With college football season now officially underway, fans of the sport are already pursuing the part of the game they rank second only to first downs and touchdowns—the tailgate party.

Across America, enthusiastic football fans are grilling, chilling, and gearing up for game day with plenty of good food and an abundance of school spirit and team pride. How To: Throw A Tailgate Party, which you can read on the website, AskMen.com, offers excellent suggestions for planning your own winning tailgate event.

On the highway, tailgaters are usually easy to spot, driving cars and vans decked out with school logos on the windows and pennants snapping in the wind. And while some tailgaters still drive their gas guzzling motor homes and rv’s, many fans have discovered that a timeshare resale or timeshare rental affords them a much more comfortable and spacious place to enjoy the weekend. Even if you fail to land those 50-yard line tickets, watching the game from a two or three-bedroom timeshare gives you and your friends plenty of room to enjoy a luxurious resort, prepare your burgers and nachos in a real kitchen, and win or lose, still enjoy a great weekend.

Here’s a list of a few of the outstanding timeshare resales available at destinations that are perfect for the college sports fan:

• Premiere Vacation Club at Varsity Clubs of America – South Bend Chapter (Indiana)
• Marriott Villas at Doral (Miami, Florida)
• Texas Timeshare in Lakeway (Austin, Texas)
• Wyndham Smoky Mountains (Sevierville, TN, just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee)

No discussion of college football would be complete without mentioning the new, life size sculpture of the legendary Ara Parseghian that Notre Dame University has commissioned from sculptor, Jerry McKenna. Thank you to the Jaunt blog for bringing this to our attention. During his illustrious coaching career at Notre Dame, Parseghian won 2 National Championship titles, 3 bowl games, and contributed greatly to collegiate football.

And finally, just to get you in the football spirit, here’s a You-Tube video that will make Florida Gator football fans proud.

Last week, the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau released the results of a new nationwide research study conducted by Opinion Research’s Caravan. The study looked at the travel patterns and preferences of grandparents, or the segment of society many people call the Baby Boomers.

According to the study, 49 percent of grandparents have traveled with their grandchildren, as well as with one or both of the children’s parents. In 2000, when a similar study was conducted, only 37 percent reported taking this type of multi-generational vacation. On top of the 49 percent of three-generation vacationers, another 31 percent said they vacationed with their grandchildren, but without the children’s parents.

Why the increase over the past 7 years?

Part of it has to do with the fact that Boomers now represent the fastest growing demographic in America’s culture. Today’s fifty-something generation is healthier, wealthier, and better educated than so-called senior citizens of any previous era. Still vital, active, and with many of them still climbing the corporate ladder, most Boomers have yet to reach their peak earnings capacity. In short, grandparents today may be rockin’, but are not likely to be in a rocking chair!

And where are grandparents traveling with their grandchildren in tow? The top three destinations for multigenerational vacations are: Orlando, Washington DC, and New York City.

With great timeshare and timeshare resale opportunities in all three cities, you can be sure that many of these vacations are planned for timeshare resorts, where everyone in the family can enjoy spacious accommodations, full kitchens, eat-in dining, and lots of on-property activities and entertainment.

Here are only a few of the excellent timeshare resorts in these three favorite grandparent-grandchild vacation cities:

• Grand Lake Resort Orlando Timeshare
• Westgate Leisure Resorts Orlando Timeshare
• Disney’s Boardwalk Villas Timeshare
• Wyndham at Bonnet Creek Orlando Timeshare
• Wyndham Washington DC Timeshare at Old Town Alexandria Virginia
• Manhattan Club Timeshare
• Hilton Club New York Timeshare

The Timeshare Owners Blog warned readers about this scam, back in April in a post titled, Warning: Timeshare Fraud Targeting Older Investors.

At that time, the Missouri Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, had issued cease and desist orders against four Missouri men, a business in Panama, two Mexican businesses, and a Nevada promoter who were targeting elderly Missourians with a “get rich” timeshare investment scam.

According to Bloomberg News and the Washington Post, the Securities and Exchange Commission is now cracking down on this scam and the people behind it. The list of those being charged has expanded to include Michael E. Kelly and 25 other people or companies who are being sued or are facing charges for their role in the $428 million fraud. The lawsuit, filed in Chicago federal court, is intended to not only bring justice in this particular situation, but to prove that the SEC will, in the words of Merri Jo Gillette, the SEC’s regional director in Chicago, “vigilantly pursue those who target older Americans, no matter what the obstacles.”

The fundamental nature of this timeshare scam is that individuals were led to believe that by purchasing timeshares, they would receive regular revenues from the ongoing rental of the timeshares. They were also told that anytime they wished to sell the timeshare, the leasing agency would buy it back for the full purchase amount.

This sounds incredible…which should be the first red flag. If this “investment” deal was solid and afforded this kind of guaranteed return, then lending agencies and investment firms would be jumping at the chance to be part of it; and the people behind it wouldn’t be looking for senior citizens to make it happen. As we hear all the time, when a deal sounds too good to be true—assume it is!

In fact, this timeshare scam is a “Ponzi scheme”, a type of fraud that takes its name from Charles Ponzi, an infamous turn of the century shyster. In a Ponzi scheme, early investors are paid returns from the money that subsequent investors have used to become part of the deal. These payments do not represent genuine net revenue as they should, and because of this, a Ponzi scheme will ultimately fail 100 percent of the time. Yet those who get into the deal early on, do receive the returns promised (for a while) and are often eager to vouch for the deal’s validity in living up to its promises. A Ponzi scheme can be highly tempting to others; while we may not trust the salesperson pitching the deal to us, we tend to place great faith in endorsements and testimonials of other investors like ourselves.

The saddest part of this specific deal is, according to Forbes Magazine, more than $136 million of the money invested in this timeshare scam came from individual retirement accounts, meaning that it obviously was not expendable income on the part of those who invested it.

Timeshares should never be purchased as an investment for financial return. Timeshares are a lifestyle investment—they promise no financial rewards, only the benefit of great vacation opportunities. If anyone implies to you that buying timeshare is an investment, that person is not only lying, he or she is violating Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.

Buy a timeshare because you want to enjoy vacation ownership. Buy because owning timeshare is a commitment to a lifetime of great vacations for you and your family, typically in luxurious surroundings, at high-demand venues. Likewise, you should sell your timeshare as soon as you find that you are no longer using and enjoying it. The value of timeshare is in using it, not in holding it for financial return.

Before you enter into any transactions involving timeshares, check with the Office of the Secretary of State or the Attorney General for the state in which the timeshare company or timeshare resale company is located.

If you would like to read the complete list of those named as defendants in this case, you can find it on The Bizop News blog, where Michael Webster has posted all the names and some additional information about the case.

What is the first big clue that timeshare resorts are edging out the hotel market, claiming more and more vacation business and a bigger piece of the hospitality and tourism pie?

Simple.

The fact is that most major hotel chains are devoting as much or more attention (and more dollars) to their timeshare and vacation ownership divisions as to their regular hotel business. There are the Disney Vacation Club Resorts, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Hyatt Vacation Club, Hilton Grand Vacations, Wyndham Vacation Ownership and even the Ritz Carlton Club and Residence, to name a few of the big dogs now on the playing field.

Timeshares, or vacation ownership, as some providers like to call it, are giving hotels such serious competition that in top tourist destinations like Orlando, Florida, hoteliers actually blame the decline in room night bookings on the excellent offerings in timeshares, timeshare resales, and timeshare rentals.

Today, most leading hotel companies have a timeshare division, even though many like to avoid use of the word “timeshare” and replace it instead with phrases like vacation ownership and vacation club. No matter what you call it, it’s still timeshare. Ritz-Carlton Hotel spokesperson, Vivian Deuschl, says the Ritz-Carlton Hotel company will no longer even manage a hotel unless it includes a residential component, according to a July 6, 2005 article published in USA Today.

A recent Time Magazine article about the newest trend in hotels, makes me wonder if one specific trend isn’t a direct response to the competitive pressure hotels feel from timeshares. The Time article states, “Global tourism is thriving, and the luxury segment, the top 15 percent of the market by price, is driving it. With rates as high as $25,000 a night, these are the most profitable rooms in a hotel, and they consistently have the highest occupancy rates”. The Time Magazine article, titled “The Grander Hotel”, goes on to cite Smith Travel Research as showing that luxury room revenues increased more than 10 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Let me make something clear, we are not talking about the type of luxury you find in a fabulous beachside Marriott Vacation Club timeshare, where the suites are spacious and the amenities are practically perfect. Time Magazine is talking about uber-luxury, targeted at a market willing to pay thousands or tens of thousands per night for hotel accommodations, sometimes referred to as “ultraluxe”.

While this may be a growing market, I’d say that it is not one that most of us are going to be part of, at least not on a regular basis.

Let’s see, you can pay $25,000 for one room night—one time—at an ultraluxe hotel. You can buy a fabulous timeshare week from the timeshare developer for about the same amount of money and use it for 7 days, each and every year, for the rest of your life. Or, for that kind of money, you can deal directly with timeshare owners who want to sell timeshare they currently own, and you can buy the right to enjoy anywhere from 14 nights to perhaps as many as 30 or even 60 or 70 nights, per year, every single year, as long as you own the timeshare. Own a timeshare for 20 years, and you conceivably could get 1400 vacation days and nights from an initial expenditure of $25,000.

I suspect many of us will be passing up ultraluxe and “settling” for more affordable (and more logical) levels of luxury.