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“InterContinental Hotels’ Holiday Inn brand is stepping into the timeshare market with the launch of a new venture with The Family of Orange Lake Resorts.

The new venture, a licensing and marketing arrangement called Holiday Inn Club Vacations, comes at a difficult point.

IHG rivals Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Wyndham Worldwide Corp. both reported declining second-quarter timeshare sales in some markets, particularly Hawaii. Wyndham has also seen higher level of defaults by buyers.

“It is indeed a challenging time, given the economy,” said Christian Hempell, who will direct the new Holiday Inn timeshare brand as vice president of Holiday Inn Club Vacations.

He said the market for timeshares “seems to be very, very resilient,” however.

IHG stressed that its deal with Orange Lake requires no capital investment. Orange Lake will continue to own, operate and develop its four timeshare resorts, all of which are included in the deal.

Orange Lake, which has more than 120,000 owners, has seen 20 percent sales growth this year without a jump in default rates, he said.

Holiday Inn Club Vacations will launch in December 2008 with Orange Lake’s 2,412 villa property in Orlando, Fla. The 1,400-acre resort is next to Walt Disney World Resort.

Later, Orange Lake’s three smaller resorts in Vermont, Wisconsin and Panama City, Fla., will convert to the Holiday Inn brand. ” (via finance.yahoo.com) by Kristen A. Lee

Pointswizard.com Spin: Read more about Holiday Inn brand enters the timeshare business

The Timeshare User’s Group started in 1993 is a self-help organization composed of timeshare owners and other interested parties. TUG provides timeshare owners with an unbiased source of consumer oriented information regarding timeshare resorts and the timeshare concept.

TUG collects reviews and ratings on more than 2000+ timeshare resorts from TUG Members who have been there and provides this data along with area activities, sites to see and places to eat for member use. It’s free to look and ask questions at in the forums section. To get access to reviews a small yearly membership fee is charged. Well worth it + unlimited free timeshare ads to sell or rent your villa.

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here and then scroll down the page to explore this site. Also explore all the links on top. Over 27,000 members can help you sort out the facts

(This is from a a thread on TUG*) 

“Email I Received from a Marriott Sales Agent Listing all the Faults of Buying Resale

Good Morning xxxx,

I just wanted to say thanks for the call yesterday. I noticed in your owner profile that the last few weeks you purchased have been through the external market. You had asked me questions about point values and I wanted to ensure that it was clear that the ability to exchange for points is available only to purchases through the Marriott Vacation Club.

Other considerations when purchasing externally:

* No access to the Vacation Ownership Advisory desk. (Department created in the past couple years to service new owners-“Your personal travel agent”) Would you pay a little more for service?

* No priority for protected inventory with Interval International.

* No priority in room requests at Marriott resorts.

* No ability to utilize the Marriott Resale department in the future.

* No purchase incentive.

* Significantly higher closing costs and a longer closing process.

If you don’t mind missing out on the above mentioned items and are going to save a huge amount of money, then a resale may not be a bad option. However, keep in mind that Marriott does hold the first right of refusal on any resale so if it is a popular piece of inventory, “great bargains” don’t usually make it through the closing process.

————————–

another poster writes-

I can’t believe he put all that in writing. If Marriott has any ethics, they would fire that guy. I know Hilton would, they do not stand for salesman’s blatant lies.

————————–

from another poster

Now this Marriott salesrep, Scott, needs to be fired.

There are flat out lies:

* No access to the Vacation Ownership Advisory desk. (Department created in the past couple years to service new owners-“Your personal travel agent”) Would you pay a little more for service?

* No priority for protected inventory with Interval International.

* No priority in room requests at Marriott resorts.

* However, keep in mind that Marriott does hold the first right of refusal on any resale so if it is a popular piece of inventory, “great bargains” don’t usually make it through the closing process.

And questionable ones:

* Significantly higher closing costs and a longer closing process.

* No ability to utilize the Marriott Resale department in the future.

And a true one:

* No purchase incentive. (This is Marriott incentives, that 40% resale savings is more than enough to make up for the MRPs. So this could be viewed as a lie too, but I’m a nice guy)

If it were me, I’d send the letter to the CEO of Marriott timeshares and ask for a clarification of each and every point. I’d ask what Marriott’s reaction to flat out lies from the sales department.

Scott needs to be fired and hung up as an example - don’t put it in writing guys. What was he thinking? Exposing Marriott deceptiveness to newspaper articles, and TUG for what? Once an owner tastes the fruit from the resale tree there is no going back.” (via tugbbs.com)

Pointswizard.com Spin: Click here to see all the posts on this topic

* Timeshare Users Group(21,000 members) www.tugbbs.com another web site with a bulletin board devoted to timeshares can be found at Click here http://www.timeshareforums.com/

“Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone.

To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.

Using this service, you can:

* search for a local business by name or category.
You can say “Giovanni’s Pizzeria” or just “pizza”.

* get connected to the business, free of charge.

* get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone.
Just say “text message”.

And it’s free. Google doesn’t charge you a thing for the call or for connecting you to the business. Regular phone charges may apply, based on your telephone service provider.

Note: Google Voice Local Search is still in its experimental stage. It may not be available at all times and may not work for all users. We’re fine-tuning the service to get better at recognizing your requests. It’s currently only available in English, in the US, for US business listings.”
via [http://www.timeshareforums.com]

The Pointswizard.com Spin: And don’t forget 1 800 free 411