Lisa Ann Schreier, author of Timeshare for Dummies authored an excellent article last month in Resort Trades making valid points about what the timeshare sales industry can learn from the travel industry.

Schreier looked at research from Chairman and CEO of Ypartnership, Peter Yesawich, which shows that the two greatest influences on Americans who travel are internet technology and feedback from other consumers.

Prodding the timeshare industry to ‘catch up,’ (or perhaps wake up) author Schreier focuses on the scarcity of timeshare sales information on the internet and lack of feedback from timeshare owners and vacationers about timeshare resorts.

“Hotels and motels and other non-timeshare travel services have been forced to become price transparent…as have just about every other product or service available to consumers. And still, the timeshare industry won’t budge on this because they cling to the concept that timeshares are not a sought-after product.”

Why Timeshare Resale Advertising Works

Strong words, but very perceptive. And they explain a great deal about why timeshare resale advertising is so effective.

• Consumers want the best price possible whether they are shopping for a hotel room or to buy timeshare or rent timeshare. Timeshare resales give buyers and renters the opportunity to shop from a large inventory of timeshares for sale or rent, where prices are clearly posted and resort features are specifically detailed.
• Consumers trust other consumers. Many people who buy timeshare or rent timeshare really like the idea of doing business directly with the property’s current owner.
• And as Schreier points out, “If a consumer can purchase a timeshare from the developer for $20,000 or a similar product on the resale market for $5,000 or $6,000…why wouldn’t they?”

Helpful reading: Surviving a Timeshare Presentation by Lisa Ann Schreier

This weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada, bloggers and representatives from all areas of the media are gathering for the BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009. We’re very interested in this event, as well as all the other developments in business communication and information exchange that are happening today.

Publishing The Timeshare Authority blog has given all of us at Sell My Timeshare NOW a better perspective on the purpose, the power, and the effectiveness of blogging as part of ‘New Media.’ But if you are not sure what the words New Media really include, don’t feel bad, the concept is literally being defined and redefined daily as everyone involved in communications, marketing, and business tries to understand the changes that are happening around us.

The concept we all understood of the media telling the public what is going on in the world today is being challenged, replaced by New Media that is much more about the public telling the media what is going on instead. User-driven, user-defined, New Media is not just new technologies for delivering information; it is a whole new way of engaging and exchanging information.

Sell My Timeshare NOW on Twitter

At Sell My Timeshare NOW, we’ve been blogging on The Timeshare Authority (formerly The Timeshare Owners Blog) for over five years. And you’ll find us on Twitter at two accounts: @JasonTremblay_ and @VacationHotDeal

We are also working to establish our communication channels through other areas of social media, such as Facebook. It is not a matter of Sell My Timeshare NOW “talking” to you, but much more about the opportunity for timeshare owners, timeshare buyers, renters, and sellers communicating with us and with each other and making the timeshare sales and timeshare resales industries stronger , more responsible, and better in tune with people’s real needs.

Thank you for reading The Timeshare Authority and thank you for following Sell My Timeshare NOW on Twitter.

Happy Labor Day to all who have been observing this US holiday that is so welcomed this time of year, signaling for many the end of summer and the return to school and all-too-familiar routines. If you have been vacationing this weekend, good for you! And if you have been on the job this weekend, well, that’s can be a good thing too especially considering today’s economy.

However you schedule your leisure time and days off, just be sure you do work vacationing into your routine. Not just because you deserve it, which you certainly do, but also because you NEED it.

We’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: Men who don’t vacation regularly are 32 percent more likely to die of heart attacks while women are 50 percent more likely, according to experts cited by the American Resort Development Association (ARDA) at www.vacationbetter.org.

Referencing the research of John De Graaf, editor of the book, Take Back Your Time and frequent speaker on issues of over consumption and overwork in America, VacationBetter.org explains, “Doctors recognize the connection between vacation starvation and heart attacks, high blood pressure, stress and depression. Studies show the risk of these ailments can double or more for people who don’t regularly vacation. Americans are twice as likely to suffer from chronic illnesses as Europeans, who get a minimum of four weeks off each year.”

Timeshare Vacations Make it Easy

Statistics like these remind us that we don’t just need vacations for our mental health; we need them for our physical well-being. And if you are an over-worker and an under-vacationer, timeshares may be just the solution you need to make a vacation happen.

• Timeshares let you spread the cost of vacation accommodations over an extended period.
• If you buy a value-priced timeshare resale, you’ve reduced the headache of paying for a lifetime of vacation accommodations before you even start enjoying that first day of relaxation.
• Owning timeshare lets you skip the vacation scheduling and planning that you didn’t have time to do anyway, and transition seamlessly from “at-work” to “on-vacation”.
• The numerous amenities of most timeshare resorts mean that should you choose to, you and your family can enjoy a fully relaxing, fully entertaining vacation, without ever leaving the property… now what could be easier than that?

Here’s a little more insight on why vacation time is critical, not optional:

Myth #1. Timeshare is a financial investment.

How can this myth still exist? Timeshare is NOT a financial investment; it is a vacation choice. In an age when your personal home may or may not still be an asset, how can anyone think that buying timeshare will guarantee a return upon resell? Not only do timeshare sales people misrepresent the truth if they claim, “… timeshare is an investment,” they also break the law in some states regarding what one can market as an investment. The only time the words “timeshare” and “investment” should appear in the same sentence is when pointing out that regular vacationing is an investment in your good health and that many timeshare owners find planning, scheduling and committing to regular vacations to be easier because they chose to buy timeshare.

Myth #2. Timeshare is worthless on the resale market.

Many of the people who expound this as fact do so because they did not advertise their timeshare resale in the right places and they had trouble selling it. Other people who propagate this myth do so because they want to buy your timeshare from you at lower than rock bottom prices (so they can then resell it for a profit). They try to convince you that they are rescuing you in the process. When it comes to selling timeshare, you don’t need relief, respite, or rescue; you need resale.

No one can guarantee you that your timeshare will sell, but every day around the world, timeshare resales are purchased. Your opportunity to sell your timeshare increases when you choose to advertise it in a large, established marketplace.

Myth #3. If a company charges you to advertise your timeshare resale, the company is unethical.

How are you going to sell timeshare if you don’t advertise it? Yes, there are websites that permit you to advertise your timeshare resale at no charge. How effective are they? Who visits these freebie websites besides other people who have timeshares they want to resell?

Most people are familiar with websites or local print publications that permit you to advertise a timeshare, a used car, a snow blower, or perhaps a wedding dress and they charge you nothing to run the ads. These sites are fine if you think you can find a buyer for that snow blower in your community. But how well does this work for timeshare resales, when what you really need is advertising to a global marketplace of buyers in a medium, such as a well crafted internet website that has been purpose built and is maintained with strategy and deliberation in order to attract the largest possible audience of interested potential buyers?

Timeshare Myth Buster

Here are some timeshare facts you can rely on:

Buy timeshare as a timeshare resale and you are already ahead of the game. You will have spent less money from the onset, and you will have less to worry about when you get ready to resell. Buying timeshare resales offers you the luxury and amenities of timeshare vacations without tying up as much of your hard-earned cash or your credit line.

When you get ready to sell your timeshare, try low hanging fruit first and ask your friends, co-workers, family, and neighbors if they would like to buy your timeshare. But if that doesn’t work, pick a timeshare resale and timeshare rental advertising company that can demonstrate its skill in advertising timeshare resales to a worldwide market of targeted buyers.

Here’s a really fun video of the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters blasting Adam with 20,000 paintballs at YouTube Live.

No news is good news, as Director of Communications Steve Luba explains.

Sell My Timeshare NOW welcomes new hire, Chris Ownby as Chief Technology Officer. Chris comes to us with an extensive background in all aspects of computer software, as well as website development, and development and interface projects. His experience in building and managing both small and large technical teams and architecting large service-oriented enterprise systems fit perfectly into Sell My Timeshare NOW’s plans for enhancing and expanding our services and products.

Chris’ twenty-plus years of experience includes positions as the CTO and the Vice President of Product Development for Sapling Systems; and managing the development of Harcourt Assessment’s online platform, which provided formative and summative testing for the United States’ K through 12 education system. Chris is the former Director of Application Development at CreditReport.com, the market leader in providing B2C and B2B online, highly secure credit services and he founded Trapdoor Net Systems, an internet software development company that was successfully acquired in 2002.

Distinguished in his field, Chris lectures and writes about the future of software, the software industry, and the role of the internet. Currently, he is authoring a book on the how to run a successful software business.

As a graduate of California State University at Fullerton, Chris is a fan of the LA Lakers—a detail we are overlooking up here in Celtics country.

Sell My Timeshare NOW, the global leader in the online advertising and marketing of timeshare resale and timeshare rental welcomes Chris Ownby to our team.

Follow this link to read the Sell My Timeshare NOW media release on our new Chief Technology Officer, Chris Ownby.

If Wyndham had been buying television sports drama, they could not have done better than the Wyndham Championship’s final round on Sunday that offered a first time Tour winner, a three-hole sudden-death playoff, and a one-inch bunker shot miss by Sergio Garcia to keep him out of the playoffs. As Greensboro News-Record writer, Robert Bell put it, “How do you improve upon a tournament that sold out in an economy that has bottomed out?”

The PGA Tour’s Greensboro Open (as the event was originally called prior to Wyndham and others becoming title sponsors) has a long and celebrated history in golf. For years, this tournament was the last PGA Tour stop in the spring before the players headed to Augusta, serving as a warm-up to the Masters. Ask the average golf buff what he or she knows about this tournament and Sam Snead’s name always comes up. This tournament proved to be a history-making event for the legendary Sam Snead who not only won the Greater Greensboro Open’s inaugural tournament in 1938, but won it again in 1946, 1949, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1960, and 1965.

Sam Snead’s eight victories in this event is a PGA Tour tournament record number of wins of the same tournament by a single player. His 1965 win in Greensboro at the age of 52 years, 10 months, 8 days, makes him the oldest winner of a PGA Tour tournament—years before the introduction of the graphite shaft produced lighter, easier to swing clubs. Both of Snead’s records in Greensboro stand after 44 years.

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare’s Future with this PGA Tour Tournament

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare‘s contract with the PGA Tour expires after next year’s tournament, with Wyndham having the option to extend its arrangement for two more years. The PGA Tour hopes instead to get Wyndham to extend its deal until 2014.

Sponsoring a tournament on the men’s tour doesn’t come cheap. Wyndham spends some $26 million to brand this event with their name and then uses it not only to expand their visibility, but as a way to do some serious entertaining of important business contacts. Some speculate that Wyndham chairman Steve Holmes and tournament chairman Bobby Long would like to see the tournament moved to earlier in the season when they reason that the course will be in better shape and their guests more flexible to attend, rather than late August with the start of school approaching in many areas.

For Wyndham, signing that longer deal would certainly give them more negotiating power with the PGA Tour about changing the tournament’s dates. On the other hand, as PGA Tour Network correspondent Brian Katrek pointed out, leaving the Wyndham Championship scheduled for the week before the Tour goes to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, creates exactly the kind of jockeying for position in the FedEx Cup standings and battle to the finish that we saw on Sunday.

Possible Tournament Favorite for the Folks at Wyndham Hotels and Wyndham Timeshare

Adding one more interesting twist to the interworking of the Wyndham Championship is a point brought out in Bell’s article, who wondered if Wyndham officials weren’t quietly rooting for Sergio Garcia. Bell noted that, RCI, a holding of Wyndham timeshare, has 160 Spain timeshare resorts (Garcia’s homeland), and another 700 plus Mexico timeshares and South America timeshares, meaning that an international winner of Garcia’s statue would be widely publicized by the Spanish and Latin media.

…Interesting, but as we all know about golf, the ball doesn’t know or care who hits it, leaving little room for politics and positioning in the game.

See the wrap up of this tournament, and watch the “one inch” that stood between Sergio Garcia and his chance to be part of the play off. This video also includes comments by Brian Katrek on scheduling for this always-successful event.

It’s hard to say with certainty that tweeting or ‘twittering’ could resolve issues you are having with travel as you head off to your timeshare, but it seems it might be worth a try. Michelle Higgins recently wrote an article that appeared in both The New York Times and in Hotels Magazine. She pointed out her own newfound respect for the power of twittering as a way to get attention when you are confronted with travel challenges.

Here’s one of the examples Michelle Higgins wrote about:

• Tony Wagner, his wife, and 2-year-old child were flying JetBlue from Washington DC to San Francisco. When he learned that the three family members were not seated together he first contacted JetBlue customer service and was told to take the matter up at the gate.
• So he tweeted. “@jetblue Advice to get both parents and 2 yr old seated next to each other on flight later today? Right now only one parent. Full flight.”
• In less than 20 minutes, Tony had received a direct message from JetBlue asking him to contact them; his ticket problem was soon resolved.

Does this tell us that your voice resonates louder with companies when they know it is being magnified exponentially by the power of social media? Who knows for sure; right now it is a changing business world where even the models for customer service are being redefined dramatically by everything from the economy, to the internet, to our personal perspectives.

So who is tweeting and, more importantly, paying attention to what you tweet?

Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Hyatt, and Starwood, to name a few of the hotel and timeshare resort companies that are now on Twitter. Several airlines, restaurants, and online travel services can be found there as well. And you’ll also find Sell My Timeshare NOW on Twitter: @JasonTremblay_; @VacationHotDeal; and @SteveLuba … because we are paying attention to what matters to you.

All of us at Sell My Timeshare NOW are pretty excited to have made the Inc. 5000 List for the second year in a row, ranking 1599 out of the top 5000 privately held US companies.

If you missed our big announcement, (see: Sell My Timeshare NOW‘s newest media release) Sell My Timeshare NOW was recognized by Inc Magazine on the Inc 5000 list in the following three categories:

• Fastest growing, privately owned real estate companies nationwide: Sell My Timeshare NOW is number 21 on the Top 100 List.
• Fastest growing, privately owned Businesses in the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH metro area: Sell My Timeshare NOW is number 51 among the Top 100 List.
• Fastest growing, privately owned companies in all categories in the state of New Hampshire: Sell My Timeshare NOW is number 13 on the Top 100 List.

But what we didn’t realize as we were celebrating, is how much better our lives (and our ranking on the Inc. 5000 List) might be, if only we could be mentioned on the Oprah Show.

• Galaxy Desserts of Richmond, California, was not ranked on Inc.’s prestigious list until after being mentioned on Oprah, multiple times. This year the specialty desert company ranks 2297.
• LightWedge Booklights went from non-ranked to 1609, thanks to a mention on Oprah.
• James Ray International, a company that ranks 479 on the Inc. 500 List, saw their sales increase by 376 percent after a mention on Oprah.
• And, the company that ranks number 708 on the Inc. 5000 List, Ecobags.com, saw their sales triple after being mentioned on Oprah’s Earth Day episode.

And according to the experts at Inc. Magazine, these are only a few of the companies that are on either the Inc. 500 or the Inc 5000 Lists and also have benefited by exposure on the Oprah Show.

…Which just makes you wonder if Oprah would be interested in buying or renting timeshare? And until we find out the answer to that, we will just have to go on calling ourselves “Sell My Timeshare NOW, the global leader in the advertising and marketing of timeshare resale and timeshare rental—but as not yet seen on Oprah.”

There is financial news regarding Hyatt, Disney and Interval International, as Director of Communications Steve Luba explains.