We start a brand new year with the latest in our Innovate 2012 series - featuring Dimitris Manikis, vice president of sales and business development for RCI EMEA. Manikis explains why creating renewed trust in timeshare should be the mission of the shared holiday ownership industry this year.

Dimitris Manikis

Trust. Any successful business is founded on it, and to create a wave of new customers for the timeshare industry, we must reinforce consumer trust through a constant and predictable commitment to their holiday happiness - today, tomorrow, and long into the future.

What does trust mean to timeshare? I believe people trust us not just to provide them with consistently impressive holiday experiences, but also to adapt the service and product as the needs of our owners change and evolve.

Because now, more than ever, we have a job to do in helping those people who built our businesses years ago, to easily and conveniently sell on their ownership to a new generation of savvy holidaymakers.

The secondary market is just one element that requires our attention and will strengthen the industry’s reputation as competition for our consumers’ wallets continues to intensify.

Ramping up our reputation

Thousands of articles have been written in the business press this year on the world-changing effects of technology. How social networking is revolutionising the way we go about our daily lives, for example, and why smartphones and mobile web devices are making us more connected than ever before.

There’s no doubt those stories are fast ringing true. There is no better way for us as timeshare companies to have owners spread the good news about resorts and their holiday experiences than by encouraging them to use social media.

Whereas once someone would have had a relatively small network of friends to talk to about their latest timeshare holiday, today they have hundreds, if not thousands, of people who they can influence in seconds using Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

But let’s rewind to the point where people feel compelled to talk positively about timeshare and their holidays.

To ensure we have evangelists to spread the good word about timeshare - and certainly the high rate of satisfaction among the millions of timeshare owners would suggest we’re in good shape to expect that - we have to place increased focus in meeting and exceeding the trust our owners have in us providing those incredible holiday experiences, and finding ways to address their changing needs.

In 2012 every timeshare business will be looking at ways to be more efficient while growing revenues. But like the product itself, when putting strategies in place for business success we have to focus on delivering delight, year after year.

Irrespective of what your plans are to grow your own business in 2012, we each have a responsibility to the industry at large to rally together with single-minded focus on going beyond the call for every single timeshare owner across the world.

Teaming for success

Some great initiatives are already taking shape to this effect, such as ARDA joining forces with the Resort Development Organisation (RDO) to give timeshare developers greater support and consumers greater confidence in the shared holiday ownership industry.

The Timeshare Association (TATOC) and ARDA are captaining high-profile owner endorsement initiatives to bring home the point that we offer families everywhere the chance to own a future of happy holidays.

And as the availability and accessibility of web video steps up a gear in 2012, RCI is enhancing both its RCI TV channel and helping many resorts create their own high-definition footage which further endorses the quality and professionalism of the timeshare industry.

Keeping clean

While we need to share best practices and unite to create a greater and mainstream reputation for timeshare as a superior alternative to the traditional package holiday, we’ve also got to work together to rid this industry of those companies working against us.

RDO’s chief executive Paul Gardner Bougaard mentioned in a previous Innovate 2012 article that greater investment is being made next year (2012) on enforcement to weed out unscrupulous operators intent on giving timeshare a bad name. Despite the enactment of the 2011 EU Timeshare Directive, and the incredible progress of the RDO’s Alberto Garcia and his team this year, there is still much work needed to be done.

It’s true we hear this message every year, and it may seem that timeshare is unique in being targeted by a handful of companies trading improperly on our industry’s success - but the truth is that many business sectors like ours, with high customer satisfaction rates, are hamstrung by those operating outside of legislation.

We should support the RDO and its enforcement efforts to marginalise the unscrupulous but we need to go further, together. We need to not only play a cameo role in locking out those who threaten our industry, but also create a concerted, proactive strategy that involves every one of us in reporting and ridding our industry of the unregulated operators and developing new reasons and opportunities for consumers to put their trust in our companies and products.

The importance of a single brand

Talk to the heads of many global organisations and they’ll tell you brand management is critical in long-range success. For timeshare to grow in popularity, and for consumers to gain greater confidence in what we do and offer, we need to work together on an industry brand that is both supported by our owners, and upheld by all timeshare developers as a kitemark of trust.

Though consumers have radically changed since the 1960s, many operators are still selling long-term, fixed-week products incompatible with the flexibility demanded by an ever more discerning buyer.

It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy - but moving a giant entity forward never is. And it starts by us trusting each other to grow the industry and, by doing so, our own businesses.