On numerous occasions we have reported that, in general, the sale of new timeshare in Europe is on the decline, the same may be said of the UK. The “staycation” market saw a cosmetic bounce when Covid travel restrictions were in place but since these have been lifted, the run for the sun has returned.
Like many UK timeshare resorts Craigendarroch, set in the beautiful area of Royal Deeside overlooking the River Dee, is also feeling the pinch. The resort is part of the Hilton Grand Vacation Club but still has an active owners committee. Over time certain weeks have become vacant, so the concept of an auction was thought of. The letter to owners’ states:
“The idea behind the auction is to offer owners the chance to purchase weeks that have been owned, but for whatever reason are no longer owned due to lapsed payments. From a Club point of view, we want all lodges to be owned by people who love visiting Craigendarroch.”
From the auction page of the corporate website it appears that there are 24 weeks available there is also a comment that there is no reserve, the highest bid wins!
TCA comment
It’s a well known fact that existing happy customers make the best new customers so the idea of offering existing timeshare owners the opportunity of buying further weeks is sound. Placing no reserve could also mean that acquisition may be well below any expected retail price. The only real problem is that no matter how low the winning bid is the dreaded annual maintenance fee still has to be paid.
Mathematically it would be fair to say that the purchase cost of each week has been well and truly covered by the previous owner, but now the owner has defaulted on maintenance payments they have lost the week so whatever a new owner pays is bunce to the club.
Another point which makes sense for the club is that there are 24 weeks that are not generating any maintenance fees, sell them and problem solved. It will be interesting to see the take up; Craigendarroch consists of 100 lodges so there should be no shortage of potential bidders. Bidding has already started and finished at 2pm on Tuesday 1 November 2022 but was restricted to existing owners.
As a final comment, we would ask why the weeks are not being sold to new buyers as this would yield far greater profits. The answer is no doubt as we stated earlier, new timeshare sales are virtually nonexistent, the holiday market has moved on, whereas timeshare hasn’t.
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