ARDA Regional Timeshare Meeting in the Colorado Rockies

I just spent a couple of outstanding days in Breckenridge, Colorado, at the ARDA (American Resort Development Association) Rockies Regional Meeting. The meeting was excellent in several ways, the first being the location. The Beaver Run Resort & Conference Center that hosted the event is a classic Colorado condo-hotel ski resort with ski-in/ski-out access condos.

And of course, there is nothing any better than the chance to spend a few days in the mountains of Colorado. The skies were incredibly blue and the air had that crisp edge of freshness. Sell My Timeshare NOW was proud to be a Gold Sponsor of this very informative meeting, one of a series of ARDA regional meetings in which we have participated as a Gold Sponsor.

If you are not familiar with ARDA, they are the Washington D.C. based professional association that represents the vacation ownership and resort development industries. In 2009, ARDA celebrates 40 years of service to timeshare owners and the timeshare industry. Their membership is nearly 1,000 strong including privately held companies, publicly traded companies, and international corporations involved in the vacation ownership industry. ARDA’s membership also includes resort management companies, timeshare owner associations (HOAs), and owners through the ARDA Resort Owners Coalition (ARDA-ROC).

The Changing Face of Timeshare Ownership

ARDA Regional Meetings are an important time of learning, exchanging ideas, networking, problem solving, and generally getting things done. One of many topics that was addressed was a very interesting trend in timeshare ownership demographics.

Many people think of timeshare owners as typically falling into the Baby Boomer generation, and in many ways that is still true, although the profile of the new timeshare buyer and timeshare resale buyer includes more and more young couples and individuals all the time. However, there is also another way younger couples are becoming timeshare owners these days and that is through passing down deeded timeshare ownership within families.

This makes for an interesting new dynamic in timeshare ownership and ARDA, as well as the timeshare industry as a whole, is on top of it. Today’s timeshare owner may be a Boomer, a Gen X, Gen Y, Millennium, or Gen Me, meaning that vacation ownership resorts are learning to respond to a variety of generational and cultural issues. It also means that it is an interesting and exciting time to become a timeshare owner.

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Be sure you visit The Timeshare Authority next week, when I will be sharing updates about ARDA’s new website www.vacationbetter.org