Hi all. Timesharing as a concept has been in existence for a long time now. I just though I could share a few thoughts on how it has evolved over a period of time. You too can pitch in with your thoughts.
The airline travel boom which started in the 60s was the one which really gave a fillip to the entire concept of leisure travel or modern vacationing. The boom has still not ended and today perhaps a dream vacation is more accessible than ever. But then this was the case always. During the early days, it was the privileged few who traveled while others toiled. Leisure travel during the early days symbolized freedom and luxury. The very word luxury has its origins from the Latin word ‘luxu’ which means splendor and abundance. Then one day came the industrial revolution and with it came more of this ‘abundance’ and leisure traveling started picking up, albeit slowly.
Wealth creation is something that followed the industrial revolution and more and more people began to have access to money for traveling. This trend then continued or rather continues, till date. In fact one amazing statistic that most of us are not aware of is that more wealth has been created in the last two decades than what was created in the last 4 million years put together!!! In the next twenty years, this growth rate is expected to double. What this in turn means is that literally the sky is the limit when it comes to leisure travel. Already there are talks of people looking for a vacation on the moon or mars. One or two have already gone to space as tourists. Today a vacation is no longer a dream or something that people yearn for, it has become a necessity and people demand it. And how is this demand being met. Through timeshares of course.
Timesharing as a concept began in the early 60s where rich families in Europe shared the ownership of a vacation home. It made sense for them to partially own a few number of weeks and sharing the expenses with others. Each family would also contribute to the upkeep of the place proportionally.
The concept caught the fancy of Americans in the 70s and then came the age of mega resorts. The early days saw lots of confusion. The sales pitches on those days usually over promised and under delivered. Thankfully now the growing pains are over. There has been plenty of regulation which has helped in enhancing the image of timeshares as a concept. There is greater consumer acceptance and security. People in the business of timeshares have also realized that the better the product the more are people going to buy from them. All this has resulted in a whopping 5 million people owning timeshares around the world. There are more than 5,000 resorts spread across every nook and corner of the world now. And the good news is that ‘our’ tribe is increasing. :-)
