timeshare blog

There’s no good reason for unethical sales practices to exist in the timeshare industry. On the flipside, there’s a world of reasons for you to buy timeshare resales.

Imagine that you arrive at a luxury resort for the express purpose of attending a timeshare sales presentation. The salesman promises you the world, and you sign the paperwork. A few months later, when it comes time to use or exchange your timeshare, you run into complications. Confusion soon turns into anger when you find out that what you were promised verbally was not described in the actual contract, and the resort won’t deliver on the salesman’s extravagant promises. 

We’ve all heard this scenario so many times that at this point the terms “timeshare” and “misleading sales practices” seem almost synonymous in the public consciousness. The big resort companies blame rogue scammers for giving the timeshare industry a bad name, while their marketing divisions exacerbate this problem even further by misleading and pressuring consumers into buying at over-inflated prices. 

Isn’t this kind of ironic?

With all these companies desperately trying to con people into buying timeshares, you’d think that timeshare was some sort of communicable disease. Still, one of the many reasons why I love my job is the sizeable pool of timeshare properties that we own, trade, resell, or use. I’ve used a number of our timeshares while traveling on business, and I have yet to be unimpressed.

Timeshares are great, no question about it. Since this is so, why do so many companies and individuals waste money, time, and other valuable resources on unethical, sometimes illegal, business practices?

There is no good reason for a timeshare sales company to mislead or pressure potential buyers. That’s what makes timeshare-by-owner advertising such an appealing alternative to buying timeshare from questionable resort sales staff.

What this all boils down to is that timeshare is a quality product, but it is often poorly marketed.

Buyers can avoid both deceptive salesmen and inflated sale prices by buying timeshare from individual owners, on the resale market.

With Thanksgiving festivities coming up shortly, this is the perfect time to introduce a new contributor to the Timeshare Owners’ Blog. Please welcome our good friend, Ms. Lucia Kaplan.

With this year’s holiday season looming nigh, I’ll take this opportunity to wish our readers a happy and safe Thanksgiving. In keeping with my festive mood, I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of ours, Ms. Lucia Kaplan. Ms. Kaplan is a writer and editor with a strong background in business, especially when it concerns the all-important business of how we spend our free time and hard-earney money. 

You can expect to read more from Ms. Kaplan in the coming months. I hope you enjoy her unique insights in today’s article, which deals with an unusual holiday dish…

It May Be Is Time to Think About Turducken

by Lucia Kaplan 

We are well into the month of November. Are the preparations for your turducken on schedule?

That’s right, your turducken.

Hate to admit you doesn’t know the ins and outs of turduckens? Perhaps you are new to the subject and only gained your first knowledge of them when the current issue of National Geographic featured turducken on their cover, alongside Indonesia, ocelots, and revolutionary events in Nepal.

Turduckens (as everyone should know by now) are the culinary delight that results when a whole, boneless chicken is filled with andouille sausage, shrimp, oyster, or traditional cornbread stuffing, and liberally massaged with Cajun seasoning. Then, the stuffed chicken is itself stuffed inside a similarly prepared whole, boneless duck, which in turn, is stuffed into a whole, boneless turkey. Tur-duck-en!

If you have missed the pleasures of a juicy, slow roasted turducken, then you have missed A LOT. Turducken lovers travel to Louisiana, particularly around the holiday season, just to enjoy this regional delicacy. Type “turducken” into your search engine and you will find half a dozen turducken specialists (almost exclusively in the Bayou State) that will overnight ship you a frozen turducken, many offering you choices of seasonings and stuffing.  Or if your skills are up to the boning, stuffing, and fowl supervision, you can easily find delicious recipes, including some from legendary Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme, for preparing a bird inside a bird inside another bird.

So what’s the real connection between turducken and timeshares? If you are planning a Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other winter season holiday, and haven’t decided where to go, consider Louisiana and Mississippi timeshares.

Yes, this summer’s hurricane season was devastating. But the businesses that are open (or reopened) need your patronage. Spend your tourist dollars in an area that has experienced a dramatic decline in business, and you are helping people get back to the business of living. And when you are spending those dollars in Louisiana and Mississippi, you are right in the heart of turducken country—reason in itself to plan a timeshare holiday. 

If you can’t fit a Louisiana timeshare vacation into your schedule right now, consider ordering a turducken this year. Many companies that sell this triple-play holiday feast are donating a portion of their receipts to the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The two hottest trends in timeshares today, condo-hotels and private residence clubs will occupy a prominent place in the timeshare landscape for years to come.

It seems like everyone’s been talking about condo-hotels and private residence clubs, but these concepts are new enough that few timeshare owners know what they are. What differentiates these concepts from traditional timeshares?

An article on hospitalitynet.org points to a .pdf file by Timo B. Jones, CEO of a company called TimeShareWare. TimeShareWare provides software products for resort companies, and their website can be found at http://www.timeshareware.com. In this article, Mr. Jones sheds light on the distinguishing characteristics of both condo-hotels and private residence clubs, and suggested that existing customer relationship management technologies might not be flexible enough to accommodate all the nuances of these new types of timeshares.

Anyone who has ever tried to check into his/her hotel and heard “…we rented out your room and we have nothing else available” would find this article of interest. If a resort’s CRM software is outdated, customer service snafus could easily ensue.

Though mention of timeshare was conspicuously absent from this year’s Throne Speech, Bermuda’s higher-ups say that reform of timeshare legislation is in the post.

Reform of the laws governing timeshare in Bermuda is viewed by many as glaringly overdue. The last piece of legislation to address timeshare ownership was passed in 1981, which means that those owners who haven’t renewed their leases are approaching the end of their tenure. Under current laws, timeshares are good for 25 years, though the option to renew is available.

Though timeshare wasn’t one of the items under discussion in this year’s Throne Speech, legislation is now being prepared to allow owners to own Bermuda timeshares for longer periods. This article from the Royal Gazette describes some proposed Bermuda timeshare reforms.

Bermuda is looking for ways to augment tourism revenues. Hopefully they consider passing this legislation, which would bring Bermuda timeshare into the 21st century. Here’s another article about the many opportunities and challenges that Bermuda timeshare and resort developers are facing.