Marriott Timeshare

Yesterday, the Timeshare Owners Blog told you about Disney’s expansion plans in Hawaii. The planned Oahu resort will occupy 21 acres of prime oceanfront property and will be Disney’s first hotel and timeshare resort that is not part of a theme park. While other sources list the property as yet unnamed, the Honolulu Star Bulletin calls it the: Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Ko Olina Family Resort.

COURTESY WALT DISNEY PARKS & RESORTS

From a business perspective, there are several ways to view Disney’s move to expand in Hawaii going there without the benefit of thrill rides and mouse ears as a draw for tourists. Even Disney Vacation Club timeshares currently only offer two locations that are not at a theme park destination: Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort and Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.

In some regards, Disney is a relative newcomer to the hotel and resort industry. The Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, which opened in 1955, was the first Disney-branded hotel, but it was not owned and operated by the Walt Disney company until 1988.

Still, nearly 19 years in the hotel business, is long enough for you to learn some of the ups and downs. And long enough to establish that not everything Disney touches thrives, despite magic pixie dust to help it along.

In the 1990’s Disney planned a project in Newport Coast, California, which was subsequently cancelled, and the land later sold to Marriott, who built the very successful Marriott Newport Coast Villas on the site.

Disney also planned hotels for Beaver Creek, Colorado, and in New York’s Times Square, but neither ever came to fruition. There’s a reason that Disney has shied away from the hotel business in areas that don’t have theme parks and maybe it’s been a good one.

Without Magic Mountain and twirling teacups, a Disney hotel is, well, just another great hotel, and perhaps not even as great as some of their competition. The developers of the property at Ko Olina were also in negotiations with Four Seasons, Trump Entertainment, and Ritz-Carlton for the land Disney has acquired. Recognizing that the Hawaii hotel and resort market is not one of the easiest—after all it’s not a drive-to destination for anyone—you have to wonder if Disney beat out the competition, or if the other hoteliers were wisely more conservative.

As with most things, time will tell. But if you are a member of the Disney Vacation Club, then maybe you’re in luck, and in the near future, a Disney Hawaii timeshare vacation will be in your plans.

Until then, here are only a few of the other excellent options for your Hawaii timeshare vacation:

• Marriott’s Kauai Beach Club
• Marriott’s Waiohai Beach Club
• Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club
• Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club
• Shell Vacations Club at Kona Coast Resort I Resales
• Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas Rentals
• Whaler on Kaanapali Beach Rentals
• WorldMark at Kapaa Shore Rentals
• WorldMark at Kihei Resales
• Wyndham Hawaii at Kona Hawaiian Resort Resales
• Wyndham Hawaii at Royal Sea Cliff Resales

A September 5 article in Hotels Magazine tells us that perhaps as much as 3 trillion US dollars will be invested in Middle East tourism over the next 20 years.

$3 trillion!

So I bet you are as interested as I am in who is spending that money and what they are creating. Here’s the way the Hotels Magazine article breaks down Middle East hotel and resort development:

• • Rotana Hotels and Resorts (a regional chain) will double its portfolio to 53 hotels by 2010.
• • Marriott International currently has 22 hotels there and plans to add 16 more.
• • Hilton Hotels has 11 properties in various stages of development in the region and anticipates committing to 20 more within the next 5 years.
• • Japanese owned JAL Hotels has already opened a new 257 room property, with plans to open two more, even larger, next year.
• • India based Flora Group Hotels is opening their sixth hotel in Dubai later this year, with plans for 4 additional properties.
• • By 2010, European based, Accor will triple their number of managed properties in the Middle East, with 30 hotels, accounting for more than 8,000 rooms.
• • By 2009, Rezidor Hotel Group will add 20,000 rooms, although this number also includes the company’s growth plans for Europe and parts of Africa. Currently Rezidor has 14 Radisson properties in the Middle East.

What is perhaps the most amazing point about this extensive list is that it doesn’t include timeshare developments, the hotel and resort development underway by companies that are actually based in the Middle East, nor does it include the development of any budget brand properties.

The Timeshare Owners Blog writes frequently about the rapidly changing face of the resort and timeshare industry in the Middle East. It’s hard to be a part of the timeshare business and ignore what is going on. Growth in this corner of the world is staggering. Reports say that perhaps as many as one in four of all construction cranes are located in Dubai, and remember, Dubai is only 3885 square kilometers in size, or about three-quarters the size of Rhode Island.

What does this astounding growth and development mean for you as a timeshare owner or someone who wants to buy timeshare?

For starters, owning a timeshare with exchange privileges in a network that includes the United Arab Emirates, Israel timeshares, Egypt timeshares, Lebanon timeshares, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or other parts of the Middle East, means your timeshare should always have good exchange potential. It should also have a decent resale value, as well as good potential for use as a timeshare rental.

But what this incredible growth (much of which is funded by US industry) means for Americans and western culture as a whole, only time will tell.

In today’s blog, I am adding not one, but two YouTube videos. They are very different in content, as the first one follows, in high-energy fashion, the construction of the Burj Dubai-a skyscraper which, when complete, will be the tallest building in the world. As you watch the video, look for the slides near the end that give you an idea of just how tall a roughly 160-story building really is.

After you watch the Burj construction video, take a few more minutes and watch the very serene video about the development of some of Dubai’s outer islands. While this second YouTube was put together as a promotional piece for a company providing water taxi services, the information about some of the residential islands themselves is very close to mind-boggling.

Not to say, “I told you so”, but we all love it when we make predictions that prove to be correct.

This past April, in a blog post titled, Are NASCAR Fans Making Use of Timeshare Vacation Property? I told readers in the Timeshare Owners Blog that Super 8 ® Motels, part of Wyndham Worldwide Resorts and timeshares, had signed an agreement with Petty Enterprises. Super 8 was becoming the official lodging partner and associate sponsor of Bobby Labonte’s car. My prediction was that other timeshare companies could soon be paying attention to the large and ever-growing NASCAR fan base as a market.

So it is with some smugness that I share with you the new deal between Marriott Vacation Club and Roush Fenway Racing. The number 99 car, driven by Carl Edwards, unveiled its new look, sporting Marriott Vacation Club’s colors, this past week during the Sylvania 300 at the New Hampshire International Speedway.

According to Paddock Talk, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Brand Awareness for Marriott Vacation Club International, Ed Kinney says, “We’re excited about this unique opportunity to sponsor Carl in Roush Fenway Racing’s No. 99 Ford Fusion. With Carl’s personality and performance, we couldn’t ask for a better fit to represent Marriott Vacation Club, our owners and the millions of fans and viewers who are looking for a great way to vacation.”

The remainder of the NASCAR season is short—only nine more races. Take advantage of a timeshare resale or a timeshare rental to put you close to all the action.

• September 23 2007 Dover 400 Dover International Speedway
• September 30 2007 Kansas 400 Kansas Speedway
• October 07 2007 UAW-Ford 500 Talladega Superspeedway
• October 13 2007 Bank of America 500 Lowe’s Motor Speedway
• October 21 2007 Subway 500 Martinsville Speedway
• October 28 2007 Georgia 500 Atlanta Motor Speedway
• October 04 2007 Dickies 500 Texas Motor Speedway
• November 11 2007 Checker Auto Parts 500 Pennzoil Phoenix International Raceway
• November 18 2007 Ford 400 Homestead-Miami Speedway

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.