The Resort Trades

The following article appears in the August issue of The Resort Trades. We are privileged to republish it here with their permission.

Timeshares: Being Brilliant Together

by Jason Tremblay

Bouncebackability is now a word, having made it to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2008. If you look it up there, you will find the definition along with a lovely illustration of a timeshare resort.

Okay, perhaps there is no direct reference in the dictionary to the bouncebackability of timeshares, but there should be. Despite facing one of the most challenging global economic climates in decades, the timeshare industry is still standing. Lehman Brothers, WaMu, Borders, and Circuit City are gone. Kodak has left the camera business and Pontiac and Hummer have driven into the dust. Businesses, large and small, across all types of industries have closed their doors forever. Yet whether you are talking about timeshare developers, resellers, brokers, management companies or other vacation service providers, in our industry most of the legitimate companies that were around five years ago are still in the game today.

But that is yesterday’s news. Our clients have forgotten what we did right yesterday to get us through to today and the popular media doesn’t care what we ever did right. Our window for laurel-resting lasted about 15 seconds and ended an hour ago. As Steve Jobs said, “Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.”

Same Game, New Rules

Alan S. Gregerman is the author of “Surrounded by Geniuses: Unlocking the Brilliance in Yourself, Your Colleagues and Your Organization.” Although the book was originally published in 2007, it was rereleased in 2010 with new insights because Gregerman recognized that in three short years, “the Web and other dramatic changes in the ways that all of us are learning, communicating, and accessing ideas,” has turned traditional business models upside down.

In the face of dramatic change, thinking creatively, seeking out profitable niches, and distinguishing yourself from others seems like a positive plan, but in some very surprising ways, it can feel counterintuitive. Todd Henry, author of “The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice,” explains, “We are hardwired to stay close to the herd and blend in as much as possible. After all, in the animal world, the members of a tribe that stand out are often eaten first.”

Fending Off Predators, Living In The Tribe

Henry takes his tribe analogy a step further, reminding us that we need the tribe and we need relationships with others. When we detach our businesses, running lone wolf in our industry, focusing on our own agenda for how vacation ownership should be structured, managed, marketed, bought, sold, rented, or resold, we limit ourselves to our own experiences and those of our particular team of employees.

By constraining our vision in this way, we become vulnerable to assumptions, such as the idea that when something has always been done in a certain way, it must continue to be done that way. Or, that because something didn’t work in one instance, it will never work – even if the consumer, product, terms or circumstances have changed.

Gregerman explains that change is amplifying the need to challenge our mindset, get outside our own company, and work in more connected ways with others. He describes it, saying, “… a growing number of companies and organizations are finally understanding the logic of casting a much wider net in the search for ideas and insights that can improve the ways we operate, the things we offer, and the nature of the customer experience.” Henry calls this outreach to work with others one of, “being brilliant together.”

One Tribe, One Voice, One Marketplace … Hundreds Of Millions Of Clients

We know in the timeshare industry, we are not wholly selling what consumers are seeking, delivered in the way they want to buy it. We know this because vacation ownership has barely dipped its big toe in the pool of potential timeshare owners and renters.

One billion people traveling for leisure this year will go far enough away from home to cross an international border. Fifty-eight percent of all Americans are planning overnight leisure travel during the months of June, July, and August this year alone. The timeshare market is a pool measured in the hundreds of millions of potential new buyers and renters. So what is holding us all back from reaching deeper into the marketplace?

Perhaps the timeshare industry doesn’t function as a tribe as effectively as it could. When we work together as an industry, we create a verdant source of ideas and innovation, stimulating and encouraging one another and generating the power needed to leverage assets in ways that are not possible when we all try to go it alone. Our united voice is stronger, speaks with more authority, and inspires more confidence than any aspect of our industry, or any brand does on its own. The more we view others in timeshare as peers rather than competitions, the harder it becomes for predators to pick us off one by one. But here’s the most important reason for the timeshare industry to start seeing itself as one tribe: the press, lawmakers, consumer activists, and consumers themselves already see us that way.

Mediocrity Falls Away

More than the impact of a challenging economy or a changing owner base, the World Wide Web is responsible for changing vacation ownership. If the tribe rises to the challenge, being brilliant together, our opportunities become limitless; we swim successfully in the deep end of the pool.

As author, blogger, and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod says, “The Internet has raised the bar because it’s so easy for word to spread about great stuff. There’s more junk than ever before… but this abundance of trash is overwhelmed by the market’s ability to distribute news about the great stuff … The web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain.”

The following article, written by Jason Tremblay, founder of SellMyTimeshareNOW and VacationOwnership.com,  appeared in the May issue of The Resort Trades. “The Future of Buying Timeshare (and Everything Else) Online,” looks at the changing dynamic of how people shop as online sales expand to include buying from tablets, smart phones, and other “always accessible” devices. In a changing world how vacationers are buying timeshare is clearly changing too.

This article is published here with the permission of The Resort Trades. Be sure to visit www.resorttrades.com for more news and information about timeshares, fractionals and vacation ownership.

The future of buying timeshare (and everything else) online

First quarter results are in and U.S. e-commerce sales are stronger than ever. While fourth quarter numbers have previously topped $50 billion thanks to seasonal spending, this year’s current numbers mark the first time we’ve hit the $50 billion milestone when it wasn’t the holiday gift-giving season. Totaling $50.27 billion, e-commerce sales are up 15.4 percent for the first quarter 2012, over the same quarter in 2011.

Some estimates push the total spending numbers for this year’s first quarter as high as $53 billion depending upon which retail items one tracks. In the past, many resources including the U.S. Commerce Department’s monitoring of online retail did not include goods such as gasoline or groceries that traditionally consumers were not buying online.

But buying patterns are clearly changing across all segments of sales as evidenced by the numbers reported by Peapod LLC and other online grocers. Peapod offers limited service in portions of roughly a dozen U.S. states, yet in 2011, the company saw nearly $480 million in online sales. Yes, people are even buying milk, lettuce, and hamburger meat over the Internet.

Internationally, online shopping follows similar patterns from one country to another, with a few slight deviations. If you assumed that Americans are the most active online shoppers, you will be surprised to learn that consumers in seven other countries out-shop us, with the highest percentages of online shopping occurring in Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and those shop-till-you-drop South Koreans, who outpace everyone. [Read more…]

The following article was originally published in the April 2012 issue of The Resort Trades magazine. It is reprinted here with permission from The Resort Trades. You will find this article and other informative information about the vacation ownership, timeshare and fractional resort industry in print and online at www.theresorttrades.com.

To view the original article: CLICK HERE.

Timeshare Sales and Marketing Measured by the Inch

by Jason Tremblay

Hollywood was in its heyday. Having mastered the addition of sound and later color in the moviemaking process, the industry felt confident, almost untouchable, in its capability to be the world’s primary format for filmed entertainment, documentaries, and news. Even when the next decade ushered in the mass production of tube TVs, the innovation of television did not, at first, feel like a threat to moviemakers. Who would choose to watch a small, black and white box when they could have the big screen experience of movie going?

Yet by the mid-1960s, technology had changed even more dramatically. With color television sets taking over living rooms around the world, the film industry realized that not only was the innovation of television challenging the traditions of moviemaking, it was rewriting the rules. Moviemaking would still be important, but movies would have no choice but to assume a redefined role.

For businesses, including timeshare sales, resales and rentals, the World Wide Web has been a dramatic silver screen that has permitted the industry into the homes of current timeshare owners and potential buyers and renters. But mobile Web access from phones, notebooks, tablets, and other portable devices is quickly becoming today’s equivalent of life moving from the big screen to a vastly smaller one – one that now measures roughly only 4 inches on the diagonal.

STAY THIRSTY MY FRIENDS

Tim Berners-Lee (knighted in 2003 and properly known as Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee), is credited as being the man who “invented” the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist and MIT professor who in 1989, proposed an information management system, and in 1990, implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet.

Berners-Lee is one of today’s strongest advocates for net-neutrality, the practice of keeping the content, sites, platform, information, and communication of the Web open and accessible to all. In an often-quoted speech he delivered in 2007 on the subject of ever-evolving disruptive technologies, Berners-Lee said, “It isn’t just about making the Web you know today work on mobile phones. We are talking about innovation. The innovations which will really count are the things which I can’t imagine now…”

When viewed in the big picture, you have to ask: In a world that once couldn’t imagine television or fathom the concept of the World Wide Web, how do we as timeshare business people wrap our minds around a vision for the future of our industry?

One answer comes from the “most interesting man in the world,” best known through the television commercials in which he advises, “Stay thirsty, my friends.” Sales and marketing have never been a more fluid process than they are right now. Change is the new stability and our willingness as an industry to stay fluid, be receptive, and to stay thirsty for change, will ultimately determine whether timeshares and vacation ownership moves forward in fresh and vigorous ways or is relegated to being a product with a shelf life rapidly approaching expiration.

SHORT TERM STRATEGIES

If the inevitable evolutionary path the Internet will lead us on is difficult even for those who conceived it to predict, how do the rest of us deal with it? We deal with it by understanding that we cannot permit the apprehensions of impending change to hold us back from making the adjustments necessary to be an effective vacation resource today.

Although change is inevitable, here are short-term strategies timeshare companies can address in order to compete better in the rapidly growing mobile marketplace:

1. Acknowledge that your existing Website may not be adaptable for your mobile users. Companies face the decision of whether it is better to rebuild their Website in a way that supports m-commerce and t-commerce, or whether they should simply build a mobile site.

2. Simplify because speed matters. Creative techniques such as the use of Flash make our Websites more interesting. But many functions do not translate well to mobile devices, and the slower your load time, the more you risk Web users simply moving on to another site. Mobile Web users have shown an even lower tolerance to wait for a site to load than that of Web users accessing your site via a desktop computer.

3. Houseclean because looks matter. Google’s Instant Preview feature shows Web users (from any type of device) a visual sample of their search results. Pay attention to how your site looks in this preview because a cluttered or uninviting preview may stop a potential client from ever reaching your site. Website cleanup goes beyond having effective title tags and meta descriptions, and speaks directly to the quality of your visual design. Simplify your content and consider using a single column layout for your mobile site visitors.

4. Pay attention to navigation. Don’t expect people to type in lengthy search terms or responses. Abridge options and convert as many components of the question-and-response or search process to yes or no format or multiple-choice answers.

5. Take down barriers. Surprisingly, many corporate executives don’t visit their company’s websites regularly, don’t try using their own forms and site options, and haven’t tried accessing their sites via a variety of devices. Take your website for a test drive on a regular basis. View it from the eyes of your consumers who are often individuals who do not know your corporate lingo, your resort properties, or your ownership structure. As you explore your website, look for barricades you can eliminate.

Lastly, don’t give up. Your website functionality and design probably fall short of where you know they should be; most businesses feel this way. In 2011, a Google survey revealed that 79 percent of Google’s largest advertisers do not have mobile-friendly sites. But within the greatest challenges are found the greatest opportunities. The ephemeral natural of business marketing today yields abundant potential for vacation ownership to shake off its problems of the past and rise to become a product that is desired, purchased, and sought after by the mainstream marketplace.

The following excerpt is from the article “Today in Timeshare” written by Sharon Drechsler-Scott for the January 2012 issue of The Resort Trades. It is reprinted here with permission from The Resort Trades. Described as a “Window into the industry” we encourage you to read this timely article in full in the print edition of the magazine or online via this link.

…Closing remarks: Jason Tremblay, Founder, Sell My Timeshare NOW

While investigating the proposed introduction of timeshare resale legislation in Florida, Resort Trades caught up with the founder of the resale firm, Sell My Timeshare NOW, Jason Tremblay. As he puts its, “Resales and transfer companies are topics about which  I certainly have a lot of passion. No entrepreneur wants to hear the government is going to impose an increased burden on their business and obviously, compliance with additional regulations will cost Sell My Timeshare Now time and money. However, we are supportive of regulations that are reasonable and which can be enforced fairly.”

Tremblay compares the current abuse of consumers by resale operators who behave unethically and unlawfully to the situation in which timeshare found itself in the early ‘80s prior to the introduction of timeshare regulations: Then as now, there were a few bad players using clearly unethical marketing practices that threatened the very foundations of the industry.

“We hope to see that Florida Attorney General Bondi will carefully review ARDA’s Timeshare Resale Model Act while crafting her proposed bill with an eye to ensuring that regulations will be enforceable. For example, we understand that one portion of her draft legislation calls for all third-party advertisers to be able to disclose past success rates, regardless of whether they solicit customers (which we do not). For those of us who frequently connect buyers directly with owners, we have no way of tracking the success of those contacts once they are conversing independently. So we do hope this proposed legislation will understand the need for practicality in their requirements for advertisers.”

“But overall,” says Tremblay, “we are very glad to see some legislation being considered that will reduce consumer fraud. It’s been a space that has been unregulated for too long. And it will be far easier to stop someone who is clearly breaking the law than it would be to prove the intent to commit fraud as things stand today.”