The president and chief executive officer at Bluegreen Corp. is to retire and resign from the company's board at the end of the year.

George F. Donovan has been a director and corporate officer at the timeshare and communities company for 15 years.

Boca Raton-based Bluegreen (NYSE: BXG) said it expects Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John M. Maloney Jr. to assume Donovan's position and responsibilities.

Donovan, 67, said the Bluegreen board has planned for an orderly succession over the last year.

Maloney, 45, joined Bluegreen in 2001 as senior vice president of operations and business development for Bluegreen Resorts. He was named senior vice president of Bluegreen Corp. and president of Bluegreen Resorts in 2002.

Before Bluegreen, Maloney was senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Owners Club by ClubCorp and director of sales and marketing for the South Florida region of Hilton Grand Vacations Co.

In its most recent financial report - this year's second quarter - Bluegreen logged a 55 percent profit decline. The company blamed accounting changes for time-sharing transactions.

Earlier this month, the company battled a shareholder, working to have him cut his potential 32 percent stake in the company to 15 percent by an Oct. 18 deadline.

Under settlement terms, the shareholder, founder of a rival timeshare firm, must reduce his Bluegreen holdings - which could have totaled 10 million shares if options were fully exercised - by at least 5.4 million shares within a year and get rid of all of them within two years.

Pending the sales, his Bluegreen shares must be voted in accordance with the recommendations of Bluegreen's board.

A £10 price rise on airline tickets could be enough to slash soaring carbon emissions, ministers have been told.

The price increase is proposed in a hard-hitting study by Oxford University researchers, who warned that, without it, the UK would fail to meet its targets to slash carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

Government had drastically underestimated the growth in demand for air travel, according to the report Predict and decide: Aviation, climate change and policy.

The researchers warned that all other industries would have to cut emissions by up to 87 per cent to offset the rise in pollution from aviation.

They called for a "personal carbon limit" and higher fares to put off leisure travellers, questioning how ministers reconciled their calls to tackle climate change with the support for airport expansion. "An additional charge of approximately £10 to £25 per ticket per year, applied over a number of years, could be sufficient to offset growth," said the authors of the report, Sally Cairns and Carey Newson.

"This path could offer significant benefits in terms of public revenue and the regeneration of UK domestic tourism and, most importantly, in setting a credible course towards fulfilling commitments on climate change."

Government fears that a price increase would deprive poorer people of foreign holidays was misguided, as research showed that most of the increase in air travel was from wealthy people taking more holidays.

Surveys showed 60 per cent of people would favour an increase in air passenger duty, even if it meant more expensive air fares, Dr Newson said.

VIRGIN plans to send tourists into space in three years using a Virgin Galactic spaceship it will unveil late next year and begin test flying in 2008.

SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and two crew and launch from 60,000 feet, after being carried to that altitude by a new jet aircraft Virgin has christened WhiteKnightTwo.

Seats will cost $200,000 and offer 20 minutes in space out of a two-and-a-half hour flight.

Virgin aims to lower prices as the programme develops, although chairman Sir Richard Branson said: “Space travel is never going to be dirt cheap, but it could be equivalent to a luxury holiday.”

Branson launched Virgin Galactic in 2004 with a promised investment of $250 million.

Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn claimed the flights would use less fuel than a single transatlantic business travel seat, with a similar amount used to reach the launch altitude. He said: “It’s not just about space tourism. It’s about beginning to do science in space.”

The spaceship and carrier will be manufactured from composite materials, making them much lighter than existing aircraft and spacecraft. The company is also working on a new fuel.

Flights will take off initially from the Mojave Desert in California before moving to a base under construction in New Mexico. They will carry passengers up to 80 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Two hundred people have paid $200,000 apiece to help fund the programme, and Virgin has five spaceships and two WhiteKnight carriers on order.

Virgin has announced an exclusive deal with travel agency group Virtuoso to sell space packages in the US. Whitehorn said the company would not need the same sort of agency deal in the UK.

Virgin Atlantic frequent flyer Alan Watts (pictured) will be among the first 1,000 people to go into space. He has two million air miles with the carrier and plans to fly in 2009. He said: “I planned to save my air miles for retirement. Then my daughter reminded me to think of the view.”

How travellers can reach for the stars

-Packages will cost $200,000 for four days. Clients will train for three days, staying at a luxury hotel
-A carrier will fly them to 60,000 feet, then launch SpaceShipTwo
-At 70-80 miles above Earth, the rocket motor will switch off and passengers will be able to remove seat belts to experience zero gravity for 20 minutes
-The ship will descend to 80,000 feet and begin a glide to Earth with passengers strapped flat to withstand the force of gravity on re-entry
-Passengers could fly in normal clothes, but may experience incontinence on re-entry. Virgin has yet to decide whether space suits will be required
-Clients must buy their own insurance and will have to sign a waiver
Virgin plans one flight a day by the end of the programme’s first year and two by the end of the second.

'Our fuel will be cleaner'
SIR Richard Branson defended his space programme against criticism it will damage the environment after he suggested the aviation industry cut damaging greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in two years (Sir Richard Branson reveals plans to cut aviation emissions, Travel Weekly September 29).

He said: “I’m extremely worried about global warming and we need to do everything we can to tackle it.

“But we’ve created a fuel that can put a ship into space for less than the fuel used for one business-class seat across the Atlantic. The materials we’re using are those we would like Boeing and Airbus to use for our aircraft.

“This programme has to be environmentally benign or I would not want to be involved. It could be a forerunner of the aircraft of the future, made of composite materials, using cleaner fuel, without damaging the environment.

“If the technology is as good as we think, we expect to be able to fly people to Australia or Los Angeles in half an hour, possibly within 10 years.”

Branson and his children will be among the first passengers to make the trip into space.

SENIOR travel professionals have dismissed supermarket moves to muscle in on the travel industry following John Lewis Partnership’s launch of Greenbee.com.

JLP – owner of supermarket Waitrose – has launched Greenbee.com, a white-label version of Expedia incorporated with Cox and Kings’ content.

It is the latest supermarket firm to enter the travel industry following Tesco’s white-label deal with Lastminute.com, Asda and Sainsbury’s in-store pods supplied by first Choice and Harvey World Travel concessions in Morrisons.

However, industry leaders doubt the impact JLP and others will have on the sector. Cheapflights.co.uk chief executive David Soskin said it takes more than £100 million to create a reputable travel brand in the UK. “Why would you buy travel from supermarkets instead of Thomas Cook,” he asked.

Lowcostgroup chief executive and Travel Weekly columnist Paul Evans said consumers would not purchase travel from non-travel specialists unless they receive added incentive to do so.

“The new white-label online versions have little or no product or price differentiation,” he said.

“I don’t believe consumers are so loyal they will buy all their services from one supplier.”

LEISURE airlines and UK long-haul carriers have defended their failure to cut the fuel supplements they add to fares despite a near 20% fall in the oil price in recent weeks.

Tour operators continue to add £25-£30 to short-haul holiday prices, £40-£45 to medium-haul and £60-£65 to long-haul, while British Airways and Virgin Atlantic retain a £35-per-sector charge for long-haul flights.

All say the charges are under review and deny concern among customers. A First Choice spokeswoman said: “Customers understand what the supplement is, having seen prices rise at the fuel pumps.

“People would pay a higher price [without charges] because we would have to anticipate the oil market.”

A Thomson spokeswoman said: “The price of fuel was continuing to rise when we last increased the supplements in April.”

However, Sunvil Holidays managing director and ABTA board member Noel Josephides said: “The fuel surcharges cannot be justified. It’s not the way a mature industry should behave.”

For legal reasons, tour operators add supplements to fares, while airlines add surcharges.

THE EU has announced funding for Optag, a €2.2 million passenger tagging scheme that could make flight delays a thing of the past.

Under the new scheme, developed by the Engineering Department at University College London, passengers will be given small, wearable tags at check in.

The tags use short radio bursts to communicate with cameras around the airport, enabling ground staff to locate passengers who are lost or late.

Latecomers are estimated to account for 10% of delayed take-offs, costing European airlines an estimated €100 million a year. The problem is likely to worsen as larger capacity aircraft, such as the Airbus A380 super jumbo, make the process of baggage removal more time-consuming.

Once the scheme has passed the development stage, each tag will cost around $1 to produce. The project's backers believe that its benefits will ultimately balance out the cost of maintaining the system and replacing lost or broken devices.

An earlier plan to place the devices in boarding cards is now likely to be shelved as advances in technology are expected to make paper documents obsolete in the next few years.

Optag's inventors admit that the system could be used for surveillance, but deny that its chief purpose is to tighten security. Project co-ordinator Bob Lloyd said: "There are potential security applications for the technology, but this is more about avoiding delays than tracking suspicious behaviour.

"After all, our system would not have thwarted the 9/11 attacks."

The tags may also be of interest to airport retailers, who would be able to gauge passengers’ shopping patterns. Due to data protection laws, however, Optag would not allow retailers access to personal information.

Optag is to be trialed at Debrecen Airport in Hungary, and will be extended if successful.

Oakwood Mission Valley, a 170-unit apartment complex at 425 Camino Del Rio S., San Diego 92108, was sold for $32.8 million.

The buyer was Worldmark, The Club, c/o Trendwest Resorts Inc., 9805 Willows Road, Redmond, Wash., 98052.

The new ownership is a unit of Cendant Timeshare Resort Group. Previously operated as apartments and short-term corporate housing, the new owners intend to convert the property into a timeshare resort.

The apartment complex consists of 58 one-bedroom units and 112 two-bedroom, two-bath units on 8.04 acres.

The Coastal Commission votes for the setups in downtown Huntington Beach. The city must now approve rule changes.

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Thursday to allow timeshares in Huntington Beach's downtown beachfront developments.

Commissioners, who met at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach, overturned their own staff's recommendation to deny the amendment to the city's Local Coastal Program. They approved the city's proposal to change the land-use regulations to permit timeshares.

Huntington Beach Mayor Dave Sullivan said the commission's decision will help boost the city's economy and promote tourism downtown.

The vote clears the way for condominium timeshare projects proposed on city-owned waterfront redevelopment property leased by Hyatt and Hilton hotel developer Robert Mayor Corp., as well as for Pacific City, owned and developed by Makar Properties.

The waterfront property is expected to have 210 timeshare units, and Pacific City is approved for 14 units, said Scott Hess, the city's acting planning director.

The developers have not yet secured city permits for those projects, Hess said.

The only condition commissioners made was that the condominiums be rented out as hotel rooms when unoccupied by their owners, said Karl Schwing, a Coastal Commission planning supervisor.

The amendment is expected to go before the City Council for final adoption in January.

Work to restore one of golf's most prominent landmarks to its former glory is due to start

Property and construction consultants, Thomas and Adamson, have been appointed to handle the procurement and cost management of the 'St Andrews Grand' development at the former Hamilton Hall university residence behind the 18th Green and 1st Tee of the Old Course.

The £23 million development is being flagged up as an exclusive club offering 23 luxury timeshare flats , leisure area, gym and spa, library and dining room.

Prices range from £750,000 to £1.9 million for nine weeks of the year.

One of the first people to become a founding member of 'St Andrews Grand' is current 'Masters' champion Phil Mickelson.

Developers Wasserman Real Estate Capital LLC, own stakes in more than 24 retail, residential and office properties around the world. Construction is due to commence this month with building set for completion in spring 2008.

According to the newly released Future Timeshare Buyers: Market Profile 2006, fully 14 percent of pleasure travelers familiar with the concept of vacation ownership, or approximately 9.2 million U.S. households, are interested in acquiring a timesharing interest during the next two years.

“This is a significant, positive increase from the level we recorded in the National Leisure Travel Monitor™ last year, and clearly represents good news for the timesharing/vacation ownership industry,” said Peter C. Yesawich, chairman and chief executive officer of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, co-author of the annual survey with Yankelovich, Inc.

The profile, conducted annually, is developed exclusively for Interval International, a leading global vacation exchange company, and prepared from data collected for the YPB&R/Yankelovich, Inc. 2006 National Leisure Travel MONITORSM, a strategic marketing tool for travel and leisure industry product and service suppliers. This widely acclaimed survey of pleasure travel habits and preferences is in its fifteenth year. The results were announced at the 8th annual Vacation Ownership Investment Conference (formerly TRIC) in Orlando, Florida.

Pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare long to be in control of their lives, are decidedly more experiential, and prefer things that are new and exciting. They are much more inclined to spend their money on products and services that they believe will enrich their lives, such as investing in their future vacations.

“While the profile of the future buyer has remained consistent over the past several years, we’re very encouraged by the high degree of interest among African-Americans and both Generation Xers (aged 28 to 41 years old) and the echo-boomer generation aged younger than 27 years,” noted Howard A. Bendell, director of market research and analysis for Interval International. “These demographic segments, along with adult leisure travelers having annual household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 and those residing in the Southern U.S., report future purchase interest at significantly greater rates than their disinterested counterparts. Timeshare resort sellers and marketers who cater to these specific groups are better positioned to capitalize on this growth opportunity.”

Prospective timeshare buyers are significantly more interested than those not interested in staying at a condominium resort during the next two years (82 percent vs. 56 percent) and focus on the same spaciousness that resort timesharing typically provides. Nearly half of all pleasure travelers consider themselves to be knowledgeable about the main features of timesharing and are more likely to report an intention to stay at a vacation ownership resort in the future (61 percent vs. 28 percent). In fact, more than one out of every four active leisure travelers familiar with the concepts of timesharing or vacation ownership express interest in attending a timeshare sales presentation or in accepting an offer for a two to three-day mini vacation package.

Other study highlights include:

Pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare report having taken four pleasure trips of 75 miles or more away from home and requiring overnight accommodations in the past 12 months;
More than eight in 10 (83 percent) of pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare drove a personal automobile to their vacation destination in the last year;
More than three-quarters (76 percent) of pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare intend to take a cruise in the next two years;
Family oriented vacationing continues to be the most popular among prospective timeshare purchasers, as nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of all pleasure trips reported involved visiting friends or family in the last 12 months;
Prospective timeshare buyers express a continued interest in visiting Florida (45 percent), California (36 percent), Hawaii (23 percent) and Nevada (17 percent);
Europe (57 percent) remains the preferred international destination of choice among pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare, followed by the Caribbean (27 percent);
The Internet continues to represent a major part of the planning process–used by nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of all prospective timeshare buyers to obtain travel information and prices.

“The results of the 2006 survey reaffirm consumers’ growing interest in owning vacation time and auger well for the continued growth of the industry in the years ahead,” said Yesawich.

Interval International releases timeshare research report

According to the newly released Future Timeshare Buyers: Market Profile 2006, fully 14 percent of pleasure travelers familiar with the concept of vacation ownership, or approximately 9.2 million U.S. households, are interested in acquiring a timesharing interest during the next two years.

"This is a significant, positive increase from the level we recorded in the National Leisure Travel Monitor last year, and clearly represents good news for the timesharing/vacation ownership industry," said Peter C. Yesawich, chairman and chief executive officer of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, co-author of the annual survey with Yankelovich, Inc.

The profile, conducted annually, is developed exclusively for Interval International, a leading global vacation exchange company, and prepared from data collected for the YPB&R/Yankelovich, Inc. 2006 National Leisure Travel MONITORSM, a strategic marketing tool for travel and leisure industry product and service suppliers. This widely acclaimed survey of pleasure travel habits and preferences is in its fifteenth year. The results were announced at the 8th annual Vacation Ownership Investment Conference (formerly TRIC) in Orlando, Florida.

Pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare long to be in control of their lives, are decidedly more experiential, and prefer things that are new and exciting. They are much more inclined to spend their money on products and services that they believe will enrich their lives, such as investing in their future vacations.

"While the profile of the future buyer has remained consistent over the past several years, we're very encouraged by the high degree of interest among African-Americans and both Generation Xers (aged 28 to 41 years old) and the echo-boomer generation aged younger than 27 years," noted Howard A. Bendell, director of market research and analysis for Interval International. "These demographic segments, along with adult leisure travelers having annual household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 and those residing in the Southern U.S., report future purchase interest at significantly greater rates than their disinterested counterparts. Timeshare resort sellers and marketers who cater to these specific groups are better positioned to capitalize on this growth opportunity."

Prospective timeshare buyers are significantly more interested than those not interested in staying at a condominium resort during the next two years (82 percent vs. 56 percent) and focus on the same spaciousness that resort timesharing typically provides. Nearly half of all pleasure travelers consider themselves to be knowledgeable about the main features of timesharing and are more likely to report an intention to stay at a vacation ownership resort in the future (61 percent vs. 28 percent). In fact, more than one out of every four active leisure travelers familiar with the concepts of timesharing or vacation ownership express interest in attending a timeshare sales presentation or in accepting an offer for a two to three-day mini vacation package.

Other study highlights include:

- Pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare report having taken four pleasure trips of 75 miles or more away from home and requiring overnight accommodations in the past 12 months;

- More than eight in 10 (83 percent) of pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare drove a personal automobile to their vacation destination in the last year;

- More than three-quarters (76 percent) of pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare intend to take a cruise in the next two years;

- Family oriented vacationing continues to be the most popular among prospective timeshare purchasers, as nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of all pleasure trips reported involved visiting friends or family in the last 12 months;

- Prospective timeshare buyers express a continued interest in visiting Florida (45 percent), California (36 percent), Hawaii (23 percent) and Nevada (17 percent);

- Europe (57 percent) remains the preferred international destination of choice among pleasure travelers interested in purchasing timeshare, followed by the Caribbean (27 percent);

- The Internet continues to represent a major part of the planning process used by nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of all prospective timeshare buyers to obtain travel information and prices.

"The results of the 2006 survey reaffirm consumers' growing interest in owning vacation time and auger well for the continued growth of the industry in the years ahead," said Yesawich.

About Interval International

Interval International, a leading vacation ownership exchange company, is celebrating 30 years of quality and innovation. Interval has a global network of more than 2,000 affiliated resorts in over 75 countries, and serves its developer clients and in excess of 1.8 million member families through 28 offices in 19 countries. The company provides a variety of services and year-round travel-related benefits to enhance members' vacation experiences. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Interval International is part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which operates leading and diversified businesses in sectors being transformed by the Internet, online and offline. Other IAC companies include Ask.com, Citysearch, Entertainment Publications, HSN, LendingTree, and Ticketmaster.

About Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell

Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell is America s leading marketing, advertising and public relations agency serving travel, leisure and lifestyle clients. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, the agency serves a roster of over 50 clients through seven offices across the United States and Europe.

A Demographic Snapshot

Prospective timeshare buyers are: White (71 percent), African-American (16 percent), Single (20 percent), Married (64 percent), Generation Xers (aged 28 - 41 years old) and Echo-boomers (younger than 27 years of age) (40 percent), Boomers (aged 42-60) (43 percent), Annual household income of $50,000 or more (64 percent)

While Divi Corporation and the Cayman Islands Government argue over who is to blame for the closure of the Divi Tiara Beach Hotel on Cayman Brac, some Divi timeshare owners are not happy with the outcome and blame both entities.

Hugh and Margaret Huntzinger, who have stayed at the timeshare resort for two weeks since the closing of the hotel, told Cayman Net News that between fifty and sixty owners have so far got together online and created a website to discuss their next move.

In a letter to timeshare owners, Divi Corporation has offered them four options: The first is to exchange owners' remaining membership weeks for membership in the Divi Vacation Club.

As a second option, owners could exchange their Tiara units for units at Divi Flamingo Beach Resort and Casino in Bonaire.

Thirdly, Divi said it would be willing to discuss relocations to other resorts on a case by case basis. "In most cases, such exchanges will entail significant up-charges," it states in the letter.

The Huntzingers said the first option was "lousy", the second and third "worse", and the options as a whole "offensive".

"The Vacation Club is a timeshare inventory left-overs buyers group," they said. Owners must say whether or not they are using their units six months in advance.

Therefore, they would not be able to book further in advance than this for their vacation with this plan.

If they chose the Flamingo Resort, they would lose their "no go, no pay" option which was a deal offered to early buyers, meaning that they can opt not to take their units and not pay maintenance that year.

In addition, these timeshares are worth much less than they paid for Tiara timeshares and are not comparable in terms of square footage, they said. With the third option, decided by Divi on a case by case basis, they are given no rights.

"Obviously, they want to slot you in to their benefit," they said. The fourth option is to maintain ownership "as is", and Tiara would continue to supply resort check-in and twice weekly housekeeping service, as provided in owners' contracts.

Divi told owners in the letter, "In considering staying, however, you should bear in mind that Tiara cannot predict the extent of rise in maintenance fees in the coming years except to say that it will be very substantial because of loss of subsidy and expected loss of paying members."

Several reasons for this are cited: "Tiara can no longer afford to subsidize operating costs for the timeshare resort," and "most owners are not required to pay a maintenance fee if not using the unit."

Additionally, they said, "We expect most owners to choose other options, which will reduce the number of owners paying for the maintenance of the resort."

"This is purposefully intimidating news," said the Huntzingers, especially for those without the "no go no pay" clause. They pointed out that Divi has not attempted to give any kind of estimate for the maintenance.

The Huntzingers would prefer to continue to return to Cayman Brac, as, they claim, a lot of owners do. Many have grown to love the Island and the people here, and also enjoy reuniting with other timeshare owners.

However they said there were no checks and balances on what the maintenance would be.

"There is no breakdown of maintenance and no accountability," they said.

Divi claims that owners do not have the right to see the books and, in order to test this claim, they would have to go to litigation.

According to their contract with Divi, any disputes would have to be settled in a Cayman Islands court.
"Indies Suite was pretty ugly," said Mr Huntzinger, referring to timeshare units on Grand Cayman that went bankrupt after Hurricane Ivan.

"We don't feel that we can look to Cayman courts to protect us. We pay US$10 per night to the Government. What do we get for this? Where are the consumer protection laws in regards to timeshare owners?"

Divi also told owners they had to select one of the options by December 31, 2006.

"If we do not receive a return option form by such date, we will assume that you have chosen the Vacation Club option."

VP Sales and Marketing for Divi, Mark Steward, said that there were a total of three hundred and thirty-two timeshare owners, and they were receiving responses to their letter at a rate of eight to ten per day, and most were accepting the offer of the Vacation Club.

Mr Steward claimed that ninety percent of owners had stopped going to Tiara timeshares anyway, which he blamed on the Cayman Airways Limited air schedule. Plus, he said, some people had owned for a while and were happy to trade out.

"We want to make sure the owners are happy," he claimed. The Huntzingers have a different story to tell:

"The early years were fine, but then the units went downhill. In 1998, the owners had a rat-catching contest. We were second. We only caught four that week. The winners caught seven."

They pointed out that Divi was forced to close the timeshares in September 2003 because they were not up to Cayman hotel licensing standards, but they were unable to learn the details of this.

"In the US, we are used to being able to get records of inspection reports. Here, you can't find anything out," they said.

The Huntzingers stated, "Divi has not had a good customer focus. We have not been impressed with corporate administration over the years."

They added, "If their intention was to come off as a greedy American corporation, they've done quite well."

...Islands will sink in 80 million years !

Slowly, slowly, the Big Island of Hawaii is sinking toward its doom. From its palm-fringed beaches to the summit of Mauna Kea, 13,796 feet high, nothing will remain of that volcanic island but a small, stony lump on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the far northwest, thousands of miles from where it stands today.

And then it will disappear completely, swallowed into the Earth's heaving crust.

Scientists in Berkeley and elsewhere say Hawaii's fate -- some 80 million years into the future -- is a certainty not just for the Big Island, but for all the major Hawaiian islands and a string of smaller, related islets that dot the ocean toward the northwest for 1,500 miles.

As those islands vanish one by one, new volcanoes will rise from the seabed where Hawaii is now; and ultimately, those too will move northwestward and shrink beneath the waves, just as if a huge undersea conveyor belt were carrying them along from birth to oblivion.

This sad end to the tropical islands as we know them is being revealed in a geologic saga playing out deep on the ocean floor. It is there that one huge moving slab of the Earth's crust, called the Pacific plate, moves the islands along toward their fate a few inches each century.

And it is there that a great "hot spot" of magma, created by the fiery heat of the Earth's core 1,800 miles beneath the seabed, is fueling the replacement islands with magma, while the massive plate itself is twisting slowly toward the west.

The Berkeley scientists and their many colleagues have chronicled these island and plate movements with data painstakingly acquired by researchers at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, aboard research vessels roaming the far Pacific, at the U.S. Geological Survey's paleomagnetism lab in Menlo Park, and at Stanford and many other research centers.

"The islands," said Warren Sharp, a geochemist at the geochronology lab in Berkeley, "are all just passively riding on that Pacific plate. The moving hot spot formed them, the plate carries them, and over time they will all disappear."

Sharp and David Clague, a marine geologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, reported on new clues to the process in a recent issue of the journal Science.

And earlier, geophysicist David Scholl of Stanford and the USGS led a research group concluding that the great "Hawaiian Hot Spot" is not fixed in one place, as scientists previously believed, but actually moved southward between 47 million and 81 million years ago.

"This finding," Scholl said, "will break across a cherished idea about how things work in the innards of the Earth."

The reports add fresh insights into the dynamic behavior of the entire Earth's crust, where vast tectonic plates are constantly moving against each other to cause volcanoes, earthquakes and the formation of new land masses.

When the Hawaiian islands disappear in the distant future, they won't be the first to go, for they are just one part of a long chain of volcanoes that rose from the Pacific floor and vanished, one after another, over millions of years.

For example, Midway Island, part of the Hawaiian chain, was once a volcano, too. Now it is only a coral atoll barely above sea level, with two small, flat islands that held Navy runways during World War II. They, too, will vanish one day.

From Hawaii, the islands of the Hawaiian chain stretch northwestward for more than 1,500 miles, with each island eroding and shrinking into the sea floor in turn until they become merely low rocky reefs, and more flat atolls, barely above the surface.

Beyond the atolls, at the end of what's called the Hawaiian Ridge, the chain becomes completely submerged and then bends in a mysterious kink to continue due north for 2,200 miles, forming an even longer string of totally submerged islands known as the Emperor Seamounts.

When and how that kink in the seamounts developed has long been a major puzzle to scientists who study the dynamic movements of the Earth's crust, but answers are now appearing.

Sharp and Clague reported in Science recently that the mysterious bend in the Emperor Seamount chain is about 50 million years old, and probably took at least 8 million years to develop. They based their calculations using the Berkeley Geochronology Center's newest high-tech methods for dating ancient rocks based on the decay rates of the element argon's radioactive forms.

Part of the Pacific plate appears to be moving too, they say. It twists clockwise ever so slowly, forcing the chain to bend and pointing the line of sunken islands due north. The plate's motions have been dated by changes in the orientation of magnetic particles frozen into the crustal rocks over millions of years.

Back at the Big Island of Hawaii, there's movement, too. While the Kilauea volcano is still building, as soon as the Big Island's other volcanoes have stopped erupting, they have started to lose height, Sharp said, "and the entire island is now sinking about 1 foot every hundred years as the Pacific Plate bows down under the weight of the volcanoes on it."

But already, only 15 miles southeast of Kilauea, the Hawaiian Hot Spot is pushing up magma to form a new volcanic island. It is named Loihi, and its summit is still more than 3,000 feet below sea level, so it is technically still a seamount. But swarms of earthquakes show the island is active and growing, and if it continues erupting as often as Kilauea and Mauna Kea have, it will rise above the sea surface as a brand-new Hawaiian island in a "few tens of thousands of years," according to scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Midway, the coral atoll, is 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii and is the oldest in the Hawaiian part of the chain, formed about 28 million years ago. Then there are the strings of other islands and atolls between Hawaii and Midway, each one a little older than the other -- like Necker Island, 657 miles from Kilauea and 10 million years old; French Frigate Shoals, 740 miles away and 12 million years old; and Laysan, 1,130 miles from the Big Island and 20 million years old -- according to dates estimated by Clague and Brent Dalrymple, a retired geophysicist from the USGS in Menlo Park and Oregon State University in Corvallis.

The entire chain of Emperor Seamounts and Hawaiian islands, tens of millions of years old, consists of at least 129 volcanoes, according to Sharp and Clague; together, they stretch for more than 3,700 miles north toward the deep-sea region between Siberia and Alaska known as the Aleutian Trench.

And there the chain ends. The islands and seamounts vanish forever as the Pacific plate that has carried them north dives 25,000 feet deep into the trench's great arc in an earthquake-generating process called subduction. There the Pacific plate is butting up against the western end of the North American plate, and that is where Hawaii, and Loihi too, will ultimately die, after riding the great conveyor belt around the seamounts' bend for 80 million years.

Plans by Donald Trump, the US property developer, to create a world-class golf course on seaside links in north-east Scotland are being delayed by the need to study bird movements.

Mr Trump wants to spend more than £300m at a 1,000-acre site on the Menie Estate, north of Aberdeen, to provide two championship courses, a five-star hotel and timeshare properties.

Trump International Golf Links said an initial planning application would be submitted shortly to Aberdeenshire Council, but the project's scale and intricacy meant environmental assessment studies would not be completed until January.

Neil Hobday, project director, said: "Some of the components, such as the winter birds' survey, are driven by seasonality and won't be ready until later this year."

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland is worried that the courses could damage wildlife on the coastal dunes, which are protected for a range of plants and invertebrates and provide breeding grounds for skylarks, lapwings and shelducks. Mr Trump has expressed concern about the visual impact on his development of a wind farm, costing more than £100m, that is being proposed off the coast of Aberdeen.

But Aberdeen Offshore Windfarm, a joint venture between the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group and Amec, has cut the number of turbines it is proposing from 33 to 23. Though the wind farm group had what it described as constructive talks with Mr Trump's representatives, it stressed that the changes to its proposals had already been made as the result of consultations with helicopter and shipping operators - not because of the golf course.

Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group said: "The wind farm has moved farther south during the design process, taking it awayfrom the golf development. This means that, currently, the nearest wind turbine is sited around three-and-a-half miles away from the golf resorts hotel. We believe that the two projects could become good neighbours."

The wind farm group is conducting environmental impact studies and will seek planning approval from the Scottish Executive next year.

Disney Vacation Club to Build Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas

Disney Vacation Club announced that it is building a new timeshare resort on Walt Disney World® property to meet ongoing strong demand for its unique vacation-ownership program.

Disney's Animal Kingdom® Villas will be part of Disney's Animal Kingdom® Lodge, which readers of Travel & Leisure Family magazine recently honored with the No. 4 spot on their list of the 50 greatest family resorts in the United States and Canada. The Disney Vacation Club® accommodations will feature intricate African-inspired details and home-like amenities, and most will offer sweeping views of an expanded savannah inhabited by a variety of African animals. These new accommodations are scheduled for development in phases with an anticipated opening beginning Fall 2007 and a completion date planned for Spring 2009. The project's first phase will include 134 remodeled accommodations on the fifth and sixth floors of the existing Disney's Animal Kingdom® Lodge building, and subsequent phases will include the construction of 324 vacation homes in a new building on the resort property, for a total of 458 Disney Vacation Club homes.

The project also calls for construction of a new table-service restaurant, themed pool and water-play island, fitness center, merchandise shop, sports and recreation facilities and more.

"We continue to see strong demand from families who want to build a lifetime of unforgettable memories by vacationing in ways they never dreamed possible," said Jim Lewis, President of Disney Vacation Club. "I am delighted to announce that our members will have yet another place to call home with Disney's Animal Kingdom® Villas. This begins another exciting new era for Disney Vacation Club as we continue to explore future destination possibilities both domestically and internationally."

Disney Vacation Club, now celebrating its milestone 15th anniversary, is an innovative timeshare program that lets families enjoy flexibility and savings on future vacations at Disney destinations and more than 500 other popular vacation sites around the world. Since 2000, Disney Vacation Club membership has doubled to include more than 300,000 individuals from over 100 countries and every U.S. state.

Disney's Animal Kingdom® Villas will be the eighth Disney Vacation Club Resort, joining five others at the Walt Disney World® Resort, one in Vero Beach, Fla., and one in Hilton Head Island, S.C. Disney Vacation Club has sold out of memberships at its first six resorts, and sales remain ahead of schedule at its seventh property, Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, which opened in May 2004 near the Downtown Disney area at the Walt Disney World® Resort.

Plans to build 45 holiday apartments on Richmond Park Golf Club outside Watton were yesterday accepted in principle by Breckland Council.

However, the development control committee remains concerned that the new designs will not be in keeping with the holiday properties already on the site and has asked the developers to revise their plans.

Norfolk County Council has also raised objections to the scheme because it believes it would not be in keeping with the surrounding countryside.

Plans have already been revised for this reason and more vegetation is proposed around the boundaries of the site to help it blend into the surrounding greenery.

But Breckland had not finished with the project, with councillor Nigel Wilkin criticising the design of the proposed buildings.

He said: "It seems to me that the holiday homes already on the site are outstanding in their design.

"Looking at these designs, it seems like we are surrounding Cinderella with the ugly sisters."

There will be 45 holiday homes on the site consisting of timeshare houses and holiday apartments in a variety of styles.

There will also be a health club, including a gym, swimming pool and treatment rooms for the use of holidaymakers and a limited number of local people.

Breckland has asked for the buildings to be redesigned and some pathways into the properties to be redirected, but has otherwise agreed provisionally to the proposals put forward.

Pacific Monarch Resorts, developer, sales, marketing and management company for its family of vacation ownership resorts has added two new executives to its senior management staff. Andrew Gennuso, RRP has been named COO-Marketing/Sales and Shawn Howie, has been named Chief Financial Officer.

Andrew Gennuso, with 30 years of successful timeshare sales and marketing experience with such notable brands as Holiday Clubs International and Hilton Grand Vacation Clubs, was most recently Senior Vice President of Sunterra Corporation and President of Resort Marketing International (a subsidiary of Sunterra) (Las Vegas, Nevada). At Pacific Monarch Resorts, Gennuso will be responsible for the day to day direction of the company’s sales and marketing efforts as well as the strategic direction of the companies’ long term goals of expansion and marketing evolution.

Shawn Howie, who holds an MBA from Harvard University, has a notable background in financial management with such companies as Ernst & Young, Irvine Apartment Communities (an Irvine Company affiliate), Movielink and KB Home. As CFO of Pacific Monarch Resorts he will be responsible for all financial oversight of the company, including financial sourcing.
“Since our inception more than a quarter century ago, Pacific Monarch has continued steady and solid growth. We are committed to take the company to another level through a dedicated focus on developing a business model that will ensure sustainable growth for years to come. The recent additions of Andy and Shawn will further strengthen the senior management team, which will place PMR in a position to take advantage of strategic opportunities and maintain our position as a timeshare industry pace setter,” said Mark Post, President and Chief Executive Officer.

“Our goal is to begin a redefinition of our business model to focus on higher quality client generation and at the same time shift the paradigm to more of an on-site experiential sales process. Over the years our off-site sales offices have been very successful and our anticipation is that we will continue to expand those distribution channels and view them as entry points for our market penetration strategy,” said Gennuso.

Post adds, “With the addition of our Cabo Azul property in Los Cabos we are in a unique position to offer exciting destinations for Monarch Grand Vacations members as well as potential clients. Combined with our other resorts in Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Brianhead Utah, Dana Point and North San Diego, California, Monarch Grand Vacations will deliver the best of all worlds in the Southwest.”

Pacific Monarch Resorts employs over 100 vacation ownership team members in its corporate offices and more than 1000 people in various sites ranging from Las Vegas to Los Cabos.

With more than 87,000 vacation owners, Pacific Monarch Resorts, which operates Monarch Grand Vacations, is one of the largest independent vacation ownership companies. Monarch Grand Vacations resort locations include Las Vegas, Nevada; Dana Point, California; Palm Springs, California; North San Diego County, California; Brian Head, Utah, South Lake Tahoe, California and Los Cabos, Mexico (opening 2007).

Seven trends that will transform the Timeshare Industry in 2007

The timeshare industry with 10 billion in worldwide sales is quickly approaching its fifth decade. In the coming year, millions of travelers around the world will encounter and experience timeshare vacation ownership, fractional ownership, residence clubs, and condo-hotels. The upcoming years will bring about a new era in the timeshare industry; one that embraces branding, diversity, globalization, digital media, and more. Lawrence Hefler, a marketing and branding expert, and founder of Hefler International, is excited and passionate about reshaping the timeshare and vacation ownership industry. “Consumers will begin to realize new ways of how, when, and where the shared ownership messages for leisure and vacation products are delivered,” Hefler said. “Innovative companies will engage customers throughout the online and offline experience, delivering clear and consistent messages across all consumer and guest touch points while building brand trust.”

Hefler’s seven trends capture the new “brandstyles” that will transform the industry into the next decade:

Demobrandics: Preview centers, sales galleries, and resort destinations will offer the alternative of self-guided, audio-visual tours that will give diverse audiences a clear and consistent brand and product message, at their own pace, and in the language of their choice. Marketers will further see that audiences (especially baby boomers) are not a single segment at all, but rather a group of sub-segments differentiated by their lifestyle, life stage, and purchase behaviors, much more so than demographics of age, income, and geography.

Maxi-vacs: The days of one-dimensional, printed collateral materials, displays, presentation books, and signage are fading (literally and figuratively.) They will be replaced by multimedia screens, interactive touch screens, kiosks, and mobile tablet PCs. These technologies will allow consumers to engage more of their senses; to see, feel, and hear about the product, creating an emotion, thereby becoming more open to absorb and retain the information.

Postviewing: Old will become new again as electronic media; such as TV and radio will be utilized to reach and target local market segments. Face-to-face marketing will edge out telemarketing as the dominant way to personally connect consumers to the brand and the product. New preview centers and vacation galleries will proliferate in cities and locations away from the actual property being sold.

E-mmunities: Web sites will become more content based, user friendly, interactive, and transactional, creating opportunities for lead generation, rental inventory, re-sales, and eventually, purchasing online. With over 60 percent of US Internet users having broadband, expect to see greater use of rich media to engage users online. Consumers will further leverage their online research capabilities to make decisions, and share their experiences through user groups, online communities, chat rooms, and blogs. The use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) will rise as users can receive (rather than search) content, such as news, tips, information, and promotions from multiple sources by subscribing to a personalized feed.

Brandsharing: Companies will seek out and embrace strategic partners for co-branding, co-marketing, and data sharing. This will enhance their database with their partner’s database to gain a more robust view of their customers and prospects. Subsequently, a co-branded product message may come directly from a marketing partner.
TPG (trust per guest): To avoid consumer dissatisfaction with the sales and marketing process, companies will pay more attention to the Code of Standards and Ethics of the American Resort Development Association, also known as the Timeshare Bill of Rights. These guidelines are a template for best practices for timeshares, fractionals, and vacation clubs

Glocalization: The coming year will be the time to watch the growth spurt of the industry’s global marketing plan with strategic specific guidelines. Major players will look to grow their brands in new markets around the world. But, similar to the hospitality brands, it will be a learning experience to market globally and adapt their brand and product to local cultures.

“Timeshare style marketing, sales techniques and product experiences will be blogged about in social media-spheres. Some companies will fall short, while forward-thinking companies that engage in more education and compliance will win the hearts and minds of the buyer, their friends, their family, and most importantly, create brand advocacy,” Hefler added. Hefler’s opinions on the timeshare purchase experience parallels those of the American Resort Development Association: “The tolerance for aggressive, outdated direct sales practices is lower than ever before and comes with greater risks to our new found status as the desirable vacation product timeshare.”

Hefler is the founder of Hefler International, a marketing and brand consulting firm specializing in the timeshare vacation ownership, fractional, residence club, and condo-hotel spaces. After nearly a decade in the industry, Hefler saw the need for more sophisticated marketing strategies, brand integration, and innovation in a robust and still evolving industry in need of greater consumer confidence. Hefler’s marketing acumen is a result of his 20 years of experience in marketing management roles with global consumer brands including: American Express, BellSouth, Disney, and Hilton.

Bluegreen Settles Litigation With Central Florida Investments, Amends Rights Plan - Quick Facts

Bluegreen Corp. said it has settled pending litigation with David Siegel, David Siegel Revocable Trust and Central Florida Investments over the acquisition by these shareholders of approximately 32% of the outstanding stock of Bluegreen.

Central Florida Investments is the parent company of Westgate Resorts, a timeshare company that is a competitor of Bluegreen.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Siegel shareholders must reduce their holdings by at least 5.4 million shares within one year, and fully divest their holdings within two years.

The company also amended its rights plan. As amended, the rights plan will give the Siegel shareholders additional time to sell their shares, consistent with the schedule set by the settlement.

Wyndham Worldwide Corp. said that it would rebrand its timeshare properties - Fairfield Resorts, Trendwest North America and Trendwest South Pacific, under the Wyndham name.

The company noted that the rebranding process would commence with the Fairfield Resorts transition to Wyndham Vacation Resorts, effective immediately. Trendwest South Pacific would become Wyndham Vacation Resorts-Asia Pacific later this year, followed by Trendwest North America, which would transition its WorldMark by Trendwest brand to WorldMark by Wyndham in early 2007, the company added.

Wyndham Worldwide indicated that collectively, these brands would continue to operate as Wyndham Vacation Ownership, one of three business units that comprise Wyndham Worldwide.

A joint income of between £35,000 and £40,000, mid-30s upwards, and maybe with young kids - does this sound like a typical timeshare owner? Most people would think not. But Marriott Vacation Club International (MVCI), part of Marriott International, thinks otherwise. This profile is precisely the type of person that Marriott is lining up to buy timeshare - or, as it prefers to call it, "vacation ownership" - at its recently opened Village d'Ile-de-France at Disneyland Resort Paris.

Along with other hotel companies such as De Vere, Hyatt, Macdonald, Accor, Four Seasons and Starwood, Marriott has seen the value of utilising space for timeshare ownership. In fact, timeshare is now the second-largest revenue stream under the Marriott umbrella after Marriott Hotels, and the company operates 52 timeshare resorts in 29 locations in seven countries, with 5,200 apartments and more than 210,000 holiday owners worldwide.

But we're not talking just all-singing, all-dancing US resorts with several swimming pools and championship golf courses. The Village d'Ile-de-France is a relatively low-key operation with tasteful townhouses, each inspired by the rural residence of a different French Impressionist painter. When complete in 2005, the resort will have 190 two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouses, each providing 105sq m of living area that will accommodate up to six guests.

Hooking people in and overcoming the well-documented tarnished image of timeshare is obviously the key to success. And there's a desire to get away from the hard sell so traditionally associated with timeshare.

"We spend time with people and take them through it step by step," says Tom Groeninger, MVCI's regional vice-president marketing operations Europe, Middle East and Asia. "If we went in on the hard sell, we would be lost. We explain all the benefits and don't go into costs until towards the end of the presentation."

So how do you persuade people to part with that sort of money and commit themselves to - in the case of the Village d'Ile-de-France - 80 years of ownership?

Deep sofa
Welcome to the sales pitch. We'll sit down on a deep sofa to discuss it, one that's difficult to get out of. That's because Marriott wants you to be in a comfortable and non-threatening environment.

Let's start with current holiday patterns. How much do you spend on vacations each year? Do you have children and, if so, how old are they? If you traditionally go to a hotel, will you soon need two hotel rooms to accommodate them because they are outgrowing the concept of rollaway beds in the parents' room? That might soon prove rather expensive. With timeshare, you pay for tomorrow's holidays in today's currency.

We'll move on to consistency now. With timeshare, you know what you are getting, as opposed to taking a chance by choosing different accommodation each year that may not be of the standard you require. And because you pay an annual maintenance fee, you can be sure that the company you are buying from will reinvest the money in the property over the years.

Vacation exchange
Not yet convinced? Not keen to spend one week of every year in the same place? You don't have to. You don't have to commit yourself to the same week each year, only the same season for which you have paid. And if you really don't want to do that, you can swap your week - at a price, of course - through a third party such as Interval International or RCI, which specialise in vacation exchanges. You can even exchange your week for hotel stays, cruises or other benefits, depending on how the timeshare is set up.

Now to the emotional part: as the tenure in this case is for 80 years, you can bequeath it to someone else, perhaps to your children or grandchildren. Finally, cost. Prices at the Village d'Ile-de-France range from £9,300 to £18,900 per week of ownership, and Marriott will arrange financing. Purchasers typically take out a 10-year loan when buying one week, or a 15-year loan for two weeks. There's also an annual maintenance fee to pay: in the case of Disney, a fairly hefty £600. You get the picture.

Of course, not everyone buys. Even so, Groeninger estimates a surprisingly high immediate take-up of 15-20%. "If visitors say they'll go away and think about it, then they generally don't come back. If you don't get them on the day, then you're lost." But even those who say no are contacted after the event and asked what impression they left with, another move to buoy up timeshare's tarnished image.

Having got this far, operators are rubbing their hands with glee and gazing at the bank balance. So how do they make their money? Some benefits are obvious, some less obvious. The two parties involved are usually the developer and the operator, although in the case of the Village d'Ile-de-France they were one and the same, as Marriott, although usually only a management company, puts up money for timeshare development because it is so profitable.

For the developer, who typically takes a 20% development profit, cash-flow is boosted and debts can be quickly cleared and turned to equity. A separate management company or operator may then come in to run the property on behalf of the owners, taking a cut of 10-15% of the annual maintenance fee. Once all the units are sold, that operator gets guaranteed high occupancy rates and does not have to prepare for the peaks and troughs of normal trading. Units are usually sold for only 51 weeks of the year to allow for essential maintenance. And there's a further profit to be had on arranging the financing. In the USA, for example, Marriott underwrites and services the loans.

Higher spend
Less obvious benefits include higher spend from timeshare guests, who tend to spend more as they have paid up front. They also visit more often than hotel guests: owning two or more weeks is not uncommon in Marriott's experience.

Operationally, timeshare complexes are more cost-effective than their hotel counterparts, too. Whereas a hotel room typically takes 30 minutes to clean, villas in the Village d'Ile-de-France receive a daily tidy of about 15 minutes and a full clean once a week of about two-and-a-half hours per two-bedroom unit - and that means fewer members of staff.

So what happens at the end of it all? In the case of Marriott, the resort asset is held by a trustee. At the end of the usage life - 2082 - the trustee will dispose of the asset on behalf of the holiday owners rather than Marriott. Proceeds are then distributed, net of discharge costs, among the holiday owners.




Why timeshare isn't just for the big boys
If you're not part of a large hotel chain, you might understandably think that timeshare is not for you. You could be wrong. Earlier this year Gleneagles sent shock waves through the industry by entering the timeshare market with a £25m development on its 850-acre Perthshire estate. Managing director Peter Lederer concedes that timeshare is still a dirty word to some people, but he points out that its image is changing dramatically as more quality operators enter the market. Lederer predicts that there will be increasing demand for timeshare-style developments as people change the way they use their leisure time. "Rather than buy one or two holiday homes, people will have different real estate products in different locations."

According to David Clifton, managing director Europe, Middle East and Africa for Interval International, which manages timeshare exchanges, the principles are the same whether you are part of a 150-strong chain or just a single unit. "You need some basic facilities; and timeshare is not a panacea for a failing hotel, but it can work for most types of hotels, either in the city or in the country," he says.

Clifton could be described as a timeshare junkie - he used to own six weeks of timeshare; he's now down to two. A former builder and marketer of timeshare in the USA, Clifton recalls that he ran a mile when an acquaintance first tried to get him interested in the timeshare market. "I nearly just walked away, as the image was so bad then. But the more I looked into it, the more I realised it all made sense." As a consumer of timeshare, Clifton says that one of the most attractive elements is paying up front. "It's a huge advantage when you haven't got a bill to pay at the end of the week. A typical timeshare guest spends 15-20% more per day than a hotel one."

Of course, you don't have to give your entire hotel inventory over to timeshare. In many places it can happily coexist alongside a traditional hotel structure. A 100-bedroom unit could, for example, take 20 suites out if its inventory and render them suitable for timeshare, creating a separate timeshare division.

Depending on how the structure is set up, at the end of the timeshare "right to use" period operators regain the asset and can either resell it for hotel use or enter a further period of timeshare.

Clifton is convincing, knows his stuff and can talk for hours on the subject. But, tellingly, the statistics may reveal an audience that has yet to believe. In the USA, timeshare has been sold to only 5% of income-eligible households; in Europe that figure is more like 2.5%.

Timeshare trivia
"Don't rent the room, buy the hotel" was the slogan used to sell the first timeshare scheme in 1964 at Superdevolvy in the French Alps. From its start in hotels, timeshare moved to the USA, and especially Florida, where it was used to sell condominiums during an economic downturn.
There are more than 5,000 timeshare resorts worldwide, accommodating more than four million timeshare-owning families.
Year-round timeshare occupancy is estimated at more than 83%, compared with about 60% in the hotel industry generally.
The average number of weeks owned per holiday owner is 1.6.
There are some 1,400 timeshare resorts in Europe, 40% of which are in Spain, followed by Italy and France.
The USA has 32% of all timeshare resorts.
For more information on the law surrounding timeshare contact the Organisation for Timeshare in Europe, timeshare's official trade body, at www.ote-info.com.
For more information on exchange programmes and how to get into timeshare contact Interval International at www.resortdeveloper.com.
What to tell your customers
Buy tomorrow's holiday in today's currency.
Know what you are buying/consistency.
A legacy that you can leave to children or grandchildren.
Flexibility to exchange weeks for a small fee through a company such as Interval International.
Peace of mind that the operator will upgrade the facilities over the years through the annual maintenance fee.
Hospitality company and developer motivations
Highly profitable business.
Reduced debt and equity requirements.
Speeds up cash-flow.
Mixed-use developments become more feasible.
Many synergies with conventional hotels and other businesses.
Higher year-round occupancies than most hotels.
More resilient during economic downturns.
Brand building (customer loyalty).
Potential exit strategy for overbuilding.
Competitive pressure.
Significant sales and marketing advantage.
You "own the customer for life".
Asset retention at end of use period.
Timeshare profit centres
Development profit plus 20%.
Finance profit.
Resort management profit - 10-15% of maintenance fees.
Inventory rental program profit.
Higher occupancies.
Timeshare owners come back more often, stay longer and spend 20-30% more than hotel guests.
Brand loyalty - sell them other things.
Regain use of the asset at end of right-to-use programme.

Marketing and branding consultant Lawrence Hefler, founder of Hefler International, has identified seven key trends that will transform the timeshare industry in the next few years.

He said: “The upcoming years will bring about a new era in the timeshare industry; one that embraces branding, diversity, globalisation, digital media and more.

“Some companies will fall short, while forward-thinking companies that engage in more education and compliance will win the hearts and minds of the buyer, their friends, their family, and most importantly, create brand advocacy.”

The seven key trends he announced at the Vacation Ownership Investment Conference in Orlando last week were:

Glocalization – major brands will start developing brands in new markets worldwide but will adapt their brands and products to local cultures.

Brandsharing – Increasing focus on developing strategic partners for co-branding, marketing and data sharing.

Postviewing – where media such as TV and radio will be utilised to target localised audiences and face to face marketing will supersede telemarketing to personally connect with consumers.

Demobrandics - which will further segment the baby boomer market and allow for the emergence of preview centres, which will enable self-guided information gathering about timeshare products.

Maxi-vacs – the replacement of one dimensional marketing tools with multimedia technologies allowing customers to use all their senses to learn about the product.

E-mmunities – websites will become more user friendly, interactive and focused on creating lead generations and managing rental inventories online.

TPG – trust per guest – a general move towards more attention to standards, ethics and general best practice to avoid customer dissatisfaction.

Oakwood Mission Valley, a 170-unit multifamily property has been sold by Englewood, CO-based Archstone-Smith for $32.8 million. The sale of the property has an interesting twist to it: the site will be converted to a timeshare resort.

The property’s new owner, Redmond, WA-based Cendant Timeshare Resort Group, won out in an aggressive bidding on the class A property, which has previously been operated as apartments and short-term corporate housing. The property had a subset of buyers, according to Scott Davis, a partner with the Costa Mesa office of Chicago-based Moran & Co. Davis and Michael Murphy, also of Moran & Co. were the listing agents.

Davis tells GlobeSt.com the property had “hotel buyers, traditional apartment buyers” and others looking to keep it with its corporate housing structure, along with Cendant’s timeshare angle. “We thought there was a chance with any of those (buyers) but the winner was the timeshare group,” he adds.
Davis says Oakwood has “unconventional zoning restrictions by the city, dictating that it have a designated number of units available for shorter-term use.” Those restrictions drew interests from a variety of potential buyers, including REITs and pension funds. He says interest grew due to an "opportunity to enter into an attractive vacation market with exceptionally low vacancy rates, rising hotel occupancy rates and little other timeshare competition.”

Built in 1990, the property will see roughly $17 million in renovations, or $100,000 per unit. Interiors will add stainless steel appliances and plumbing will be replaced. Common areas will also be brought up to luxury hotel quality levels.

Of the 170 units, 58 are one-bedroom and 112 are two-bedroom residences. All the units are housed in a single, four-story building. The units range from 598 sf to 897 sf.

Davis says Oakwood is the first timeshare property sold out of Moran’s West Coast office. He adds that Cendant had already picked up two other sites in the San Diego area and had a good understanding of the zoning issues and what it would take to convert the units to timeshares.

Due to his unfamiliarity of the timeshare product type, the deal took a little longer than Davis is accustomed to seeing. “The normal due diligence we see is 30-45 days,” he says. “We gave these guys about 60 days, to make sure of the land use questions.”

First suit by consumer watchdog is against holiday resale company

It would waste no time in putting pressure on its clients to sign the deal and hand the money over — but it was tardy when it came to responding to complaints.

For that, a holiday resale company found itself in the spotlight as the first company that will be hauled to court by the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case).

Yesterday, Case filed an injunction writ against Orion's Belt Network, for repeatedly breaching the two-year-old Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act (CPFTA).

The injunction was recommended by Case and approved by a Ministry of Trade and Industry panel, which is chaired by a former high court judge.

Following this, a district court will examine evidence and hear lawyers of both sides before delivering a judgment.

If the court rules against Orion's Belt Network, it would be ordered to stop its tactics. And if it breaches consumer laws after that, the firm would be held in contempt of court and its owners face a fine and jail term.

Case opted for the legal route after Orion's Belt Network spurned three chances — over a period of six months — to sign a Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA), a contract that binds errant firms to agree to stop unfair practices and compensate consumers.

Despite being threatened with the court order, the company ignored a Sept 25 deadline.

Targeting those who feel trapped by their timeshare resort deals and can't wait to offload the burden, Orion's Belt Network offers to sell off their timeshare packages.

Fourteen of the company's clients — who paid amounts from $500 to $10,000 — complained to Case that Orion's Belt Network made misleading claims and used high pressure sales tactics, among other gripes.

Laboratory technician Lim Teck Meng (not his real name) was one of them.

When Orion's Belt Network called him in March and told him they could help him recover 80 per cent of the timeshare deal — or about $13,000 — that he had bought from LGM, a timeshare firm, Mr Lim thought it was a deal worth exploring.

Days later, Mr Lim and his wife, a nurse, met the firm's executives at their Park Mall office, where the couple was put through a "pressurising" hard-sell presentation, where executives took turns to explain the resale process and benefits.

After a tiring four hours, Mr Lim, 56, relented and signed the resale contract. He paid them $5,000, a discount from an initial $7,000. But when he studied the contract later, Mr Lim found that none of the terms mentioned a money-back guarantee. Incensed, Mr Lim lodged a complaint to Case the next day.

Another complainant paid $3,900 to the firm to help him get rid of a timeshare deal, only to realise later that it would have taken only $65 to cancel the contract himself, executive director of Case Mr Seah Seng Choon told Today.

At his Park Mall office yesterday, however, Orion's Belt Network's director Anan Devan accused Case of "not trying to settle this amicably".

Mr Anan claimed to have called Case "umpteen" times to set up a second meeting to resolve the matter and to ask for the case files of those who complained against his company.

When asked if he was denying that his firm had misled consumers and used pressure-selling tactics on them, Mr Anan asked: "What misleading claims? Have you heard of buyer's remorse?"

Case's Mr Seah said there was never a request by Orion's Belt Network to meet. If Orion's Belt Network disagreed with any term in the VCA, it could have talked to Case and drawn up new terms agreeable to both sides, Mr Seah added.

This latest case has prompted Case to consider cutting the time it is giving companies to respond to a VCA, from four months to two. Since the CPFTA took root in 2004, six companies have signed the agreement. Compared to a court order, a VCA is "much cheaper, friendlier and behind the scene", Case vice-president Dr Ang Peng Hwa said.

By stalling on the VCA, however, the company has given Mr Lim — and others like him — no choice but to take a longer route, via the Small Claims Tribunal, to recover their money.

"I still wonder why I gave in to them. Now I just want my money back," said Mr Lim, whose case will be heard next Monday.

Relax, Recharge, Rejuvenate: Hyatt Treats American Express Cardmembers to "Pure Relaxation" -- a 50-Minute Complimentary Massage at Hyatt Pure Spas

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts are giving guests Pure Relaxation -- a complimentary 50-minute massage or spa treatment -- when they stay two or more consecutive nights at select locations, and pay the Pure Relaxation rate using their American Express® Card. Eighty-three Hyatt International properties and Park Hyatt hotels worldwide with luxurious spas or treatment rooms are participating in this limited time offer. Guests must mention the AXSPA offer code to receive the Pure Relaxation massage or spa treatment. The promotion begins November 1, 2006 and continues through February 28, 2007.

"Hyatt is proud of the industry-leading position it has earned through creating distinctive wellness experiences for its guests at Hyatt Hotels & Resorts around the world," said Sara Kearney, vice president of marketing operations, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. "As a company that offers some of the world's most culturally indigenous spa experiences we are in a unique position to show our gratitude to customers using their American Express Card with the ultimate relaxation thank you."

HyattPure, the company's global spa portfolio, includes serene retreats such as Plateau, the industry's first residential spa at Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, featuring an awe-inspiring 80,000 square foot urban oasis with 14 spa guestrooms and suites.

Hyatt Pure spas also include the"fifth level of heaven" at i.sawan at Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok and Amara at Park Hyatt Dubai. These properties present wellness-dedicated accommodations that are a natural evolution of Plateau's goals and achievements, although they are distinctive in design and feel.

"With our vision of cultural authenticity, all of our spas are an extension of their environments," said Gordon Tareta, Hyatt's assistant vice president of spa operations. "Our approach to spas is zero-based. We start from scratch with each location and consider the local setting: amount of sunshine, local altitude, and other climatic factors. We plan our services accordingly, creating an experience that is organically linked with the traditions of the destination."

This offer is available to one person, per room, per stay. For full terms and conditions and participating properties see www.purerelaxation.hyatt.com.

AIF Study by PricewaterhouseCoopers Reports Robust Financial Indicators in Multibillion Dollar Timeshare Industry

The AIF annual benchmark study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) of the financial performance of the timeshare industry released today by the ARDA International Foundation (AIF) underscores the ongoing, robust financial performance of the multibillion dollar vacation ownership industry. The study, which focused on an industry subset of 46 companies encompassing 293 timeshare resorts in active sales1, showed key financial ratios such as sales and marketing costs remained in-line as companies posted robust 9.1 percent growth in 2005. Each year, PwC surveys a group of timeshare resort developers to take the industry’s financial pulse—analyzing industry trends and setting benchmarks on product pricing, sales, marketing costs, and financing, and other financial indicators. This year’s findings reveal a 9.1 percent year-over-year increase in net sales of timeshare resorts in active sales, as the industry subset reported $6.1 billion in net new sales, following sales of $5.6 billion in 2004. Approximately 91 percent of 2005 sales occurred in the U.S. Average net sales per active resort were $21.3 million last year.

“ARDA's recent research has shown the popularity of vacation ownership continues to rise among consumers; this study takes a close look at the business of timeshare development and shows companies' financial performance remains on-track to satisfy that growing demand,” said Howard Nusbaum, president and chief executive officer of ARDA.

Half of respondents sold more than 2,500 timeshare weeks during 2005, with the largest companies experiencing the most rapid growth (11.8 percent increase in net new sales). While most timeshare companies continue to sell timeshares that are based on ownership of an interval week at a specific resort, points-based products, in which an owner has purchased a points or credits backed by a usage right to a club's resorts, have achieved a prominent position. Of the $6.1 billion of net new timeshare sales in 2005 (excluding fractional sales), $5.1 billion (84 percent) was classified as interval week sales, while $1 billion (16 percent) was classified as points sales.

Timeshare sales in many locations exhibit seasonal patterns, as popular vacation periods correspond to heightened sales activity. Compared to 2004, net sales in 2005 were 7.2 percent higher in the first quarter, 6.7 percent higher in the second quarter, 10.9 percent higher in the third quarter, and 10.5 percent higher in the fourth quarter.

“Study results reflect strong growth in the timeshare industry, as well as companies' ability to control key financial indicators as they expand and enter new markets,” explained Scott Berman, a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner.

The weighted average price of a timeshare interval, or week, sold during 2005 was $17,797, reflecting an increase of 3.8 percent over 2004 prices. The increases reflect changes in timeshare week prices as well as any changes that may have occurred in the types of units sold. Approximately 63 percent of respondents reported higher average prices in 2005 than in 2004, indicating that price increases were broad-based.

Study results reflect the continued importance of financing provided to consumers at the point of sale. Companies reported financing 72.9 percent of the dollar value of timeshare sales in 2005, compared to 69.7 percent in 2004. The remainder of the sales was cash or cash-out within the first 90 days. The average interest rate on new consumer loans in both 2004 and 2005 was 13.9 percent, and companies reported receiving average down-payments equal to 14.9 percent of the contract price.

The study participants included eight publicly traded companies, or subsidiaries of publicly traded companies, which accounted for 72 percent of net sales reported, and 38 privately owned companies. Geographically, the survey respondents broke down as follows: 17 companies were headquartered in the Southeastern U.S., including 13 Florida-based companies; 13 in the Northeast and Midwest; and 12 in the Southwest and West. Approximately four percent of the respondents were based in other North American countries (comprised of two Canadian-based companies), and approximately four percent were based in other international locations.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers study supports the findings of an AIF study released last week on the full industry that also points to the dramatic strength in vacation ownership, with increases in new owners and occupancy rates that far exceed U.S. hotels.

Bluegreen Corporation Completes $139.2 Million Vacation Ownership Receivables Term Securitization With BB&T

Bluegreen Corporation (NYSE: BXG), a leading provider of Colorful Places to Live and Play®, today announced that on September 21, 2006, BB&T Capital Markets, a division of Scott & Stringfellow, Inc., served as initial purchaser and placement agent for a private offering and sale of $139.2 million of Bluegreen Corporation vacation ownership receivable-backed securities (the "2006 Term Securitization"). Approximately $153.0 million in aggregate principal of vacation ownership receivables were securitized in this transaction, including: 1) $75.7 million in aggregate principal of receivables that were previously transferred under an existing vacation ownership receivables purchase facility in which Branch Banking and Trust Company serves as Agent (the "Purchase Facility"); 2) $38.0 million of vacation ownership receivables owned by Bluegreen® immediately prior to the 2006 Term Securitization; and 3) an additional $39.3 million in aggregate principal of the Company’s qualifying vacation ownership receivables (the "Pre-funded Receivables") that can be sold by Bluegreen through December 22, 2006.

Excluding the Pre-funded Receivables, the remaining $113.7 million of receivables (the “Receivables”) and the related $66.7 million of receivable-backed debt under the Purchase Facility, were accounted for on Bluegreen’s balance sheet as assets and liabilities, respectively, immediately prior to the consummation of the 2006 Term Securitization.

The Receivables were sold and the Pre-funded Receivables are expected to be sold to Bluegreen Receivables Finance Corporation XII, the Company’s wholly-owned, special purpose finance subsidiary ("BRFC XII"). BRFC XII then sold the Receivables and is expected to sell the Pre-funded Receivables to BXG Receivables Note Trust 2006-B, an owners' trust (a qualified special purpose entity), without recourse to Bluegreen or BRFC XII, except for breaches of certain representations and warranties at the time of sale.

The $139.2 million of proceeds from the 2006 Term Securitization were used to: 1) pay all amounts outstanding under the Purchase Facility; 2) pay certain fees associated with the transaction to third-parties; 3) deposit initial amounts in a required cash reserve account; 4) provide net cash proceeds of $33.9 million to Bluegreen; and 5) place proceeds of $35.7 million (at an advance rate of 91%) in an escrow account with the indenture trustee as payment for the Pre-funded Receivables, along with other associated amounts, to be held until the Pre-funded Receivables are actually sold by Bluegreen to BRFC XII. If the Company does not sell sufficient Pre-funded Receivables to earn the entire amount of related proceeds held in the escrow account by December 22, 2006, the remaining proceeds will be used to pay down amounts owed to investors in the 2006 Term Securitization. Bluegreen also received a retained interest in the future cash flows from the 2006 Term Securitization. The net cash proceeds from the 2006 Term Securitization will be used for general operating purposes.

As a result of the 2006 Term Securitization, Bluegreen Timeshare Finance Corporation I, the Company’s wholly-owned, special purpose finance subsidiary, may transfer additional notes receivable for a cumulative purchase price of up to $137.5 million under the Purchase Facility, on a revolving basis, prior to May 25, 2008, at approximately 85% of the principal balance, subject to the eligibility requirements and certain conditions precedent.

George F. Donovan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bluegreen, commented, “We are very pleased to have consummated this transaction, which we believe reflects the quality of Bluegreen’s vacation ownership receivables and the promising outlook for our Resorts business.”

After a crackdown by their ISP, two US men have pleaded guilty to sending thousands of junk emails.

Two spammers could go to jail after an investigation by EarthLink found they were sending thousands of unsolicited messages from PeoplePC accounts.

Jared Cosgrave and Mohammed Haque pleaded guilty last week in a US District Court in Southern Florida to charges of fraud and violation of the Can-Spam Act. Sentencing is scheduled for 16 November, and the two could get up to three years in jail and be given a fine of up to $250,000.

The two were identified in an investigation last year by EarthLink's fraud and abuse team into activity at its PeoplePC subsidiary. The team discovered more than 25,000 junk emails had been sent through 10 PeoplePC accounts that originated from Miami. The emails contained such subject headers as "I'm finally back home" and "I just got back in town", and contained messages that marketed herbal supplements.

The accounts were subsequently closed, and the FBI called in to investigate.

EarthLink, which acquired PeoplePC four years ago, has been aggressively pursuing spammers. Last year, the Internet service provider filed a lawsuit against a Florida man known as the "timeshare spammer". He was convicted for violating the Can-Spam Act and sending millions of unsolicited mail messages.

EarthLink said it has received more than $200m in judgments from spam-related cases since 1996.

Six Hyatt Spas Named to Travel + Leisure's World's Best Spas List

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts is proud to announce today that six of its properties -- Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa, Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa, Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa, Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa, Park Hyatt Toronto and I.Sawan Residential Spa & Club at Grand Hyatt Erawan, Bangkok -- have been honored by Travel + Leisure's 11th annual World's Best Spa poll. This esteemed accolade, given by the readers of Travel + Leisure, is a true mark of excellence in the industry.
"This is a tremendous accomplishment for each property and the recently developed HyattPure brand," said Gordon Terata, assistant vice president of spa operations for Hyatt Hotels Corporation. "Each of our properties holds true to the HyattPure Promise, which serves as a guarantee that our facilities around the world offer an extensive array of treatment therapies that leverage both age-old and modern techniques, and are deeply rooted in the local culture."

Hyatt Resorts' three Hawaiian properties ranked in the Top 10 Hotel Spas in Hawaii with Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa ranked third, Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa ranked fifth and Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa ranked tenth. Hyatt had more properties on the top 10 Hawaiian spas list than any other hotel chain. All three resorts offer distinctive treatments rooted in the Hawaiian culture including the Kaanapali Salt Glow offered at Spa Moana at the Hyatt Regency Maui and the lomi-lomi massage offered at the Na Ho'ola Spa at Hyatt Regency Waikiki. To further enhance the guest experience the ANARA spa at the Grand Hyatt Kauai will complete renovations in early 2007.

Tamaya Mist at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa, located in Santa Ana Pueblo, was the only property in the state of New Mexico to make the top 25 hotel spas in the U.S. This unique spa offers a calming and rejuvenating menu of services based in the traditions of the Tamayame, including Ancient Drumming where guests are massaged with mud and chilis from a local mountain and the therapist drums to help alleviate stress.

Park Hyatt Toronto was honored as one of the top five hotel spas in this year's poll. In conjunction with Travel + Leisure, the spa will offer a special for readers entitling them to a complimentary Stillwater Relax Kit -- a stress-relief scalp treatment, aromatherapy candle, bath salts, body cream, and relaxation tips -- for magazine readers who book a 60-minute Stillwater Do Cho Massage during the month of October.

I.Sawan Residential Spa & Club at the Grand Hyatt Erawan, Bangkok was named to the Ten to Watch list. I.Sawan brings to life the unique residential spa philosophy, pioneered by Hyatt International, where guestrooms double as spa suites, thus eliminating the need for guests to move from room to room between treatments while providing an unparalleled level of privacy. The properties named to this list are new properties chosen by the editors of the magazine that they expect to see on the list in the future.

Travel + Leisure magazine's annual World's Best Spa readers' poll appears in the October issue of the magazine and is currently on newsstands. In order to be eligible for the World's Best Awards, spas must receive not only high marks but also a minimum number of reader evaluations.

Errant timeshare firm to resolve consumer complaints out of court

TWO days after the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) slapped a court order on a defiant holiday resale firm, the firm extended an olive branch by proposing to settle the matter out of court.

Executives from Orion's Belt Network met Case officials yesterday and agreed to write a proposal to diffuse the matter before legal action went into full swing. The company is expected to submit the proposal today.

On Monday, the company, which helps timeshare owners to resell their timeshare properties for a fee, became the first company to be taken to court by the consumer watchdog.

Fourteen consumers, who paid amounts ranging between $500 and $10,000, had complained to Case, saying that Orion's Belt Network made misleading claims and used high pressure sales tactics, among other gripes.

Case chose to take the legal route after the company shunned three chances over six months to sign a Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA), a contract that binds errant firms to agree to stop unfair practices and compensate consumers.

Despite being threatened with the court order, the company ignored a Sept 25 deadline. On Monday, its director Anan Devan told reporters that he was prepared for a court battle.

But at the end of the one-hour meeting initiated by Orion's Belt Network yesterday, the firm told Case it would draw up a proposal geared at resolving the matter out of court.

The company's proposal is expected to be similar to the VCA that Case had wanted it to sign.

Under the VCA, the company must agree to stop and not repeat their unfair practices. The firm would also have to compensate consumers with amounts that will be set by Case.

It was not clear if Orion's Belt Network would have to pay extra costs for ignoring invitations to sign the VCA. But Today understands that having allowed the case to reach this point, the company would have less room for negotiation than if they had signed the VCA. They would also now have to pick up the tab for whatever legal fees Case has incurred until now.

The matter, however, could still go to court, as Case could reject Orion's Belt Network's proposal, said Case executive director Seah Seng Choon.

"What they will propose is still subject to our agreement. We have to check with our lawyers to see if their proposal can be accepted at this stage," he told Today.

Mr Anan could not be reached for comment.

A LONG-TIME Queenstowner – we’ll call him Fred – was keen to sign up for the presentation to find out what timeshare in 2006 is like.

And he was also happy to accept a $100 dinner voucher at Sofitel’s Vie restaurant that was offered as a lure to sit through the pitch.

Not a bad deal for 90 minutes of his time, Fred figured.

His description of the pitch – put on at Sofitel’s five-star hotel complex by the Accor Premiere Vacation Club one recent afternoon – is less flattering.

“I would liken it to a used car sales lot,” says the Queenstowner, who agreed to tell Mountain Scene on condition of anonymity.

The first thing to strike Fred was the location of the APVC office near the Sofitel entrance.

“I found it really quite surprising to be having people pitching timeshare as someone is walking in to check into a $400-$500 a night room.”

He’d expected to be in a room of people with someone delivering a presentation from up front.

Nope, Fred was paired up with an Aussie builder and assigned a salesman who took them through the deal at a small table.

“The reason they want it [almost] one on one is they don’t want someone shooting holes in the thing and everybody hearing.

“They don’t want a jerk like me saying, ‘What about this, what about that?’ It spoils their control.”

He says the “pathetic” sales attendant, in his early 20s, couldn’t even tell the Aussie builder the costs in Australian dollars and instead of answering questions, would say he’d get to that later.

“He obviously had to go through some training where they get told to say, ‘That’s a very good question’.

“He must have said, ‘That’s a very good question’ about 30 times without really answering it’.

“The essential pitch of the thing is you’re locking in your vacations for the next 80 years.

“Your vacations are at a fixed price for the rest of your life and your kids’ lives so that all looks very good,”
Fred adds.

However, Fred says, after emphasising how much money you’ll save – and that it’s inflation-free – they mention an annual maintenance fee starting at $A630 ($NZ710) in year one, which is dependent on the Consumer Price Index and can change by as much as five per cent each year.

“That comes in the last five minutes. I’m not trying to say this thing is a sham but they gloss over some of the stuff that undermines their argument.”

Overall, eyewitness Fred says it’s professional and well-run – “as far as timeshare goes”.

But he doesn’t feel 90 minutes is enough time to digest the fine print and decide to commit to a $16,000-$28,000 purchase without financial and legal advice.

“It’s all legalese. It must be 30 pages of financial disclosure terms.

“It’s not hard sell, twisting your arm, but the whole thing is geared to having you decided. They said ‘If [your answer is] a maybe, then it’s a no’.

“I was astonished they’d contemplate people showing up for 90 minutes and signing up for a $30,000 deal.”

Beware the hustle

WHEN eyewitness Fred says 30 pages of fine print is too much to absorb there and then – so the timeshare touts shouldn’t demand instant sign-ups – he’s wrong about only one thing.

There are 130 pages, not 30. And much of it is dense legalese.

Timeshare company Accor Premiere Vacation Club agrees prospective buyers should take their time – the info pack has warnings to do so, like: “Seek advice before committing yourself.”

Pity the company hasn’t told its hustlers to allow buyers to take more time.

At least there’s a “Cooling-Off Statement” which gives five days for you to have second thoughts and cancel.

But if the pitch wasn’t so heavy on “Buy now”, then sellers – on commissions averaging $1500 per deal up to $7000 – wouldn’t have to heat buyers up so much.

And the cooling-off period wouldn’t be needed.

The “Buy now” inducements are a package of incentives called “Premiere Plus” – essentially an upgrade – but only if you sign up there and then.

The fine print also refers to possible discounts of up to 7.5 per cent for Premiere Plus deals signed on the same day as the pitch.

So what’s the deal?

You’re not buying a direct freehold stake in the conventional
sense but the documentation says you’re buying into a “managed investment scheme registered with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission”.

Yet this documentation, warns the fine print, isn’t an investment statement or prospectus under New Zealand law.

Another warning puts a shiver up the spine: the promoters “may not be subject in all respects to NZ law”. It doesn’t say why not.

APVC Ltd, which holds the real estate “as a statutory trustee for the club members”, started up in 2000 and is owned by global French hotel giant Accor.

Here’s the real deal: by giving APVC a one-off lump sum, you’re supposedly pre-paying 80 years’ worth of holidays, of varying lengths and varying luxury depending on the price point you choose between NZ$16,690 and NZ$97,740.

You get “a beneficial interest” in a varying number of accommodation units owned or leased by APVC at each of 12 Australian and two New Zealand resorts, one of which is Queenstown’s St Moritz hotel – part of the Accor chain.

More units in other resorts will be bought, built or leased to keep pace with sales, claims the literature.

Buyers are “members” who belong to a “club” – currently with 15,000 – and get yearly holiday “points”.

But beware – as Our Man Fred says, the hustlers don’t put too much emphasis on the extra costs yet they’re all there in the fine print. Cleaning, for instance. You only get one clean per holiday week – a second clean costs $A75-$A225 ($NZ85-$NZ255). A late departure also sets you back $A200 ($NZ225).

Then there are annual “club fees”, currently $A630 ($NZ710) says Fred, to cover running costs, maintenance and refurbishment – and a tidy little “management fee” for APVC.

This year, APVC’s management fee is budgeted at $A570,000 ($NZ645,000) but the disclosure statement says the company also has the right to hike the management fee – to over $A1.5 million ($NZ1.7m) on the current operating budget.

APVC can also unilaterally impose a “special levy” on members if club fees prove insufficient to cover costs.

Divi Tiara Beach Resort is definitely up for sale at the right price and offers are still being accepted.

This was confirmed this week by Vice President Sales and Marketing with Divi Resorts Mark Steward.

The resort on Cayman Brac closed last month with the loss of 37 jobs.

Mr. Steward told the Caymanian Compass that the price of the resort is between US$9 to $11 million, depending on what is included in the sale.

As it stands, Divi Resorts has been given four viable offers for the resort and one of these is from a Cayman Islands’ politician, said Mr. Steward.

“We expect to make a decision on these offers at the end of the week,” he said.

At a press briefing a few weeks back Minister for Tourism Charles Clifford said that up to that point the owners had suggested the property was not for sale and Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts said the government had received several expressions of interest from parties interested in purchasing it and re–opening it immediately.

Mr. Steward asserted that the property has been and is for sale.

He did note that many offers had been made that could not be entertained as they were well below the market price for the property.

Mr. Steward said the actual sale price will be contingent by what the customer is offering to buy. For example, offers include: for the business ongoing as it is; for the dive business independent of the hotel and property; and for the land only.

The day the resort closed for business, he said, there were bids made for the dive shop boats, but they have not been sold pending the big sale.

Speaking about the units sold as timeshares at the resort, Mr. Steward said they involved a separate parcel of land of which Divi is to retain ownership.

The timeshare units remain open along with housekeeping and maintenance on them. Timeshare guests can also use the amenities at the Brac Reef Beach Resort, such as diving and the restaurant, he said. Some timeshare guests are being housed at Brac Caribbean Resort and Carib Sands Beach Resort.

Those who had pre–booked vacations at the resort are also being set up with accommodations at other tourist properties on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.

“We stayed a good citizen on Cayman Brac and filled up all our competitors,” said Mr. Steward.

The Department of Tourism has also contacted dive wholesalers and travel agents who book dive travel to the resort to support guests who already have reservations, and to ensure that Cayman does not lose business to competing destinations, Minister Clifford said recently.

When asked if staff pension payments have been paid up, Mr. Steward said everything was paid up as of two weeks ago. A loan had to be secured in order to do this.

“For the past three years the hotel had not made a positive amount of money,” he said, citing the biggest problem as direct airlift from the US to Cayman Brac.

This will be the same challenge if a buyer chooses to re–open the hotel there, he said.

“To go in with a 50 to 60 room hotel Cayman Airways would have to put on a more direct service from Miami into Cayman Brac,” he said

This would be needed at least twice a week such as a Sunday and Thursday or a Tuesday and Saturday, he said, because people tend to go for a four–or–five–night vacation.

Mr. Clifford said with regard to the number of air travel seats to Cayman Brac in general over the past five years figures had significantly increased.

Cayman Airways Express, he said, has the capacity to provide up to 4,850 roundtrip seats per month to the Sister Islands.

Divi Tiara also cited reasons for closure as increased competition from a growing number of niche market dive destinations throughout the Caribbean, high insurance costs, and weather, which in the past years has created real and perceived concerns about travel to the Cayman Islands.

Mr. Clifford also recently noted that there had been problems with the renewal of licensing of the resort, based on the resort not meeting minimum Hotel Licensing Board standards.

Mr. Steward said that the company would have invested the money in the resort to get it to the standards that are required by the Licensing Board as it had done every year.

“However, in reviewing the infusion of cash that our stockholders have had to input on a yearly basis due to lack of revenue from tourism, this project was deemed as not profitable since we have no chance of regaining the investment due to the loss of the business caused by the airlift situation.”

MRS Mary Green, from Gateside in Fife, feels that she's been stung twice.

The first sting was by a timeshare organisation called Gigantes Promotions, which offered her a cheap holiday deal.

Mary paid £1300 by credit card while on holiday in Tenerife, then settled the balance of £2450 when she got home.

When the promised certificates did not arrive, Mary and her husband tried to contact Gigantes by phone and mail, but the company had disappeared.

At this point, Mary contacted her credit card company, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and was disappointed for the second time.

Mary had done her homework and felt she had a solid claim for reimbursement under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

When you buy something, there are laws to protect you and if the trader doesn't fulfil their duties, you can sue.

But if you have bought something using credit - using the bank's money not yours - the bank normally becomes equally responsible if there's a problem.

Be careful though, if you're using a card such as American Express and Diner's Club - which require monthly bills to be settled in full - you can't ask them to get involved. The same applies to debit cards.

And if you use your credit card to get cash to pay for your purchases, you won't get any help from your bank if something goes wrong.

RBS offered to reimburse Mary the £1300 she had paid on her credit card as a gesture of goodwill, but refused to be involved with the balance of £2450.

Mary's local Trading Standards supported her and even wrote to RBS on her behalf.

But eventually she was told she had only one option - to take RBS to court.

More bad news was to come. The High Court had decided to investigate the question of overseas transactions since some banks were claiming the act covered only domestic transactions.

To Mary's dismay, it found in favour of the card issuers.

When Mary contacted RBS again, they quoted this High Court ruling in their answer and reiterated they would only pay her the £1300 she had paid on her credit card.

Mary thought she had reached the end of the road.

She said: "I felt I had no choice but to accept this offer although I did think it was a cop out.

"I couldn't consider taking them to court and so I gave in and accepted."

But it wasn't over yet. In April of this year, Mary read that the Court of Appeal had overturned the High Court verdict. The act did mean that the banks had a responsibility to compensate their clients when overseas deals went wrong.

Mary was elated and expected RBS to offer to refund the full amount, but they didn't.

She added: "They said that since I had accepted the £1300, the matter was closed. I was appalled. I feel they took advantage of me. If I'd known, I'd have hung on."

Mary felt that, providing they knew about the appeal, RBS had a responsibility to tell her that an appeal was being lodged against the High Court ruling and, at the very least, to wait until the appeal had been considered before settling.

She felt the offer should not have been irrevocable and RBS should have complied with the new ruling when it was made.

The official response from RBS is that they were permitted by the Consumer Credit Act to refuse to compensate Mary for overseas transactions at the time.

The act referred to 'transactions' and made no distinction between domestic and overseas, and the court action was taken in order to clarify this.

The wording of the act was subsequently tested and the ambiguity on which RBS relied was removed after appeal. At that point, I feel the bank should have paid up. But they didn't.

It's worth knowing that HSBC, Bank of Scotland and Sainsbury's Bank were all honouring claims for purchases made abroad at the time.

I have always maintained that people trust their banks too much - they treat them as they would their doctors or solicitors.

Yet banks are simply a businesses and, like most businesses, do whatever they are entitled to do to maximise their profits and limit their liabilities.

Yes, Royal Bank of Scotland may have felt legally entitled to do as it did.

But, morally, I feel it's a very different story.

Chairman of Carnival Cruise Lines, Mickey Harrison, has written to the governments of the Caribbean, requesting an urgent meeting with them and United States authorities in Washington, D.C., according to secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace.

The request follows a move by the U.S. Congress to delay the implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) new passport requirements, until June 1, 2009, for cruise passengers travelling to the U.S. from the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada or Bermuda, but still requiring U.S. citizens travelling by air to these regions to have a passport by January 8, 2007.

Unfair advantage

The decision reportedly gives the cruise lines an unfair advantage over land-based operators (hotels) and airlines that fly to the Caribbean.

Speaking with The Gleaner from the Interval International Timeshare Conference in Orlando, Florida, yesterday, Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace said the cruise lines want to compete on a level playing field with their land-based competitors.

However, since the announcement was made on Monday, regional tourism interests have been predicting that the decision will have a devastating impact on the region.

"We do not plan to sit and wait to see what will happen," the CTO secretary general said.

Already the issue has been placed high on the agenda of the Caribbean Hotel Association's (CHA) executive committee meeting which is scheduled for Friday in Miami.

Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace said regional tourism officials have been meeting with senior U.S. officials in the Caribbean who, over the last year, have been pressing the Caribbean's case in Washington, D.C.

He said CTO now plans to intensify its awareness efforts with the hope that the United States authorities will understand how catastrophic the effect will be. "They need to be clear on it."

In 2005, research commissioned by the CHA, which was done by the World Travel and Tourism Council on the economic impact of the U.S.A.'s passport changes to Caribbean travel and tourism, showed that 188,000 jobs would be lost if the law became effective in January 2006.

After considerable lobbying, the region was later given a one-year extension, which expires on January 7, 2007.

The report said that among the nine Caribbean destinations that may be impacted, the biggest effect could be felt in Jamaica, where 80 per cent of U.S. visitors to the island do not use passports.

When the numbers were translated into direct and indirect employment, some 114,000 jobs in Jamaica were said to be on the line.

Some people got excited about the Dow Industrials reaching their all-time high this week. Another market that is far more exciting — to yours truly, at least — is the real estate market, which will set its own local record in 2006. Based upon the first nine month's activities in the sale of commercial and residential properties in the New York region, I would not be surprised to see sales in excess of $30 billion.

Of course, it takes a lot of activity to set a record of $30 billion. So just consider what's going on today. The 1 million-square-foot Manhattan Mall, located at 100 West 33rd St., hit the market. Manhattan Mall originated as a department store for the Gimbel Brothers. It was erected in 1910 on Broadway and 33rd Street, has 11 levels above ground and two below. After Gimbels' demise in 1987, Melvin Simon & Associates partnered with Silverstein Properties and the Zeckendorf Companies to redevelop the building into a mall, specialty stores and an A & S department store.

The original cost was $450 million; Argent Ventures acquired the mall and office building in 1998 by buying its debt for a reported $135 million. Argent reduced the mall's retail square feet into 180,000 on two below-grade levels, the ground floors and the first floor. In 2002 the firm converted the five floors above that, some 450,000 square feet, into office space for Bank of America and Interpublic Group.

Also today, at 5:00 pm, the first bids are due from real estate investors around the world who are willing to pay the highest price ever for an apartment complex, the 80-building, 11,800 residential rental apartment-unit complex that makes up Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town.

Few real estate insiders were surprised by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.'s announcement earlier this summer; this prize has been owned by the insurance company for more than 60 years and they were looking to sell.

Development sites and hotels are also fueling the sales volume this year. Last week, Belfonti Capital Partners and the Carlyle Group closed on the sale of the former Rogers Peet Department Store at 485 Fifth Ave.to an affiliate of Global Hyatt Corp. for $136 million.

In 2005, Belfonti and Carlyle entered into a joint venture agreement to convert the former office building into a for-sale residential condominium. The joint venture paid $88 million to an investment group headed by Jack Forgash, who earlier in the year had paid $54 million for the 95-year-old, 185,000-square-foot building with entrances on Fifth Avenue and 41st Street and on 42nd Street between Madison and Fifth avenues.Hyatt plans to convert the building into a luxury suite hotel. According to the trade, when completed the hotel will have 200 suites or rooms at a cost in excess of $1 million each.

"The lack of available hotels for acquisition continues to result in increased values" the principal and head of hospitality consulting at Sonnenblick-Goldman, Mark Gordon, said."We recently advised on the sale of an office-to-hotel conversion that was originally planed as an office-to-residential conversion. This is a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future as increasing value of hotels outpaces the value of residential in certain areas of the city."

Hilton Grand Vacations Co., a division of Hilton Hotels, announced last week that it has begun construction of a timeshare at its 28-story property on a site at 102-108 West 57th St. between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. The building will feature 161 units, with an expected completion date of 2009.

This marks the first time a building designed exclusively for timeshare accommodations has been built in Manhattan. The suite hotel will rise on the former Shelly's restaurant (which has relocated to West 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues) on the former site of the Horn & Hardhart Automat (perhaps I'm dating myself with the aforementioned reference).

In June, the 112,965-square-foot site was sold for $63 million, or $557 a developable square foot. "The sale represents one of the most significant land sales in 2006," said Mark Spinelli, of Massey Knakal Realty Services, who represented the seller with Robert Knakal and James Nelson. "The premium price was nearly 20% higher than the average price paid for large scale development sites in Manhattan south of 96th Street. In fact, the only two large scale comparable land sales that surpassed the 57th Street site were Harry Macklowe's purchase of the former Drake Hotel at 440 Park Ave. earlier this year, and Garden Homes purchase of the former Beth Israel Hospital North at 170 East End Ave."

Directly across the street from this site, adjacent to the Buckingham Hotel, on the corner of West 57th Street and Avenue of the Americas, demolition has begun for the construction of a boutique hotel. It is on the site of the old Ritz Fur Shop and directly across the street from the new Hilton.

Hotels continue to be in demand by investors. Last week, LaSalle Hotel Properties, a REIT, announced it is in contract to purchase the 138-room, Holiday Inn Wall Street, for $51.5 million, or $373,188 a room.According to the trade, the 46-story, 770-room Crowne Plaza Hotel Times Square at 1605 Broadway at 49th Street is in contract to be sold to a joint venture. The purchase is paying about $225 million.

As I reported last month, a joint venture of a consortium of European and American investors are in contract to purchase the Beekman Tower Hotel on First Avenue and 49th Street and the Eastgate Murray Hill on Lexington Avenue and East 38th Street.

In June, Istithmar Hotels FZE announced the acquisition of the classic Beaux-Arts former Knickerbocker Hotel in Times Square. On the southeast corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, it is known as 6 Times Square. The Dubai-based company paid about $300 million, or more than $1,000 a square foot, for the property, and converted it to office space. Now it's being converted back to a hotel.

According to the trade, a Middle Eastern company is expected to purchase the 270-room W Hotel Union Square at 201 Park Ave. South. The property should sell for more than $275 million, or about $1 million a room.

Sunstone Hotel Investors in March paid $242 million to Forest City Ratner for the 444-room Hilton Times Square located on 42nd Street one half block west of Times Square between Seventh and Eighth avenues.Adjacent to the hotel is a site which has been owned by Howard and Edward Milstein.

In August, a joint venture of SJP Properties and Prudential Insurance Company purchased the eastern block on Eighth Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets, paying $306 million. The joint venture plans to construct a 40-story, 1 million-square-foot office tower.

In the mid-1980s, Boston Properties entered a contract to purchase the former New York Coliseum and its 150,000-square-foot site on Columbus Circle. They agreed to pay $445 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and proposed to build a complex with two towers, one 68 stories and the other 58 stories. In 1994, Boston Properties walked away from its deposit and the site was sold in 1998 to a joint venture of Apollo Real Estate Advisors and the Related Companies for about $400 million.

According to a trade report, Boston Properties last month acquired a site less than four blocks from the Time Warner Center. Insiders expect the company to construct an office building. Boston will be purchasing the site on Eighth Avenue between West 54th and 55th streets from Robert Gladstone, who purchased the large site and the air rights for some $170 million to the Hearst Corporation. Mr. Gladstone had announced plans to construct a luxury high-rise and hotel tower which is said to include a Hyatt Hotel

In June, Boston Properties sold its 1.2 million-square-foot office complex at 280 Park Ave. to an affiliate of Istithmar PJSC for $1.2 billion, for about $1,007 a square foot. Boston Properties acquired the property in 1997. Boston is now marketing the 37-story, 1.1 million-square-foot 5 Times Square, completed in 2002 and located at the "Crossroads of the World" on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

This year has also seen office buildings in Midtown Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn. continue to sell for more than $1,000 a square foot. Nevertheless, the highest price recorded for the sale of an office building in Lower Manhattan has never exceeded $400 a square foot.

Appearing on my television show last month, Joseph Moinian, CEO of the Moinian Group, the owner of more than five million square feet of office space in the country, and one of the largest owners of office properties in Lower Manhattan, said he expects that in a few years he predicts an office building in that area to sell for more than $1,000 a square foot.

"Over time, Joe is right," the senior managing partner at Apollo Real Estate Advisors LP, Lee Neibart, said. "It was clear to me five years ago that with the price per square foot in London and Paris that this craziness would continue. People who raise money must invest at the market whatever that means and should capital gains rates go up and people continue to hold and refinance, then the amount of sales will dry up and prices should increase even faster assuring interest rates stay in line."

The co-founder and managing member of Antares Investment Partners, Joseph Beninati, said: "I believe capital will continue to flow to real estate in the tri-state area. Ups, downs, they happen monthly — remember the $100 per barrel oil stories 90 days ago? — but for those of us who have to make big long term bets, there is no better place than tri-state realty."

Last Friday, a joint venture of Silverstein Properties and California State Teachers' Retirement System purchased the 35-story, 611,000-square-foot office tower at 575 Lexington Ave. The joint venture paid approximately $400 million, or $654 a square foot, to the Koeppel Companies LLC, who had purchased the property in 1958.

Marsh & McLennan is planning to sell its condominium office headquarters at 1166 Avenue of the Americas. Last year, Lehman Brothers originated a $475 million, 30-year loan on the office space. Marsh & McLennan owns 21 floors of the 44-story, 1.6-million square-foot building which was built in 1974.

Macklowe Properties is marketing for sale its 22-story, 750,000-square-foot office tower at 340 Madison Ave. The company recently completed a total renovation of the 1920 building.

"Real estate clearly has a lot of momentum going into the third quarter of an incredibly busy year," the managing director of RBS Greenwich Capital, Chuck Rosenzweig, said. "The bond market rally in the last few weeks has helped the markets and pricing on some of the recent acquisition activity. I think there will be a continuation of the public to private deals especially if interest rates remain low, allowing buyers to take advantage of the higher leverage available on the private side. From a lending perspective, there is as much liquidity as there ever has been for real estate debt, with the exception of for-sale condominium product. If there is a hiccup at all down the road, I do not think that liquidity will be shut off, but that there will be more differentiation between good and average real estate, markets and sponsorship."

The managing director of Sonnenblick Goldman, David Schaiman, said: "The great real estate market will continue as long as capital is available — debt and especially equity — and it does not appear to be any slower in terms of availability of capital. However, the stock market is hitting all-time highs, an indication that investors are going back to stocks, maybe investors are forgetting that the robber barons of today had or have no interest in shareholders. If investors return to the stock market it will take capital away from real estate."

The chairman of the national real estate practice at Greenberg Traurig, Robert Ivanhoe, said: "Other than a softening in the residential sector, the commercial real estate market continues at its blistering pace.The continuation of enormous capital flows into real estate, combined with a limited supply of quality properties in desirable central business district locations and a stable interest rate environment should keep prices strong. However, the sky is not the limit, as institutional investors do require some assurance of rational risk adjusted returns, so, except for the occasional super-trophy or vanity investment, prices should not increase significantly except to reflect increasing returns from improving real estate fundamentals. It is doubtful that the price increases resulting from cap rate compression can continue unabated, as investors must feel that the money they are investing will perform reasonably well on a risk adjusted basis."

Given the improvement in the underlying rental markets in New York for both rental apartments and office space, it would not be surprising to see some increases in pricing to reflect the stronger cash flows that can be projected as leases roll over. However, further price increases to reflect continued improved fundamentals should be measured, since significant improved fundamentals have already been priced into the market, as have lower cap rates. Though competition for quality assets will remain fierce, there is a limit on what people can project for returns and, therefore, on the prices that will ultimately be paid, Mr. Ivanhoe said.

A £4 MILLION project to transform a former residential school into four-star holiday accommodation is back on the table.

Planning consultants JWPC Limited submitted an application to build 40 holiday units at the former Linton Camp School site back in August 2005.

The scheme is expected to create five full-time and eight part-time jobs.

continued...
But, three weeks after the application was submitted, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority decided it wanted an environmental impact statement.

Paul Tunstall, an associate director with JWPC, said the statement involved ecological information which could only be obtained at certain times of the year.

However, the document has now been completed and the application is scheduled to go before the park's planning committee in November.

The site was used as a residential school until the 1970s, but since then it has been a cause for concern, particularly in the 1990s when it was used by new age travellers who were evicted by a court order.

The old buildings still remain on the site and, theoretically, could be repaired without the need for planning permission.

But Mr Tunstall's clients, the Linton Regeneration Company, want to clear the site and build 40 two-bedroom units for self-catering holidays and timeshare accommodation.

However, he said he was still talking to the national park about whether some element of the site's past should be incorporated into the development.

"It could be an interpretation board or perhaps one or two of the buildings could be left so that people could understand its history," explained Mr Tunstall.

A letter accompanying the original application stated: "We have striven to achieve a careful balance between the enhancement of the natural beauty of the national park - through the removal of unsightly and dilapidated buildings and their replacement with an attractive group of rural buildings - and a high quality tourist-based facility that will meet an identified latent demand for long and short-term letting accommodation in the park.

"In doing so, this will achieve the third aim of bolstering the local economy. Not only will the site be directly providing jobs, but by encouraging more visitors to stay overnight or for longer periods, they will spend more money within the park."

The Linton Regeneration Company was set up solely to purchase, develop and ultimately run holiday accommodation at Linton.

The directors have previously been involved in the leisure industry, running hotels and restaurants, and feel there is a demand in the area for high quality self-catering accommodation.

Shannon Hartig steps down because she disagrees with the association's direction, which she says is too political.

The president of the Williamsburg area's main hotel association stepped down from her post Thursday, saying she didn't feel suited to run a group that she views as increasingly political.

"There always seems to be a political undertone of one thing or another," said the ex-president, Shannon Hartig. "My interests lie more in bringing people to town."

The Williamsburg Hotel & Motel Association is an important voice for this tourist town's hoteliers, who have struggled with low occupancy rates in recent years. It has about 120 full or associate members and runs a reservation center that books rooms at about 70 hotels. Hartig, 30, became the association's youngest president in April 2005.

Hartig said the association's 16-member board has gained a number of new people since she became president, and its focus has changed with the turnover. She said the new focus is on issues such as local government matters, "who's going to vote for what" at an association meeting or the membership status of bed-and-breakfast inns and timeshare resorts.

"The direction of the organization has shifted dramatically since the time I took office," said Hartig, whose last name was Mueller until she got married six months ago. "With the new direction, I'm not a politician, and I'm not the best person to lead it in that area."

The membership status of bed-and-breakfasts, as well as timeshares, is in flux. Members discussed this spring how those types of businesses weren't mentioned in the group's bylaws. They've since become associate members, Hartig said. Some hotel association members view that as a downgrade - and worry more members could be downgraded. Others describe it as a housekeeping issue or an effort to give these businesses an active membership status.

"It's one example of getting caught up in details, as opposed to bringing more folks to town," said Hartig, who also is operations director for Carlton Hospitality Group, which manages three Williamsburg-area hotels. She said her preferred focus for the hotel association is marketing member properties, running the reservation center, upping the number of reservations, increasing income from the group's magazine and inclusion rather than exclusion.

"I'm not saying the new direction is wrong," Hartig said, but added it's not her vision for the group. She also said she resigns with no ill feelings and plans to remain an active member of the association.

One top board member praised Hartig, while offering a different view on whether the group is become more political. Doug Pons, who runs the Quarterpath Inn, is the association's treasurer, a past president and serves on its executive committee.

"It's very unfortunate that she's taken this position," Pons said. "The way that she carried herself in that position ... she's going to be a tough act to follow."

But Pons maintained that a political emphasis is not a new thing for the group. He said, "It's been part of the hotel association's makeup to be aware of and participate ... in political activities that have an effect on the lodging industry."

The group's next president could be its current vice president, Ernie Young of the Quality Inn Lord Paget, according to Pons. He said the association could pick a new board member to replace Hartig at its Oct. 12 meeting, when it also will vote on the bed-and-breakfasts issue.

Holiday Group Partners with TimeshareAid, Donates Quarter Million Dollars to Feed The Children

TimeshareAid, through the support of Holiday Group, a Seattle-based timeshare company, announced a $250,000 donation to Feed The Children, a nonprofit hunger relief organization.

"This is the purpose for which TimeshareAid was envisioned," said the organization’s founder, Alan Renberger. "The millions of timeshare owners, developers, and resorts worldwide have the opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of those in need."

"We at Holiday are proud to give to those in need," said David Skinner, president of Holiday Group. "We hope the donation acts as a catalyst for timeshare owners and the industry to realize that uniting behind our own dreams can make a huge difference in the lives of others."

"We are so grateful for the generous donation made by the Holiday Group," said Larry Jones, president and co-founder of Feed The Children. "This donation will go a long way towards helping the smallest victims of hunger have a brighter winter and holiday season."

Since 1992, Holiday Group has been a pioneer in selling timeshares on the secondary market through online marketing. This donation in partnership with TimeshareAid to Feed The Children follows a $50,000 donation in 2005.

About Feed the Children
Founded in 1979 by Larry and Frances Jones, Feed The Children is the 3rd largest international charity in the U.S., based on private, non-government support. The mission of Feed The Children is to deliver food, medicine, clothing and other necessities to families who lack these essentials due to famine, war, poverty or natural disaster. In FY 2005, Feed The Children shipped more than 183 million pounds of food and other essentials to children and their families in all 50 states and internationally, supplementing more than 1,463,065 meals each day. Since its founding, the organization has reached out to help those in need in 118 countries around the globe. For more information, please visit www.feedthechildren.org.

About TimeshareAid
TimeshareAid is an industry effort to give back to the communities in which our ever-growing industry operates. A cooperative effort of timeshare resorts, developers, and industry partners, as well as timeshare owners, TimeshareAid undertakes specific projects where we see a need. We have a simple operating philosophy: Our industry is built on the hopes and dreams of our neighbors, and we simply cannot afford to let their dreams die. For more information, visit www.timeshareaid.org.

About Holiday Group
Holiday Group is an online timeshare business that connects thousands of vacation buyers with discounted timeshares every year. Holiday is headquartered in sunny Seattle. For more information, visit www.holidaygroup.com.

Amstar Group and Davidson Hotel Company today announced the acquisition of the Hyatt Regency Newport in Rhode Island from H.E. Newport Equities, LLC, an affiliate of Global Hyatt Corporation for an undisclosed amount. The 264-room hotel is uniquely located on Goat Island in the midst of beautiful Newport Harbor.
Davidson Hotel Company, one of the nation's largest hotel management companies, and Amstar Group, a leading real estate private equity firm, plan to spend $23 million to renovate the hotel. The renovation will incorporate the heritage of Newport as a world class Oceanside yachting destination and take advantage of the outstanding water vistas the hotel has to offer. Key elements of the renovation plan will include a major upgrade of the entrance to the hotel, a spectacular new lobby, a new signature restaurant, an exciting new bar and lounge concept, and an enhancement to all guest rooms. The hotel's conference center and meeting space will be re-configured and upgraded, providing a total of 25,000 square feet of meeting and pre-function space and an additional 40,000 square feet of outdoor space overlooking the Newport marina. In addition, the full-service, Stillwater Spa will undergo a complete renovation, rounding out the transformation of one of the finest spa facilities in the Northeast U.S. The comprehensive renovation, coupled with the implementation of Davidson's proprietary management and marketing systems and Hyatt's continued brand recognition among its customers, are expected to transform the Hyatt Regency Newport into one of the leading destination resorts in New England.

"The Hyatt Regency Newport is in an irreplaceable location in a strong resort market, within easy driving distance of more than 22 million people," said Gabe L. Finke, chief executive officer and general partner of Amstar Group. "With strategic capital and the right execution, Davidson and Amstar will make this property realize its full potential."

"We expect the improvement project to begin during fall 2007 and last eight months, after which the Hyatt Regency will be the premier hospitality offering in Newport and one of the best in New England," said Phil Hutchins, vice president at Amstar, a Denver-based real estate private equity firm. "Luxurious rooms, modern spa facilities, fine and casual dining options, well-appointed meeting and event rooms and inspiring service, combined with the unparalleled location, will make for superlative guest experiences."

"This is our third joint venture and our fifth management assignment with Amstar," said John A. Belden, Davidson's president and chief executive officer. "Collectively, we have added significant value to every asset that we have worked on together. We will continue to aggressively seek first-class, full-service hotels in markets with barriers to new competition."

"We appreciated working with Davidson and Amstar on this transaction," said Steven R. Goldman, executive vice president of development at Global Hyatt Corporation. "They did what they said they would do and closed exactly as planned." Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels advised Global Hyatt Corporation on the transaction.

During the last 15 months, Amstar has invested $250 million in hotels in partnership with Davidson. Most recently, Amstar partnered with Davidson in its January 2006 acquisition of the Pasadena Hilton, a 296-room Southern California hotel within walking distance of the Pasadena Convention Center and Old Town. The companies also invested together in the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, which recently completed a $10 million renovation. Other hotels Davidson has managed for Amstar include the Doubletree Hotel in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and an independent hotel in Washington, D.C., that was repositioned and sold by Amstar during 2004, with Davidson staying on as the hotel manager for the new owner.

About Amstar Group

Established in 1987, Amstar Group is a leading real estate private equity firm headquartered in Denver. The company invests nationally in value-add acquisition and development opportunities, often with local partners. In its history Amstar has acquired, developed and sold more than $2.2 billion of real estate. The firm has so far committed $500 million during 2006, including acquisitions and new developments in hospitality properties, office properties, apartment communities, mixed-use projects, master planned retail centers and distribution facilities. For more information about Amstar Group visit the company's website at www.amstargroup.com

About Davidson Hotel Company

Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., Davidson Hotel Company is an award-winning, full-service hotel owner and third-party management company that provides management, development/renovation, acquisition, consulting and accounting expertise for the hospitality industry. The company currently owns and/or manages 26 upscale hotels with nearly 7,800 rooms across the United States, including such brands as Hyatt, Hilton, Embassy Suites, Doubletree, Marriott, Renaissance, Westin and Sheraton. Additional information on Davidson may be found at the company's website, www.davidsonhotels.com .

About Global Hyatt Corporation

There are 217 Hyatt branded hotels and resorts (over 90,000 rooms) in 44 countries around the world, operating under the Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt brands. Currently, there are an additional 32 Hyatt hotels and resorts under development, including 11 new hotels in China. Hyatt Corporation (domestic U.S., Canada and Caribbean hotels) and Hyatt International Corporation (international properties) are subsidiaries of Chicago-based Global Hyatt Corporation. Global Hyatt Corporation is also the owner of Hyatt Vacation Ownership, Inc. operators of the Hyatt Vacation Club (timeshare and fractional residential product), Hyatt Equities, L.L.C. (hotel ownership), Select Hotel Group L.L.C. (which owns, operates and franchises AmeriSuites hotels, Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels) and U.S. Franchise Systems, Inc. (which franchises Hawthorn Suites, and Microtel Inns and Suites). For more information on Global Hyatt Corporation, or for reservations for any Hyatt hotel worldwide, log onto www.hyatt.com