Timeshare Leads and Marketing Technology Blog

The ARDA 2010 Convention and Exposition is fast approaching (going from March 14-18th) and we’re getting excited to show off our product to everyone in the timeshare industry.  With a great lineup of speakers and presenters at ARDA, the Whitecap team will be hoping to contribute as well. We’ll be around the conference floor talking about our efficient and affordable timeshare tour generation solution.

We currently are running a 30 day free trial and want to give any resort the opportunity to generate some tours for their mini-vac program, no risk and no hassles.  First we’ll set up your resort’s package promotion page on Vacation-Offer.com: including the package price, dates, info, terms and conditions, pictures, amenities and more.  Then we’ll do what we do best, marketing, to drive qualified  tours to that page so that they can get in contact with your booking specialists.  We’re confident that after the 30 day free trial it will be worth your while to continue with the service.  If you don’t want to, there’s no loss to you.

Whether or not you’re going to Vegas for ARDA 2010, be sure to contact us if you’re interested in participating in the trial.  We’d be glad to set up a meeting to let you know how we can help your resort sell timeshares.

The American Resort Development Association will hold its upcoming annual convention and exposition from March 14-18 in Las Vegas. The convention will take place at the luxurious Venetian Hotel and Casino.

In past years, the ARDA convention has had an impressive turnout with more than 3,500 participants from a variety of resort development professions.    This includes industry insiders from over 20 countries that are ready to share their expertise on subjects like the evolving timeshare marketplace, resort branding, timeshare marketing and more.

The convention will feature a variety of exhibitors who are showcasing the resort industry’s newest products and services as well as several keynote speakers.   This conference is an important mainstay for anyone in the resort industry for several reasons.   Those launching  a new resort industry product or service can gain face time and important business leads on the exposition floor.  Property managers and developers also have a chance to check out these services and see how they can benefit their resorts in 2010.

Here are a few of the highlights from ARDA’s 2010 Convention:

• Sunday, March 14 – RCI/AIF Open Golf Tournament
• Monday, March 15 – Principles of Timeshare I: Building Blocks of the Industry
• Tuesday, March 16 – Sales and Marketing Forum: Branding and Selling through Electronic Media
• Wednesday, March 17 – Awards Gala Dinner and Entertainment
• Thursday, March 18 – Interactive Workshop: What it Takes to be a Market Leader in Today’s Dynamic Global Marketplace

Whitecap LG is one service that can help resorts in 2010 using a cutting edge timeshare tour generation product that brings in qualified tour prospects at a fraction of the standard cost.  Feel free to Contact Whitecap for more information.

Get more information on ARDA’s 2010 Convention, including full schedules and registration information.

Marketing your resort’s timeshare offerings can often be a difficult process because there are so many different directions you could take.  Whitecap’s cutting edge timeshare marketing software minimizes the difficulty by harnessing the advantages of several options and applying them in a simple, straightforward way.

One of the advantages to leveraging Whitecap’s timeshare tour generation technology is its ability to utilize several on-site mechanisms for generating tours.   We believe in optimizing our mini-vacation landing pages to target a span of potential customers.  After Whitecap hones in on a potential tour  by directing them to a resort’s mini-vacation page, it provides the customer several options to book:

1.  Call In Tours: This option is the least ‘invasive,’ allowing a potential tour to  call in to an easily accessible 1-800 number that re-routes the person to the resort’s phone room.  This potential tour has already had access to a variety of information about the package, including prices, rooms, pictures, and terms of use; giving the phone operator a good head start in booking the customer.

2. Pay Later Tours: This option allows for a potential tour to submit their contact information, booking dates, and sign off on the resort’s tour requirements.  The customer info is then entered into the Whitecap database, where a phone operator or administrator can access and process the submission.   Automated emails will notify any designated resort administrators about freshly generated tours.

3.  Complete Bookings: Whitecap provides a third option for those potential tours that prefer to handle everything online, allowing them to select dates, sign off on tour requirements, enter payment information, and fully commit to a mini-vacation. This option mimics modern day vacation booking sites like Expedia and Orbitz so that potential tours feel comfortable throughout the process.

After a booking is completed, an automated confirmation email is forwarded to the customer, reminding them of their tour date and location, as well as providing receipt of payment. Depending on the resort’s available inventory, the customer’s vacation dates are then automatically blacked out to prevent another person from overbooking those days.

Not only does Whitecap provide a resort several ways to book potential tours, it also provides several monthly pricing plans to accommodate the budgets of small to large resorts.

The Forum is a timeshare industry event that takes place in London on December 9-10.  The timeshare event will feature expert analysis on the state of the industry as well as where the future lies for the shared ownership market.  Generator Systems and Perspective Magazine are hosting the Forum, which will include debates and panels with timeshare industry experts from around the globe.

One of the big questions posed at the Forum will ask how fractional ownership will play its part in the future of timeshare.  An in-depth analysis on fractional ownership will allow timeshare marketers and developers to decide how they want to move forward with fractional ownership strategies.

Some of the big name speakers include Brett Archibald, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Group RCI, Peter Booth, Board Director at Group Pestana, as well as Darren Ettrdige,  the Vice President of Resort Sales at Interval International.

Check out the Forum site for more information on panelists and the event schedule.

One of the services that Whitecap provides hand-in-hand with it’s timeshare tour generation software is social media marketing.  ‘Social Media’ has been a recent buzz word that is getting thrown around a lot, but how do you actually use it to promote resorts and timeshares?  I’d like to review what exactly Social Media Marketing is, and in particular how it can give a healthy boost to a timeshare marketing campaign.

Social Media basically refers to a new generation of internet community.   Social media websites allow people to connect with each other through relevant topics and interests.  Social media marketing allows you to target these niches, including people, groups and locations that are relevant to your field.

One of the biggest social networking sites is Facebook.  Facebook has a multitude of location specific groups and pages that are formed around common interests.  For example if there was a ‘I Love Las Vegas Group,’  this would be a great place to tell people about your Las Vegas mini-vacation special, or some new amenities that were recently added to your resort.

Twitter is another social media site that allows you to target specific people through various conventions.  Hashtags (#) are one tool within Twitter that allow you to micro-target specific discussions based on keywords.  For example, Twitter users could be ‘tweeting’ about Las Vegas, using the hashtag #LasVegas.  This would be a great place for you to tweet about some fresh resort news:  “Our Las Vegas Resort just added a state of the art indoor pool, be sure to check it out at www.vegasresort.com #LasVegas ”

Social Aggregators like Digg and Redditt are another great way to get out the breaking news on your resort.  If you have a resort blog and frequently update it, submitting your articles to these aggregators will allow more people to find and access them.   Not only can social aggregators increase traffic to your resort or timeshare blog, but they also enable you to categorize your articles to specific topics like ‘travel.’

One of the reasons why Whitecap’s tour generation software is successful is through the use of social media marketing.  These services are fully inclusive within our monthly pricing packages.

From VacationBetter.org

Sally Lessig was one of the 2009 winners of  ARDAs ‘Bring Your Vacation to Life’ timeshare story contest.  The goal of the contest was for timeshare owners to share a particular story about a vacation that touched their lives.

This is an excerpt from Sally’s winning entry:

“It has been such a joy to watch our children grow up, marry, have their own children and this year our Great-Grandson came for his first visit. That makes four generations sharing fun at the Beach House.”

Although it may just seem like some well placed Timeshare Marketing from ARDA, the ‘Bring Your Vacation to Life’ contest really  did highlight why vacation ownership can be a great option for some people.  Timeshare isn’t right for everyone.  However, for a percentage of vacationers, timeshare is the perfect solution: providing long term savings, accessibility, and exchange options that have the potential to change lives.

There are vacationers out there who have the potential to fall in love with Timeshare, but just don’t know enough about it yet.  They haven’t heard about that fantastic  resort destination, incredible amenities, and long term savings that are waiting for them.  Whitecap’s technology has the ability to reach out to those specific people through targeted Timeshare Marketing and deliver them to a specific resort.

One service that Whitecap offers as an addition to its SaaS timeshare tour software is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for resorts.  SEO is essentially implementing target keywords on a website that are relevant to the industry or site audience.  For example, if you run a ski resort out of New Hampshire, one likely target keyword would be ‘New Hampshire Ski Resort’.

Keywords like these are strategically implemented on site pages so that if a person were to Google ‘New Hampshire Ski Resort’ the listing would appear on the 1st page of search results.   Having a website listed on the 1st page can dramatically increase relevant site traffic as well as resort visitors.

Many companies charge thousands of dollars per month for Resort SEO services.  Whitecap however, has partnered with it’s sister company Insight Forge, to offer SEO to its resort clients free of charge as part of the monthly SaaS package.  This process involves keyword optimization on the portal Vacation-Offer.com for a resort’s specific mini-vacation page.  Utilizing this technique, a resort can gain tremendous visibility for their timeshare offerings.

The quality of the incoming resort tours generated by SEO efforts is also very high.  These are people who are specifically searching for keywords that are highly relevant to the resort.  SEO marketing for resorts can often be a superior and more cost-effective alternative to online advertising (such as using Adwords).

The majority of timeshare marketing companies price their services  ‘per tour’.  The prices per booked tour often range from $350 to $400.   If the marketing company generates 1 tour the resort pays for it.  If the company generates 50 tours the resort pays the sum.

Whitecap takes a totally different approach in pricing our booked timeshare tours.  We charge a monthly ‘Software as a Service’ fee of $499.  This includes utilizing our full marketing efforts to generate tours for a resort, including access to our online vacation portal Vacation-Offer.com, as well as off-site search engine optimization for target destination keywords.  The difference is, no matter how many tours we generate during a month, we charge the same monthly fee.  The resort could have 50 booked tours and still only pay $499.

Why do we price this way?  Our SaaS pricing structure is based on our expertise in the timeshare industry and ability to easily deploy new resorts utilizing our timeshare marketing software.   It isn’t a hassle for us to upload a new resort and start generating booked tours, so we figure it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg for the resort every time we land a potential sale.

Whitecap has also been developed to be extremely flexible for resort administrators, including phone room operators and mangers.  This means we don’t need to concentrate on adapting our software per new resort customer and can instead concentrate on timeshare marketing.

We believe it is a new day for marketing timeshare tours.  Utilizing the full potential of the Internet, Whitecap makes the process dead simple while also retaining the necessary tour quality for resorts across the country.

Very often software design companies claim to have designed the perfect interface for a specific industry.  Once the software reaches the hands of the target users however, its design fails to live up to expectations.   The reason this occurs is because the software designers and developers are not usually a part of that industry.  Although there is a feedback loop with industry users, much is lost in translation and the final product ends up reflecting that.

Whitecap displays a different breed of targeted software design.  Our team is made up of the best of both worlds:  first-hand experience in the timeshare industry combined with cutting edge Web 2.0 design and marketing credentials.

Whitecap realizes what the needs of resort developers are.  We know why it’s integral to have an easy-to-use interface for administrators to sift between mini vacations within resorts.  We know why it is important for resort administrators to be able to set qualifications for their timeshare tours, such as minimum income and geographic requirements.   We realize a lead or tour needs to be able to be ‘flagged’ for review if it has a bogus phone number or name.

Whitecap has a multitude of other features targeted specifically for timeshare sales, carefully planned to create an efficient and simple administration process.

The Whitecap team also has a deep experience base in internet marketing, allowing us to effectively target potential qualified timeshare leads with accuracy and efficiency.  Our experience in Web 2.0 has enabled us to create a modern vacation portal that allows consumers to browse and book mini-vacation packages with ease.   Our search engine optimization expertise lets us target the vacation specific keywords that consumers are searching for.

All in all, Whitecap has been targeted specifically and only for timeshare industry users.  We don’t have an umbrella software package that spans several industries like many other companies do.  Our single goal is to satisfy the tour and lead generation needs of the timeshare industry.

The 1960’s represented times of radical change. The brittle status-quo exoskeleton was shed, making way for spongy new ideologies to be soaked up by the populous. While counter-culture youth lashed out against the establishment and the cold war ignited a race to the moon, an equally profound change began to simmer in a small ski-town in the French Alps.

The story goes: a French family who loved to ski wanted to fulfill their lifelong dream of owning a beautiful Alps Chalet. Unfortunately, such an expensive purchase was well beyond the modest means of this family. Their dream would not be denied: the father brilliantly concocted the strategy of petitioning their large extended family to split the Chalet’s ownership based on calendar months. This way, each part of the extended family could enjoy ownership of the Chalet for a different portion of the year. This event marked the conception of timeshare ownership, soon to be promoted and popularized by nearby resort developers Hapimag of Switzerland and SuperDevuloy of France.

This original premise of the father reaching out to his ‘extended family’ is what peaks my interest. It must have been quite easy for the father to convince his extended family to buy- after all, he probably knew a bit about them. Elise, the old matron of the Boulangers, was notorious for her love of soaking in hot tubs. Therefore, the Chalet had two luxurious, state-of-the art jacuzzis. The Petain family were known as food-connoisseurs (snobs), and so one of France’s great eateries conveniently resided at the foot of the Ski slopes. This must have been how the father sold them, based on each family’s personal desires and preferences.

In today’s world of timeshare sales, the ‘extended family’ is getting harder and harder to come by. A phone room operator doesn’t know that Marcy from Topeka loves golf or Bill from Cleveland has a sweet spot for back massages. This is why the internet has become so important.

Using the newest lead generation technology a timeshare developer can collect vital geographic, psychographic, and demographic information about prospective buyers. This valuable data can be directed through mini-vacation packages that are adeptly marketed to the right people. The times of picking a needle (or prospect) out of a haystack are gone.  Timeshare leads need to be honed and on-point as if  directed towards an old friend or family member. The web provides the tools to bridge this gap and make all sales prospects a part of your ‘extended family’.