures for their article: Top 10 boutique hotel trends revealed.

The inaugural Boutique Hotel Summit was highly successful and attendees are still raving about their experience there. Thanks to RCI Ventures for summarizing the top ten trends revealed from a panel discussion during the event.

While all ten are remarkably applicable to timeshares, I selected just three on which to focus this timeshare blog post:

1. Experience and integrity: Boutique hotel guests are looking for something different from the “cookie cutter” approach.
2. Clubs: Look out for a proliferation of members’ clubs incorporated in to boutique hotels, particularly in key urban markets such as London and New York.
3. In-room technology: It’s important for boutique hotels to offer technology that is at least as good as the guest would expect to have in their home, but it must be user friendly and practical.

Timeshare Experience and Integrity

Timeshares come in many flavors. Yes, you can always find good ole’ vanilla, but timeshares include brands from the best-known hoteliers to small, family-owned properties. Timeshares are found in destinations around the world from urban and upbeat locations to reclusive retreats. Your vacation experience in a timeshare can be as predicable or as out of the ordinary as you like, depending upon the resort you select.

Like every other business, in order for a timeshare to survive, to stay successful in this demanding world, it must provide its guests with the services they seek. That’s why, depending on the venue, you will find timeshares that offer on-property entertainment, others that offer kids programs, and most that will go out of their way to assist you with special needs such as a baby crib, and a variety of services that make vacationing a little easier or a little more fun.

Vacation Clubs or Timeshares with Tiered Membership

Timeshares recognize the need for member/owner flexibility. Whether it is through a vacation club or a tiered membership option, more and more timeshare are offering “club-based” experiences and exchange for their members.

Timeshare and Technology

Although many timeshares offer one, two or three-night vacation options, they recognize that most timeshare owners or renters are there for at least a one-week stay. During that period, people both desire and need to be connected to their technology. Most people check email even on vacation. Many families don’t want to deal with children going cold turkey from video games and DVDs during vacation week. At the end of a fun-filled day, it is often nice to let the kids relax with their favorite games. Most timeshares offer more than one television and more than one DVD player, depending upon the size of the timeshare unit. Going on vacation shouldn’t necessarily mean a vacation from the technology that makes your life easier.

And technology has its place in timeshare beyond what’s available in the unit or condo itself. Timeshare resorts are constantly updating their booking, exchange, and reservation options with the aid of technology that is industry specific to the needs of vacation ownership.

Timeshare and Boutique Hotels

Although boutique hotels and timeshares seem (at first thought) to be ideas that are far apart, the similarities are remarkable. I encourage you to read the full RCI Ventures article for a look at all ten trends. You’ll find it interesting that every one of the boutique hotel trends is also a trend you’ll find in timesharing.

Who’s buying Brazil timeshare and Venezuela timeshare right now? Brazilians and Venezuelans! Both countries recorded double-digit growth in the sale of timeshare and vacation ownership products last year, almost exclusively within the domestic market.

A recent Hotels Magazine online article cited the RCI Executive Summary noting that domestic timeshare buyers made 97 percent of Brazil timeshare sales last year for a total of over 14,300 weeks. Venezuelans purchased 99 percent of the Venezuela timeshares (a total of 12,700 weeks) sold in that country.

Perhaps responding to this trend, sixty-one Latin America timeshare resorts and Caribbean timeshare resorts became part of RCI timeshare exchange system in 2009. These additions brought the total number of Latin America timeshares affiliated with RCI timeshare exchange to 1,200.

The RCI Executive Summary also showed promising growth in Costa Rica, where several luxury projects have been started and in Argentina, Colombian, Uruguay, and Brazil where timeshare companies that may not have had a presence there previously are entering the market. Even Mexico, a vacation destination hit hard by fears of the S1N1 virus, added 22 resorts to the RCI affiliation inventory. Sixteen Caribbean timeshares and seven Brazil timeshares also became part of the RCI timeshare exchange.

RCI timeshare exchange publishes the RCI Executive Summary annually. A targeted 2010 Latin America and the Caribbean Vacation Ownership Fact Book will be released later this year.

As of last week, Celebrity Resorts, LLC (timeshares) and 35 affiliates have voluntarily filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, filing in the US Bankruptcy Court in Orlando, Florida.

Celebrity (and its affiliates) own and operate thirteen timeshare resorts including Florida timeshare, Hawaii timeshare, and timeshare in Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Celebrity Resorts timeshares report that the company has approximately $23 million in unsecured debt and $12 million in secured debt. The two debts listed as secured are to International Escrow Services of Atlanta and Resort Condominiums International of Carmel, Indiana.

According to an article by Randall Reece for Netdocs.com, the company cites the following as the three primary reasons for the bankruptcy:

1. The economy in general and what the timeshare company calls, “unprecedented decrease in revenues” since September 2008.
2. Internal disagreements between family members who hold control over the debtors regarding the company’s business model. Two family members have been terminated, one of whom has filed a lawsuit against several of the companies involved.
3. The declaration of a default on a loan owing to Textron Financial Corporation.

Celebrity Resorts, formerly known as Resort World, began its business selling Caribbean timeshare in the 1970s, and then added Orlando timeshare in the 1980s.

At the time of this blog posting, there is no information on the company’s website regarding how the closing may impact any of the Celebrity Resorts timeshares.

The full court document is currently available to read at: http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=491abf36-f3e4-4fbe-81a1-2bbeeebbdb80

We deliver so much timeshare news and current events here on The Timeshare Authority, it becomes easy to forget that many of the people who are interested in buying timeshare or a timeshare rental are new to the world of timesharing. They may not “speak the language” that the rest of us have all grown accustomed to understanding.

So let’s use today’s blog and talk about some of the industry jargon that is understandably confusing to people who haven’t encountered it before:

• Fixed Week: These are seven-day increments of timeshare that you own at a home resort. Your fixed week of timeshare ownership is usually identified by a number, such as, “Week 10”. When you own a fixed week of timeshare, you are guaranteed that vacation week every year. But you are not required to stick with it; you can still typically use it as a timeshare exchange.
• Floating Week: A floating week gives you the right to one week of timeshare that usually falls within a season of a specified value. RCI (Resort Condominiums International) for example, uses color coded seasons of red, white, and blue with red representing the highest demand season. Use of a floating week is always based on availability and you must go through the steps required by your resort or exchange company to use it as a timeshare exchange. Points based timeshare is always floating timeshare ownership.
• Space banking: When you save or ‘bank’ your timeshare into a collective of other available timeshare weeks or units, you are space banking it for future use.
• Lock-out: A lock out or lock off timeshare unit is one that can be subdivided and each section rented separately.
• Gold Crown Resort: A Gold Crown timeshare resort is a connotation applied by RCI to identify timeshare properties of the highest standards.

Buying, renting, or selling timeshare is not a complicated process (at least it shouldn’t be) and enjoying timeshare is certainly not hard to do. But the industry has developed some specific terminology and you will be better prepared to make decisions and make plans if you understand the language.

To learn more about the no doubletalk approach to timeshares, check out the Sell My Timeshare NOW Timeshare Glossary.

Now this is just fun. How about an app for your iPhone that helps you time manage your Disneyland vacation? The Walkee™ iGuide to Disneyland® Park by TapBanana.com is out just in time for next month’s opening of the expansion at the Disney Grand Californian Hotel and Spa. The California timeshare expansion adds 203 hotel rooms and 48 Disney Vacation Club timeshare units, including two Grand Villas, to the already expansive property.

The GPS-enabled customizable app is a fun alternative to those paper Disney Park maps we have all stuffed in our pockets but never really used in the past. And since the Disney Grand Californian Hotel and Spa (with Disney Vacation Club timeshares) is located in the very middle of the Disneyland resort, you will be at the heart of it all for using the Walkee™ iGuide to help you navigate the park, pick your favorite restaurant, or update your friends about what you’ve seen.

New Disney Vacation Club Timeshare is a Boon to Area Economy

The Villas at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel® & Spa are the first Disney timeshare units available at the Disney California parks. And they couldn’t open at a more welcomed time for the people of Anaheim where the City Council says these new hotel rooms will generate more than $2 million annually in bed taxes, while the new Disney timeshare units translate to nearly a half million dollars in bed taxes the first year alone.

But Disney’s expansion with California timeshares is not just good for the local community, it’s great for members of Disney Vacation Club, providing that West Coast Disney timeshare option that has never existed before. And as of January 1, 2009, RCI is the exclusive exchange provider for Disney Vacation Club. Timeshare owners at Disney Vacation Club can now use their Disney Vacation Club timeshare points to book timeshare at RCI affiliated resorts worldwide.

Here’s a quick look at Walkee™: