The website TypicallySpanish.com is reporting that a German prosecutor is investigating timeshare fraud conducted in the Canary Islands. The case is being prosecuted in Stuttgart, bringing charges against Ivan Boris, a 37-year-old man from Croatia. According to the report, Boris has assumed at least fifteen false identities, in his attempts to defraud victims in the timeshare scam.

Boris allegedly promises the timeshare buyers an investment return and uses falsely notarized documents to back up his promises. The timeshare fraud has involved perhaps as many as 40 victims, who spent nearly three quarters of one million dollars (collectively) for timeshare rights at the Club Monte Anfi.

Timeshare Sales in Spain

As a timeshare buyer, you should understand that timeshare purchased in the Canaries (or in the Balearic Islands) is governed by Spanish Timeshare Law. Click here and you can read a summary of Spanish Timeshare Law from the official source: The Organisation for Timeshare in Europe, the OTE.

Timeshare laws in Europe have lagged behind those in the US and many other parts of the world in providing a structure that properly protects the interests of timeshare owners and timeshare buyers. While it wasn’t for lack of having laws in place, the wording of many of those laws simply permitted loopholes that could be exploited.

In recent years, the OTE has tightened up their laws, targeting £100,000 in 2007 to its “Enforcement Project in Spain,” with plans to increase that spending in 2008 by 30 percent. During the past year, the OTE Enforcement Project in Spain, working with the police, has closed four bogus law firms and seven timeshare resales companies that were running timeshare scams.

Timeshare in Spain is some of the most splendid in the world, but historically, it has also been a hotbed of timeshare fraud. Among timeshares in the Canary Islands, Tenerife in particular has seen more than its share of timeshare scams. The OTE estimates that nearly half a million Brits lose over a billion pounds each year to timeshare fraud in the form of Discount Travel Membership Clubs.

Buy Timeshare Safely

When it comes to buying timeshares, the rule is the same worldwide: Don’t rush. Don’t make a buying decision on the spot and don’t make your decision to buy under pressure. If you are not dealing with a worldwide brand that you know, (Marriott timeshare, Hyatt vacation club timeshare, Hilton timeshare, etc.) Take the time to find out whom you are dealing with, and not just based on their word, but by contacting organizations such as OTE and asking them about a timeshare company’s reputation.

If a timeshare sales person pressures you with a “buy now or this price goes away” approach—walk away. You can always buy timeshare at even better prices than the developer can offer by buying timeshare resales, where you never have to face the high pressure sales pitch, and can deal directly with the current timeshare owner.

You have choices and you have time – take advantage of them.

So far, the timeshare industry has weathered the economic problems in the US without significant impact. Most of the leading timeshare resort developers are still publishing solid quarterly reports, and in many cases, timeshare sales are propping up declining hotel revenues.

But when people stop gambling, we have to feel concern for all sectors of the economy. Typically, gambling weathers almost any economic crisis. For the first two months of 2008, gambling revenues in Vegas were down by 4 percent from last year.

Ups and Downs in Las Vegas Timeshare and Hotel Construction

Hotels Magazine tells us, “…Las Vegas has a huge inventory of new casinos and hotels due for completion in the next few years, and a long slump could send the city reeling.”

The bright side:

• Caesars Palace is planning a billion dollar makeover, with a 23-story tower and three new swimming pools.
• MGM Mirage’s $8 billion CityCenter project is still moving forward, encompassing 76 acres on the Vegas strip.
• Westgate Resorts timeshare‘s fifty story timeshare resort, the Planet Hollywood Towers, is moving forward to become the only timeshare resort directly connected to a major hotel and casino on the strip.

The bad news:

• Foreclosure has started on a $760 million construction loan for the Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino.
• Plans to build the Crown Las Vegas, a bullet-shaped hotel and casino resort that was supposed to become the tallest building in the city, have been scrapped due to lack of financing.
• For January and February, hotel occupancy was down by 1.5 percent, despite the fact that daily room rates were nearly 4 percent lower than for the same period in 2007.

Serving Your Timeshare Needs

Who can even guess any longer, how the US economy will sort itself out? For people who are in the business of buying real estate, selling oil, or repossessing automobiles, then these are good times. And for the rest of us, who need gasoline to get to work, groceries for our families, and mortgages we can afford, well, things are feeling a little scary.

Wherever you are in this economic rollercoaster, Sell My Timeshare NOW is an affordable, safe, and reliable way to deal with your timeshare needs, whether that is buying timeshare, selling timeshare, or renting timeshare.

Vacation destination, Branson, Missouri, shares a problem that has plagued many cities, including Orlando, Gatlinburg, Myrtle Beach, and other favorite tourist towns.

The solicitation of tourists on the streets of downtown Branson, by timeshare sales representatives, is an issue the city wants to resolve. During the May 6 work session of the Branson Board of Aldermen, the group looked for ways to solve the problem of solicitors approaching tourists with free offers that were really tied to the tourist attending a timeshare sales pitch.

Branson City Attorney was quoted by the Branson Courier as saying, “There has been some downtown businesses that have issued some complaints recently about some vacation club sales and time shares, that kind of business, getting a lot of locations in downtown Branson and soliciting people on the sidewalk.”

The Courier article goes on to say the complaints were not necessarily from citizens or tourists in the downtown Branson area, but were from businesses that don’t like the environment the solicitors create.

Currently the Branson law states, “In addition it makes it unlawful to solicit when either the solicitor or the person being solicited is located within ten feet of the doorway to any business, 20 feet of a public toilet; 20 feet of an automated teller machine, or 20 feet of a pay telephone.”

The Aldermen believe that by redefining the term “solicit” in the Branson Municipal Code, they can resolve the problem.

As I recall, the city of Gatlinburg, addressed its timeshare and vacation club solicitation problem by passing out free emblems that a visitor could wear, stating that they did not want to be approached.

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do, than by the ones you did.” -Mark Twain

Sam Clemens, a.k.a., Mark Twain loved to travel. He traveled by ship to South America at the age of 21 and later piloted a riverboat along the Mississippi River. He also traveled in some of the roughest territory of Nevada and California, as well as living in cities including San Francisco and New York. Some of his earliest travel writing included 4 months spent in Hawaii writing about the Sandwich Islands, and his great literary works that center around travel, like Innocents Abroad and Following the Equator. The point is, Mark Twain loved to travel and explore both the US and around the world.

Considering how much Mark Twain loved to travel, I can’t help but wonder if he had a piece of the $168-billion stimulus package coming back to him from the US Treasury, would he use some of it to take a vacation? Maybe he would buy a timeshare resale to make traveling easier and to lock-in the price of his accommodations. Perhaps he’d even become part of a timeshare vacation club, that included exchange privileges for a riverboat cruise.

We can only guess at how Twain would live his life in the modern world, but we don’t have to speculate on his philosophy of existence. He made that pretty clear: Live life without regrets.

Americans May Be Using Checks for Travel and Timeshares

Los Angeles Times staff writer, Hugo Martin, thinks that many people will be using all or part of their stimulus checks to take some much needed vacation time, and in his L A Times online post from May 11, he even suggests a few locations. But he brings up an interesting point:

While your stimulus check was meant to boost the economy, it wasn’t meant to boost a foreign economy. Martin points out that, in his opinion, it would be much more patriotic of Americans to spend their checks on American soil.

Sell My Timeshare NOW Hot Property List May Help You Decide

It is almost time for the Timeshare Owners Blog to began running the results of the Sell My Timeshare NOW Hot Property List. Watch the blog for the 2008 featured timeshare resort properties – we will begin posting them over the next few weeks.

Maybe, the profiles of some of these favorite timeshare resorts will be just what you need to start thinking about spending your “extra” money on timeshare resales or timeshare rentals and living that life of no regrets.

Here is some interesting silent film footage of Mark Twain, shot by Thomas Edison in 1909, courtesy of YouTube.