MIAMI? More and more, Americans are looking to vacation ownership as an affordable, flexible and hassle-free means of achieving the ?second American dream?? owning a recreational property. American consumers are increasingly ?willing to accept, attend sales presentations for, and actually purchase resort timesharing, the product which best fits their immediate needs in terms of both usage and budget,? according to ARDA?s 1999 American Recreational Property Survey. The survey results demonstrate that timeshare offers a viable opportunity to make an investment in future vacations within the family budget, with respondents citing $47,000 as an attractive and realistic price for a recreational property, even with the availability of financing. About 8.9 million U.S. households, or 8.6% of the total, currently own a recreational property, according to the survey, and this number is growing by about 2.4% annually. Resort timeshares represent more than half of the increase during recent years. Nearly tripling since 1990, resort timesharing and related products have demonstrated the greatest proportional increase as a preferred type of recreational property. ?Fully 22% of Americans express interest in a timeshare purchase, up from 8% in 1990,? the survey noted. Familiarity with the concept of vacation ownership is at 79%, according to Vacation Ownership 2000 (VO2000), a benchmark survey of prospective timeshare owners sponsored by Interval International and conducted by Yesawich, Pepperdine and Brown. More than four out of 10 survey respondents (43%) had positive perceptions of vacation ownership. Close to half of VO2000 respondents (44%) had stayed previously at a timeshare resort. Among VO2000 respondents who currently own a timeshare, nearly half (45%) were extremely or very interested in purchasing an additional timeshare in the future. As noted in the American Recreational Property Survey, the proportion of households attending sales presentations for timeshares has increased significantly, although it declined in all other primary categories of recreational property. ?Increasingly, the timeshare industry is offering a variety of ownership options at different price points, creating affordable and flexible vacation opportunities for a wide variety of consumers,? said Craig Nash, chairman/CEO of Interval International. ?With the low penetration of the domestic market, there is vast opportunity for timeshare-resort development in the United States.?
