Despite the challenging economy, the cruise industry continues to grow, year over year, according to information released during the Cruise Lines International Association’s seventh annual conference, Cruise 360.

Last year, in the US alone, the cruise industry contributed $40 billion to the economy and created 350,000 jobs. And although 15 million passengers enjoyed one or more cruises in 2010, with 72 percent of them being from the US, Canada, or Mexico, only 20 percent of Americans have ever been on a cruise, indicating a large, untapped market of future cruisers.

Timeshare Exchange for Cruises

Obviously not all timeshare can be exchanged for cruises. In some cases, timeshare exchange for a cruise is made through the timeshare company; in other cases, it is made through a timeshare exchange service. And sometimes timeshare points are “spent” to “buy” a cruise instead of their typical use for timeshare vacation weeks. Because of the variety of ways to exchange timeshare for a cruise, the protocols and requirements of each avenue vary.

When you exchange timeshare or use timeshare points for a cruise, be sure you ask about any additional costs that may or may not be covered by the exchange. One example is your port fee.

Port fees are typically included in the cost of a cruise when you buy the cruise directly, but when you are using timeshare exchange or timeshare points to cover the cost of your cruise, the port fees may be an add-on. Port fees cover the change for the cruise ship to dock and include a wharf or passenger charge; a port entry fee; and a dockage fee depending on the ship’s size and length of stay.

Other fees that are not always covered by timeshare exchange could include things like taxes, transportation to and from the ship or while in port, and charges that would be add-ons for any cruiser, no matter how you paid for the experience.

Bottom line: Be sure you understand fully what your timeshare exchange covers and which expenses will be up to you to cover out of pocket. Then pack your flipflops and your suntan lotion for a Bon Voyage!

Additional Timeshare Resources

Timeshare exchange is one of the reasons timeshare owners love their vacation properties. It’s hassle-free vacation ownership with the opportunity to enjoy a different location every time you travel.

Trading Places International is a timeshare exchange company with over 35 years of experience in helping timeshare owners just like you. Best of all, you don’t have to pay an annual membership fee to take advantage of many of the timeshare exchange opportunities they provide.

With hundreds of timeshare resort destinations in their inventory, Trading Places International offers an easy way for you to exchange your timeshare, paying only an internal exchange fee (swapping timeshare at your own resort) or an external exchange fee when you want to vacation at a different resort. Fees range from approximately $109 to $159, depending on location and the type of exchange. You can also bank your timeshare through Trading Places International, meaning that you can “turn in” your timeshare now and enjoy a different timeshare resort in the future, up to three years from the date you make your deposit.

If you have more specific timeshare exchange needs, Trading Places International offers paid membership benefits, further expanding your timeshare exchange opportunities.

Timeshare Owners Have Choices When it Comes to Timeshare Exchange

In addition to Trading Places International timeshare exchange, there are other companies, including the two largest, RCI (Resort Condominium International) and II (Interval International). There are also timeshare exchange companies that specialize in properties in a certain region as well as several companies that, like Trading Places International, offer a no annual fee option.

With so many choices available to you, anyone interested in timeshare exchange should be able to find a company that fits his or her needs and vacation desires. As a timeshare owner (or prospective timeshare buyer), remember that timeshare exchange is a benefit of ownership you can really make work to your advantage; it is flexible and available in a variety of formats to fit every vacation need.

In the first change in timeshare points used at the Disney Vacation Club in over 18 years, the Disney Company is redistributing the number of timeshare points needed for lodging at its resorts. Points represent the timeshare owner’s percentage of ownership in the Disney Vacation Club properties.

Up until now, Disney timeshare required more points – almost twice as many – for weekend accommodations as for weeknight stays. The fact that weekday/weeknight timeshare stays required so many fewer timeshare points created greater demand for vacations Monday through Thursday than for accommodations on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

Now, Disney Vacation Club is redistributing (reallocating) throughout the week the number of timeshare points required to stay in their properties. Their objective is to more evenly distribute the occupancy levels for weekdays vs. weekends. In so doing, they are also taking away much of the consumer saving gained by avoiding weekend stays.

With the changes, weekday stays will still require fewer timeshare points, but will now be much closer in points required to weekends than in the past. Florida State law permits a timeshare company to make this type of reallocation to their points values during the year as long as the total number of timeshare points required for a timeshare week at a Disney Vacation Club or Disney resort property remains the same.

Interesting Info about Timeshare Points at Disney Vacation Club

Unlike many other types of timeshare, Disney Vacation Club membership is not held in perpetuity. Instead, Disney Vacation Club membership expires on January 31, 2042; timeshare membership at Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa expires on January 31, 2054; while timeshare membership at the Animal Kingdom Villas ends on January 31, 2057.

Disney Vacation Club timeshares is defined as a real estate interest and does carry a deed, deeded ownership at a Disney timeshare resort simply expires on the predetermined date.

Although you are buying a “real-estate interest” and your purchase is actually deeded, your ownership ceases to exist after these dates.

For many families, this time structure is ideal as it means that at a predetermined point in the future, they will be free from the commitment to their timeshare, after having had the benefit of enjoying it for many years.

Source: The Orlando Sentinel and others.

As the festivities of Super Bowl XLIII kick into high gear, football fans and partygoers by the thousands are descending on Tampa, St. Petersburg, all the surrounding “burgs” and even Orlando, which is some 70 miles away.

Tampa hotel rooms are sold out, although there are still some rooms available across the bay bridge on the beaches of St. Petersburg. If you can find a room in the Tampa area, expect to pay from $500 to $900 a night; if you opt for Orlando, the prices are about half that much this weekend. Of course, if you owned Florida timeshare, and had scheduled to use days during this week, you’d already have accommodations in the right place for taking in the hottest ticket in town.

A timeshare along Florida’s Gulf Coast would be especially convenient, but Tampa’s middle of the state location means that anywhere you own Florida timeshare, you would only be an easy half-day’s drive away from seeing the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Arizona Cardinals.

Here’s what you could be enjoying:

Music: Celine Dion; The Eagles; Rihana; Fall Out Boy; Lifehouse; the Latin-flavored Pepsi Musica concert; the annual Super Bowl Gospel Celebration; jazz greats playing at the SuperLX Live! daytime concert ; and at halftime–Faith Hill; John Legend; and of course, The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen.

Other Entertainment: Comedian Dane Cook; a youth football game featuring the L.A. All-Stars coached by rapper Snoop Dogg and a Tampa area team coached by former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Mike Alstott; and of course parties; parties and more parties. Some of the biggest names hosting (or attending) pre and post Super Bowl parties this year include Nelly; T-Pain; Flo Rida; Sean “Diddy” Combs; Paris Hilton; Kim Kardashian; Leigh Steinberg; Donald Trump; and Paris Hilton.

Area Attractions: Busch Gardens; historic Ybor City; the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino; and miles and miles of great beaches, including Fort DeSoto Park and Caladesi Island.

Use Your Timeshare Interval and Don’t Miss the Next Big Event

Okay, enough couch time; there’s a future sporting event calling you. Get a calendar. Go to Google. Look up all those championships you wish you could see live, but never do. Find future dates and locations, and then plan to use your timeshare days accordingly. You bought that timeshare to really enjoy … and seeing the Super Bowl, the NCAA basketball championship, NASCAR races, or any other monumental championship in sports is a perfect way to get the most out of timeshare ownership.

I don’t know how many cities Santa Claus covered on Christmas Eve and in the wee hours of Christmas Day, but he’s about the only one who can take in more territory than you can as a timeshare owner with great timeshare exchange privileges.

Timeshare exchange is designed to give you flexibility in vacation destinations, dates, and accommodations. Resort Condominiums International (RCI) and Interval International, (II) are the two largest timeshare exchange companies, but there are dozens of other companies, many of which specialize in regional or other targeted types of travel. You will find the cost to join a timeshare company varies, as will the types of services they offer.

In their book, How to Benefit from Your Timeshare, authors Susan Johnson and Janice Taylor describe the benefits of timeshare exchange like this:

“An Exchange Club is an organization that lists thousands of travel destinations for use by its members. … An Exchange Club take points/weeks that you do not want to use in the current year and allows you to use and select from their huge inventory of locations worldwide. You should receive a directory from the Exchange Club listing all properties available to you within their network.”

Currently there are 4,775 RCI affiliated timeshare resorts and 2,400 resorts affiliated with Interval International.

Follow this link to learn more about the opportunities of timeshare exchange. And to help you get started in planning your vacations, here is a handy timeshare calendar or, you may wish to visit the website for Timeshare Calendar.

Group RCI recently released research showing that 876,000 timeshare weeks (that’s new timeshare sales only) were sold worldwide in 2007, according to an article in the July edition of Perspective magazine. The information is published in Group RCI’s Latin America and the Caribbean Vacation Ownership Fact Book 2007, and reveals a 6 percent increase in the sale of new timeshare (timeshare bought from the developer) over timeshare sales in 2006. Of this increase, timeshare sales in Latin America account for 30 percent of the total amount, or 261,000 timeshare weeks sold.

More Information about South America Timeshare Sales

Here are some other noteworthy facts about timeshare sales from the RCI Fact Book:

• 57 new timeshare resorts became affiliated with an exchange system in Latin America in 2007.
• Of the 1,154 timeshare resorts in Latin America affiliated with a timeshare exchange company, more than 750 of them are located in the Caribbean, Central America, or Mexico.
• Other high-growth areas for South America timeshare include Brazil timeshare, Venezuela timeshare, and Argentina timeshare.

Stats that appear in the book are based on research derived from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and regional Tourism Ministries and their affiliates. Ricardo Montaudon, President and Managing Director, Group RCI, The Americas, describes the book as a, “…valuable publication that offers potential investors and entrepreneurs interested in the vacation ownership industry an objective overview of the current state of the industry and of its performance last year.”

According to an article that appeared this week in Boston.com, Steve Shermoen plans to spend his retirement years traveling the world and staying in timeshare resorts. Shermoen, an attorney from International Falls, MN, says he owns about 100 timeshare weeks, bought with an eye on his retirement.

Tom Kelly, author of the article, explains, “A growing number of entrepreneurs with an exceptional grasp of timeshare purchasing, closing and selling have begun to acquire inexpensive weeks at upscale resorts via resale channels, which they then rent out weekly or on a per-night rate comparable to what a nice hotel would charge.”

Using some of his timeshares weeks as timeshare rentals is part of Shermoen’s plan. But he clearly understands the importance of buying timeshare resales rather than buying timeshare from the developer. Shermoen says, “You cannot make the rental concept work if you buy directly from the developer. You have to be sure of what you are buying and purchase only on the resale market. The cost from the developer simply is too high for it to become a rental that will pencil out.”

Here is the advice Shermoen offered for picking up great deals on timeshare resales:

• Look for timeshare owners who may be desperate to sell because of unexpected circumstances, such as job loss, divorce, or a death in the family.
• Stick to big name brands, such Marriott timeshare, Hyatt timeshare, and Hilton timeshare.
• Look for timeshare resales during the time of year when annual fees are announced for the next year.
• And for Shermoen, who happens to be an attorney, he offers to provide timeshare closing at a discounted fee.

Okay, but suppose you are not an attorney, you are not in the market for 100 timeshare weeks, and you want a good deal, but you are not willing to read the obituaries looking for desperate timeshare sellers?

The article, which is titled, “Despite Economy, Timeshares Drum Up Big Business,” suggests looking for points based timeshare ownership.

The Good Things about Timeshare Points

Points based timeshare, as the Boston.com article correctly points out, offers flexibility. While some interval based timeshare ownership allows you to break up your time into segments of less than one week, almost all points based timeshare lets you choose whether you use it one night at a time, or in blocks of consecutive days.

Once timeshare becomes lodging you can schedule as you would a hotel stay, it suddenly becomes something you use not just for vacations, but for family reunions, long weekends, weddings, and as a day by day rental.

On the other hand, the article also brings to light a downside about timeshare points. Points are like dollars, they represent a spending value that can be used for timeshare and other vacation related expenses, like air travel and cruises. But like the dollar, the value of your points can go down, depending upon how many timeshare points overall a resort issues.

If you are planning, like the attorney mentioned in this article, to use some of your timeshare weeks in future years (possibly renting the timeshare weeks you are not using), you need to understand how the fluctuation of timeshare points could affect you. The number of points it takes to “buy” a timeshare week today, may not be sufficient to “buy” a full week by the time you retire.

No choice is perfect. There are positives and negatives about buying a vacation home, buying timeshare, renting timeshare, or staying at home and never taking a vacation. But as Steve Shermoen figured out, buying timeshare the right way, at the right price, can turn out to be a very good plan. Just do your homework first!

Last week, when a timeshare company partnered with a timeshare owners group to offer a members-only timeshare auction, it would have been understandable if some the timeshare owners stared feeling like Rodney Dangerfield claiming, “I don’t get no respect.”

During a three-day period, members of the timeshare group were allowed to bid on any of over 300 timeshare resale properties. While the timeshare weeks auctioned were priced from $800 to $2500 and up, there were no reserves on the bidding that started at 10 cents.

As the official press release for the event stated, “…the potential pitfalls of owner-to-owner auctions via eBay are many. Who transfers the ownership? Who takes care of the legal paperwork? How do I know what I’m really buying? What guarantees do I have?” This timeshare auction claimed to reduce the type of buyer risk associated with eBay property auctions, while offering deeply discounted prices for timeshare buyers.

Market Values of Timeshare Resales

Ironically, the timeshare owners group has historically been critical of timeshare resales companies, claiming that buying timeshare on the resale market, like buying timeshare on an eBay auction, is fraught with problems. Personally, I can’t think of a much bigger problem than owning timeshare property that has been devalued because it has been sold at an absurdly low price.

When the bidding at a timeshare resales auction starts at a dime per property, no one really wins. The timeshare owner who wants to sell timeshare that he or she no longer uses would do just as well (and maybe better) to donate that timeshare to charity or give it to a friend or family member rather than sell it at a price that is so low it is meaningless. And while the timeshare buyer may gain in the short term by purchasing timeshare weeks at a giveaway price, in so doing, the timeshare buyer may have directly contributed to the long-term devaluation of his own property as well as that of all the other timeshare units at the resort.

Timeshare Resales By Owner

For the timeshare resales market to stay solid there must be fairness for both timeshare buyers and timeshare sellers. It is just as detrimental to the value of the product to sell timeshare weeks for pennies, as it is to overprice it and gouge the timeshare buyer.

Look for good deals on by-owner timeshares resales; but expect to play fair. Fair market pricing is good for the buyer, good for the seller, and good for the timeshare resales market.

A Look Back at the Humor of the Late Rodney Dangerfield, With Our Respect:

Dial An Exchange Timeshare Exchange is expanding their offerings to timeshare owners with the addition of timeshare travel insurance provided by CSA Travel Protection.

The travel insurance will be available to timeshare owners to purchase when they exchange their vacation weeks. Fermin Cruz, VP North American operations Dial An Exchange, says, “When combined with our Cancellation Protection Option, we believe that CSA travel insurance is the perfect complement to any exchange transaction, offering the DAE member an inexpensive, yet valuable protection to cover their entire vacation experience.”

Les Maine, CEO of CSA Travel Protection says, “By purchasing travel insurance from CSA when exchanging or banking their timeshare with Dial An Exchange, timeshare owners can protect themselves from losing any of their vacation time already purchased as well as annual maintenance fees.”

Dial An Exchange Timeshare Exchange was founded in 1997. The company’s website says it is the largest privately owned timeshare exchange company with worldwide destination availability. Not only is there no charge to timeshare owners to be a member of Dial An Exchange, but timeshare exchange fees are not charged until the actual exchange is made.

Last week, in a blog post titled, Expansion of SFX Timeshare Resort Exchange Company, the Timeshare Owners Blog told you about the expansion and new services of San Francisco Timeshare Exchange. Like Dial An Exchange, SFX offers timeshare owners another choice in timeshare exchange or banking timeshare for future use or exchange.

RCI and Interval International are well known, but smaller timeshare exchange companies are really claiming a portion of the timeshare resort market, and in many cases, offer service that is as good as or better than the larger timeshare exchange companies offer.

If you have had a good experience or a poor one with a smaller timeshare exchange company, please leave your comments on the Timeshare Owners Blog. No one has better insights about timesharing than timeshare owners who are using their timeshare weeks or exchanging them on a regular basis. We’d love to hear your comments.

Do you have Bahamas timeshare weeks you want to sell or rent?

If so, you may benefit from this information. According to an article that appeared in The Freeport News, January 11, this month is bringing record numbers of visitors to the island of Grand Bahama. Logic says, the more the Bahamas develop into a highly desired tourist destination, the easier it could be to sell your Bahamas timeshare resale or use it as a Bahamas timeshare rental. And the Bahamian Ministry of Tourism is doing everything they can to move the Bahamas up the preferred vacation destination charts.

Tourism to Grand Bahama Island recently benefited because high winds in other parts of the Caribbean rerouted some cruise ships to Freeport Harbor. Yet much of the tourism Grand Bahama is enjoying is simply the result of people who have selected the Bahamas as their target destination.

The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism is working hard to improve the island’s desirability factor. According to the Executive Director of the Ministry, Kerry Fountain, (as quoted in The Freeport News) the plan is to, “Create your product, deliver on the experience in terms of service and the attitude, get your guests here affordably, and promote it.” He adds, “It has to happen in that order, but we have to keep our nose to the grindstone in order to get it done.”

The Ministry of Tourism anticipates being able to successfully weather even a tight US economic market because many US vacationers will still be taking trips, they will just be looking to travel closer to home. Additionally, the Ministry is working hard at recruiting and training better hospitality industry workers, unrolling programs in the high schools to promote careers in tourism. Efforts like this will help the long-term tourism market in the Bahamas as well as Bahamas timeshare resales and Bahamas timeshare rentals.

Creating immediate boosts to the tourism market in Grand Bahama are recently discounted airfares to Freeport and Nassau. US Airways and American Airlines are currently both offering special pricing on island airfares or vacation packages.

And now that things seem to be turning around for the Royal Oasis timeshare resort with plans to renovate and reopen, popular Bahamas tourist destinations like the International Bazaar may actually return to their former glory. Harcourt Developments Limited, the purchaser of the Royal Oasis timeshare, is expected to invest some $400 million dollars in their Bahamian resorts over the upcoming years.

To learn more about how to sell timeshare or rent timeshare you own in the Bahamas, visit Sell My Timeshare NOW. If you are interested in becoming a Bahamas timeshare resales owner, Sell My Timeshare NOW also offers an excellent inventory of vacation ownership properties.