Timeshare Rentals

Recently the first TMS Family Travel Summit convened in Orlando, Florida. Obviously, the topic on the minds of everyone in attendance was getting the “recipe” right for high quality, memorable, and affordable family vacations, vacations that are relevant to the needs and desires of today’s families. Timeshares and timeshare resales can be relevant to this discussion, but as an industry we have to focus on ensuring that are doing all that we can to help fulfill those needs and wants.

The Summit attendees, many who are leading travel media and marketers, defined 7 important components for family vacations. Some of these seven components are benefits the timeshare industry already does a great job providing; others are features and benefits upon which we could improve.

 7 Essentials for Family Vacations that Serve Today’s Families:

1. Make booking trips and accommodations easy by designing websites with the user experience in mind. As the TMS Family Travel Summit explains, keep it, “simple and transparent.”
2. Offer vacation options at lower prices. Budgets are tight for many families. Family vacations shouldn’t be a luxury; in today’s busy, stressful world vacations are a necessity. Affordable timeshare resales and timeshare rentals are one way to lower the cost of family vacations. More flexibility in vacation intervals also helps… timeshare resorts must be willing to offer shorter stays at prorated costs for families whose schedules or budgets don’t permit them to take week-long holidays.
3. Ensure that there is diversity among your staff and that your marketing speaks to guests of all ages, gender, and races. Remember that the family unit of Mom, Dad, and two kids is no longer the norm and that today’s families are diverse in many different ways.
4. Provide free WiFi. Surveys show it is one of the most valued amenities at hotels and timeshare resorts. And when you think about it, why wouldn’t you make it as easy as possible for your guests or timeshare owners to be sharing their vacation experiences with others?
5. Offer activities for all ages and all types of interests.
6. Make guests feel that everything they do is new and unique.
7. Photography and video making are pretty simple these days. Offers photographers and filmmakers on site to help record the fun of family vacations.

Amy Foster, part of the Disney Consumer Insight Team, pointed out to the attendees at the TMS Family Travel Summit that not only do family vacations make treasured lifelong memories, but that these warm, wonderful memories can be what gets us through the tough times in life. As Amy accurately observes,  “Fun is not frivolous. …Fun is precious.”

What’s the real market value of a timeshare resale or timeshare rental? Market value for any product is not established by what the original owner paid for the product. Neither is the market value of timeshare resales and rentals established by a value that a timeshare developer or Home Owners Association sets. Instead, market value of any product, whether it vacation ownership or a pre-owned car or an antique armoire, is determined entirely why the amount of money the buying consumer is willing to pay to purchase the product on the secondary market. As an accurate of indicator of demand for timeshare resales, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com has just released the 2013 Timeshare Demand Index. (TDI)

Just released today, in time for summer’s busiest vacation week, the 2013 Timeshare Demand Index shows the top 100 most in-demand timeshare resales and timeshare rentals based on the number of offers to buy or rent received through the company’s websites over the past year. The report is freely available to anyone—owner, timeshare industry professional, or prospective timeshare seller, renter, or buyer—who is interested in knowing which timeshare resorts consumers want to visit or own, based on the number of offers placed through our company to buy or rent timeshare at that property.

Please check this out for yourself. You can view or download the 2013 Timeshare Demand Index here: www.sellmytimesharenow.com/media/pdf/timeshare-demand-index-2013.pdf. If you are familiar with timeshares and vacation ownership, you may be able to guess many of the properties that made the top ten most in-demand list this year, but we will bet there’s at least one resort that placed in the top ten that will surprise you.

What is no surprise is that Marriott Vacation Club timeshare resales again, figure prominently on the top ten list of most in-demand timeshare resales and rentals or that six of the top ten timeshare resorts on the Timeshare Demand Index are at the beach. (And the other four aren’t far from the beach). Also, making the top ten on the 2013 Timeshare Demand Index for the fifth consecutive year is the Holiday Inn Club Vacation Resort at Orange Lake Resort in Kissimmee (Orlando), Florida.

We invite you to take a look at the full list. And to check in here on The Timeshare Authority blog in upcoming posts where we will look more closely at the information the 2013 Timeshare Demand Index reveals and the popular resorts that made the list.

We are excited to share this news from Dial An Exchange, which is really our news, too. But with something as big as the new guaranteed program ensuring your timeshare rental is ready and waiting when you arrive, well… that’s an announcement that deserves extra attention.

Here is the announcement as released by our rental program partners, Dial An Exchange, just this morning:

DIAL AN EXCHANGE PARTNERS WITH SELLMYTIMESHARENOW.COM TO LAUNCH RENTAL PROGRAM

Phoenix, AZ – June 6, 2013 – Dial An Exchange (DAE), the world’s largest independently owned timeshare exchange provider with worldwide destination availability, has teamed up with SellMyTimeshareNow.com, a leader in online timeshare resales and rentals, to provide a benefit to timeshare owners who wish to monetize their vacation weeks and to the consumers that wish to rent them. This new program will guarantee that weeks posted by timeshare owners for rent on the SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and ResortRentals.com websites are valid and, in fact, available to rent – real time.

Commented Fermin Cruz, VP Americas Region for DAE, “This is a tremendous benefit to renters. Prior to the introduction of this program, independent owners’ rental postings were seldom guaranteed as described in their ads. Often owners forget that they’ve rented to a friend, rented via another site or not paid all appropriate fees, resulting in a lockout status of their unit. In essence, the prospective renter had to trust the validity of the rental ad they were reading. Since independent owners can set their own prices, renters love to book these weeks because the rental rates are so low. Now Dial An Exchange will do the legwork to ensure that the rental is truly available and current.”

Starting July, 2013, vacationers will be able to rent owners’ timeshares for week long luxury vacations through each of the VacationOwnership.com brand websites, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and ResortRentals.com backed by an accommodations verification processed by DAE. Pricing on the VacationOwnership.com brands will be competitively lower and will be made available to all timeshare owners, regardless of how many weeks they have to offer.  The new VacationOwnership.com rental program will appeal to vacationers who prefer the amenities and spacious accommodations of timeshare resorts at highly competitive prices, and will also enable timeshare owners to monetize their vacation ownership by generating rental income. At the same time, they will be introducing the timeshare ownership proposition to reach millions of prospective buyers that had not previously considered timeshare as an option.

Added Cruz, “The service we are providing for the VacationOwnership.com brands is part of our core competency and a perfect fit for us. Plus there is huge value for the renters who will not have to worry if the owner has paid his maintenance fees, already rented the unit, or deposited it with an exchange service without taking down the rental listing. Until now, such problems were all valid concerns. We anticipate that the continued online expertise of ResortRentals.com and SellMyTimeshareNOW.com combined with DAE’s supporting services will deliver a value benefit to the industry as a whole, breathing new life into the secondary market.”

Jason Tremblay, Founder of SellMyTimeshareNOW.com adds, “Through advancements being implemented on SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and ResortRentals.com, timeshare owners will soon be able to get their properties in front of an extremely targeted and massive base of vacationers who have been previously under-marketed for timeshare rentals. The new timeshare rental booking platform will deliver what travelers and vacationers want by making it easy for them to book and confirm their vacation immediately, in the same easy way they are accustomed to booking airline reservations and other online travel services.”

Today DAE is the world’s largest privately owned timeshare exchange provider with worldwide destination availability, an extensive network of corporate customers, and a  member base of over 450,000. Offices are located in the United Kingdom, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, China, India, South Africa, Italy and now Eastern Europe and Egypt. DAE offers a free membership option and exchange fees are not charged until an exchange is confirmed.

The truth about timeshare offers to buy that are published on our website is as transparent as we know how to make it. Yet it still doesn’t always “click” with some people. On our SellMyTimeshareNOW.com website, we publish in real-time, the live feed of timeshare offers to buy as they come into our company. You can check these out for yourself at Up-to-Date Offers to Buy.

But before you follow this link, you need to know and understand what you are seeing. The page, which looks like the picture you see here, is a continually updating list of the offers that come into our company through our SellMyTimeshareNOW.com website. At any given moment, day or night, 24-7, you can view the activity generated on our website by offers being made either to buy timeshare or to rent timeshare.

The information is simple to follow. The left column of the chart shows the “AD#.” This is the ad or advertisement number assigned by Sell My Timeshare NOW to each timeshare unit, interval, or points we advertise, whether it is advertised to buy or advertised to rent.

The second column of information is the “RESORT NAME,” while the third column is called “TYPE OF OFFER.” The “TYPE OF OFFER” simply defines whether an offer is the bid (also called the offer) by a prospective buyer to buy a timeshare or it is a bid by a prospective renter to rent a timeshare. The last column on the right of the chart shows the “AMOUNT” which is the amount of the offer and the “TIME,” which is the hour of the day that the offer or bid was placed.

What’s Right (And You Might Not Understand) about the SellMyTimeshareNOW.com Offers to Buy Page

On our Offers to Buy timeshare page, you can see what dollar amount people are offering to purchase or to rent timeshares. Let’s be very fair. This list does not tell you the final price a timeshare owner accepts for the sale or rental of his or her timeshare. Because people ‘test the waters’ by presenting low-ball offers, you will see offer amounts that are simply too low, but that doesn’t mean that the buying and selling negotiations ended; in fact, a low-ball offer is often where negotiations begin.

Another aspect of the information that can’t be taken at face value is the fact that some prospective buyers begin their process to buy a timeshare by making offers on several properties, again in the process of testing the water to see which owners are negotiable on selling price or other terms of the sale or rental process.

But on the other hand, what’s so very RIGHT about this page is that the information here is as real as information can be. The SellMyTimeshareNOW.com offers to buy or rent page is live, real time, and unedited… and most importantly of all, it is proof that people do buy and rent timeshares every single day.