Timeshare Juice Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Interval’

TimeshareJuice and the Thunder Lizards

Friday, September 10th, 2010

When I started the journey of TimeshareJuice last year I said I was going to be transparent. That honesty sounded really good but I wasn’t really sure what it meant. It was all new to me and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go but I thought it would be interesting to share what I learned with everyone. I was going to write about and tweet about the highs and lows of creating our startup, TimeshareJuice. How can one guy take on 2 multi-billion dollar companies? Sometimes I shared too much. But what a ride it’s been. It’s been an amazing journey for sure. It’s surreal to think that a year ago I had idea to change the timeshare and vacation world and then you look up and it’s happening. Not only do you have this amazing product but a community of passionate users all over the world that love it and spread the word to friends, tweet about it and share it on FB and blogs.

I haven’t written in a while so here’s a summary of what’s been happening:

The People: They call them “Thunder Lizards”. I love that. I remember reading it in Guy’s book “Selling the Dream”. He wrote that if your product is good, you might have enthusiastic Thunder Lizards. I thought, wow that would be amazing to have Thunder Lizards. I have no idea how he came up with that phrase, but the good news is that we have Thunder Lizards!

I have not advertised the site more than a few dollars on Google and yet the traffic consistently grows – 20-30% per month and we have members from all over the world now. I think it’s just people telling friends and so on and so forth. I don’t know why or how it happens but at a certain point the product is exciting enough that people just start to talk about it. Sometimes you just stare at your site and wonder why nothing is happening. It’s not scientific it’s just spontaneous. Just like Kawasaki said, the Thunder Lizards are real. If they are passionate about your site they will sing from the mountain tops about it. I shared my stats each month (some good, some bad) in the newsletters and blog posts for all to read.

Why would I tell everyone (including my competition) what our site stats are each month, especially when they are down in certain areas? I don’t have a good answer for that except that it’s fun and exhilarating to be completely open and honest. Looking back, perhaps it made the members feel a part of the team. It was like our virtual boardroom. I don’t know for sure.

On the flip side, as an industry outsider it’s been difficult at times. The Timeshare Industry is very unique. Although large it is comprised of a small number of people in management. And the people in the industry have been here a long time and they all seem to know each other. So a lot of times your calls go unanswered because the other person has never heard of you before. It’s unlike other industries I’ve worked in. That just means you have to try harder and make more calls. But I have certainly made some great contacts and friends in the industry. And some people have gone out of their way to help me network and meet people and got behind my idea in a big way.

Running in Molasses. I also find the industry very hesitant to change. It seems like 1990 here because some people are doing business the same way they were 20 years ago. Their motto (perhaps even a tattoo on their back) is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That’s all fine and dandy except if you are bringing something really new and fresh to the industry. Then it might make you wish Happy Hour started earlier some days - like noon.

The baby: The website is working really well now. I don’t get many “how do I do this?” or “this doesn’t work” emails anymore. I’ll tell you that caused a few sleepless nights. We spent a lot of time listening to our users in order to create the user interface and functionality we have today. It did not happen by accident. We would listen, meet, discuss, and make changes right there on the fly. Sometimes we met at Corner Bakery or Panera to discuss it and we’re making adjustments to the site right there. It was fun.

An expert? Recently I have been asked by some Timeshare Industry execs to explain Social Media to them and how it affects the travel and timeshare business. That took me by surprise. It’s been great to have an opportunity to share what I know and am good at. I wrote a blog post about that here . So one of the things I learned was when you are new to an area, industry, company, etc reach out and offer information. Give, give, give.

Opportunity knocks It’s funny how when you are starting out very few people want to be part of the party. It can be really lonely. You wonder if you are on the right path if no one is responding. Now, we get deal opportunities pretty frequently. So to those of you that are just starting out, hang in there. It gets much better. In the beginning you have to be committed and focused, even if you are the only one that believes you can do it. Just stay the course. That doesn’t mean you never make changes to the path to get there but at times you have to put blinders on and go, go, go. If you keep it up long enough, you start to get momentum and then it gets easier. But don’t stop ‘til you get the “Big Mo”.

Lastly, probably the most interesting point of all. We heard through the grapevine that “our competition” has told the resorts (our potential customers) to not get involved with us. If they do, there will be financial repercussions. The exchange companies are very powerful in this industry. More powerful than anything else. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get going, right?…Hmmm, that’s nice. Well that will make it much more difficult for us no doubt. If you ever wonder “Are we on the right track?” and you hear that about your competition, then you probably are.

Oh here is our new video. check it out: TimeshareJuice Overview to interval and vacation ownership exchange

I want to recommend a blog that I read. It’s for all you up and coming entrepreneurs. It’s about having little resources but leveraging your strengths to accomplish a lot. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/06/BUKQ1F7CM4.DTL

It’s been an amazing journey so far; one that’s been full of ups and downs. I’m even more excited now than I was in the beginning. We have some really great stuff in the pipeline that we will be announcing over the next few months.

Vacations really are the Juice of Life. So go get some Juice!

My best,

Erick

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Travel the world in Luxury AND save money

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

I have a cool strategy to share with you about how we have traveled to some really nice destinations around the world, stayed in luxury digs and did it all on a budget.

First, a few questions about your vacation:
• Do you stay at the best hotel available or the one that is most affordable?
• Do you wish the hotel room was larger? Maybe an extra room and Jacuzzi tub?
• Does eating out get old when you have to do it for EVERY meal? Especially the cost? Do you sometimes just crave a bowl of your favorite cereal for a quick meal rather than going out?

Here’s what we did: We own a timeshare in Hawaii. It’s beautiful. It’s everything you want in a vacation. Although we love it there, we don’t want to go there every single year. So what we did was trade our week at that resort with someone that owns another week at another resort. That’s called an exchange. We found other owners (on the internet or through friends) at resorts that we wanted to vacation at.

“Would you be willing to vacation in Hawaii this year instead of going to your resort again? If so, we can exchange our weeks”. If they say yes, we exchange our week with them for their week. The cost to trade is NOTHING and we get to stay in a beautiful resort in the destination we wanted to travel to.

We always did our research beforehand so we knew that their resort had everything we wanted: beautiful pool, large rooms, Jacuzzi tub, oceanfront view, kitchen etc. In all honesty, they do have hotel rooms like that but they are called THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE at $2,000 per night or more. That’s slightly out of our budget. Even an average hotel room is $150 per night. That’s over $1,000 for the week with all the taxes. Our way is far less expensive and nicer.

Eating out every meal gets expensive not to mention tedious. So once we check-in to the resort we head out to the local market and buy groceries to stock our in-unit fridge (not the mini ones you get in a hotel; a real fridge). We figure we will eat breakfast in the unit most of the time since we prefer having a healthy breakfast in our kitchen over having to rush around in the morning to the fast food drive-thru. That allowed us to eat better, have more time and save money.

We would choose a couple of the nights to prepare dinner in our kitchen with local fresh food. This was always fun. Somehow cooking in this new kitchen seemed like more fun than our own. We also whipped up a batch or two of frozen margaritas to enjoy while watching the sunset from our balconies overlooking the beach or mountains (when was the last time you did that at a hotel – no way). If you’re in wine country, wine is a perfectly suitable substitute.

And sometimes during the week you or the kids will want a quick snack before or after dinner (keep the savages calm) and it’s nice to just go to the kitchen rather than room service. Later you can sit the kids down to relax after a long day of sight-seeing or amusement park rides and pop in one of their favorite movies in the in-unit DVD player with some microwave (in-unit) popcorn. And then you can spend some time unwinding in the Jacuzzi tub with a bottle of wine. It’s nice to have “space” some times.

One of the things I always appreciated was the knowledge we received from the timeshare owner about the area. It was always spot-on! Where to go; what to do; where to eat; where the discounts were; all great. And that always saved us money and lots of time on vacation. They certainly know the area, they’re the experts. They own there.

I know many people use Exchange Clubs like RCI and Interval and pay hundreds of dollars to do an exchange which add to your vacation costs. We used this strategy for years and traveled to amazing places all over the world. Essentially, Timeshare Juice is just what I described but it’s all automated for you. We made it so soooo easy to determine which resorts are the best; that’s our community rating system. And we made it really simple to find owners and properties that you want to visit and to make offers. We also made it really easy to share information with each other. And we made it fun.

In closing, whether it was the whole family or just the 2 of us, timeshares have allowed us to have luxury vacations all over the world. It cost us less than staying in a hotel room and helped us save money many other ways. It also gave us some much needed space and nice amenities. And with the extra savings you’ll get from not having to pay your exchange company fees, you’ll have even more money for Mickey, surf lessons, or frozen margaritas on the beach.

What’s your favorite timeshare resort?

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Timeshare has been very good to us…for the most part.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

The concept of timeshare was totally foreign to me when I bought it in 1996. I didn’t know anyone that owned one. No one told me to “look out” for those people peddling tours. We were visiting Hawaii on vacation (for the first time) and Marriott offered to fly us to Kauai for the day and buy us dinner if we took a tour of their resort on Kauai. “No problemo!” We had never been to the island of Kauai so we took them up on the offer.

We did the tour of the resort and were blown away. I hadn’t ever seen a place like that before. It was so gorgeous. The lobby, the palm trees, the pool, the beach…wow! So we bought it.

The next couple of years we returned to the Kauai Beach Club. It was just an awesome vacation for the family. The units are great and the service is the fantastic. The views of the mountains, beach, sunrise/set is just inspiring (it’s exactly the recharge you need from work). Since then, we have been back many times but one year we exchanged our unit for a new resort that was opening in Marbella, Spain; another year we exchanged for Orlando, FL; then Aruba; then Palm Desert. We have certainly had some great vacations and stayed at some really great places. We are very pleased. It’s allowed us some great memories and stories and we felt like we stayed in comfort each time.

The 3 things that I like about timeshare units vs. hotel rooms is:

  1. Having a kitchen in the unit is so convenient when you have a family. Having to eat out every meal on a vacation gets old and time consuming; it takes the joy out of it when you have to do it each meal.  We like having snacks and fresh fruit too (if you are visiting an island, think of all that fresh fruit you can utilize). And the units come equipped with blenders so you can make fruit smoothies as well. And that goes for some great fresh margaritas on the balcony to enjoy the sunset (Those are the moments you relive in your mind when you’re back to work and sitting in your cubicle.)
  2. Condition of unit – the condition of the rooms and equipment is far better than a hotel room. The beds and couches are better. It’s more home-like. The bathroom is far more upscale than a hotel room. Sometimes you can get a Jacuzzi tub in the unit which is fun. Our unit has nice flat panel TVs with DVD player and also has a nice music system so you can crank some tunes as you prepare for the night out (that beats cranking the little clock radio that you get in hotel rooms to 10, right?).
  3. Lastly, I would have to say that size does matter. The units are much bigger which is important if you have 5 people in the family going on a vacation. A little extra space goes a long way. Our unit has a very unique feature called “lock-out”. There is a door that separates the 2 large rooms (think suite) essentially creating a 2 bedroom unit. This gives the kids a chance to maybe watch a movie at night and get some space from the parents. And it allows the parents a little space after a day at the amusement park. It also allows us to bring another couple on vacation and give them some space and privacy.

But I am not advocating that you buy a timeshare. There are challenges that owners face. Believe me, it’s not all “a box of chocolates”.  There’s fees…and fine print…exchange companies…and more fees.  I’ll be writing about the challenges in an upcoming blog. But I wanted to be honest about the upside first.

What are your thoughts on timeshare ownership? Has it been good to you?

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What’s TimeshareJuice all about?

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Let me first explain who we are. We’re a bunch of timeshare owners that put our time and money (yikes), and sweat into building a destination for timeshare owner community and timeshare exchange.
 

What’s the purpose of the site?

To gather all the owners on the Web from all the 5,000 resorts around the world and build an online community to exchange timeshares and help each other maximize our vacation ownership.

We designed it based on what we wanted as timeshare owners. Then we took input from other timeshare owners we knew and those we connected with online. We’ve done a lot of this informally already; we’ve exchanged units with friends and “friends of friends” for vacations around the world; we’ve also talked to other owners to find out what resorts are great and which ones are not. Now its time to do this on a large scale using the Internet.

The first thing we wanted to do was stop paying all that money to RCI and Interval for exchanges and membership fees. We don’t really feel like we need someone to broker these trades; we feel like we can absolutely do this by ourselves, owner to owner. I mean eBay connects people all over the world selling every item known to man and then some. We can certainly exchange vacations within the community.

How would you rate your experience with RCI or Interval International?

The second thing was we wanted a social network about just vacations and timeshare. We thought that if the entire timeshare community (about 7 millions owners worldwide – wow) shared tips and knowledge about timeshares that would be incredible. We figured the power and energy of everyone coming together would be better than anything out there right now for timeshare on the web or not. By giving a voice to each owner and the collective community to rate resorts and activities, we would all know what resorts were the best to vacation at, what activities and day-trips were the best to do, the best sites to visit etc etc.  All the content on the site will be supplied by timeshare owners themselves.

A lot of the reviews out there right now are paid for by resorts. I think that if the reviews and ratings were supplied directly by owners the best resorts with the best service would get more visitors; all the others would have to raise their standards for service. It’s that simple. This holds true for everything about the timeshare industry; from maintenance fees (don’t get me started on that) to exchange fees, cleanliness of units, resort fees etc. We could open up the lines of communication for the entire industry.

What challenges are you having with your resort?

Our team spent a lot of time together writing down what we as timeshare owners would want in a social network. Then we spent a lot of time organizing so it was easy and simple to use. I hope you like what we are creating and I hope you take the time to have your voice heard as well.

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