According to AAA, the price of gas isn’t stopping most Americans from taking that much needed vacations, at least not when it comes to this year’s Memorial Day weekend travel.

Gas prices over Memorial Day weekend are projected to be at $3.91 a gallon for a national US average. Nevertheless, nearly 35 million people are expected to travel during the last weekend in May, up slightly over 2010 travel numbers. But Brad Roeber, AAA Regional President, says some travelers will, “compensate for the higher fuel costs by cutting other areas of their travel budgets.”

During the Memorial Day weekend, hotels and resorts with AAA Three Diamond lodgings will average $148 per night, compared to $142 last year. Air travel prices will be up 14 percent, and gasoline is some 38 percent higher than it was this time a year ago.

So how can you travel, enjoy the vacation you need, and still cut your costs?

Timeshare rentals look even better than ever as a way to save money and still enjoy a great vacation.

Why You Save Money When You Rent Timeshare

In our blog post on Friday (Timeshare Enchantment? Ask Guy Kawasaki), I pointed out how surprising it is to me that many people do not know timeshares are available for rent. They assume you have to buy timeshare and never even consider timeshares for rent.

Yet every year, thousands of timeshare owners discover that they cannot use their timeshare this year and for some reason cannot or prefer not to use it for timeshare exchange. What these timeshare owners really want (and sometimes need) to do is use their interval as a timeshare rental, often seeking only enough in rental fees to cover or offset their annual maintenance fee. What are your options to rent timeshare? For starters, Sell My Timeshare NOW has an inventory of over 16,000 timeshares available for rent.

How Timeshare Rentals Work

Timeshare owners can make their timeshare available for rent by contacting the resort and making a reservation for another guest. When you want to rent timeshare, search the Sell My Timeshare NOW website by resort brand or by destination and you will find timeshare rentals that match your vacation plans and your budget.

Next, click on the search results to get the details on the timeshare rental that interests you, make your offer online, and the timeshare owner or a timeshare rental specialist will contact you directly to complete the rental process. You’ll find timeshare rentals with published prices below the cost of hotel rooms. You will also find many others listed as, “Price Negotiable,” perfect for bargain hunting negotiations.

Remember too that timeshares are available in studios, one-, two-, and three-bedroom layouts, many sleeping as many as 12 people. For the price of one multi-bedroom timeshare rental, you and friends or family members can share the space and watch your vacation cost dip even lower.

But you’ll never know about these great prices until you visit the Sell My Timeshare NOW website and peruse the listings yourself. Don’t let the price of gas or the rising cost of hotel rooms keep you at home this summer.

Vacation rental, as you can imagine, is big business in Florida. Many absentee property owners buy a vacation or holiday home in Florida, use it for their own vacationing, and arrange for its rental management the rest of the year, through a realtor or other management agency.

And while this can be a good deal for both the property owner and those seeking to vacation in a space larger and with more privacy than most hotel rooms offer, it is also complicated from the perspective of management, taxation, and investment.

The Florida Vacation Rental Managers Association, a trade association, estimates that there are now more than 20,000 vacation-rental homes in Central Florida (the Orlando-Kissimmee-Daytona Beach area) alone. These are not timeshares or fractionals. They are individually owned properties, typically bought specifically for the purpose of use as a vacation rental home.

The Challenges of Vacation Rentals

Currently, vacation rentals come with a fair measure of risk for the owner who must deal with repairs, taxes, and the responsibility to keep the property rented if income from it is desired or needed. Additionally, zoning in a residential neighborhood can change at any time, making use of a home bought for the purpose of vacation rentals, no longer an option.

For renters, vacation rentals also bring risks. Does the property look as good in person as it did in an online ad or brochure? Do the photos of the property fail to tell the whole story by not including any undesirable nearby features; for example, would you still rent this home if you knew it backed up to a freeway, prison, or an airport? Any lastly, if you are renting the property, and you have a problem with the air conditioner, plumbing, or other feature, will the property owner or management agency be available to get it repaired in a timely manner?

Currently, lawmakers, property owners, and some segments of the Florida tourism industry are in conflict regarding a state bill that invalids existing city and county laws, which either prohibit vacation rentals entirely or require those rental homes to comply with the same regulations as commercial hotels. While laws vary from county to county in Florida, currently Orange County (where Orlando is located), prohibits short-term rentals (less than six months) on properties not zoned for commercial or industrial use.

Timeshare Rentals Eliminate the Risk Factor

Timeshare rental is an easy way to enjoy spacious vacation accommodations while still benefiting from the management structure and the property standards you know and expect from trusted global hospitality brands.

With timeshare rentals, you can enjoy the space, privacy, and home-like features of a timeshare condo, but relax knowing you are benefiting from the onsite amenities, maintenance, management and security associated with timeshare.

As a timeshare owner who may choose to use his property as timeshare rental, you know the burden of maintaining and managing the property is off your shoulders, covered by your annual maintenance fee. And while local and state laws may come and go, as a timeshare owner, you never share the impact alone in the same way sole property owners do.

Renting timeshare makes a lot of sense. After all, vacationing is supposed to be about relaxation time, not about added worries and responsibilities.

ABC7 News out of Los Angeles, California recently teamed up with Consumer Reports ShopSmart to look for ways to make vacationing more affordable.

They came up with-no surprise here-timeshare and timeshare rental!

As they reported on the ABC7 webpage, in an article titled, “Vacation bargains found in timeshare rentals“:

“Timeshares are a great way to vacation with the whole family since many of the properties have great amenities such as space and kitchens. But when ABC7 teamed up with Consumer Reports, we found that you don’t need to buy one to enjoy one.”

Here’s some of what the Consumer Reports team liked best about timeshare rental and timeshares:

• Timeshare exchange opportunities when you buy timeshare or timeshare resales.
• Spacious accommodations, with living rooms and eat-in dining areas.
• Kitchens available in many timeshare units.
• Exotic locations for your timeshare vacation.
• And the negotiability of timeshare resale and timeshare rental, which of course comes into play especially when you deal with by-owner timeshare opportunities.

Earlier this month, Sell My Timeshare NOW issued a press release on the opportunities of timeshare rental: $2.6 Million Last Year into the Hands of Timeshare Owners Using New Timeshare Rental Management Service.

We started a pilot program to help timeshare owners who want assistance in using their timeshare as a timeshare rental. The results have been outstanding and a proven win-win for both timeshare owners and vacationers who want to take advantage of the excellent deals available in timeshares for rent.

We didn’t really know what to anticipate.

After all, most of our clients and potential clients at Sell My Timeshare NOW —some 2 million plus each month who come to our website — are looking for great deals on vacation ownership and vacation rentals or they are timeshare owners looking to sell or rent timeshare they no longer use. They come to us because they want to take advantage of by-owner ads on Sell My Timeshare NOW’s high-visibility websites but prefer to manage their timeshare sale or timeshare rental themselves.

Some timeshare owners need or prefer turnkey service for their timeshare sales transactions. For this reason, we added timeshare broker services and licensed real estate agents to provide sellers who go this route, the comprehensive services they seek.

We also recognized that if some people preferred turnkey services for selling timeshare, there might be timeshare owners who wanted turnkey services for using their timeshare as a rental, too. With this in mind, late in 2007 we launched Rental Assist. In 2008, it was a small effort and it wasn’t really until 2009 that the program began to get its legs and take off.

A Highly Successful Timeshare Rental Solution

Sell My Timeshare NOW is proud to report that the brokerage team of trained professionals at Rental Assist completed $2.6 million in timeshare rentals in 2009. Lucas Lanigan, Rental Sales Director, says, “With Rental Assist, our team of experienced timeshare real estate professionals match timeshare owners with timeshare renters, handling every detail of the process—turnkey service for the timeshare owner. In 2009, 1,450 timeshare owners rented their timeshare through this program for an average weekly rental rate of $1,808, which is more than triple the average owner’s maintenance fee.”

Lucas goes on to explain, “1,450 families enjoyed timeshare rental vacations last year because our Rental Assist team was able to get them the destination and price they wanted for their vacation during the dates that matched their schedule. Personalized service for the timeshare renter and worry-free, comprehensive service for the timeshare owner, and we are just getting started. In 2010, we expect to see timeshare Rental Assist soar, as timeshare owners recognize its value.”

The results of Rental Assist are very exciting. Imagine getting a weekly rental rate of $1,808 for your timeshare. This is easily more than enough to pay most owners’ annual fees for maintenance and to even let them put some money in their pocket.

Click this link to read Sell My Timeshare NOW’s most recent timeshare media release about our exciting results at Rental Assist. And contact our timeshare rental specialists to learn how you can take advantage of this new and exciting comprehensive timeshare rental service.

To make sure you get all the information about Sell My Timeshare NOW’s new “Book It NOW” feature, we’re talking about it again today here on The Timeshare Authority blog. This new timeshare rental feature is just too important and too helpful for you to miss; it could totally change the way you think about renting timeshare.

For the first time ever, you can now book a timeshare rental with the same type of online, real time booking convenience that we’ve all grown accustomed to using for booking air travel online. And it’s only available at Sell My Timeshare NOW; no other timeshare resale and timeshare rental advertising company offers this service.

“Book It NOW” Turns Booking a Timeshare Rental into ‘Pushbutton Vacation Planning’

This is such an easy, convenient way to book an affordable timeshare rental vacation. First, go to this Timeshare Rental page on the website www.sellmytimesharenow.com. Click the link that says, “Click here to search our amazing vacation rentals available for immediate booking!“

The page that opens will have choices for you to select. They are all optional. Fill in as many or as few as you like. Your next step will then be to choose a timeshare rental. You will find an excellent selection based on price, week available, location, and size of the timeshare unit, including timeshare rentals available for your “last minute” vacation plans.

After you have made your selection, you’ll be taken to a webpage that explains in detail the conditions of the rental process—this is not scary legalese; it’s things like “leave the timeshare unit as clean as you found it”.

This is also the page where you will provide your contact information. After you have completed the information form, you will then receive confirmation first from Sell My Timeshare NOW with your booking number, and later from the resort itself, with your confirmation number.

It’s Just That Easy to Plan a Great Timeshare Rental Vacation

Let’s face it, timeshare rentals are some of the best deals available in vacation accommodations. They are roomier than a hotel, many include kitchen and dining areas, and they are located in all the places you like to visit.

Taking advantage of the spacious accommodations and the excellent prices in timeshare for rent couldn’t be any easier. All you have to do is go to Sell My Timeshare NOW and “Book It NOW“.

Overstressed and under-vacationed? Overworked and underpaid? It’s not just you; it’s a global mantra.

In trying to do our part in these challenging times to help you get that much-needed vacation, we have focused extra attention on our timeshare rentals. Renting timeshare is one of the most economical ways to vacation. You get more space and more amenities for less money compared to almost any other type of vacation accommodations. And because timeshares are designed so that they can easily be shared by extended families or multiple families, a timeshare rental is a perfect way to cut the cost of vacationing while sharing your good times with family or friends.

Knowing that timeshare rentals are one of the best choices for vacation affordability, Sell My Timeshare NOW has been working on strategies to make scheduling that timeshare rental even easier for you.

That’s Why We’ve Added “Book It NOW” to Our Timeshare Rentals

We’ve added a user-friendly, real time feature to our website. You can now select a timeshare rental from available dates and locations and then just click the “Book It NOW” button. You will be booking your timeshare vacation accommodations online, in real time, without ever needing to interact with a booking agent or the timeshare owner. Think of it as ‘pushbutton vacation planning’.

And because timeshare vacations mean flexibility and choices, Sell My Timeshare NOW still offers two additional ways to rent timeshare. You can search the company’s full inventory of timeshares rentals and then contact the timeshare owner directly to negotiate a best-price rental rate, or you can take advantage of Rental Assist by Sell My Timeshare NOW and let a vacation specialist find the timeshare rental that’s right for you.

A vacation … right now when you need it most, plus the option to click and book your timeshare rental with Sell My Timeshare NOW’s “Book It NOW” feature. To make it any easier for you to enjoy an affordable timeshare rental vacation, we will have come to your house and pack your luggage for you.

Spain is always a popular destination for vacationers from the US and the UK, and Spain timeshare is typically some of the most beautiful in the world. This year, Spain timeshare is looking more attractive than ever.

At last week’s Loving Andalucía British Tourist Trade Forum, held in the beautiful port city of Malaga in southern Spain, Spanish Tourist Board Director, Ignacio Vasallo, said that the region, including the Costa del Sol, welcomed nearly half a million British vacationers in the first quarter of 2009. This represents an 18 percent decline over last year and tourism officials think it reflects how the pound is struggling against the Euro. Overall, UK visitors to Spain have declined by 17.7 percent over last year.

During the conference, officials urged some 100 Spanish hoteliers in attendance not to raise prices to compensate for the decline in bookings, but instead to lower them to help balance the challenges of exchange rates. Logical advice, but often hard to follow when hotel management must find a way to pay bills, just like everyone else.

Travel Weekly UK reports that travel and tourism industry experts including the Association of Independent Tour Operators’ Derek Moore says, “Spanish hoteliers had already been too slow to react to the economic crisis, which took off last autumn by refusing to reduce prices then. ‘The damage has already been done’.“

Monarch Group’s overseas director and head of purchasing, Hugh Morgan agreed: “A lot of hoteliers have been really complacent, they take the view that the British will come. They’ve taken us for granted.“

Spain Timeshares are an Obvious Consumer Solution, Especially Spain Timeshare Resales

When the big picture deals with economic recession on a global level and the challenges of exchange rates, you are dealing with problems that are not quickly resolved. As corporations, economists, and political leaders struggle to find solutions, an immediate answer for helping the consumer is already available and waiting.

Spain timeshare resales and Spain timeshare for rent are an attractive, affordable vacation accommodation option. The prices are competitive, the resorts are elegant, and the charm of a vacation to Spain can be too tempting to pass up.

Whether hotel rooms in Spain hold their price or hoteliers are forced to bring prices down in order to continue to fill beds, hotels are not likely to ever be genuinely comparable with the opportunities in Spain timeshare resales and Spain timeshare for rent.

Yesterday Inc. Magazine announced their Inc. 5000 list, and SellMyTimeshareNOW.com is proud to be part of this very special, business elite. Until last year, Inc. published their highly respected Inc. 500 list, but starting in 2007, they expanded the list to include the 5000 fastest growing, privately held businesses in America.

SellMyTimeshareNOW.com ranked in several categories on the 2008 Inc. 5000:

• Number 2 fastest growing business in the state of New Hampshire.
• Number 21 in the Top 100 Businesses in the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH metro area.
• Number 44 in the Top 100 Advertising & Marketing Companies in the US.
• Number 637 in the Top 5000 fastest growing businesses in the US, out of more than 7 million companies overall.

SellMyTimeshareNOW.com is Part of an Elite Group

Founded just 5 years ago, this marks the first year SellMyTimeshareNOW.com has been eligible for consideration for Inc.’s prestigious list. Since 2004, our business growth has been 520.9 percent, with revenues of $1.1 million in 2004, which grew to $7.0 million by 2007. At the time we were considered for the Inc. 5000 list, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com had 112 employees, having increased from our original 3 employees back when we first started. Our staff growth continues, and today we have over 130 people employed by our company.

In our Inc 5000 profile, they state that two reasons for our growth are the fact that we recognized there was previously no efficient way for timeshare owners to sell timeshare or for prospective timeshare buyers to buy or rent timeshare. They also identify that our consistently superb placement on Google and other search engines gets us over a million hits per month and leads to about $7 million in offers to buy or rent timeshare each week.

How our Timeshare Resales Company Made the Inc. 5000 List

In order to be considered for the 2008 Inc. 5000 list, a company must have had at least $200,000 in revenue in 2004, and $2 million in 2007. All companies recognized by Inc. are US based, privately held, independent, for profit companies, which are not subsidiaries or division of other companies, as of December 31, 2007.

An interesting note is that industries reporting the highest median revenue are the travel industry with $38.8 million, followed by financial services, logistics, government services, and energy. The top five largest industries ranked included the category SellMyTimeshareNOW.com falls into, which is Advertising & Marketing with 361 companies, while IT Services was the number one largest category with 579 companies.

What it Means to SellMyTimeshareNOW.com to be Honored by Inc. 5000

At a time when the US economy is shaky and the daily financial news looks bleak, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com is very proud to be part of the solution to getting this country back on solid financial footing. The companies that made the Inc. 5000 list report aggregate revenue of $185 billion and they have created more than 826,033 jobs since the companies were founded. It feels very good to all of us at SellMyTimeshareNOW.com to be part of the economic “good news”.

Our company started out as a vision that we first mapped out on a paper napkin, and with a tremendous amount of hard work and careful business planning, we have thrived and grown, despite the challenging economy. Our daily objective is to help timeshare owners sell or rent their timeshare easily and efficiently, while at the same time offering a vast inventory of timeshare resales and timeshare rentals to prospective buyers. When timeshare owners sell timeshare they no longer use, and a new family gains the pleasure of vacation ownership at an affordable price, we have done something pretty remarkable to make the lives of both the timeshare seller and the timeshare buyer a little better.

And the only thing that I can think of that is more exciting for SellMyTimeshareNOW.com than how far we’ve come in the past 5 years, is to think about what lies ahead for tomorrow.

Last October, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com launched our ‘Rental Assist‘ program to make it easier than ever to rent timeshare. Rental Assist offers in-house client matching for timeshare renters and available timeshare rentals. Peter Emery is the manager of Rental Assist and our dedicated staff has increased from two to nine employees already, with more expansion expected over the next six months.

Why all the interest in renting timeshare?

Apparently a lot of people are realizing that renting a timeshare is an incredible way to vacation. Timeshare units are more spacious than hotels, prices are better, and the selection of available locations and dates makes it practically impossible not to find your perfect vacation accommodations. But renting timeshare is a win-win. In these tight economic times, when some timeshare owners are opting not to vacation this year, being able to rent their timeshare helps them offset the cost of owning timeshare, while holding on to it to use for their own vacations in the future.

Timeshare Rentals at SellMyTimeshareNOW.com

Don’t just take my word for how much the interest in renting timeshare is growing; the numbers speak for themselves. In our Rental Assist program, at the end of the second quarter 2009, 23,086 offers to rent timeshare had been received by SellMyTimeshareNOW.com. This represents an increase of 179 percent over the same quarter year-to-date figures last year. And the dollar amount of these offers was $29,922,343 – a figure that shows a 175 percent increase over the same quarter in 2007, and in fact, surpasses SellMyTimeshareNOW.com’s 2007 year-end total.

So are you ready to rent great vacation lodging at a luxurious timeshare resort? Pour yourself another cup of coffee or a nice, cool drink and from the comfort of your computer, peruse the incredible inventory of timeshare rentals available through SellMyTimeshareNOW.com.

Follow this link to read our most recent press release about timeshare Rental Assist at SellMyTimeshareNOW.com.

When you travel, you have several options for lodging, in addition to the alternative of renting timeshare. All of these choices come with both pros and cons.

Nothing saves vacation dollars quite like staying with relatives, and depending upon the situation, this can be a great way to spend time with people you perhaps don’t see as often as you would like. But spending your vacation in someone else’s home, where their schedules and plans will greatly impact your own, can be like a lot like a summer movie, starring you instead of Chevy Chase. Besides, unless you have lots of accommodating friends and family, or the ones you have relocate like nomads, spending every vacation in the same location can quickly lose its appeal.

For the motivated economizer, there are also lodging opportunities at hostels, fire watch towers, and even college dormitories, but will you be able to find such deals, when and where you need them? Will they meet your needs, and most importantly, will you feel like you are on a vacation while staying there?

Traveling like a movie star and renting a private home can be a very luxurious option, but unless a domestic staff comes with the deal, or you are bringing your butler, you can expect to be pretty much on your own during your stay. If you need anything, there is no one at the front desk to assist you and forget about courtesy tee times and supervised activities for the kids. Besides, staying at a private residence or vacation condo is often a bit of a gamble, unless you have rented there before. Your landlord’s idea of spacious, well appointed, and convenient to local attractions may differ vastly from your own. This leads us to the reason that so many people choose to stay in hotels or motels when they travel.

Hotel and motel lodging is available almost everywhere. Easy to book, easy to find, hotel lodging is relatively predictable. However, as everyone knows, or learns the hard way, cleanliness, quality, and safety can vary enormously from property to property, even though hotels may be owned or managed as part of the same chain.

The Timeshare Rental Solution

Timeshare rentals are more predictable than renting a private vacation home or condo. You can largely rely on the on-site timeshare management to ensure the standard of safety, cleanliness, and service at the resort. Timeshare management, after all, must answer to the timeshare owners at that resort, in a way that demands a different type of accountability than a motel or hotel has with its transient guests. And for many of the same reasons that people want to buy timeshare, they also want to rent it. Timeshare resorts typically offer an abundance of amenities, good security features, and roomy accommodations.

With the economy tight and gas costing more and more each week, this may not be the year you buy timeshare. But there has never been a better time to rent one. Rent timeshare and learn firsthand if timesharing is right for you. Check out a resort, enjoy a vacation, and pay less and get more than you do at a hotel.

The opportunities in timeshare rentals are excellent and with the choices available through Sell My Timeshare NOW, you are bound to find one that is just right for your vacation needs and budget.