Timeshare Trends Blog

The first international timeshare sales office for Disney Vacation Club will open in Tokyo with a 15,000 square foot sales center at the Ikspiari shopping complex. Disney also plans to add timeshare sales kiosks throughout the Tokyo Disney Resort. Disney Vacation Club timeshare preview centers are already located in Long Island, NY, and in Chicago, Illinois. The new timeshare sales center for Disney Vacation Club will include a full-size model of one of the two-bedroom timeshare units planned for the Disney Vacation Club Villas, Ko Olina, Hawaii.

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The Disney Doorway to Dreams is a new store now open in the Roosevelt Fields Shopping Center in New York. It is a new and convenient way to discover the excitement of the Disney Vacation Club. The Disney Doorway to Dreams showcases the spacious, family-friendly accommodations featured at the vacation club resorts.

Through the Disney Doorway to Dreams, clients may purchase Disney Vacation Club ownership for anyone of the Disney Resorts located at the Disney parks in Florida and California, as well as separate resorts in South Carolina, Florida and Hawaii. Disney Vacation Club ownership also allows you to utilize more than 500 vacation locations around the world. Also included is the Disney Cruise Line and family-friendly interactive adventures by Disney Trips.

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Disney Vacation Club has launched a new bonus strategy for its staff in a bid to boost the number of people that use its resorts. The timeshare club is adjusting its salary and bonus strategy to try to encourage members of its staff to help increase sales of Disney timeshare units.

Rena Langley, spokesperson for the Disney Vacation Club, explained that the pay structure among advance sales associates will enable them to provide more reward and recognition to top performers in the sales team. Disney timeshares have long been a popular option among European timeshare holders and new research shows that sales have been increasing among adults and couples without children.

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Disney takes more of the burden of troubled timeshare mortgages from Citigroup. With the growing number of timeshare buyers defaulting on their loans, the Walt Disney Company recently assumed more than $200 in liability to preserve a credit agreement between its timeshare subsidiary and banking giant Citigroup.

The maneuvering involves a 1999 agreement in which the Disney Vacation Club would bundle together timeshare mortgages it issued to individual buyers and sell them to Citigroup. It was a lucrative way for Disney to make money, but Citigroup has virtually stopped buying mortgages from Disney, so in order to maintain an agreement, Disney has assumed more liability and will reacquire trouble Vacation Club loans from Citibank.

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Still on schedule are 50 new units that will open later this year in Disneyland in Anaheim, California, along with three recently opened timeshare properties right in Disney World in central Florida. The ambitious growth in the Disney Vacation Club is coming at a time when sales at the Celebration, Florida based timeshare business fell during the last three months that ended on March 28. It is the first quarterly decline that Disney has recorded in its Disney Vacation Club timeshare arm in several years.

According to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, this has added more pressure at Disney’s worldwide them park division, which has relied on its vacation club to help fuel its profit growth in recent years. The new resorts in Disney World in Florida include the Kidani Village, Treehouse Villas, and Bay Lake Towers. In Anaheim, the Villas at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa is on schedule, the resort in Hawaii remains under construction and is scheduled to open in 2011. Finally, Disney has purchased 15 acres just outside Washington DC with plans to build a family resort and timeshare units.

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Group RCI, the global leader in vacation exchange, and Disney Vacation Club, one of the world’s fastest-growing brands in the vacation-ownership industry, announced the agreement, which now allows subscribing members access to an even broader array of vacation opportunities.

RCI now becomes the exclusive third-party exchange provider for Disney Vacation Club, enrolling Disney Vacation Club’s more than 135,000 member families into RCI’s global exchange network. RCI has one of the most expansive portfolios of high-end affiliated vacation resorts, as well as more choices in more countries than any other exchange network.

Disney Vacation Club Members will now be able to enjoy vacations at a variety of destinations across six continents and 25 countries and have access to a significantly broader range of resorts, including all-inclusive options, more nightly exchanges and a selection of luxurious, high-end fractional properties. Similarly, RCI’s more than 3.6 million members will now also enjoy the opportunity to exchange into Disney Vacation Club resorts throughout the year.

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The timeshare arm of the Walt Disney Company, is experiencing huge losses now that it has lost its access to a long standing line of credit it had been tapping to raise cash by selling bundles of its timeshare mortgages it issues to individual buyers.

Disney sold $17 million in Disney Vacation Club memberships in its last quarter compared to $41 million one year ago. With Disney being forced to carry the timeshare mortgages as opposed to cashing them out will end up slowing Disney Vacation Clubs earnings and growth.

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Disney Vacation Club continues unprecedented growth with two new development projects in Disney World.

Two highly anticipated resort developments announced today will expand the Disney World experience and continue the rapid growth of Disney Vacation Club, Disney’s vacation-ownership program. The 15-story Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort is scheduled to open in the Fall of 2009, and the Treehouse Villas at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, is scheduled to open in summer 2009.

Bay Lake Tower sales began in September 21 for Disney Vacation Club Members. Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa sales will begin at a later date.

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