Hotel and Motel Management recently ran a report on social media, a topic we feel strongly about at Sell My Timeshare NOW and The Timeshare Authority blog. (Apply marketing basics to social media to sell timeshare)

As they correctly observed, timeshares and social media are a logical match, with author Stephanie Ricca pointing out, “The timeshare industry is known for its marketing savvy, so it makes sense that this segment hit the ground running when it came to adopting social media strategies.”

Much of the report addresses what it defines as, “using social media outlets to strengthen the bond with the most critical mass—current timeshare owners.” This is a good observation and brings up the issue we made in a blog post this past Sunday (Social Media and the Timeshare Industry at the VOASA Conference)

Timeshares inherently have a special need for social media. Timeshare owners may buy timeshare from a developer who gives them plenty of attention, right up until they become a timeshare owner. After that, some timeshare owners feel they are “on their own” when it comes to gaining updates and general information about the opportunities of vacation ownership. This feeling of “aloneness” can be even greater for timeshare owners who bought timeshare as on the resale market. Who do they turn to with their questions? Where is their support system?

But as Howard Nusbaum, president and CEO of ARDA (the American Resort Development Association), explains, “We’re trying to educate our members that viral and word-of-mouth marketing now has a huge megaphone…This is an opportunity every day to ensure you’re igniting your fans and answering your detractors.”

Timeshare Owners Need a Voice…and a Listening Ear

Social media is often called “new media” for a reason. The old way the business world used to communicate with consumers has come to an end. No more one-sided conversations where advertising executives strategize the message, trying to shape the way consumers feel about the product.

Instead, social media has given consumers the voice they should have always had. Whether the product is timeshares, other travel and vacation products, or consumer goods and services, social media is providing the platforms for individuals to express and share their likes, dislikes, needs, and opinions. New media is one of the best directions business has taken in many years, even though it has left most industries—timeshare included—working hard to get up to steam with a presence in all the places its market wants to be heard.

The Timeshare Authority Blog and Sell My Timeshare NOW hope you will follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jasontremblay_ and http://twitter.com/vacationhotdeal

SPI Software, providers of software for the timeshare industry, has announced that Matt Brosious, vice president of sales, is a speaker at this week’s Vacation Ownership Association of Southern Africa (VOASA) conference. The VOASA conference, (August 29-31) is being held in Durban, South Africa. Brosious will speak on the topic: Positioning Your Brand and Social Media.

SPI Software, a Miami, Florida based company, has been providing software to the timeshare, vacation ownership, fractional, and private residence club industry since 1978. Their software is effective for both traditional timeshare and timeshare points based ownership programs. The proprietary timeshare software utilizes Microsoft .NET-based software either as an enterprise suite called Orange Systems, or in specific modules to handle sales, marketing, finance, property management, centralized reservations maintenance fee and receivables servicing, or Website access operations.

Why Social Media Matters When it Comes to Timeshares

Timeshares inherently have a special need for social media. Timeshare owners may buy timeshare from a developer who gives them plenty of attention, right up until they become a timeshare owner. After that, some timeshare owners feel they are “on their own” when it comes to gaining updates and general information about the opportunities of vacation ownership. This feeling of “aloneness” can be even greater for timeshare owners who bought timeshare as on the resale market. Who do they turn to with their questions? Where is their support system?

A strong network of connectivity through Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and other social media platforms can be a difference maker in the satisfaction level timeshare owners feel after their initial purchase. Matt Brosious will no doubt be reinforcing this message, offering insights to the VOASA conference attendees that will help everyone involved in the industry be more responsive to timeshare owners and their needs.

More news from The Timeshare Authority on the VOASA Conference:

South Africa Timeshare and the VOASA Conference 2010

In case you haven’t already gotten the word, once again Festiva Resorts is running its annual Festiva Photo & Story contest.

If you are a Festiva Resorts timeshare owner, you are invited to share your best Festiva vacation stories or photos. Write the story of your most memorable (funny, amazing or unexpected) vacation experience at any Festiva timeshare resort; your story may include a photo, but photos included with stories are optional. You may also enter by submitting a photograph to the photo-only portion of the contest, where no written story is required.

Your Best Festiva Timeshare Vacation Could Help You Win Your Next Festiva Timeshare Vacation

The contest judges say they are not necessarily looking for the story with the most accurate grammar or the photo that is the most artistically skilled. Instead, they want you to capture memories, fun, experiences, and the joy of vacations and celebrations.

Festiva timeshare owners may submit one entry per month for the story contest and one entry per month for the photo contest. Prize winners are to be announced on February 1, 2011. In order to claim your prize you must be a Festiva timeshare owner in good standing.

Here’s what you could win:

• 1st prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property + $1,000 to spend on your vacation (air travel, spending money, etc.)
• 2nd prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property + $500 to spend on your vacation (air travel, spending money, etc.)
• 3rd prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property.

You have until the end of the year—December 15, 2010—to get your submission in to contest@festiva.travel. Learn more at: http://blog.festiva.travel/contest/

Sometimes a photo is worth a thousand words … but sometimes it is worth a week’s vacation at a Festiva Resort timeshare.

At Sell My Timeshare NOW, we are excited about our acquisition of the clients and primary assets of the Canada timeshare website, Rapid Resale, Ltd. Their customer base is loyal; the website, established in September of 2004, has a proven track record of helping Canadian owners buy and sell timeshare in the secondary market. This move strengthens our position in the Canada timeshare market by expanding our brand and visibility. And as Jay Bade, Vice President, Business Development for Sell My Timeshare NOW, stated to the media, “We are honored that April Cummins entrusted her customers to Sell My Timeshare NOW and excited to be able to expand visibility, marketing, and timeshare sales services for her clients.”

Now if only the mainstream media will share this positive, timeshare industry business growth and development with its audience. Will the story be buried behind accounts of shady timeshare resellers and sluggish quarterly profit reports from timeshare developers and resort companies?

Perhaps the timeshare industry story that gets “buried” most of all is the simple and astounding fact that a high percentage (consistently year-in-and-year out greater than 80 percent) of timeshare owners report that they use and enjoy their timeshare and are satisfied with timeshare ownership. 23.5 percent of timeshare owners rank their ownership experience as excellent; 37.4 percent rank it as very good; and 23.9 percent rank it as good … which adds up to a whopping 84.8 percent ranking it good or better than good. (Source: Vacation Timeshare Owners Report, 2008 edition. Prepared by Synovate for AIF in a study that surveyed a national sample of 4009 current timeshare owners between May 30 and June 10, 2008.)

Timeshare really is a good news story, even though that is not always the message consumers hear. If you would like to read Sell My Timeshare NOW’s “good news” media release, click here: Sell My Timeshare NOW Acquires Top Canadian Timeshare Resales Website

The next timeshare owners educational conference for the National Timeshare Owners Association will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and will feature national speakers and the opportunity for timeshare owners to ask questions and get real answers. Scheduled for September 19 at the Clarion Hotel in Milwaukee, registration to attend the event deadlines on August 19.

David Turriff, Midwestern coordinator for the National Timeshare Owners Association, says, “Many Wisconsin citizens own timeshares and it is very difficult to obtain unbiased information about what they should do with their ownership.” The meeting is designed to offer what NTOA describes as “up to the minute information and insights” from the perspective of timeshare owners, not timeshare developers.

In order to attend the Milwaukee meeting, you must be a member of the National Timeshare Association, a consumer protection organization that defines its mission as:

1. To be a powerful recognized influence in the timeshare industry;
2. To provide a forum for face-to-face exchanges of experiences and ideas among timeshare owners;
3. To keep members informed about events and developments in the timeshare industry;
4. To provide a means for informal exchanges, rental, and sale of units.

To find out more about the National Timeshare Owners Association, contact Ed Hastry (410) 536-0064 or by email at Hastry@aol.com

Do you feel as if this summer is passing you by? That you’ve failed to make vacation plans thus far, and now have little hope of working one in before the kids go back to school and you’ve put away your flip-flops for the season?

Not to worry! You can still work an affordable last-minute vacation into your plans and the opportunities in timeshare rentals have a lot to do with making this possible. Here’s how it works: Every year some timeshare owners find they cannot use their timeshare holiday. Sometimes the reason is illness, sometimes it is a scheduling snafu with their work responsibilities—maybe they are even in the midst of a job relocation, divorce, or other life issue. They wind up not using their timeshare and not banking it to use in the future …But they are glad to rent it!

5 Reasons Timeshare Rentals are Your Vacation Solution

Timeshare rentals are one of the ways you can genuinely benefit from timeshare as a vacation product. Here are 5 reasons why a timeshare rental may be your answer to a 2010 summer vacation:

1. Timeshare rentals can be booked in advance, but are also available on short notice for last-minute vacation scheduling.
2. Timeshare rentals may be available in increments of less than a week, for those times when your schedule only permits a shorter stay.
3. Booking a timeshare rental is as easy (and sometimes easier) than booking a hotel room. The “Book it NOW” feature at Sell My Timeshare NOW, is one option for timeshare rental that lets you book online, with immediate confirmation by email, providing you with your unique booking number.
4. Timeshare rentals are available worldwide. You can travel the globe, but you can also plan a relaxing drive-to vacation, which eliminates the expense and hassle of booking last minute air travel.
5. Timeshare rentals can be negotiable. Oftentimes you may find that the closer it gets to a timeshare’s usage date (in other words, the more last minute it is) the more flexible the timeshare owner may be on pricing.

Let’s face it; “staycations” are nobody’s idea of a real holiday. Before you give up all plans of vacationing this summer, look into the reasonable and easy-to-book opportunities in timeshare rental.

We love the news we receive from TATOC Timeshare Association. Here’s what they said in their last news release. It is just so intriguing we want to share it with you in exactly their own words:

“Wednesday 26th May 2010 was an important day for the timeshare industry. There was no scandal, no new legislation nor a consumer television programme about to reveal all. But in a hotel in Manchester (England) there were representatives from every facet of the industry meeting for the first time to discuss the challenges and problems of the industry and more importantly to discuss action to overcome them.”

TATOC (Timeshare Association Timeshare Owners and Committees) is known as the only elected consumers association to represent the interests of timeshare owners in Europe. The topics of their watershed meeting sounded very much in harmony with the issues brought up last week, here in the US at the ARDA New England Regional Meeting. TATOC members addressed, with concern, the fact that the media perception and consequently much of the consumer perception about timeshares is not healthy for the industry. One spTimeshare resales, timeshare news, timeshare blog, timeshare owners, timeshare exchange, RCI timeshare, Interval International, European timeshareecific prevailing topic that the industry is working hard to resolve is that of how to best respond to timeshare owners who wish to resell timeshare.

Harry Taylor, the CEO of TATOC, explains, “Following our very successful Annual conference in March and as an Association who represents the consumer, we felt, that we should keep the impetus going and use this opportunity to move forward as a cohesive body. It is a TATOC initiative and we have been very encouraged as to the companies and interest taken by the industry and also the commitment to address these issues.”

Executives from Worldwide Timeshare, Club la Costa, Diamond Resorts International©, FNTC, RCI, Resort Developers Association, Resort Properties, Resort Solutions, Interval International, and Dial an Exchange participated.

Learn more about TATOC:
www.timeshareassociation.org
Or contact Harry Taylor CEO on +44 (0)845 230 2430

Following up on yesterday’s post on The Timeshare Authority, I want to share more with you about this past week’s ARDA New England Regional Meeting held in Providence, Rhode Island.

Howard Nusbaum, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Resort Development Association, was the keynote speaker, discussing ARDA’s key issues for 2010. Point one, along with my thoughts, appeared yesterday in The Timeshare Authority, so you will want to check out that post, if you missed it.

And now here’s a look at the next four important areas of focus for ARDA and the timeshare industry as a whole:

2. Working to foster growth in the secondary marketplace:
This point is part of an overriding and significant theme for the timeshare industry. Timeshare fraud is the exception, but to any degree, it cannot be tolerated. Laws must be adhered to and the timeshare industry on all levels, including timeshare sales and timeshare resales, must be able to show itself to the world with transparency and creditability.

3. Nurturing and supporting timeshare owners:
The timeshare industry is not, and never can be, solely about new timeshare sales and timeshare resale. Instead, we must all be about nurturing and supporting customers and honoring the dream that customers purchased in becoming timeshare owners. Timeshare ownership products must be maintained as strong, vibrant, and fulfilling products.

4. Utilizing social media technology:

It is no longer acceptable for any business or any industry to rely on drawing consumers into the store or onto a webpage. Instead, through the power of social media, the timeshare industry must reach out to timeshare owners, timeshare buyers, timeshare renters, and prospective clients, connecting with them in the online locations they already frequent. Embracing social media marketing is one of the most timely and relevant sales and marketing strategies for spreading the message of what a great product timeshares really are.

5. Changing business models:
ARDA is working to help the timeshare industry explore new business models and evolve old business models. Thought leaders of timesharing and vacation ownership are addressing how products can be revised to better suit consumer buying profiles and vacation patterns. One of many points in question is that of ownership in perpetuity, which may no longer have the desirability factor it once did. In response to that, new products that offer short-term ownership opportunities are being explored.

It’s all good, isn’t it? When the goal of any industry is to work together to make its products more consumer-focused and more desirable, under an umbrella of forthrightness and complete transparency, then only good things can come of that effort. Timeshares are a great product, getting better all the time, and frankly, I am proud to part of an industry that focuses on bringing affordable vacation opportunities to individuals and families in ways that are relevant, timely, and flexible.

Do you recall being in elementary school, sitting in your desk, doing your work, while the teacher focused all of his or her attention on a few disruptive students? If you were one of the kids who followed the rules, doing your work, and trying to master long division and the names of capital cities in Europe, you must have wondered why the loudmouth in the third row could get away with interrupting the educational process for you and others who were in school to learn.

Sometimes in the timeshare industry it seems as if all the attention goes to a limited group of unscrupulous business people. Over 80 percent of all timeshare owners use and enjoy their timeshares. Some timeshare owners choose (or need) to resell timeshare. And although you hear over and over that it is impossible to resell timeshare, each month, at Sell My Timeshare NOW alone, nearly 150,000 offers to buy timeshare or rent timeshare are made for the vacation ownership properties we market and advertise.

For all the timeshare owning families that enjoy great vacations in their timeshare, and all the timeshare owners who successfully sell or rent their timeshares through reliable timeshare resales avenues including by-owner advertising and timeshare broker sales-well, I suspect they get really tired of being treated as if they made a foolish decision to buy timeshare.

…and then again, maybe they are just busy enjoying their vacation ownership property.

AIF has finalized the State of the Vacation Timeshare Industry: United States Study, 2010 Edition, releasing some very positive and reaffirming news about timeshares. The annual study, prepared by Ernst and Young, showed an average of 79.9 percent occupancy at US timeshare resorts in 2009 as compared to a 54.7 percent occupancy rate at US hotels. (Source: “STR Trend Report,” Smith Travel Research, April 2010)

Thirty-four percent of US timeshare resorts showed occupancy rates as high as 90 percent and higher, with another twenty percent ranking between 80 and 89 percent occupancy. Only twelve percent of US timeshare resorts had 60 percent or lower occupancy rates last year.

Occupancy Rate for Timeshare 2009 Attests to the Strength of Timesharing

Stats don’t lie. While there will always be timeshare owners who don’t use their timeshare or who feel buyer’s remorse and wish they had not purchased it, the majority of timeshare owners use and enjoy their vacation ownership property. In fact, many timeshare owners believe that in the tight economy of recent years, had they not owned timeshare, providing them pre-paid vacation accommodations, they would have never been able to work a much-needed vacation into their budgets. Timeshare owners frequently have found that they are at the beach or in the mountains enjoying a family holiday while many of their friends and neighbors were left at home, in the backyard on staycation.