Previously a member of the hotel section of Starwood North America, Westin St. John will soon become a member of Starwood Vacation Ownership with their upcoming transformation into a vacation ownership resort. Come the year 2017, the make-over will be complete and this once-hotel will be a vacation ownership resort composed of deluxe villa timeshare units.
Currently, Westin St. John has a total of 96 hotel rooms. When renovations begin next week, those rooms with be reduced to 45 to allow guests to visit the resort during the year-long revamping. In time, those will likely become villas as well, once the other rooms have been transformed into villa units. There is also room for the resort to expand in the upcoming years as business has been booming, and there is more customer demand to purchase vacation ownership properties.
Director of Operations for Westin St. John, Sam Hugli, talked about the industry wide shift to vacation ownership, saying, “You’re basically a part-time owner of the unit. Vacation ownership units give customers more flexibility to travel to other locations” (more so than traditional timeshare).
Changing the model of the resort will also lengthen the length of the resort’s season. Summer months are traditionally slow in this area, but now customers will be forced to purchase their vacation weeks during this time as more popular weeks fill up.
Read more about the changes to come at Westin St. John here.