Guys and gals, from my perspective, Karen Blackford and Trish Harrington NEED your votes. It's imPERative that we get them voted back in. Wyndham is trying get them both off the Board, particularly Trish Harrington. Doing so would essentially give Wyndham all the power. And that would be ironic, as well as bad news, as they are no longer our manager of the timeshares. The developers chose to hire Wyndham Management company to run/manage/maintain the resort. It was never their property. It has ALWAYS been owned by the individual timeshare owners as well as the few condo owners. There has been 2 Boards that work together. The AOAO and the IOA. The former's responsibility was essentially taking care of the grounds and buildings, as they are common to both groups. The IOA is responsible for the inside of the timeshare rooms, as well as rental and sales.
When we first found out that Wyndham Management was using the timeshare sales pitch to get individual owners to give them their deed for nothing, plus pay them money, in order to get into Club Wyndham. When I was there in 2005, I went through an "owner's update". Wyndham tried to get me to give up my deed to them (And I have a premium oceanfront building deed) and give them $7000 to get into their vacation club. For one, that's unethical. We hired them to manage the property, not use that as a way to gather deeds for taking over the resort.
The IOA noticed that the quality of the maintenance under Wyndham was going downhill. At first, they tried to work with Wyndham to improve things. Eventually, though, they found them not being responsive. The IOA started looking into other management companies and chose Grand Pacific Vacation Services. They started later last year and they have been great so far. GPVS had also taken over from Wyndham at the Makai Beach Club after they had found the level of maintenance that Wyndham provided was unsatisfactory. Apparently, since 2013, GPVS has done wonderful things a the MBC and the resort sparkles. Keep in mind, they're supposed to be working for the owners. Clearly GPVS has been very responsive.
So now that the IOA brought in GPVS, Wyndham has been fighting to wrestle power away from actual individual owners. And through a lack of information to the ownership, few owners have actually been casting votes. Wyndham controls about 1100 deeds, compared to the roughly 5500 deeds overall. Only about 600 owners, to my understanding, have voted in recent past elections, allowing Wyndham to throw actual individual owners off the Board. They're gunning for Trish Harrington this time around.
We need to make sure that Trish Harrington and Karen Blackford remain on the IOA Board. Wyndham successfully got Trish thrown off the AOAO Board last year. I'm guessing that she'll try again the next time for voting for that board; and with our more aware ownership (I hope), we'll be able to get her and others back on. And congratulations to her, Trish Harrington was voted onto the board at Shearwater last week. She really is a great person to have represent us individual owners.
There are others who are worthy to be on the boards, and we (including me) will work to get them on. But we don't want water down our vote either. If enough of the individual owners vote, we have way more votes than Wyndham does. But Wyndham is predicated on apathy, hoping that most owners will not vote, so that can use their voting power to further take over the board, allowing them to make decisions that will help Wyndham Corporate, not the actual individual owners at Kauai Beach Villas.
One final thing, if you're looking to get rid of your deed because you can no longer use the timeshare, please avoid merely giving it away for free to Wyndham. At the very least, first try putting in a classified at RedWeek.com (they deal in higher end sales, rentals, and purchases), or a classified in TimeSharing Today, a 6-times per year periodical (that also has an online edition). In case you're not familiar with TimeSharing Today, it's a non-profit run by and for timeshare owners with many interesting articles written by owners and industry experts. A classified ad starts at $40, I believe. You should be able to get something for your KBV deed, and it keeps it out of the hands of Wyndham.
Thanks for reading. Aloha!
Jeff Bellin
Salem MA (A city with several connections to Hawaii, including the Peabody Essex Museum, owning one of only 3 existing Ku statues, the Hawaiian war god)