If you scheduled New York timeshare this week, you could be on the eighteenth green to see the winning putt at the 2006 US Open

This week the United States Golf Association returns to Winged Foot, hosting the US Open Golf Championship. For only the fifth time since 1929, the prestigious event will be contested on the challenging fairways and greens of the Mamaroneck, New York golf course. To give you an idea just how difficult a US Open at Winged Foot can be, only Fuzzy Zoeller in 1984, claimed his win with a total score below par—267 for four grueling rounds of golf.

So on Sunday afternoon, who will walk away with the trophy and the winner’s share of the 6.2 million dollar purse? It might be Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. It might even be 52-year old Jay Haas, who only three weeks ago claimed his first major title at the Senior PGA Championship. And this year’s winner could even be long shot, 15-year old Tadd Fujikawa, (the second youngest qualifier in the event’s history) who claimed the lone entry spot at the sectional qualifier in Hawaii.

But in tiny Mamaroneck, New York, where every hotel and motel room has been sold-out for months in anticipation of this great golfing event, the real winners will be the timeshare owners who planned ahead and exchanged their weeks for New York timeshares.

Orlando’s bed tax is not an issue for timeshare owners or those who rent timeshare by-owner.

How did you feel when you helped pay for the expansion of the Convention Center in Orlando? And wasn’t that nice of you to underwrite the city bus system there and pay for all those television ads to attract more tourists to Central Florida?

Don’t remember doing that?

If you enjoyed an Orlando vacation and stayed in a hotel or motel room there, then you did donate to a number of city and county projects—in addition to the donation you made via state and county sales tax to the highways, school systems and community services enjoyed by Florida residents.

The Central Florida vacation area, like many other tourist destinations across the country, levies a tourist tax or bed tax on top of their state and local sales tax. Hotel and motel occupants must pay both taxes on every room night booked. And because this double taxation accounts for a minimum of 11 percent of every hotel bill, (more in some areas) it is no wonder travelers reel with sticker shock when they see their final bill.

But residents of The City Beautiful may soon have to find another way to build a new arena for the NBA’s Orlando Magic and a new community performing arts center. Despite the fact that tourism is up in central Florida—hotel occupancy is down. When industry experts went looking for someone to blame for the room night shortage, (because surely the tourists were not all sleeping in their cars) they found the culprit to be timeshare resorts!

According to Staff Writer, Tim Barker, of the Orlando Sentinel in 2001, 10 percent of all visitors to the area stayed in Orlando timeshares. By 2005, that number had increased to 15 percent. Because timeshare owners are actual property owners, they do pay a percentage of their unit’s annual property or real estate taxes. But they are not charged with bed tax or sales tax on timeshare nights because they are sleeping in a bed they actually own.

What’s more, most timeshare renters are not charged the bed tax, if they lease a timeshare property directly from the person who owns it. Until municipal governments figure out how to collect and enforce such an effort, they simply have no way to track or collect the bed tax on individual transactions that often take place online, outside the state of Florida, perhaps even outside the US. The only situation in which timeshare renters are likely to be hit by the bed tax is when they rent timeshare directly from the resort.

So if you are considering selling your Orlando timeshare, the good news is that the Orlando resale market gets stronger and stronger all the time. And if you’d like to hang on to your timeshare resort property and use it as a rental, that market looks equally solid, especially as hotel rates (and their additional taxes) creep upward, already up 9 percent in the first quarter of 2006 compared with 2005.

No wonder even highly

Marriott Seeks One More Place in the Sun

Marriott Vacation Club International is buying the Radisson Suite Beach Resort on Marco Island. The $58 million dollar sale is scheduled to close on June 30, 2006. As a Radisson hotel, the property currently offers 233 hotel rooms. Marriott Vacation Club (a timeshare/vacation ownership club) would like to expand the present accommodations into condo-size units for timeshare use and to build vertically, creating a structure that is substantially taller than the 150-foot height currently permitted by city ordinances.

On behalf of the property’s purchaser, Boykin Lodging Company, a real estate investment trust, has been in discussions with Marco Island city planners in hopes of reaching a compromise that will satisfy both parties. In the event an agreement is not reached, the closing on the sale of the property could be delayed to July 30.

Marco Island, situated on the Gulf Coast, is the largest of Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands and boasts miles of pristine beaches, sugary white sand, and tropical vegetation.

New Wellness Community to Focus on Health, Fitness, and Relaxation

Tucson’s famed Canyon Ranch Spa and Wellness Center is planning to build their third “healthy living” residential community. But future residents should not expect desert vistas or cactus flowers in bloom. The newest Canyon Ranch facility will be a 67-story tower overlooking Chicago’s city-center strip known as the Magnificent Mile.

Plans for the health-centered residential community include a 65,000 square foot health and wellness complex, 256 luxury condos, 128 hotel-condominium rooms (that can be purchased like timeshares), and 48,000 square feet of office space. An on-staff medical team, therapists, and other specialists from the Cleveland Clinic will be available to serve the needs of the residents.

Similar properties are planned for Miami Beach, Florida, and Bethesda, Maryland, with Los Angeles, New York City, and Texas as other potential development locations. Canyon Ranch and the Chicago-based LR Development Company, made the official announcement about Canyon Ranch-Chicago on May 19, 2006, and plan to break ground on the 450 million dollar property early next year.