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What is
Timeshare?
( It is spelled as one word, not two words: TIMESHARE. )
Timeshare at its core is essentially a group
of people sharing the cost of a vacation home.
The word "timeshare" has grown over the decades to
include a wide variety of vacation products and plans. Also known as "vacation
ownership" "holiday ownership" and "interval ownership" ,
its umbrella covers traditional deeded timeshare ownership, fractional ownership, private residence clubs, points
clubs, and more. Some would even broaden the term further to include campground memberships and the " condo
hotel" concept, in which a condo is purchased outright but the owner is only allowed to use it for a specific
periods of time and it is rented by a hotel management company for the remainder of the time.
Regardless of how loosely or rigidly you choose to define the
term, the basic premise of timeshare is simple. You and a group of other people share the purchase cost of a vacation
accommodation, in increments of one week (or more) per year of use, thus guaranteeing your ability to use that
accommodation during the period of time you choose, either for life or for a specified number of years. Accommodations
range from hotel rooms to condos, from cabins to luxury houses and castles, from yachts and cruise ships to RVs
and houseboats.
Owning timeshare in the traditional sense means a condominium/villa/house/hotel unit, etc. is subdivided into
52 separate units of time (52 weeks in 1 year), and usually sold to a maximum of 51 owners (leaving one week each
year closed down for annual renovations and/or maintenance). Each owner would own 1/51 of the unit. Each share
repesents one week of vacation. Each owner is entitled to ownership rights and privileges of the shares that they
purchased.
This system makes vacation home ownership possible for many
people who cannot afford a second home or who otherwise would not be able to enjoy such resort facilities.
**It is important to remember that purchasing timeshare should
never be viewed as a financial investment with the expectation of gaining a profit in either reselling it or renting
it to someone else. Timeshare is an investment in lifestyle,
in future holidays, in family time together, and when viewed that way it can be a good investment indeed.
A (very) little history: Depending on how rigid your definition of the word is, modern timesharing
was invented in either Switzerland or France.
Hapimag,
headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, arose from Alexander
Nette's desire for rent-free holidays every year. He
and his partner Dr. Guido Renggli established a company named "Hotel- und Appartementhaus Immobilien Anlage AG" on September
23, 1963 and began to acquire resort properties, which
were sold in a "right to use" share program as opposed to deeded real estate. Hapimag lays claim to the
very first points program and the first timeshare rescission clause, ever. Hapimag is still a successful company
today, and interestingly never has formally affiliated with the major exchange companies. You can read a fine history
here: http://www.wae-online.com/pdf/Guido%20Renggli%20interview.pdf
In France, Paul
Doumier of the Socié té des Grands Travaux
de Marseille development company created a timeshare concept for his firm’s SuperDevoluy ski resort in the French Alps. Doumier coined a catchy advertising slogan
that advised people it was cheaper to buy the hotel than to rent the room, and it caught on. It is interesting
to note that as important to the industry as this innovation was, the year of its introduction is in dispute. Depending
on the industry history you read, it is placed variously in 1964, 1965, 1967, and 1968.
The first timeshare sold in the United States was the Kaua`i
Kailani on the island of Kaua`i in Hawaii. Bob Burns
and Bob Ringenburg
sold leasehold
condos there in weekly intervals (with a forty-year lease), beginning in May
of 1969. They went on to form Vacation Internationale,
and also created the original " points" system to make the product more flexible for their owners.
The first deeded timeshare program in the U.S. was offered in 1973 at Brockway Springs in Lake Tahoe, California.
The developer was Innisfree Companies of Sausalito, California (a 50/50 joint venture with Hyatt Corporation) and
the team who put it together was Carl Berry, Paul Gray,
Greg Bright, Doug Murdock and Dave Irmer.
It was that group of men who pioneered the
word "timeshare" to describe the product in order to make it understandable to bankers, who were already
familiar with the term as used in the sharing of mainframe computers.
They got financing through Avco Financial and when they filed with the California Department of Real Estate they
labeled their product 'timeshare' and then used the word 'timesharing' in their marketing materials.
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