In case you haven’t already gotten the word, once again Festiva Resorts is running its annual Festiva Photo & Story contest.

If you are a Festiva Resorts timeshare owner, you are invited to share your best Festiva vacation stories or photos. Write the story of your most memorable (funny, amazing or unexpected) vacation experience at any Festiva timeshare resort; your story may include a photo, but photos included with stories are optional. You may also enter by submitting a photograph to the photo-only portion of the contest, where no written story is required.

Your Best Festiva Timeshare Vacation Could Help You Win Your Next Festiva Timeshare Vacation

The contest judges say they are not necessarily looking for the story with the most accurate grammar or the photo that is the most artistically skilled. Instead, they want you to capture memories, fun, experiences, and the joy of vacations and celebrations.

Festiva timeshare owners may submit one entry per month for the story contest and one entry per month for the photo contest. Prize winners are to be announced on February 1, 2011. In order to claim your prize you must be a Festiva timeshare owner in good standing.

Here’s what you could win:

• 1st prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property + $1,000 to spend on your vacation (air travel, spending money, etc.)
• 2nd prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property + $500 to spend on your vacation (air travel, spending money, etc.)
• 3rd prize: One-week stay at a Festiva property.

You have until the end of the year—December 15, 2010—to get your submission in to [email protected]. Learn more at: http://blog.festiva.travel/contest/

Sometimes a photo is worth a thousand words … but sometimes it is worth a week’s vacation at a Festiva Resort timeshare.

The Orlando Sentinel has recognized Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake Resort timeshare as one of the, “Top 100 Companies for Working Families.” To make this list, a company must score well in areas that include employee benefits packages, work environment, communication, family-related benefits to employees, and employee training.

Dan Carricato, senior vice president of Human Resources for Orange Lake Resorts timeshare, explains, “Family is the key word at Orange Lake…it’s who we are – as a company and individually. Our employees come to work every day to create great vacations for families, and in turn, we create a family-friendly workplace that engages them daily. We’ve been creating this culture for more than 28 years, and we’re ecstatic to have been selected as one of the Sentinel’s Top 100.”

Holiday Inn Club Vacations timeshare, you may recall, was created in 2008, by an alliance between Orange Lake Resorts and IHG, the corporation that owns Holiday Inn Resorts. The Orange Lake Resorts timeshare is a popular Orlando timeshare located near the Walt Disney World Resort and other theme park attractions of Central Florida. The resort features a lazy river and outstanding golf courses onsite. With nearly 2500 timeshare villas, expansion plans call for an additional 2000 timeshare units to be added.

Orange Lake Resort timeshare, the flagship property for Holiday Inn Club Vacations, is a family-owned company with over 2799 timeshare employees.

Sell My Timeshare NOW started as a good entrepreneurial idea… that has continued to get better and
better.

Today, Sell My Timeshare NOW is a leader in timeshare resale and rental advertising and with our brokerage arm, Timeshare Broker Services, a leader in brokered timeshare resales. The company is proven and trusted, with our websites averaging more than two million pageviews each month. But SellMyTimeshareNOW.com began seven years ago as nothing more than the vision of entrepreneurs who believed in an idea and were willing to invest energy, personal resources, and genuine sweat equity into seeing it develop.

Timeshare, as a concept, was originally the result of entrepreneurial minds willing to think, pardon the cliché, “outside the box” about new possibilities in vacation ownership. As the industry grew and time passed, companies such as Sell My Timeshare NOW developed because new entrepreneurial minds recognized unmet consumer needs in the timeshare industry and could offer cost effective ways to meet those needs.

But in a struggling global economy, with timeshares taking both deserved and unfounded criticism in the media virtually every day, you have to wonder if there is anything to entice new blood, new ideas, and exuberant entrepreneurs into this business. And if there isn’t, will the current thought leaders of the industry put forth and embrace the kind of new thinking necessary to recharge the concept, making it vibrant and flexible in all the ways it needs to be?

Why Entrepreneurs are Important to Timeshares

Startup companies in any industry (on average) account for more than 60 percent of the new jobs available. Between automation, downsizing, and the fact that more people enter the workforce each year than exit it, new job creation is critical in maintaining (or recreating)a healthy economy.

The timeshare industry began with a basic flaw, that being the absence of a process for reselling timeshare. Imagine the automobile industry without a resale option? What if car dealers offered owners no way to resell their vehicles; it would be like saying we will sell you a new car, but should you ever want to resell it and buy a different car or even get rid of it entirely and go back to riding the bus, well… you are just out of luck. Until Sell My Timeshare NOW began offering affordable, effective, and trustworthy timeshare resale solutions, timeshare owners were left struggling over what to do with a timeshare they no longer wanted to own.

The combination of a very atypical sales model for new timeshares and the lack of a viable plan for timeshare resales has haunted the industry, creating an Achilles heel of vulnerability. With no regulated or structured timeshare resales plans in place, the door was left open for unscrupulous people to jump in trying to make a quick buck off of someone else’s problem. Timeshare resale scams have popped up like a “Whack-a-mole” game, with government agencies wielding a rubber mallet, trying to keep them at bay.

As long as there are lemonade stands operated by pint-size visionaries, there will be another crop of entrepreneurs to charge into the business arena and both shake it up and smooth it out by challenging old ideas and instigating new ones. Let’s hope the timeshare industry closes the door on scammers and at the same time, puts out the welcome mat for the dreamers and doers who have so much to offer for the future.

The highly respected European timeshare association TATOC, has announced that its Sharetime magazine is now available to all timeshare owners on the website sharetimemagazine.com

The quarterly publication is transitioning to a digital-only format available in ‘flip page’ technology. Colin Collins, Sharetime editor, will have the next issue out in September, packed with more industry information always of interest to timeshare owners, renters, and anyone interested in the possibilities of vacation ownership.

By going to a digital-only format, replacing the print edition of the publication, TATOC demonstrates environmental responsibility. Just as importantly, online distribution means that the broadest possible audience will have access to the features, articles and ads found in Sharetime.

TATOC is the only elected consumer association representing the interests of timeshare owners in Europe and represents more than 80 European timeshare resorts. Through its outreach, TATOC provides access to over a quarter million timeshare owners and families.

Other recent news from TATOC:

• TATOC Timeshare Association Says Keep the Impetus Going
• Today’s Timeshare Interview with TATOC Timeshare CEO, Harry Taylor
• Europe Timeshare and Spain Timeshare Has New Ally at the BCCS