vacation ownership

The following article appears in the October issue of The Resort Trades. Looking at the changes, growth, and new directions of Google, you have to wonder if vacation ownership and timeshare companies are getting the message.

Google and Frommer’s Travel Guides: Will vacation ownership get the message?

by Jason Tremblay

It’s been almost a year since Google purchased Zagat Restaurant guides and six years since it bought YouTube. Now Google is buying Frommer’s travel guidebooks from publisher John Wiley & Sons, in a transaction that may already be completed by the time this article goes to press. And although Frommer’s travel guidebooks brush too lightly over timeshare as a vacation accommodations option, that’s only part of the discussion about Google and the vacation ownership industry.

Google, from search to content 

Google is positioned as the highest deity in Internet search, masterminding the algorithms that determine what you, me and every other Web user sees when searching the Internet via the Google platform. Whether Google defines updates to its search algorithm as a panda, a penguin or any other anthropomorphic identity, the truth is, we are talking about one powerful mega-beast that calls the shots here in the jungle.

If you could ask Google what business it is in, you would likely get an answer that makes the company sound like a giant compass always pointing to true magnetic north. Theoretically, this is accurate. Google is a search engine that points to what are intended to be results that are the most relevant to the word or words you are searching.

Since the scope of the Internet is massive, the results returned are typically massive too, requiring that Google maintain a system for ranking by quality and relevancy to your search terms, the order of the results it returns to you.

This daunting task leads Google to continual adjustments and overhauls of the processes behind its complex algorithms for search-and-organize. But with such a system in place, even Google itself has to live by its own rules when it comes to the structuring of how search results are returned. And although a litany of factors feed into this structuring, right now, Google, the King of the Jungle, says the most important factor is content. He or she who produces the best, richest, freshest and most relevant content on a regular basis can rule his or her little niche of the wilderness.

More than 15 years ago, Bill Gates pointed to content as the key collateral on the Internet, saying, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” While we have all heard it repeatedly said that content is king (and perhaps said it ourselves), that message is taking on greater importance than ever.

Although sales calls, print advertising, timeshare resort tours, and other ways to market and message vacation ownership are important for the sale of new timeshares, developers know that Internet visibility also matters – and matters more and more each day.

For timeshare resales, Internet visibility is very nearly the whole ball of wax. So when Google, a search engine, purchases Frommer’s travel guides, one of the largest providers of travel and tourism content in the world, every company in the business of timeshare and timeshare resales should take it very seriously.

For more than half a century, Frommer’s has published definitive travel guides that in recent years have included both print and online products helping travelers make their vacation decisions, while offering a rich resource of tips, insights, family travel suggestions, and accommodations reviews. Exactly how Google plans to use this wealth of information has not been, nor is it likely to be, fully disclosed. But here is some of what we do know. In July of 2010, Google acquired ITA Software, a Cambridge, Mass., flight information software company, enabling Google to use flight search technology for Google local search.

As Google builds local search and travel search engines, the content from Frommer’s could easily be imported into the search process, showing up in search, local search and mobile apps. And Google has publicly said, “The Frommer’s team and the quality and scope of their content will be a great addition to the Zagat team. We can’t wait to start working with them on our goal to provide a review for every relevant place in the world.”

Google’s statement begs one really important question: “Is your timeshare resort a ‘relevant place’ in the world as defined by Google?” Don’t worry, if you don’t have enough rich, quality content to communicate to the World Wide Web that you are a relevant place; Google will gladly sell you an ad to help you fight poor placement in search results. eMarketer, a leading digital data analysis company, projects that travel advertisers will spend $3.16 billion for online advertising this year, an increase of 23 percent over spending in 2011.

Don’t blame Google

Before you decide that Google has crossed a line it shouldn’t, you might consider whether the company has actually been nudged over the line. Google is a search company that competes against Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer. Google’s launch of Chrome, its own browser, helps keep it competitive in a world where Microsoft products and defaults are standard in most PCs sold today.

When Google created Google , in the name of improved search, most savvy Internet users recognized that although it likely improves Internet search, Google , with its friend circles and content sharing, is as much about being a social platform as it is about search. But, if the content on Facebook – the world’s largest social platform – was more searchable by Google, would Google have ever ventured into social media?

Whether it’s Google Play, Google , Chrome, YouTube or any of dozens of other ways Google is expanding its services, Google has been more than just a search engine for a long time. Google is a company, expanding its roles and redefining its brand and its services in an ever-evolving marketplace, and nobody calls that sinister. We call that good business.

Unquestionably there is a lot of gray area about directions Google is taking and we all have to hope that regulators get it right. But the fact remains that these directions are already in play and are already influencing your business on a daily basis takes us back to the two most important questions raised here: Did we get the message and do we know what to do to make timeshares “relevant places in the world” by making vacation ownership germane to broader vacation and accommodations searches in the eyes of Google?

The answer comes down to a single thought: Content really is king.

(This article is reprinted with permission of The Resort Trades. You can read it there online, along with all the news and updates of timeshare and vacation ownership.

The ARDA West Regional Meeting 2012 was held Thursday and Friday, October 4-5, at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina in San Diego, California. This meeting afforded the perfect time for timeshare, timeshare resale, and vacation ownership leaders to come together and exchange ideas, problem solve, and network.

John Gruenwald, JCG Human Resource Group kicked off the sessions looking at the topic, “Creating the Future You Want.” As John explains, “We live in volatile times and having the tools to navigate an ever-changing world is more critical than ever before.” His presentation examined the leadership skills necessary for the future, including individual core motivation, and the motives that drive others in your organization. Learning how to use your understanding of motivation is a key to creating the future you really want.

Another important topic was that of balance. We are all challenged to find, and more importantly, to maintain, a balance in our work lives and our ‘real’ lives. Research conducted on 50,000 employees worldwide by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) shows that the work-life balance is one of the strongest drivers and employee attraction and commitment factors, second only to compensation.

This insight is highly consistent with everything statistics tell us about the values of Gen X and Millennials, but how do you bring this to your workplace? Knowing that employees who feel they have a better work-life balance typically work 21 percent harder than do those who do not, finding and nurturing a balance is critical information for employers.  Shutopa Das of Welk Resorts spoke on this top in a session presented by WIN and sponsored by RCI.

Time to Focus on Timeshare Resale

In the session, “HOA Challenges and Solutions Follow-up,” speakers Kit Armour of Breckenridge Grand Vacations; Tom O’Brien of VRI; and Clark Rowley of SmartChoice Timeshare Resales hashed out critical topics as part of a panel moderated by Dave Waller of Baker and Hostetler. They looked at the challenges and solutions around association maintenance fee increasing delinquencies, methods for HOAs to find replacement owners; and what HOAs can do about timeshare weeks now being transferred into trusts, clubs or to individuals who have no intention of paying the fees. This important session was sponsored by Travel To Go.

Other hot topics addressed included “Connecting with Owners and Reigniting the Spark of their Ownership,” with the afternoon wrapping up with a look at brainstorming other key industry topics.

ARDA regional events help the timeshare and vacation ownership industry work more effectively together and respond in more relevant ways to a changing world in which the objectives and values of consumers, employees, and vendors are changing too. Be sure to part of the final ARDA Regional Meeting of 2012, scheduled for November 1-2 in Orlando, Florida. Find out more information about that meeting here: ARDA Southeast Regional Meeting.

SellMyTimeshareNOW.com and Vacation Hotdeal Companies Inc are proud to be a member of ARDA.

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.

You can also read this article in the September 2012 issue of The Resort Trades magazine.

The following article appeared in the May 2012 issue of The Resort Trades.

In it, Jason Tremblay looks at  two different business models for reselling timeshare. The option for timeshare owners to resell timeshare when they no longer wish to own it is an important part of maintaining a healthy and balanced vacation ownership marketplace. Timeshare resales shouldn’t be mysterious, complex, or frightening. Any timeshare owner who decides to sell, should not have to feel as if he or she is navigating a sea of timeshare scam companies. Whether the timeshare resale is motivated by financial need, because the timeshare no longer fits the owner’s vacation style, or because the owner would like to buy new timeshare elsewhere, the process should be simple, straightforward and transparent.

You’ll find this article, along with timely news and information about the timeshare industry, each month at The Resort Trades, available both online and in print.  It is reprinted here with permission of the publication.

Timeshare resales: Marketing driven or market driven?

by Jason Tremblay

How many times have you heard someone in sales criticized for being “too pushy”? Pushy is a word that makes most people uncomfortable. Although we push our children, our coworkers and ourselves to try harder, do more, and strive for greater success and more milestones achieved, we are constantly trying to find a comfortable balance between push and pushy.

Sales efforts that take your timeshare product directly to your market are “push” tactics or marketing driven strategies. For timeshare sales in general, push marketing includes Off Premise Contacts (OPC) to drive potential buyers to sales presentations; telephone and email marketing campaigns; and other options for direct selling to prospects, such as satellite sales offices in malls, hotels, and at trade shows.

For timeshare resales, marketing driven strategies typically include having onsite sales teams at your resort to market to your existing timeshare owner base, drive tours, and move sales volume to a higher level. Marketing driven techniques allow you to push sales opportunities toward your prospective timeshare buyers. They are time-tested tactics that have served as the game plan for how timeshares have been bought, sold, and resold over the years and if they are working for your resort or HOA, you probably should keep doing them.

But what if, in addition to using marketing driven strategies to push your prospects toward your product, you also incorporate market driven strategies that pull or attract your prospective timeshare buyers and renters toward you? Marketing that is too pushy is problematic, but when have you ever heard an offer criticized for being too attractive?

Market driven timeshare sales reflect consumer intent

With timeshare buyers and renters armed with Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, and other smart devices to keep them fully connected to the buying, selling, and renting prices and patterns of today’s timeshare marketplace, pushing anyone toward a buying decision is more challenging than it has ever been in the past. Don’t call your prospects the next generation of timeshare buyers; recognize that the next generation is now and includes both younger shoppers and tech-savvy seniors.

Today’s timeshare consumer is web-wise, social media engaged, and peer review responsive. Instead of the timeshare industry pushing him or her toward vacation ownership, prospects are being pulled toward timeshare as they surf the Web, read positive feedback from current timeshare owners or renters, hear upbeat comments from their friends and family who enjoy timeshare, and learn more about the product through informative online content.

When prospects visit your website and the sites of your competitors, it is because they already have a strong behavioral intent to purchase or rent timeshare. In the primary market for timeshare sales, the Internet is growing in significance as a sales and rental resource, while in the timeshare resale marketplace, the Internet is already number one as the optimal place to buy or rent timeshare.

Developers and HOAs can use the Internet to create greater visibility for their inventory and for the owner services they offer. They can pull market driven prospects toward them through their own efforts or by utilizing a third party timeshare resale service or timeshare brokerage.

Some developers find that skilled and professional third party timeshare resales and rental services or timeshare brokerages mitigate issues of internal conflict that might potentially arise with the company’s own sales and marketing department. A third party resale company makes it easier for a timeshare company or HOA to protect the pricing integrity of their product by resolving the challenges of owners who need to sell. In the process, timeshare companies often find they increase customer satisfaction and enhance brand loyalty.

Lists of resale companies that are also ARDA members are available from the American Resort Development Association and some developers have chosen to work with multiple resellers. Many other developers and HOAs have turned to an exclusive relationship with a single authorized reseller as a way to consolidate resale inventory, stabilize resale and rental prices, and keep their membership strong by reselling to new owners who are emotionally vested in their vacation ownership product.

Market driven timeshare sales always reflect consumer intent. More specifically, market driven timeshare sales, resales, and rentals represent the voice of customers who are literally asking for your product.

These buyers and renters come to your website by way of the words they choose when searching the Internet. The online prospect who is being pulled toward you through market driven sales or resales may find you by searching for, “Key West timeshare” “timeshare resale in Aspen,” “week 26 timeshare Canada,” or any of thousands (yes, thousands) of search terms consumers use daily to find out more about the specific timeshare product that interests them most.

Marketing driven sales are not a bad way to operate. But for many timeshare developers, management companies, and HOAs, the strongest approach is a combo of marketing driven push and market driven pull strategies. Because the one thing we can all agree on is that, the Internet is not going away.