What happened at the vacation ownership investment conference?

Ask the Timeshare Crusader / October, 2010

I am a follower of your blog on Timeshare Insights and read that you were recently at the Vacation Ownership Investment Conference (VOIC) in Orlando. I would be very interested to hear what came out of this gathering.

Yes, I did attend the 12th annual Vacation Ownership Investment Conference this past week here in Orlando. While not as large or broad-based as the annual ARDA Convention, it is a great indicator of current and future trends in timesharing, with a decidedly "investment" theme.

I met some truly wonderful and dedicated timeshare and fractional professionals during the three days. I also sat in on various break-out sessions dealing with everything from resort design to financing, and legal issues to (of course) sales and marketing. I left with strong feelings on two topics which I'll address here.

First of all, the industry as a whole has some road to travel before they move into the 21st century. While this conference was not designed to address the resale issue, it did come up a number of times. Each time, none of the speakers quite knew how to answer the question. If you reference my blog you'll see that I was bemused with the way that the word "Internet" was treated: as if it were some "evil empire." I don't think that any timeshare resort or development has truly grasped the implications of the Internet, social media, transparency, smart phone technology, and the power that those mediums give to consumers. Technology truly levels the playing field and I don't think that the timeshare industry has come to terms with that yet.

Secondly, and perhaps more important to consumers, both owners and prospective owners need to know that timeshare developers, consultants, senior vice presidents of resort sales and business development, vice presidents of marketing, inventory planning, or sales — to name a few titles of the people that I spent part of my three days with — are fine, upstanding, honest professionals. All too often, everyone in timeshare gets painted with a negative brush and I can tell you that it is just not the case. What happens is something gets lost between the vice president of resort sales and business development level and the OPC trying to get you to tour a resort or the salesperson who, shall we say, misrepresents the trading power of a week in Arkansas.

The good news is that there are clear indicators that the people at the top are beginning to realize that parts of the system are indeed flawed. I am confident for the first time in quite a long time that positive changes may be made in the near future.