time share madness

this quote summs it up! / dieses zitat sagt alles

The way I look at it, I'm going to pay my hotel bill 30 years ahead of time.''

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Paul Higgins loves to visit New York. He doesn't like the struggle to find a good hotel room. So Higgins and his brother bought one instead.

Paul and Michael Higgins, co-chief executive officers of Mississauga, Ontario-based Mother Parker's Tea & Coffee Inc., now own a time share in a two-bedroom apartment at the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue. It's theirs for eight weeks a year, complete with access to butler service and use of a chauffeured Bentley. .....



Time shares, once known for high-pressure sales pitches for properties that sometimes were never built, are attracting more members in Manhattan as hotel companies expand fractional ownership beyond resort destinations. ....

At the St. Regis, where a two-bedroom hotel suite may cost more than $2,500 a night, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has sold about half of its 22 four-week time-share blocks for as much as $750,000. Owners pay $17,500 a year for maintenance, fees and taxes. ( when you come form camp nelson this look like a great idea/investment...../ man muß wohl auch camp nelson kommen um das für ne tolle idee zu halten...)


First New Construction
Hilton Hotels Corp. is selling shares of 78 units at its flagship hotel near Rockefeller Center for as much as $70,000 for seven days a year.

Hilton, based in Beverly Hills, California, also is erecting a 161-unit property on West 57th Street that is to open in 2009. It will be the first building in New York constructed specifically for time sharing, rather than a conversion, and will have no regular hotel rooms. ......

``When we first started, time shares still had a bad reputation,'' said Melody Andres, director of communications at the Manhattan Club, the city's first time-share property. ``People hadn't forgotten about the days when people sold Florida swamp land. We were there with used-car dealers'

A week at the West 56th Street building sells for $42,000 for a one-bedroom unit, up from $14,000 when it opened in 1995, Andres said. The property is about 95 percent sold, she said. ....

`Extremely Successful'
Hilton President Matt Hart said his company may look for additional time-share locations in Manhattan. The plan is to develop a sales force, then build and sell several properties in a few ``12-month markets'' such as Hawaii, Las Vegas and New York, he said. .......

New York time shares make sense because buyers of vacation ownership properties want options beyond beach and ski resorts, PKF's Eble said. New York hotel occupancy is 84 percent, and the average room rate is $241 a night, according to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

``You can stay in a hotel and pay through the nose and have no equity, or buy a condo and pay $2 million,'' Eble said. ``But if you could buy six weeks of use in a $2 million condo, that's an attractive proposition.'' ........( or you can go to a hotel for a fraction of what a time share costs and you have 100% flexibility, or you can buy the timeshare and loose money etc....)

Paul Farhi, an Ithaca, New York, consultant, paid $130,000 for 50 nights a year at the New York Hilton. Farhi, 56, said he appreciates the level of service the hotel provides and the opportunity to swap nights in New York for stays in Florida.

``It is very, very convenient,'' he said. ``The way I look at it, I'm going to pay my hotel bill 30 years ahead of time.''