Caribbean Timeshare

Wyndham Worldwide continues aggressive growth plan.

Empty and ignored, The Grand Beach Palace in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, has not lived up to its palatial name for quite some time. Wyndham Vacation Ownership (Wyndham Timeshare) recently purchased the 290-room resort from the Palms Resorts Holding Company and now plans a $40 million transformation on the property. Originally developed in the 1980’s, the hotel has sat empty for more than two years. When complete, the new timeshare vacation resort will offer 143 residence condominiums.

The property, which includes 13 buildings, encompasses 25-acres along the beach and is roughly one mile from the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort and Spa. Lisa Burby, senior director of Wyndham Vacation Ownership, was quoted in Commercial Property News (www.cpnonline.com) as saying, “St. Thomas is an extremely popular destination for our owners.”

The purchase price was reportedly $31 million. Wyndham Vacation Ownership, is a member of the Wyndham Worldwide corporation, which has a portfolio of 140 resort properties in North America and the South Pacific. The official new name of the island resort (expected to reopen in 2008) has yet to be announced.

The Virgin Islands are classified as an unincorporated territory of the United States and were purchased by the United States in 1917 as part of a defense tactic to increase US control over the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. Remember that, when you plan your timeshare vacation in the US Virgin Islands, no passport is required of US citizens visiting or returning from this destination.

Today’s post continues our coverage of the ongoing Royal Oasis debacle.

I’ve been wanting to follow up on the continuing story of timeshare owners at the Royal Oasis resort on Grand Bahama. The Freeport News recently published a letter to the editor from a concerned timeshare owner. Looks like this letter can speak for itself, and needs no further preamble from me.

Check it out:

http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/editorial/286062345496719.php

Fire seriously damages at least one of the timeshare property’s buildings.

According to reports by the Virgin Island Daily News, one of the three accommodations buildings at Magens Point Timeshare Resort in St. Thomas was seriously damaged by fire on January 16, 2006. While no guests were injured, the damage reported is extensive.

When firefighters from St. Thomas, along with nearby Anna’s Retreat arrived, they found the building on the east side of the property engulfed in flames with the most severe damage being to the eight units on the building’s upper floor.

According to St. Thomas Fire Chief, Glenn Francis, the fire did not originate in any of the occupied guest rooms, however the actual cause is undetermined at this time. An investigation is ongoing into the cause as well as to find out if the fire alarm system was operational at the time the fire broke out.

If you were scheduled to vacation at Magens Point this year, you should contact the resort immediately for a full report on the damages and the future availability of accommodations. It also occurs to me that it might be a smart idea if we all brought along a small, fully-functional, battery-operated smoke detector for future vacations…

After fifteen months, no communication, and exchange hassles, some Bahamas timeshare owners may resort to legal action.

While checking Google News this morning, I found an article which describes certain problems surrounding a timeshare development on Grand Bahama.

According to this article, since September of 2004, Crowne Plaza Golf Resort and Casino at the Royal Oasis on Grand Bahama has been closed for business. Those who own timeshares there have received no word on whether or not the current management has any plans of selling this property. To compound matters, when these owners attempt to exchange their timeshares through RCI, they are told that their points have been frozen.

If these allegations are true, what does this mean? Not only have these owners been unable to use their vacation time because the resort has remained closed, they can’t exchange the time they’ve already bought.

In my opinion, this sort of thing does more damage to timeshare’s reputation than thousands of one-man “take-the-money-and-run” scam operations. Here we have a report of not just a lone “timeshare spammer” but at least one major company at fault. This is the kind of story which undermines the whole industry’s credibility at a fundamental level. Thanks to this, thousands of people will reconsider buying a timeshare. After reading this account, who can blame them? Where and with whom does accountability lie? What does this mean for Bahamas timeshare in the future?

My sincerest hope is that, if the resort company is to blame, RCI will seek restitution from the resort on behalf of the many timeshare owners who bought time there. People bought these points with the natural expectation that they would be able to use them! If these points are now useless, this situation just might effectively sabotage the entire concept of timeshare points systems.

My associates and I have personally seen points systems work extremely well on thousands of occasions, but if these kinds of complaints recur, a new solution should be developed by exchange companies.

However, despite this negative publicity, I still have faith in the system. RCI’s parent company Cendant has been rearranging its corporate structure of late, leaving one with the hope that such an ambitious restructuring might mean smoother sailing in the future.

My company and I will be following this story over the weeks and months to come. Our readers can expect more updates as events develop.