Friday, September 27, 2019

Billions in Timeshare Rentals Raises Some Questions

A recent timeshare industry survey found that 47% of timeshare resorts are actively using online travel agencies (OTAs) such as VRBO and AirBnB to rent out their inventory. 

Let that number sink in for a minute. Almost half of timeshare resorts rent out their inventory. A savvy consumer could easily stay in lovely timeshare resorts every single year and never have to outlay more than $21,000-the average price of an interval in the US last year. 

Several questions jump out at me from this survey:

>Exactly what inventory is being rented?  It’s impossible to trace a piece of inventory, I.e. a timeshare room to see if it’s owned by the resort or an individual owner.

>Why is the resort allowed to use third party sites such as VRBO to advertise rentals when individual owners of at least one major developer are barred from doing so?

>How much of those 12.1 million nights (!) amounting to $2.4 billion (!) in rentals came from inventory that individual owners are desperately trying to exit from?  In other words, if the owner is not using the timeshare and the developer is making tons of money renting it out, why do they make it nearly impossible for the owner to get out? 

It seems to me that the timeshare industry is at a critical tipping point. If they allow business to continue as it has for the past 40+ years and continue to let the value proposition of owning continue to be eroded, they’re in for a much bigger shake up than the financial crisis of 2008


1 comment:

Irene Parker said...

Please write an article "What is a Travel Club Anyway?" I have had it explained to me six times and I still don't know what it is but it sounds like a lot of middlemen making a lot of money with buyers on the short end of the stick.