Timeshare Is Back - But Not As We Know It

WHATEVER you do, don’t call it a timeshare. Some of Scotland’s most luxurious resorts have taken the notion of owning a holiday property for a few weeks of the year, stripped out the dodgy salesmen with fake tans and reinvented the whole thing as ‘seasonal ownership’.

Among them is the five-star Gleneagles, which is charging up to £100,000 for the right to own a luxurious getaway one week every year for the next half century.

Christmas, Hogmanay and some September weeks at the 50-home Glenmor seasonal ownership village in the grounds of the Perthshire hotel have already sold out, even though construction is not due for completion for several years.

In addition to a price of between £7,500 and £51,000 to own a week a year for the next 55 years, buyers face an additional annual maintenance charge of around £1,000, potentially taking the bill well into six figures. But despite the price, more than 700 weeks have been sold, netting £11m.

George Graham, the development’s director, said: "They are selling very quickly and the most expensive weeks have sold first. Seasonal ownership is really taking off."

Graham said the word ‘timeshare’ was never mentioned, either by Gleneagles or its customers. "We say to them that there may come a point when they want to exchange their properties, but they say to us we are not timeshare we are seasonal owners," he said. "The bad reputation of timeshare came about because of high-pressure selling. This is low-pressure selling and we are having no problem getting sales."

Graham conceded that maintenance charges added a considerable amount to the total bill, but said they were an accurate reflection of the costs.

"We are keeping them in absolutely tip-top condition so they never look tired," he said. "We want the owners to be very proud of them."

Another group rapidly expanding in the market is De Vere which is planning more than 100 seasonal ownership homes as part of a new £50m development on the shores of Loch Lomond.

Prices will range from £7,450 in winter to almost £40,000 at peak times, with an annual maintenance charge of around £500. Managing director Craig Mitchell said: "We went down this route because the people who buy seasonal ownership are very different from second-home owners.

"The latter stop off at Marks & Spencer to buy their food and drink on the way, whereas the seasonal owners spend between £400 and £500 a week in the resort hotel and restaurants because they are more likely to be on a special holiday."

Mitchell said that while the concept of timeshare had been sound, its reputation had been tarnished, prompting the change of name.

"The feeling is that timeshare is something you buy abroad, while seasonal ownership is something you buy in Scotland from high-quality leisure companies," he said.

"The people who went into timeshare 20 years ago were single entrepreneurs. The companies involved in it here in the UK are big companies with solid reputations."

The De Vere properties will be on its new 300-acre ‘The Carrick at Loch Lomond’ site, close to the company’s Scottish flagship Cameron House Hotel, and built around an 18-hole championship golf course. So far, £4m-worth of ‘weeks’ have been sold from a development set to bring in £18m overall.

The Hilton group is also becoming increasingly active in the seasonal ownership market, with weeks for sale in lodges on its properties on Royal Deeside, the Cairngorms National Park and Perthshire.

New properties at its Dunkeld House property in Perthshire have been put on the market for up to £23,500 per week, with a £480 maintenance charge.

"We probably called them timeshare originally but have made the switch to seasonal ownership," a spokesman said. "It’s just a much better phrase."

Andrew Martin, director of the Scottish Centre for Tourism at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, said: "People like to say they are seasonal owners, whereas they wouldn’t admit they had bought a timeshare. It’s almost ‘timeshare bad’, because of the high-pressure selling of the past, and seasonal ownership good."

He believes the growth of seasonal ownership will be good for the Scottish economy. "The people who buy these are high quality, high spenders who love what Scotland has to offer," he said. "They also come here 52 weeks of the year.

"It is not that long ago that Gleneagles closed in the winter. Seasonal ownership makes it more of an all-year-round attraction."

Timeshare was in need of an image change because of irresponsible operators, largely working abroad in countries such as Spain, using high-pressure sales techniques that damaged the industry’s reputation.

In some cases hundreds of holidaymakers were cheated out of vast sums in frauds. Customers were faced with complex, misleading paperwork and a confusing network of companies which meant they never got their properties. Those who did found them almost impossible to sell on, and suffered losses.

Consumer organisations say most complaints came from British tourists being sold timeshare apartments by British sales teams.

But the nature of the market changed dramatically following the introduction of tougher consumer protection laws by the European Union in the late 1990s, and the emergence of major hotel groups which came on to the scene.

Around 450,000 Britons now own timeshare properties, mainly abroad, but experts are forecasting a rapid expansion as more high-quality seasonal ownership developments are completed.

But according to the Timeshare Consumers Association, owners even at the top end of the market should not treat their purchase as an investment.

"Experience has shown this not to be the case," said chairman Sandy Gray. "But I doubt those buying at the very top end are doing it for investment reasons anyway."