An Interview with the Wyndham CEO – USA Today

A business travel correspondent from USA Today, Barbara de Lollis, has interviewed the chief executive officer of Wyndham regarding the recent downswing in the timeshare business and how it has affected the company – Wyndham.

There was one particular question which was asked that gave away a striking answer. This question was about the reason why their company has laid-off about 4,000 employees. This interesting question was then answered by the CEO in that every business across the world felt the pressure of the recent turn-up of the macroeconomic environment. No company – or their company for that matter was even resistant to it. The event where the tightness of the capital markets became seeming, it has created an environment where they have to take the sales down. When they sell timeshare, they let people lend the people some money for 50% of the time to buy it. Then the company goes to the insurance companies and banks so that Wyndham could lend money. Unfortunately, the lenders shut down. Because of what happened, their company was left with no choice since it has narrowed down the amount of capital where they had to make available to the buyers, who their company sells timeshares to.

With this, now we know that half of the timeshare owners, who buy with Wyndham, buy the properties with corresponding loans. It seems like there is a very high number and points pointing to the fact that many timeshare owners might not know what they are purchasing. The paying interest on a timeshare is the same as paying someone to make more of the consumer’s money. With the existence of maintenance fees, special assessments on top of a mortgage, people who own a timeshare are not only paying a huge amount of money but also contractually compelled to pay for a long time. It could have been hassle-free for a lot of people not to buy time share properties and just pay for their vacations individually.

This may seem to be very unfortunate, but still a lot of time share owners believe that they are making a very good deal in investing their money in time share. After all, having the right to own a property and having all the fun and leisure just within reach despite their very frantic schedule seems to be really rewarding. This means, that paying a whole lot of fees is not really a big deal anymore.