Resort industry haggles over redefining itself

Tim Barker
of the Sentinel Staff
Posted April 25, 2001

Here's a quick pop quiz: You've spent $15,000 to guarantee yourself the right to come back to the same tourist resort for one week of every year.

You:
A) Bought a time share.
B) Bought membership in a vacation club.
C) Bought time at a vacation ownership resort.

Many in the time-share industry are wrestling over what the correct answer should be.

For more than a decade, many of the folks who hawk time shares have tried to distance themselves from the industry's shady past -- marked by questionable sales tactics and shaky financing -- by using fancy names such as vacation ownership, vacation clubs and interval ownership.

"No time shares here," they'd say. "We sell experiences."

But if Tuesday's gathering at the American Resort Development Association's Orlando convention is any indication, the backlash has begun.

Read this entire article in the Orlando Sentinel.

Copyright © 2001, Orlando Sentinel