Last week, ARDA’s vacation website, www.vacationbetter.org announced the winners of this year’s “Bring Your Vacation to Life Contest.”

Each year this photo, essay, and video competition is announced in conjunction with the National Travel and Tourism Week in May. Entrants are asked to share a memory of a timeshare vacation that contributed to their enjoyment of life or impacted their family or their health.

This year’s winners received an American Express gift card.

• Sally Lessig received first place for her photo, “Al Relaxing” and the accompanying story, “Thru the Years.”
• Alexis MacDonald received second place for her photo, “Lexie & Dan Love Myrtle Beach.”
• Tracy Dunn received second place for her photo, “For My Next Act.”

Follow this link to read Sally’s story about a lifetime of timeshare vacations at the Beach House Golf and Racket Club in Myrtle Beach.

And remember, you aren’t limited to just reading about the great timeshare vacations other people enjoy. The competitive prices of timeshare resales and timeshare rentals make affordable vacations an option even for travelers on a limited budget.

Flu season is almost here, only this year it includes the added concern of H1-N1 flu, the name we are supposed to now use instead of swine flu so we won’t offend the pigs or create a bad marketing image for the pork industry. (Okay, fair enough)

It is natural to wonder whether it is a good idea to travel at all with concerns so high about exposure to illness. But before you cancel your timeshare vacation, you might consider just taking some preventative measures to improve the odds that you stay healthy, especially if your vacation is planned for a timeshare you already own (and therefore have already paid for) or you’ve arranged a great deal on a timeshare rental.

And while the threat of flu exposure may give you pause to rethink your timeshare vacation plans, the overall health benefits of vacation and relaxation time probably outweigh the risk of coming down with a bug. According to ARDA, the American Resort Development Association, at their website www.vacationbetter.org, “Men who don’t vacation regularly are 32 percent more likely to die of heart attacks; women are 50 percent more likely.” This single fact alone is an eye-opener to the fact that vacation time is critical, even if it means washing our hands a few extra times along the way.

Simple Steps to Increase the Odds of Staying Healthy During Your Timeshare Vacation

Your timeshare unit should be clean when you arrive, and if for any reason it is not, contact the timeshare management immediately to ensure that you are either switched to a different unit, if one is available, or that housekeeping takes care of your concerns.

But even in the cleanest of timeshare resorts, there are little steps you can take to improve your chances of staying healthy during your timeshare vacation.

1. Worry less about the sink and toilet and more about items such as the on-off buttons on light fixtures. Take along some sanitary disposable wipes and wipe down doorknobs, telephones, light switches, the refrigerator and microwave door handles, salt and pepper shakers, and other places that people frequently handle but housekeeping is more likely to miss in clean-up. This is not major cleaning; you only need to do this once upon first entering your timeshare condo or unit.
2. Some timeshare vacationers routinely load the dishwasher with all washable kitchen items and run them through the hottest or longest washing cycle before they use anything.
3. Deal with the most unsanitary item(s) in the room … the TV and video remotes. Since you can’t bathe the remotes in disinfectant, try taking a zip-closure sandwich bag turned inside out, picking up the remote and then pulling the bag over it, and ‘zipping’ it closed. Great trick, super simple, and you can still work the remote just fine right through the bag.
4. Put a pair of thongs or other slip-on shoes inside the front door, for each family member. Leave outside shoes on a newspaper inside your timeshare, and wear the clean thongs inside the unit. This way, you won’t be bringing more outside germs into your timeshare nor will you be walking around barefoot inside the unit.
5. Author L. A. Robinson (“Keeping Germs at Bay“) suggests a bottle of alcohol for cleaning up tubs and toilets. It is cheap, easy to splash around, safe for most surfaces and you can pick up a small bottle anywhere.
6. And finally, wash your hands. You can’t hear this enough or do it too much. Buy a handful of those little bottles of waterless liquid soap and make it a game with your kids to use the stuff liberally and often.

Finally, if you do get sick, seek medical attention promptly. And if you are traveling outside the US, and you or a family member becomes seriously ill, contact the embassy or consulate for that country. The Department of State Diplomacy in Action website is www.usembassy.gov/

To contact this agency by phone from the US or Canada call: 888-407-4747. From outside the US call: 00-1-202-501-4444.

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 three corporate accounts: @JasonTremblay_; @VacationHotDeal; and @SteveLuba. 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.

The Sell My Timeshare NOW Forum

The SellMyTimeshareNOW Forum is a great place to exchange ideas with other timeshare owners or ask questions and leave comments. Soon we’ll be adding a Facebook fan site as another way to expand our social media presence and provide more formats of communication for timeshare buyers, sellers, renters, owners, and everyone involved in the timeshare industry or interested in timesharing.

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.

Follow this link to read the Sell My Timeshare NOW press release, Sell My Timeshare NOW Uses Social Media Marketing to Fill an Important Need among Timeshare Vacationers

Director of Communications Steve Luba gives a wrap-up of the latest happenings in the industry.

Last week, Sell My Timeshare NOW released the HOT 100 List for timeshare resales and timeshare rentals. Let’s take a closer look at some of the trends the report reveals, especially about the HOTTEST 10 timeshare resorts – those popular ten at the very top of the list.

For the second consecutive year, WorldMark by Wyndham timeshares rank number 1 in the number of offers received to buy or rent. These timeshares are multi-destination ownership, meaning that your WorldMark by Wyndham timeshare gives you a choice of nearly 60 luxurious timeshare resorts in the US (including Hawaii), Mexico, Canada, and Fiji.

Marriott timeshare (Marriott Vacation Club International) claimed four spots on the HOTTEST 10 list. Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club in Palm Beach, Aruba was number 2; Marriott’s Newport Coast Villas, Newport Coast, California was number 3; Marriott’s Grande Vista, Orlando, Florida was number 8; and Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club, Maui, Hawaii was number 9.

One of the few changes in the HOT 100 List, this year over last year, is that Marriott’s Grande Vista in Orlando is new to the HOTTEST 10, while Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club in Oahu, Hawaii, was number 10 on last year’s list but slipped to number 11 on this year’s list.

By geographic destination, Orlando timeshare dominated, including the Marriott property already mentioned, and two other popular Orlando timeshare resorts: Orange Lake’s West Village, which ranked number 6, and Hilton Grand Vacations Club at SeaWorld International Centerdo, new to the list at number 10.

Rounding out the HOTTEST 10 timeshare resales are: the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas in Maui, Hawaii, number 4 on the list, the Harborside Resort at Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas, number 5 on the list, and the always popular Manhattan Club, in New York City, moving up from last year’s number 9, to be number 7 on this year’s list.

For the ten resorts making the HOTTEST 10 List, Sell My Timeshare NOW received 23,317 offers to buy or rent in 2008.

Click here to view the entire HOT 100 List for Sell My Timeshare NOW timeshare resales and timeshare rentals.

And if you are interested in comparisons, this link will take you to information about last year’s HOT 100 List: Sell My Timeshare NOW Releases HOT 100 List for 2008.

Sell My Timeshare NOW has released its annual HOT 100 List, which shows the top 100 timeshare resales and timeshare rentals advertised on www.sellmytimesharenow.com. The list is based on the number of inbound offers to buy or rent timeshare.

This year’s HOT 100 List reveals some interesting trends, most notably a 56 percent increase in the number of offers to buy or rent timeshare on the HOT 100 List, compared to the previous year. The total number of offers for the HOT 100 List was 70,700.

The report also shows remarkable consistency from last year to this year in the timeshare resale and timeshare rental resort properties that make the top of the HOT 100 List — those on the Top 10. The timeshare resorts that made the Top 10 received 23,317 offers to buy or rent.

Here’s the HOTTEST Timeshares of the HOT 100, the Top 10:

• WorldMark by Wyndham, Multi-Destination Resorts (Number 1 for the second year in a row.)
• Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club, Palm Beach, Aruba
• Marriott’s Newport Coast Villas, Newport Coast, California
• Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas, Maui, Hawaii
• Harborside Resort at Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas
• Orange Lake’s West Village, Orlando, Florida
• Manhattan Club, New York, New York.
• Marriott’s Grande Vista, Orlando, Florida
• Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club, Maui, Hawaii
• Hilton Grand Vacations Club at SeaWorld International Center, Orlando, Florida

The full report on all 100 HOT timeshare resales and timeshare rentals is available here: Sell MyTimeshare NOW HOT 100 List, and our official press release is available here: Timeshare Resales Offers up 56 Percent on HOT 100 List as Americans Seek Vacation Savings

Many states are looking at raising hotel taxes to help offset budget cuts. Director of Communications Steve Luba discusses the issue.

Which ocean do you prefer? Atlantic or Pacific?

When you compare HOT 100 List timeshare resort number 25, Occidental Allegro Vacation Club, Grand Aruba and the Sands of Kahana Vacation Club timeshare, HOT 100 resort number 24, you may find it hard to choose, which beautiful island? Which sunny beach?

Aruba Timeshare at the Occidental Allegro Vacation Club Timeshare

The Occidental Allegro Vacation Club is a multi-destination timeshare with Grand Aruba being a favorite destination of many who are members of this popular vacation club. Recognized as the largest and fastest growing all-inclusive timeshare resort company in the world, the Occidental Allegro Vacation Club has more than 75 properties. Located around the world, you will find Occidental Allegro resorts in Morocco, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Antigua, France, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Tunisia, and of course, the beautiful resort in Aruba.

If you thought buying timeshare takes the hassle out of vacation planning, and lets you lock-in the price of a lifetime of vacations, imagine what buying timeshare at an all-inclusive resort does for the equation.

Here are some of the benefits of that are part of membership at Occidental Allegro Vacation Club Grand Aruba timeshare and included at no additional fee:

• Unlimited meals, even at their high-end restaurants. Your choice of 6 restaurants, 4 bars and a disco with bar.
• Unlimited snacks and beverages.
• Nightly entertainment.
• Freeform pools with whirlpools. Chaise lounges and towel service at the beach and at the pool.
• Two tennis courts, aqua aerobics, water polo, snorkeling and kayaking.
• Daily activities on the beach and at the pool.
• Kids club.
• And no hidden fees, VIP Check-in, and much, much more.

Hawaii Timeshare at the Sands of Kahana Vacation Club Timeshare

But if you prefer Polynesian charm, you may find yourself more attracted to the next timeshare resort on the HOT 100 List, the Sands of Kahana Vacation Club timeshare.

It starts with location, location, location, and this Hawaii timeshare just so happens to be situated between Kaanapali and Kapalua on the west coast of Maui. How much better can it get? The Sands of Kahana Vacation Club is considered to be the flagship resort of the Consolidated Resorts Properties.

Choose from one, two, and three-bedroom timeshare units, all with full kitchens and in-room washers and dryers. Enjoy the beach, swim in the pool, or soak in the hot tub. You can also enjoy the putting green, tennis courts, exercise room, luxurious spa, clubhouse, bar, lounge and restaurant.

Timeshare is All About Choices

You know, timeshare really is all about choices. You pick the way you like to vacation, you pick the locations you want to explore or revisit again and again, and best of all, as your lifestyle and interests change, timeshare exchange makes it possible to continue to enjoy vacations that are ‘just-right’ for you and your family or friends. Best of all, the opportunities of timeshare resales and timeshare rentals help make flexible, luxury vacations available at affordable prices.