Recently Club la Costa issued a marketing video featuring the founder and owner of the CLC resorts, Roy Peires being interviewed by journalist, television presenter and former BBC Royal Correspondent, Jenny Bond. The four minute video takes its primary focus of Mr Peires explaining the confusion surrounding the relationship between CLC and Wyndham. A considerable time is also spent on extolling the future virtues and development plans surrounding the relationship.
The interview begins with Mr Peires welcoming Jenny “home”, Jenny then boldly states that “I think you changed the image of timeshare, I really do” best we don’t comment on that. This then launches straight in to an explanation of what it means for CLC to join the Wyndham “franchise programme”. Apparently, the joining of the two organisations presents a twofold plan. Firstly, all the excess space throughout CLC will be turned into Wyndham and Ramada residences, excess space meaning unused apartments etc. Secondly, although Mr Peires states adamantly that the ownership of CLC remains the same, the benefits of expertise of Wyndham in various areas will greatly improve the user experience and effectively polish up the act.
Putting the record straight
It’s fair to say that both timeshare owners of the CLC product and the timeshare industry were somewhat confused by the joining forces of the two organisations. Mr Peires attempted to settle this confusion by explaining that Wyndham had two distinct parts, the first being Wyndham Hotels, the second being the timeshare operation, he stated categorically that the franchise entered into was with Wyndham Hotels and had nothing to do with the timeshare side of the business. Wyndham owners will not have access to CLC resorts, except via the normal exchange programmes, and vice versa. Mr Peires stated emphatically “We won’t be staying in their resorts and they won’t be staying in ours”
This certainly has clarified the position but we envisage this may add a further layer of confusion and worry, more on that later.
A little snippet of information dropped is that the Wyndham timeshare brand is “dropping its name” and will be branded as something else; guess we’ll be keeping our eyes on that development.
All in all, the interview is an opportunity to blow smoke, apart from the rebranding, staff will be indoctrinated into the Wyndham mould of how to do things, a new spa, water park and members lounge, better food and beverage, separate check in facilities are all benefits extolled in the video but what is the true reasoning behind the move?
Looking a little deeper
At the risk of sounding boring, how many times have we said that timeshare in Europe is a declining market, well if what this video promotes is true, this would appear to be a message that CLC has taken on board. With two possible avenues for Wyndham to go down, timeshare or hotel, they must have crunched the numbers and dismissed any timeshare involvement, odd as CLC is primarily a timeshare developer.
We all know that CLC has placed its sales division into administration so by that very action there is an admission that there will be no new timeshare sales. At first we thought Wyndham would jump in with an American style timeshare sales operation, this apparently will now not be the case.
Unlike some American developers, such as Disney, who have sold their entire inventory, the admission that Wyndham will be picking up “spare capacity” is an admission that CLC was far from sold out, the question is, does CLC have the spare capacity to satisfy the Wyndham thirst or will member allocation come under threat? All too often we see timeshare resorts appearing on the online booking platforms, the corollary of which is that owner availability, especially points owners is impacted.
To a certain extent timeshare and hotels together is like trying to mix oil and water. On the one hand there are contractual owners who technically should have right of holiday tenure, but on the other hand there may be a queue of fair paying passengers anxious to spend money and book a holiday. Again, on the one hand the owner pays a contractual annual maintenance fee so income to the developer is safe. On the other hand there are hungry holiday makers willing to pay yet again for the same accommodation. We all know that points nether guarantee the dates or even the resort you can book, so if a developer can effectively sell the same accommodation twice, happy days but another layer of confusion for timeshare owners.
Our thoughts
This is a hard one to call but what is obvious is that CLC have basically admitted that the timeshare market is not the way forward for the group. We covered our thinking in a recent article so won’t go over old ground here. Realistically it might be argued that timeshare owners at CLC could well be the thorn in the side of the ambitious plan to develop the resorts into hotels. With Wyndham clearly positioning CLC outside their timeshare operation they will want to see success reflected in their hotel division. Although unlikely, if the CLC resorts are successful in this transition and availability to guests wishing to use Wyndham/Ramada hotels being greater than availability, one has to wonder how this might impact on timeshare owners.
We all know that CLC have been found guilty in the Spanish courts because for many years and for many thousands of owners they retailed timeshare contracts deemed illegal under Spanish statute law 42/98. It would be hard to estimate the claims value in total but we are talking multi millions. CLC have systematically refused to settle these claims and in the end took the devious steps to place the guilty sales companies into administration done to further attempt in avoiding paying up. It’s funny that Jenny Bond didn’t touch on those matters! It would certainly be interesting to see a further interview by Jenny Bond asking direct questions of Roy Peires as to how he and the CLC board are going to settle the legally awarded compensation to those owners affected by the various court cases, will this happen? Not a chance.
Should you wish to see the video it may be viewed here.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk