What Do iPods and Timeshares Have in Common?

Some upbeat and very interesting quotes from industry panelists at the European Timeshare Business Forum 2005.

The latest edition of Timeshare Staff LTD Magazine, (December ‘05-January ‘06) reviewed highlights from this year’s, European Timeshare Business Forum, recently held in Prague. Here’s a few of the facts that came out of this meeting of industry giants, which we think will have you congratulating yourself heartily for being a savvy timeshare vacation property owner.

Chairman and CEO of Starwood Vacation Ownership, Rip Gellein, looks at his industry this way, “Timeshares are alive and well in the United States… I believe the sky’s the limit.”

He elaborated that there have been no “down years,” in timeshare sales in the US since 1980. US timeshare sales in 1990 were $1.2 billion, and by 2004 had reached the astounding figure of nearly $8 billion. This means that since 1993, the US timeshare sales growth rate has been almost 16%.

On the international market, timeshare sales topped $11 billion last year. And as Yannis Daskalantonakis of The Daskalantonakis Group, reported, “it (the timeshare industry) will be in even better shape in the future.” 

But Shari Levitin Katz, President/CEO of Levitin Group gave us perhaps the most enlightening factoid to come out of the forum, “The growth rate in the past year has been seven-fold. What other product has that level of growth?”

“iPod, Australian wine, and Prozac,” she said, answering her own question.