Timeshare Sales

When an idea works, why not run (or roll) with it?

A recent edition of the Miami Herald reported a new twist in time sharing.  Blas García Moros, a former Microsoft executive, loves fine automobiles—loves them so much he can’t decide which one (or ones) he wants to own.

So for Moros, and others like him, who just can’t choose whether to buy a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin, the newly created Collexium of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, will soon offer a solution. Premiering later this summer, Collexium plans to operate much like vacation timeshares, except that the featured product will be luxury cars -not condo-style accommodations.

Current plans call for members to pay a $15,000 initiation fee, as well as a $15,000 annual fee. In return, they will receive about thirty days of driving. To gain additional drive time each year, members will need to purchase points.

Although automobile timesharing may be a clever idea, Moros is not actually the first to come up with it. Collexium is similar in concept to Car Club Manhattan and Car Club London, however both of these other  “auto timeshares,” offer mainly classic or muscle cars. Collexium plans to keep their lineup all about performance—very high performance.

But don’t put on your driving gloves or take out your checkbook yet. When Collexium premiers, at least in its initial phases, membership will be by invitation only.

We seriously hope you would never make such a mistake, but one Singapore businessman has.

The February 13, 2006 edition of The Singapore Electric Newspaper reports that a Singapore man paid $84,000 in fees to a timeshare resale company promising to help him end his timeshare membership—a timeshare he initially purchased for $9,000. While we aren’t certain, I would assume that this news story uses Singapore dollars as the rate of currency discussed. So, if it makes US readers feel any better, Mr. K. B. Ong, was really out about $51,600 dollars, depending on the prevailing exchange rate on each of the days he wrote checks to the timeshare reseller.

Sounds like a crime, doesn’t it?

The authorities in Singapore don’t seem to think so. Police are treating this case as a civil dispute, while the Consumer Association of Singapore looks into the matter. Worst of all, it does not appear that Mr. Ong’s timeshare membership has even been terminated. Which in the end, may be his only good news. If the company failed to provide the services promised, Ong’s attorney doesn’t have to argue the ethics or legality of how much Ong paid, only that the services for which Ong paid were never provided.

If you think that timeshare scammers aren’t good at what they do, consider this: Mr. Ong has an engineering degree and an MBA and presently works in sales management. 

Of course he should have known better, but he said he was pressured into signing checks on the spot, with him thinking each check was the last one. In all, Ong wrote checks for $6,000; $3,000; $5,000; $15,000; $15,000 (again), and two final payments of $20,000 each.

Mr. Ong’s timeshare membership is in the Asian Travel Club (ATC). Because of the ongoing lawsuit, the name of the timeshare reseller has not been released. I however, can assure you one thing: it is NOT SellMyTimeshareNow.

What’s the #1 reason why Mr. Ong wanted to sell his timeshare? According to the article, due to “hectic work commitment” he has not been able to use his timeshare once since purchasing it.

Two recent conferences send a strong message: that travel and tourism consumers are fed up with traditional advertising and timeshare sales pitches, leaning more toward online information-gathering.

This past December, two conferences were held in San Francisco, the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) conference and the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) conference.

Two conferences in San Francisco. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like spectacular news. What’s the big deal here?

At these conferences, marketing research professionals dealing specifically with the travel, tourism and hospitality industries basically announced that conventional marketing tactics don’t work anymore.

Sounds familiar, right? I’ve blogged about this subject before. Only now, it seems like some portions of the industry are slowly catching up to where SellMyTimeshareNOW was two years ago.

What do I mean by conventional marketing tactics? Television commercials, pushy salespeople, junk mail, email spamming… you get the idea. People are sick of invasive marketing, and are finding alternative ways of getting information about products or services. Most of the time, this happens online.

People aren’t stupid. Whether we’re talking blogs, social networking sites, product review sites, or syndicated feeds, the modern consumer is absorbing as much information as possible from as many different sources as he or she can find.

What does this mean to timeshare buyers, sellers, and renters? 

Get with a company that’s ahead of the times, not behind them. Blogs, syndication, consumer-generated content, and search marketing have all been proven to be more successful ways to generate timeshare sales –  compared to email spam, telemarketing, slick TV ads and mountains of junk mail.

I sincerely believe that the opportunities afforded by these new marketing techniques come at an ideal time in the history of timeshare, when the industry is slowly but surely ridding itself of bad apples. By assigning long-term customer satisfaction a greater priority than making a fast buck, a wide range of remarkable men and women are making sweeping changes in our field.

Let’s keep up the good work!

Both resorts and resellers use a variety of timeshare sales tactics. What type of advertising is most effective for attracting buyers to a timeshare property?

Here’s three different examples of common methods that have been used in the timeshare sales business:  

1. A month or so ago, the blogosphere was buzzing with the story of the “timeshare spammer“. This man sent out millions of unsolicited emails promoting some sort of timeshare. Peter Moshou pled guilty to violating the new CAN-SPAM act, and was one of the first people to be prosecuted for a violation of this nature. He now owes several million dollars in fines, and is embroiled in a lawsuit from internet service provider Earthlink.

2. Since then, timeshare marketers have moved away from sending bulk spam emails, but they’ve recently been getting more aggressive about direct mail marketing. Invitations to timeshare presentations are mass-mailed to thousands of people every day. The same tired premise plays itself out; the mass mailings inevitably allude to a free week at a resort, but they fail to mention that a “90-minute” timeshare sales ordeal is a prerequisite of this enchanting getaway. Resellers rarely use direct mail, unless they have somehow obtained a list of timeshare owners.

3. In a particularly unique display of ingenuity, some timeshare sales companies advertise on billboards. These are strategically placed near high-demand resort areas, especially in places where there is a high concentration of resorts offering timeshare. While I myself have seen no figures on the subject, employees of these companies have been known to disclose that billboard advertising in the right setting can help owners sell their timeshares.

These three timeshare sales tactics have one thing in common: they can help drive traffic to an online inventory of timeshares for sale.

That should be good enough, right?

Wrong. Unsolicited emails, direct mail and billboards, like print advertising and television commercials, reach a lot of people. However, they don’t reach people whose sole concern is buying and selling timeshares.

As an example, consider a newspaper’s classified ads page. This part of the paper is read daily by people looking for a job, checking out apartments, buying a car, looking for a good plumber, or browsing the personals. The traffic that the classified page gets is not targeted.

Imagine you are a prospective timeshare buyer. You want to find an inventory of timeshare properties on the internet. To do this, you go to a major search engine and type in search terms, like “buy timeshare”. The websites that come up in the top five search results for “buy” terms receive what is known as targeted traffic. Almost all traffic driven to these sites is composed of people interested in buying timeshares. Only search marketing can deliver this kind of exposure. 

Quite literally, search marketing offers people exactly what they are searching for. However, just because a company is #1 in the search results doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. As I’ve said many times, it is absolutely vital to scrupulously research any company you intend to have dealings with.