Finding balance in timeshare sales and timeshare resales
On the heels of last week’s 14th annual Shared Ownership Industry Conference (SOIC) held in Orlando, the Orlando Sentinel reported on the overall feeling among timeshare and vacation ownership industry executives. (See: Time-share industry sees daylight ahead). The Orlando Sentinel summarized the ups and downs of timeshare sales by identifying that the collapse of Lehman Bros., followed by the credit squeeze, together made it, “… very difficult to finance time-share purchases …”.
Capital One Financial Corp. was credited with getting into the timeshare market early in 2012, and in so doing, afforded timeshare developers and timeshare sales a measure of relief. The Orlando Sentinel quoted American Resort Development Association (ARDA) president Howard Nusbaum as saying that the involvement of the What’s in Your Wallet investors has been, “manna from Heaven.”
Timeshare Sales Hurt By More than Recessionary Economy
The article also pointed to other factors, in addition to the difficulty in financing timeshare sales, which have had a negative impact on vacation ownership, including:
General consumer uncertainly about the economy.
The decline in building new resorts has led to a reduction in inventory.
Baby boomers—timeshare’s traditional market—are giving way to Generation X, a demographic that tends to vacation differently than did their parents.
And let’s not overlook the elephant that is always padding about the room, timeshare resales. The fact that a generation of timeshare owners has reached a point in life that they want to sell timeshare they no longer use or can no longer afford, and that there has been historically the absence of a timeshare exit strategy for them, has also hurt current timeshare sales. Selling new timeshare can never be enhanced by current owners clamoring loudly about the challenges of resale. Although most timeshare can be resold, most owners understandably don’t know how to go about it, who to trust, how much to realistically expect as a resale price, and what to do if they happen to own timeshare that is not an easy resort or interval to resell.
Nevertheless, as the Orlando Sentinel accurately reported, the industry’s overall attitude is upbeat, with many leaders anticipating a return to pre-recession timeshare sales numbers in the near future. Ron Goldberg is president of Wellington Financial, a lender that has been there with the timeshare industry through thick and thin. He assesses the environment, saying, “… demand is really starting to pick up as the developers are working through the inventory they have amassed.”
The following article by Jason Tremblay was first published in the August issue of The Resort Trades and is republished here with their permission.
Since 1986, The Resort Trades has been a respected source of news and information targeting the resort and timeshare sales industry. The Resort Trades offers display advertising, classified advertising, Trade Member listings, as well as monthly industry news and press releases, global analysis articles, and in-depth interviews with industry professionals and business leaders.
At SellMyTimeshareNow.com and VacationOwnership.com we are honored to among their contributing authors.
Timeshare: A maze or amazing?
By Jason Tremblay
Everything about the opportunity to own your vacation, to return to favorite destinations or explore new venues, and to do so in comfort, security and style is amazing… except when we in the timeshare and vacation ownership industry manage to turn amaze into “a maze.” In print, the distinction between the two words is one tiny empty space. If we examine our businesses, we might find that the differentiation in the way we view our purpose and our product is equally as subtle. Yet, unchecked, what we do in the timeshare industry that turns amaze into a maze can become the critical difference between a sale and no sale and even the difference between business success and business failure.
Ironically, in vacation ownership, we seem to teeter on the edge of turning our amazing product into a maze of rules, guidelines, caveats, and restrictions. Governed by legislation and impacted by everyone from OSHA, to the real estate industry, the Federal Trade Commission, and endless other agencies and watchdogs, vacation ownership is already complicated. If we stepped back and thought about it, we might start turning our energy as an industry toward streamlining and simplifying our products and services as much as possible.
Why? Because simpler is always better and because most timeshare owners do not understand what they own. Even though they may be satisfied with their ownership, they often don’t take advantage of the full benefits and features to which they are entitled because they aren’t aware of them or don’t understand that these benefits apply to them. And the biggest reason to simplify what we sell is because consumers have stopped listening. Traditional marketing no longer works in the way it once did and for the snippet of mental bandwidth a consumer allocates to “listening,” he or she is not going to burn it on marketing and advertising messages that are complicated. The simple story will win out every time.
Why consumers have stopped listening
A number of years ago, author Seth Godin spoke at one of the TED conferences (www.ted.com) about why interruption marketing no longer works. For years, interruption marketing has been the basis of television advertising that interrupts the programming consumers sit down to watch. Interruption marketing pops into our lives in the form of Internet advertising, email campaigns, those annoying popup ads and stacks of junk mail we are all forced to deal with because the postal service delivers it to our front door. In timeshares, interruption marketing has taken its own unique forms. There is mail and email, but there are also phone calls from timeshare sales associates, OPCs and on-site sales staff who interrupt people during their vacations.
We all understand how annoying interruption marketing can be because even though we are business people with products to market, we are also consumers ourselves. We know what we hate and we know why others hate it too, and we shouldn’t assume that we’ve written our marketing collateral in a way that somehow makes it less annoying than that of anyone else engaged in interruption marketing.
For years, the premise behind interruption marketing worked. Consumers made buying decisions based on the impact of ads, commercials, and overtures from direct sales personnel – until it all became like living near the railroad tracks.
The trains still roll through every day and every night, but we no longer hear them. Over the years, they’ve become larger, faster, and louder… but it doesn’t matter. Even when they shake our houses, we simply do not notice. As consumers who have been bombarded by marketing and advertising since we were in utero, and we have become highly effective at tuning it out.
We record our television shows so we can fast forward through the commercials. We put pop-up blockers on our computers, scroll past the Internet advertising we want to ignore, delete emails without opening them, and let phone calls we don’t want to answer go to our voice mail. As desensitized consumers, we respond only to that which amazes us and we run backward from anything that is not painlessly simple to understand and use. Who has time for mazes?
Simplicity in purpose
Timeshare developers, hospitality brands and resorts have a beautifully simple purpose in their message. Timeshares are prepaid ownership of the way vacations make you feel. Everybody is happier on vacation. Vacation ownership is a prepaid commitment to having intervals of vacation happiness in your life. All the rest of the bells, whistles, perks, and benefits are important… but not really. The simple message of vacation ownership always comes down to the fact that you, me and every other consumer is always happier on vacation.
In timeshare resales, it is equally easy to lose sight of the simple purpose. Consumers buy vacation ownership resales because of the price. If timeshares were not lower in price from the reseller than from the resort, no consumer would ever buy on the resale market. Timeshare buyers would, 100 percent of the time, buy timeshare from the developer, because buying from the source intrinsically carries with it confidence-inspiring factors. Resellers have one feature to sell that differentiates them from developer sales and one feature only: price.
Simplicity in product
The guidelines for owning, using, exchanging and enjoying your timeshare product are simple to you because you helped draft them, you approved them and of course, you understand them. But most timeshare owners look at the guidelines that come with their timeshare and think they are as simple as federal tax code. There are clubs, tiers, perks, membership levels, colors, stars and reward programs. Potential owners get a whiff of the complexities of timeshare ownership guidelines and they can’t back away fast enough.
Today’s timeshare buyer isn’t like Ward and June Cleaver who bought timeshare decades ago. June was a domestic engineer, devoted to all the details of the family’s life. If she and Ward wanted to commit their spare time to working their way through the stipulations involved in using their timeshare, they had more flexibility to do so than do most of today’s timeshare buyers.
Everyone is always happier on vacation
Recently Godin wrote a blog post titled, “It’s Easier to Love a Brand When the Brand Loves You Back.” Questioning why gift certificates have an expiration date, he described it as, “a policy designed to punish a few outlier customers while it actually annoys all of them.”
Let’s simplify. Kill the maze. Be amazing. Love your customers so they have a reason to love you back. And remember that everyone is always happier on vacation.
According to a new Rasmussen Reports study, slightly more Americans took a summer vacation this year than those vacationing last year. The study revealed that 39 percent of American adults took a summer vacation in 2012, up from 33 percent in 2011. Of those surveyed, fewer people cited economic conditions as a reason to spend less on vacationing. The percentage of those travelers who where vacationing in timeshare resales is not specified in this study, yet we do know that occupancy rates for timeshares consistently outmatch those of hotels.
Peter Yesawich, vice chairman of MMGY Global observes, “It’s not like everyone’s financial situation has improved, but people went through a series of three or four years of paring back on expenses. We are now seeing for the first time that mentality abate.”
People have grown tired of working without a real vacation, tired of staying home and pretending it’s a holiday to cook hotdogs in the back yard, and tired of being tired without a true vacation to help them restore their passion for life, work, family, and their daily responsibilities. The dreaded “staycation” may not quite be dead, but it is surely on life support
A study done by marketing and research firms MMGY Global and Harrison Group found:
26 percent of vacationers said they prefer luxury hotels and resorts this year compared with 15 percent in 2011.
The number of travelers who are concerned with cost cutting has declined and 34 percent of vacationers choose first the destination of their trip, compared to 18 percent first set a budget.
AAA reports that automobile travel volume over Labor Day weekend 2012 was 3 percent higher than it was last year.
Why Spend More When There is so Much Value in Timeshare Resales?
The MMGY Global and Harrison Group survey found that the average amount spent on vacations over the last 12 months was $4,461, compared with an expenditure of $3,874 during the same period two years ago. But in today’s economy, there are many families that understandably just can’t—no matter how badly they need the vacation—commit $4500 to one holiday.
That’s where timeshare resales come in as a huge problem solver and budget minder. Recognizing that travel accommodations are typically the biggest chunk in any vacation budget, you may be spending a lot more money than you need to if you have never considered a timeshare resale as an affordable vacation option. For less than most vacationers are spending on hotel rooms, you could become a timeshare resale owner at a luxurious resort, providing you years of future vacations for literally the same amount you may be spending on one trip. With your
Check it out. Timeshare resales are a great option to help you avoid stay-cations forever!
Sell My Timeshare NOW and VacationOwnership.com for timeshare resales values
At Sell My Timeshare NOW and VacationOwnership.com, we did not have a Labor Day Sale on timeshare resales, just like we didn’t have a Back-to-School Sale and we won’t be having any holiday shopping sales heading into the Christmas buying season.
You might think timeshare sales or timeshare resales bidding wars would be a good idea. After all, consumers have always loved a sale and with the downturn economy and many retailers operating in markdown mode, shoppers have become addicted to sales and sale pricing. Paco Underhill, of Envirosell, a company that studies consumer behavior, explains that retailers have added to the shop-on-sale mindset of many consumers. After several consecutive shopping seasons in a struggling economy, where retailers have used discount pricing to stay alive, consumers no longer want to buy what is not on sale. Many shoppers even say that paying full price, “takes some fun out of” shopping. Underhill even adds that, “Sales are just like heroin.”
So why not take advantage of consumer’s love for sale pricing and advertise “Weekend Specials” or “Doorbuster Timeshares?” Because at Sell My Timeshare NOW and VacationOwnership.com, timeshare sellers set their price and timeshare buyers determine what price they are willing to pay for timeshare points or timeshare weeks and intervals. We sell timeshares at market value—the price the consumer market says timeshares are really worth.
SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and VacationOwnership.com Where Timeshare Resales are always on “Sale”
Instead of being like the retailer with the Labor Day Sale Special, Sell My Timeshare NOW and VacationOwnership.com are much more like that even bigger retailer with its motto of, “everyday low prices.”
Despite what you may hear, timeshares—even on the resale market—really aren’t worth only a dollar or a penny. With a few exceptions, most timeshares have some resale value although it is never as much as the price at which the timeshare originally sold. And timeshare owners seeking to sell timeshare they no longer use, as well as vacationers looking to buy a timeshare, can count on our websites to always offer them the biggest, most competitive marketplace in timeshare resales today.
Sell My Timeshare NOW and VacationOwnership.com—you might just call us the home of everyday low timeshare resales prices.
