Long before vacation home rentals became the most talked-about way to travel, timeshares were the most prominent option for vacationgoers not interested in staying in a hotel. After falling into struggles and earning a bad reputation over the years, timeshares and their owners are getting a new breath of fresh air with ResortShare.
The company was twice listed on the “Fastest Growing Companies in Orange County” list by Orange County Business Journal and recently announced that it will work with homeowners associations (HOAs) in addition to timeshare owners to keep the industry alive and well.
“We see timeshare as the originator of the whole sharing economy idea. In some ways, it was ahead of its time,” said Jay Yadon, ResortShare co-founder and CEO.
“We are definitely in the middle of the sharing economy. We take the millions of unused nights that people have already paid for at some great resorts and ‘share’ these properties, making them available to people on the sites they are already searching for their travel needs.”
One of the ways ResortShare is helping to keep the timeshare industry profitable is working with HOAs, which are often left to foot the bills of vacant inventory and owners who are not paying their regular maintenance fees. This can sometimes last a few months to a few years.
ResortShare works directly with board members to develop a specific solution that makes sense for their situation, which can including making a rental program available to their individual owners.
At the same time, ResortShare works with timeshare owners who are looking to transfer their ownership or rent out the property when they are unable to use it. And since the properties are built and licensed specifically as vacation homes, there aren’t any issues with regulations.
ResortShare takes the delinquent inventory and enters it into their database, which feeds into online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire, Priceline and Booking.com. Using data the company has gathered from renting thousands of nights, its proprietary system is able to calculate pricing based on demand for a vacation rental property.
A video explaining how ResortShare partners with HOAs.
“Owners who try to rent themselves typically face multiple challenges with regards to marketing their property, creating rental agreements, etc. We manage this entire process for them end to end, and since their ownerships are advertised on the top OTAs, we have a high success rate of securing rentals for them,” Yadon said.
ResortShare boasts a slew of educational material on its website to give timeshare owners who want to take care of the process themselves, but the company also offers a free rental program and a 50/50 split on rentals. Generally, the service is able to secure a renter withing the first 30 days of signing up.
Currently, the company works primarily in North America but deals with some properties throughout the world.
Yadon says there are 54 million unused nights in North America, and the company’s goal is to fill these with travelers and keep the timeshare wheel turning.
“The industry has a poor reputation due to a combination of pushy sales and a complicated product that most don’t understand. We are helping to change that by providing education so that owners are armed with the knowledge to help them get the most from their ownership,” Yadon said.
“Once people are effectively using their ownership by better managing their point system or renting their unused time, owners are generally very happy.”