We all know intellectually that we need to vacation, but somehow, we too often fail to do it.

We let life, work, schedules and a dozen other things overrule the common sense message that our brains and bodies are sending us to take some time off and take a vacation.

This week, many are celebrating Easter, observing Passover, or simply enjoying the sense of rebirth to our planet that comes with the arrival of spring. But just as our earth renews itself each year, so must we make time to restore and refresh ourselves.

All of us at The Timeshare Authority wish you and your family a happy, peaceful, restful day and invite you to make holidays and vacationing better through easier vacation planning. Visit us at SellMyTimeshareNOW, Timeshare Broker Services, and soon, our new location on the web: VacationOwnership.com and let us help you plan the vacation time you so need and deserve.

Jason Tremblay, Jerome Bocquet, Kevin Curran, Frank LaRoche in front of Timeshare Broker Services' new Orlando offices.

Today Timeshare Broker Services and Sell My Timeshare NOW announce significant growth in timeshare brokerage. Although we facilitate thousands of by owner (FSBO) timeshare sales and rentals each year through our Sell My Timeshare NOW website, our timeshare brokerage services and assisted timeshare rentals are also seeing dramatic gains.

In fact, business has been so strong, and our growth pattern is so strong that we have expanded our Orlando Timeshare Broker Services office, moving into our new location at 8680 Commodity Circle, Orlando, FL 32819. This is a great location for us, situated just off the intersection of Sand Lake Road and John Young Parkway. It’s a spot many in the timeshare industry recognize, since it also houses the Corporate Headquarters of Island One Resorts®.

We’ve just about doubled our work area, which supports our continued growth and will make it easier for our team of licensed real estate agents and timeshare industry professionals to better serve the needs of timeshare buyers, renters, sellers and the timeshare industry.

You can read our full press release about our expansion here: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Timeshare-Broker-Services-of-Florida-Announces-Brokerage-Growth-and-Office-Expansion-1636052.htm

Leading timeshare exchange company, Interval International, has recently announced that the company has earned the Viking River Cruises® Platinum Circle status for its 2011 sales results.  In commemoration of this achievement, the Interval Travel Cruise team was presented a crystal scale model of a traditional Viking Longship, now on display at the company’s offices in Miami.

For those unfamiliar with Viking Cruises, the company is the world’s leading river cruise line known for offering scenic deluxe cruise vacations along the rivers of Europe, Russia, China, Southeast Asia and Egypt. Viking has been honored multiple times as the top river cruise line on Conde Nast Traveler’s “Gold List”and Travel + Leisure’s “World’s Best Awards, as well as recognized at the World’s Leading River Cruise Operator at the World Travel Awards.  Since its 1997 inception, the company has grown to a fleet of 19 vessels and provides unique deluxe vacations to experienced travelers with an interest in geography, culture and history.

In business for 15 years, Viking is making their fleet even more spectacular with the launch on six new Viking Longships, with features including an outdoor terrace and the largest staterooms on a river cruise vessel. The Viking Emerald sails the Yangtze River in China with every stateroom enjoying a private veranda.

For additional information visit Viking River Cruises

In providing services to North American consumer member families, the Interval Travel Cruise department has been operating since 1997 and is a member of the Cruise Lines International Association Booking Agency, or CLIA certified.

UCF’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management has joined the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the largest timeshare association in the US. ARDA is the Washington D.C.-based trade association that represents the timeshare, vacation ownership, and resort development industries, seeking to promote industry growth and development through legislative advocacy, professional and educational networking, industry news and knowledge, and professional development.

Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida (Orlando) was established in 1983 as an offshoot of the Dick Pope Sr. Institute for Tourism Studies, a program that honored Pope, who was the owner of Cypress Gardens and a pioneer in Florida’s tourism industry. In 2004, the program was recognized as a full college and today offers three undergraduate degrees and two graduate degrees in the field of hospitality. The College is led by a respected faculty that includes educators and leaders from both academics and the hospitality industry itself.

Dr. Amy Gregory, Rosen College visiting assistant professor and liaison for ARDA explains, “With our university located in the largest timeshare resort destination in the world, there are numerous opportunities for Rosen College and its students to benefit from academic and practical study of this industry segment. More specifically, ARDA sponsors academic scholarships and mentoring opportunities for students interested in pursuing a career in the timeshare industry.”

The Rosen College recognizes that membership in ARDA provides opportunities and exposure for its students to leading timeshare resort industry professionals, best business practices, news, scholarships, and research opportunities.

Visit http://hospitality.ucf.edu/about-us/ to learn more about the opportunities of hospitality industry education at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management.

The facts speak for themselves. The following statistics are based on research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and relate to the global tourism industry, which includes hotels, timeshare, travel, and all services related to tourism and hospitality.

• One American job is created for every 35 international visitors to the US.
• Impact of travel and tourism on the global gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to rise by 4.2 percent annually to US $9.226 trillion by 2021.
• Visitor exports—that’s the amount visitors spend in a given foreign country—will increase by 6.6 percent annually through 2021, rising to US $1.789 billion by 2021.
• In New York City alone, Brazilians tourists spent a total of $1.63 billion in 2011. Italians tourists spent $1.1 billion; Canadian tourists spent $1.27 billion and visitors to the Big Apple from the United Kingdom spent $1.42 billion. (Source: NYC & Co., the city’s tourism board.)
• Globally, over the next ten years, tourism is projected to add an additional 69 million net jobs to the world’s employment picture.

Your next timeshare vacation or holiday is good for your mental and physical well-being. It’s good for your employer because you return to work rejuvenated and more productive. Vacations and holidays are good for building bonds and strengthening relationships among those who share the experience. And tourism and travel are powerful tools for helping to restore the global economic picture.

Florida International University has announced that its hospitality school has been named the Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, in honor of Harvey R. Chaplin and the Chaplain family. (See: http://hospitality.fiu.edu/)

Harvey R. Chaplin is the chair and CEO of Southern Wine & Spirits of America, a company known by many for hosting the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Southern Wine & Spirits of America, Inc. is the nation’s largest wine and spirits distributor and broker with operations in 35 markets. Included at FIU’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management  is the Southern Wine & Spirits Beverage Management Center, a 4,500 square-foot facility, built in 1999, that affords the latest technology for beverage tasting and analysis. The Center serves the needs of both FIU students and industry professionals including winemakers and distillers.

The Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management provides top rated learning opportunities for students pursuing careers in the hotel, timeshare, and food service industries, and all aspects of tourism. FIU’s School of Hospitality and Tourism is particularly distinguished by its campus locations, expert faculty, and fast-track career advantages in the international areas of the tourism industry. The Marriott Tianjin China Program, established in 2006, is FIU’s largest international program, with a capacity for up to 2,000 students.

FIU is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools(SACS). The Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management offers a number of Bachelors and Masters degree programs as well as non-degree certifications.

The following article appears in this month’s issue of The Resort Trades and is republished here with their permission.  We hope you will also read it online or in their print publication.

Timeshare: 2012 means the need for more cowbell

By Jason Tremblay

Presuming that the prognostications for a year 2012 doomsday are in error, there is still much about the upcoming year that promises to be remarkable, even watershed in its impact on all our lives.

Here in the U.S., in 2012, we will elect (or re-elect) a president and for a while, we will discuss it daily – hourly. Other changes will happen that we will pay much less attention to because change has become so normal that we only notice if the changing stops. The IRS, the USGA, and the NCAA will all tinker with their rules and regulations, Apple will introduce yet another version of the iPhone, and Facebook will change a little or a lot, and most likely will change both a little AND a lot.

But what will the year 2012 mean to the timeshare industry? What will change in timeshare and vacation ownership sales, resales, and rentals?

The truth is, these are the wrong questions to ask. The better, more insightful questions are:

• What will 2012 bring for current timeshare owners that will make buying, owning, renting, and selling timeshare an easier, more flexible and more trustworthy process?

• And the far tougher question to answer; how do we get there from here, creating an owner-centric product and industry?

Timeshares: we are already behind

Much of the timeshare industry is just getting used to the idea that consumers buy and rent timeshare online. In 2011, online response to retail promotions (for all types of retail sales, not exclusively timeshare and vacation accommodations) increased by 33 percent over 2010. Consumer spending for online purchases in the first three quarters of 2011 was up 13 percent over the same period in the previous year. This translates to nearly $125 billion and that number does not include the seasonally strong sales of November and December 2011.

Just as many timeshare developers and others have finally come to grasp that search engines define user experience, 2012 will hit with the revelation that timeshare consumers, as Internet users, now define the search engine experience.

For a nanosecond in the timeline of Internet experience, businesses realized that content was king and were able to go for it. And just as we’ve all become vaguely comfortable with blogging, videoing, and otherwise creating Internet content, we are being presented with the reality that content creation has become secondary to content curation. We have become what Steven Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of magnify.net, describes as a “curation nation” where those who can quantify, parse, and categorize the surging data stream of content are fast becoming the definers of what succeeds and what fails in business today.

Pursued by data

Where once we went in search of data, data now searches for us. Social media brings a stream – a torrent – of information that follows us from our computers to our tablets to our phones, television sets, and automobiles. If you haven’t recently been through the appliance section at your local big box store, you may be surprised to learn that today’s refrigerators not only deliver ice and water to the door, but a touch screen data center with Internet access as well. Information now pursues us and remarkably, we like it that way.

In the past year, mobile Internet searches have quadrupled, and for many items, one in seven searches is now made from a mobile device. Users of smart phones have now downloaded apps nearly 11 billion times and the demand for mobile apps is not expected to peak until sometime in 2013 – that is unless nuances unfold to create even more demand for even more apps, which is of course entirely likely.

Set fire to the rulebook

The timeshare industry can be like other groups that strive to write and incessantly refine rulebooks by which to guide, govern and control their members/users and marketplaces. If we stick with that path, we will become annoying, misunderstood, and outdated. And if you troll around in public perception, listening to how often and how brutally timeshares and timeshare sales are the butt of some pretty pathetic jokes, then you may even come to the conclusion that the industry, as it stands, is already annoying, misunderstood, and outdated in the minds of many.

We have to step down as conductors. The world is changing almost faster than we can process the change. Timeshares are a truly great product, challenged only by questionable marketing and sales models.
Consumers are going to define how vacation ownership is used and enjoyed. Current owners and future buyers and renters will dictate the product, its terms, how we market it to them and even how it is bought, rented or sold.

We have to stop orchestrating. The bell is already tolling; this is the reality of business in the year 2012. Let’s embrace and respond to a new tune. Timeshares need more cowbell and the marketplace is playing our song.

Each year the women of WIN sponsor a very important charity auction. WIN is a non-profit organization within ARDA whose membership includes women, and those who mentor, inspire and support women, in the vacation and timeshare industry.

WIN auctions provide a time to support charities that benefit the health, education and welfare of women and children in need, but also to take advantage of great deals on that include travel, sports, jewelry, golf gear and much more.

You can get involved in the auction by visiting WIN’s Bidding for Good webpages and registering to be part of this important cause. But you have to hurry!

Not only are the bids racking up fast for many items, but at 10 PM, December 11, 2011, all bidding stops.

For 2012, WIN’s 3rd  Annual Auction supports: Girls, Inc.; Christel House; Send Me On Vacation; Quest To Walk; Deliver The Dream; The Children’s TherAplay Foundation; and The Children’s TherAplay Foundation.

Click here to learn more about WIN, and to visit their website and here to visit the ARDA website.

This week, we announced that at Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services, we are hosting a Holiday Food Drive for the New Hampshire Food Bank. Our partner in this food drive is Cocheco PrintWorks.

Although this food drive is targeting the Dover, New Hampshire area for drop offs of canned goods and non-perishable foods, you can also get involved in other ways. Here are some facts about the food drive and about NH Food Bank that will tell you more about this effort and about why it is so needed:

• New Hampshire has one of the lowest poverty levels in the US but ranks #7 in the number of homeless children
• New Hampshire Food Bank is a program of New Hampshire Catholic Charities. So far this year, it has distributed more than 7 million pounds of food through a statewide network of approved agencies. Distribution is made to over 400 New Hampshire senior citizen homes, food pantries, shelters, day care centers and soup kitchens and more than 130,000 adults and children have been served.
• Checks are also accepted. Please make them payable to: NH Food Bank.
• You can make your donations through Thursday, December 22, 2011.
• Our drop-off location is 383 Central Avenue, Suite 260, Dover, NH 03820, which are the offices of Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services. We are located on the second floor of the Cochero Falls Millworks and you may park on the street or in the guest parking spaces in front of the building and use the entrance facing TD Bank.

You can learn more about this important effort at:

http://www.sellmytimesharenow.com/media/2011-holiday-food-drive/

We also invite you to read our most recent media release here:

http://news.hospitality-1st.com/SellMyTimeshareNOW-120811.html

The needs are great and the stories are endless.

This is a tough year for many people. Families—right here in our own communities—are dealing with hunger. Mothers and fathers are putting their children to bed at night knowing that those children have not eaten adequate or nutritious food. Senior citizens are choosing whether to buy medication they need or put groceries in their pantry. And countless others are making painful decisions in which housing, food, electricity and other basic needs compete for the same limited dollars.

Almost everyone has been challenged by the tight economy in recent years. But if you can share, even just a little, we invite you to help us support the New Hampshire Food Bank. Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services, along with Cocheco PrintWorks, are hosting a 2011 Holiday Food Drive.

Sell My Timeshare NOW and Timeshare Broker Services Food Drive

Now through Thursday, December 22, 2011, we’re collecting donations of canned goods and other non-perishable food items at our Dover, NH offices at: 383 Central Avenue, Suite 260 in downtown Dover.

You can learn more about this food drive by visiting our website at: http://www.sellmytimesharenow.com/media/2011-holiday-food-drive/

And you can learn more about the New Hampshire Food Bank at: www.nhfoodbank.org/

Each year the NH Food Bank collects over 7 million pounds of food and facilitates its distribution to more than 400 New Hampshire food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, day care centers and senior citizen homes. By their efforts, some 130,000 adults and children in need are served.

We also encourage you to visit, and “Like” both the NH Food Bank and Sell My Timeshare NOW on Facebook. You’ll find us at:

https://www.facebook.com/SellMyTimeshareNOW

and the NH Food Bank at: https://www.facebook.com/nhfoodbank