The Resort Trades

In the September issue of The Resort Trades, Jason Tremblay shares interesting insights on how a changing internet affects the timeshare industry and contributes to a healthier, more transparent relationship between the industry and the timeshare owner.

Here are interesting excerpts from “Google Panda puts the emphasis on user-driven technology,” reprinted with the permission of The Resort Trades.

From customized apps to integrated software, there is a lot going on in technology that makes it easier for the vacation ownership industry to deliver faster and more effective services to its clients, improving the timeshare ownership, fractional or rental experience. Yet one of the most far-reaching  and substantial changes for the industry, the timeshare consumer, and web users as a whole, has occurred, not with the release of a new app or software management system, but through the most recent changes Google has made to the algorithms that direct search engine results in response to user queries.

With implementation beginning as early as February and continuing through major adjustments made in July of this year, Google changed much of the methodology it has used in the past for ranking websites. The rollout of the new search engine strategy is being called, “Google Panda,” presumably in tribute to Google software engineer, Navneet Panda.

The goal of Panda was to improve Google’s effectiveness in returning to the web user, search results that focus on high quality websites with well-founded content. While the changes have shaken up search engine results for many websites, the rationale behind Google Panda is one that should ultimately benefit both businesses working to keep their websites and blogs high in the search engine rankings and timeshare buyers, renters and sellers seeking reliable, quality information about vacation ownership.

…This user-centered approach speaks to the heart and soul of new media. It is one more way that business is no longer be driven by ad campaigns built by agencies in ivory towers but instead, in the way that it always should have been, by consumers themselves.

You can find this article in its entirety in the September issue of The Resort Trades magazine and online at http://www.resorttrades.com

The Trades Publishing Company, Inc. is celebrating two important milestones. The Resort Trades magazine is celebrating 25 years in publication and the Resort Trades’ Management & Operations magazine is celebrating 10 years. Both accomplishments are a measure of true success in the highly competitive world of publishing.

Back in 1985, Tim Wilson, publisher of these and other magazines, was a timeshare and resort developer, who recognized the lack of timeshare industry-specific media resources available. Launching the Resort Trades magazine, was no doubt challenging as Wilson and his staff ventured into uncharted territory with their timeshare publication. Tim explains, “We have worked extremely hard over the years to earn the trust of our readers, and we have always maintained our integrity with our advertisers.”

Wilson continues, “We have a distinct advantage because we are totally independent and that freedom to speak without censorship or limitation is exactly what our editorial policy is based on. Our readers expect our content to come from reliable sources, and we deliver. Our large pool of credible, knowledgeable contributors includes industry experts such as Jason Tremblay, Sharon Drechsler, David Waller, Marge Lennon, Alan Schlaifer and many more.”

News sources across South Carolina and within the timeshare industry itself have been abuzz over a proposal to the South Carolina Tax Realignment Commission. The proposal, drafted by a subcommittee of the state’s Tourism Alliance and the state’s Chamber of Commerce Tourism Committee, calls for adding South Carolina’s existing accommodations tax to timeshare maintenance fees statewide. It’s a move that some critics say looks suspiciously like an attempt to squeeze more money out of those who already do so much to support the state’s tourism economy.

Ironically, the South Carolina Tax Realignment Commission is a state legislature-appointed committee tasked with, “…maintaining and enhancing the state as an optimum competitor in the effort to attract business and individuals to locate, live, work, and invest in the state.” Yet a proposal to tax South Carolina timeshare owners through both the taxes they already pay by way of their annual maintenance fees and again as a tourist tax added to these same fees serves not as an attraction, but as a serious deterrent.

Accommodations taxes (also called tourist or bed taxes) are an add-on tax to hotel and motel rooms, and in many states to any short-term apartment or vacation home rental. Presently, South Carolina timeshare owners do not pay this tax, but they do pay other taxes that benefit state revenues. Through their annual maintenance fees, timeshare owners pay the property or real estate taxes at their home resort– properties often assessed as high-dollar developments built on prime real estate.

Additionally, the annual fee paid by timeshare owners provides the funds for the timeshare’s HOA to pay the payroll taxes on the resort staff as well as sales taxes on any items purchased by the resort, such as cleaning supplies or building materials. Annual fees, which are paid whether or not an owner uses the timeshare, also pay utility taxes on the resort’s use of phone, water, cable, satellite, electricity, and gas.

And it doesn’t stop here…

If a residential property owner in South Carolina rents his property to someone else for a short-term stay, the property owner is responsible to pay the accommodations tax on his rental income. Likewise, when South Carolina timeshare owners use their timeshare as a rental, they currently pay both their maintenance fee to the resort (which goes in part to pay property taxes) and the accommodations tax on the money received by renting. In other words, they follow the same rules all other South Carolina homeowners follow.

Jason Gamel, vice president of state government affairs for the American Resort Development Association, reinforces the position that timeshare owners are already South Carolina taxpayers in the form of property taxes, and describes the premise on which this new proposal is based as faulty. “A timeshare owner,” Gamel explains, “is a real property owner in the state of South Carolina. It’s no different than someone owning a second home.”

As individual consumers, timeshare owners in South Carolina (and other states) make a rock-solid contribution to local economies through the taxes they pay on the goods and services used during their holidays and by the economic influx of the actual dollars they spend while on vacation. Earlier this month ARDA released a study developed in conjunction with Ernst & Young, which shows that for 2009, the economic impact of the timeshare industry on the U.S. economy was $68 billion, with $8.4 billion of that coming in the form of taxes.

Perhaps the handful of South Carolina hoteliers who are behind this double-taxation proposal haven’t fully considered that today’s economy has already turned ‘walking away from’ into an option many homeowners and timeshare owners consider viable if faced with a mortgage they are struggling to pay. As the federal government works to find ways to help homeowners save their ownership, how inappropriate is it for a state government to attempt to implement standards that make it more difficult than ever for real property owners in the form of timeshare owners to hang on to their ownership?

Since 1969, ARDA has been working to support the needs of timeshare owners, strengthen the industry, and help effect legislation that protects and preserves the rights and privilege of timeshare. They have promised to “put up fierce opposition” to this tax and all us who make up the timeshare industry should stand with them in support of South Carolina timeshare owners and the future of the timeshare industry there.