Timeshare tourism has been a popular concept in the West. With the global tourism industry in an upbeat mood the concept has stretched to other parts of the world including India. With 7.5 million timeshare owners from 270 countries, it is certainly a phenomenon. Timeshare tourism is growing at a rate twice that of the industry. The global timeshare industry has nearly 5,500 resorts spread over 100 countries and boasts of an annual revenue of over $10 bn. Looking at the growing trend of this segment, the United Nations World Tourism Organization has recognized the timeshare industry as the newest trend in holidaymaking. Indian tourism players too are going global by acquiring properties abroad as the scope for growth and the opportunities are huge.
Timeshare is a right to occupy a particular vacation property for a specified period at a specified interval. Generally, the developers first acquire property in a popular tourist location and bungalows and villas are built thereon. The value of the property is divided into one week ownership units and offered to public for sale. One who buys a unit becomes owner for the pre-specified time every year during the ownership period that normally ranges between 33-99 years. The owner has to bear the annual maintenance costs.
Compared to a normal hotel accommodation, more room space, kitchen and laundry facilities are provided to the occupants. While a hotel accommodation is typically designed for two people, a timeshare is designed for a family. The entire resort focuses on giving the family a great holiday experience and therefore resort activities are planned with the customers' holiday requirements in mind. It has been found through studies that timeshare acts as stress buster and brings in a positive change in the quality of personal life. The study further revealed that the timeshare experience improved health and happiness of the timeshare owners and enhanced communication and bondage in the families.
Major hotels that saw timeshare as a competitor to their existing hotel businesses earlier have now started looking at it as a source of raising additional revenues. The rise in timeshare ownership has attracted hospitality industry across the world and India has been no exception. Top international brands such as Marriott, Hyatt, Four Seasons, Disney, Starwood, Ritz-Carlton and Hilton have opened their doors to timeshare. Though incidents like SARS, Tsunami, September 11, and Gulf war had the global hotel industry bleeding, the timeshare segment did not see negative growth. This was possible because it leveraged business from domestic markets during those times.
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