Time sharing…
The additional Westin timeshare buildings are well underway. Looks can be deceiving. Driving down South Shore road, it looks like several new buildings are going up. In fact, they are existing buildings that have been completely stripped of their roofs and walls, and the concrete shells are being built out from scratch. They’re the top tier buildings on the hotel side of South Shore Road, and the once 180 or so rooms are being converted into about 90 two and three-bedroom timeshare villas. Some of them will get private little pools.
But that’s old news.
Here’s what we hear. The entire property will soon be timeshares.
Why not? It’s good money for the Westin. Sell ‘em. Get paid to take care of them, and take a cut when it rents them.
On St. John right now, there are about 100 Westin timeshare (oops! “vacation club“) weeks on the market, from $13,500 for a week in September, to $295,000 for a month from late February to late March. There are also about a half dozen timeshare weeks listed for the Virgin Grand Estates timeshares. (A couple of ultra nice villas at the very top of Virgin Grand Estates.)
Hey, timeshares are hot business. About $8.6 billion in annual sales in the U.S., says an Ernst & Young study (not Ruth Ernst.) Timeshare sales have posted double-digit sales growth every year except one in the past 17 yrs.
And ya know what? Whatever ends up happening, the Westin is a pretty darn cool property.
January 14th, 2007 15:32
Let people like my parents buy them up. Then the rest of us can go to redweek.com to snatch up their unused weeks at low costs.