Some of you may remember me from many years ago; i've rented Millions of points across all types of ownerships and management companies back in the day.
I stepped away from the industry, and pursued other interests in technology. After building multiple million dollar businesses, and then catching embezzlers, suing them, and rebuilding new businesses back to multi-millions; I caught the accountant embezzling and racketeering which shut down a handful of operations, and I lost hundreds of thousands again in investments, etc.. and no longer have anything to work on. So i'm thinking of a new businesses to create while I get back on my feet. Past few years; i've advised many start ups around silicon valley and abroad on technology infrastructure, and business process, etc.. and many times i'll deal with companies wanting to incorporate blockchain with no real basis other than driving sentiment.
Incorporating blockchain in hopes of driving sentiment and utilizing a token as a security first and not even thinking about it's utility application has been the unfortunate demise of most blockchain decentralized applications before they even begin. However, I'd like to think i'm the few that do understand the application of technology and incorporation.
Here is what i'm thinking.. lately, I've been recalling all the ins and outs of the timeshare industry. I read a study that owners are getting younger, and about 10M is still spent per year for timeshares via developers; over 8 million US owners alone... and it's just sad and crazy. Then I look at ARDA who should be governing for the owners as well as industry, etc.. and it's laughable.. back in the day, I recall them trying to sneak "voluntary" donations on maintenance fees.. and would be paid by 80% of owners (most on automatic payments); unbeknownst to them.
I won't get into it, but you can know just by looking at ARDA's site how one-sided their intention of marketing is. Look at the "Featured sites" they have on their website promoting... one site owned by Florida to promote a bogus "good" resale market available, another owned by a technology company on an extremely outdated reservation system sold to resorts that is owned by wyndham (but licensed to starwood/now marriott...umm what?)... the whole technology I may add that can be completely obsolete and beaten in efficiency and cost by use of the other tech or even blockchain (not my use case tho, which i'll get to). Then I look at other nonsense they have and it's crazy to think they are fooling anyone not being a PAC to lobby (marriott/wyndham/etc) and trying to hold the perception of the industry and bad perception of being scammed if you want to get out on the resale market.
Then I look at RCI and II; the two main exchanges back in the day.. RCI I know was bought out by Wyndham... but what, now II is owned by Marriott? what? So they monopolized the exchange industry? Just crazy imo.
So.. here's what I am thinking, I can easily Disrupt the Timeshare ReSale Industry, as technology in the title industry is already being disrupted and completely piss off the monopolies and arda which will either 1) make them offer to buy out and shut down, or 2) force their hand to comply with changes to the industry for the benefit of the owners, regardless of the impact to developers (because the change will happen with or without them). 3) just lose a ton of market share and revenue as well as an over complicated system to benefit solely them.
This is how I'll do it without divulging too much before I create it:
Ledger Timeshare Owners - Digitize their timeshare ownership asset to the blockchain
When someone wants to sell or buy an ownership; it will be 100x easy with a ledgered timeshare as all the information is readily available digitally for the other party to verify (as well as the title company and resort/management company to confirm if needed but they have all that info anyway, etc). They will also be able to see the history thru time on that ownership since being ledgered and tracked as a digital asset (if sold and resold, etc). There can be additional smart contracts to facilitate incorporation of a title transfer company partner for when buyer/sellers do have a transfer to initiate, etc or just program it to automate the bulk of the process until the industry changes (remaining counties not doing erecording, etc). Can also legitimize ownership, and do much more. Could automate deedbacks when viable and offer quick solutions out to those that apply. With industry conforming, it would get much much easier. If a developer incorporated blockchain, then everything could be done at the root level and make this 1000x better and quicker, but no way they will be so quick to do that with the amount they'll lose control and money.
The second part is creating an Association or ledgered timeshares to govern the standard of the decentralized resale/exchange industry along with the technology programming and token itself... as a disrupted industry that needs to be conformed to new technology is a long education process for everyone, especially old owners...
the third part is of course the exchange; allowing timeshare owners a decentralized portal to exchange/trade or deposit reservations with others. So many benefits here such as verification, easy of access to information to confirm, escrow for money between renter and rentee before released all handled automatically along with ledgered accordingly. This can be done in many ways obviously and would need to be tweaked accordingly and voted on by the ledger timeshare owners or exchange users.
There isn't really any money tied to it initially as i'd go sole utility use route to make sure it's a viable model with no funding and not security route that just try's to get investments off of sentiment with no actual viable model... i could probably create it all in my own time and my own dime (as rough as it gets); I may be able to convince an angel investor to drop a few million into it or get funding from a state that wants to invest in a blockchain startup accelerators... but I also know there will be some hurdles; such as time... (it's up to the user to establish account and upload docs to digitize asset), and education (which i can make the process easy by an easy user interface like any other application), and inexperience with crypto (all of which will evolve in time).
But.. if there are really 8M timeshare owners in the US, they are getting younger, sales are still growing every year, the industry is still the wild wild west in the resale market and a nightmare to most that are stuck in it. Developers love this in my mind; disrupting that would be a devastating nightmare, which is why they have a huge PAC (arda) ingrained at every level to make sure it stays that way and people continue to buy from the developer instead of get for little to nothing on the resale market.. it is not a balanced association.... too much like the financial industry... and it's surprisingly easy to disrupt if there was a demand from owners for such a thing... which brings me to my question.
How many people would actually want their timeshare ownership (as an asset) digitized?
How many people would jump on the train as early adapters knowing it may not actually come to benefit them until they have a use for it (ease of information) or it progressed and scaled (decentralized exchange).
This would be created by someone who isn't an owner anywhere, but for owners everywhere. I use to know everything about developers/management companies/resorts/ownerships/contracts/deeds/title work,etc.. so I could do it all very well to the benefit of owners and the resale industry. For owners, the main benefit initially would be they'd have all of their ownership details at their fingertips digitally along with docs... but it would have the capability to handle so much beyond that with smart contracts being integrated to complete functions of the resale and exchange industries... it could go even farther with api's to resort management systems if they ever did comply or integrate blockchain into their own infrastructures. (would reduce cost and increase efficiency of any resort's reservation system entirely alone).
Feedback welcome.. my apologies for the wall of text in some paragraphs.. don't want to relay too much of the benefits nor inner-workings as concept could be stolen before i start... but it's been getting tossed around in my mind a lot and i have the perfect brands, knowledge to create the technology, knowledge of the industry, and I have the vision to seeing it work to the benefit of many owners when the time comes and wish things could be easier.
If you did digitize your timeshare ownership.. make no mistake - nothing changes to your ownership, it's just being recorded digitally that you are the owner... and making the ability to digitally trade such asset or usage possible with ease... in time and a ton of work on my part.
Thanks for reading.
Kaio
I stepped away from the industry, and pursued other interests in technology. After building multiple million dollar businesses, and then catching embezzlers, suing them, and rebuilding new businesses back to multi-millions; I caught the accountant embezzling and racketeering which shut down a handful of operations, and I lost hundreds of thousands again in investments, etc.. and no longer have anything to work on. So i'm thinking of a new businesses to create while I get back on my feet. Past few years; i've advised many start ups around silicon valley and abroad on technology infrastructure, and business process, etc.. and many times i'll deal with companies wanting to incorporate blockchain with no real basis other than driving sentiment.
Incorporating blockchain in hopes of driving sentiment and utilizing a token as a security first and not even thinking about it's utility application has been the unfortunate demise of most blockchain decentralized applications before they even begin. However, I'd like to think i'm the few that do understand the application of technology and incorporation.
Here is what i'm thinking.. lately, I've been recalling all the ins and outs of the timeshare industry. I read a study that owners are getting younger, and about 10M is still spent per year for timeshares via developers; over 8 million US owners alone... and it's just sad and crazy. Then I look at ARDA who should be governing for the owners as well as industry, etc.. and it's laughable.. back in the day, I recall them trying to sneak "voluntary" donations on maintenance fees.. and would be paid by 80% of owners (most on automatic payments); unbeknownst to them.
I won't get into it, but you can know just by looking at ARDA's site how one-sided their intention of marketing is. Look at the "Featured sites" they have on their website promoting... one site owned by Florida to promote a bogus "good" resale market available, another owned by a technology company on an extremely outdated reservation system sold to resorts that is owned by wyndham (but licensed to starwood/now marriott...umm what?)... the whole technology I may add that can be completely obsolete and beaten in efficiency and cost by use of the other tech or even blockchain (not my use case tho, which i'll get to). Then I look at other nonsense they have and it's crazy to think they are fooling anyone not being a PAC to lobby (marriott/wyndham/etc) and trying to hold the perception of the industry and bad perception of being scammed if you want to get out on the resale market.
Then I look at RCI and II; the two main exchanges back in the day.. RCI I know was bought out by Wyndham... but what, now II is owned by Marriott? what? So they monopolized the exchange industry? Just crazy imo.
So.. here's what I am thinking, I can easily Disrupt the Timeshare ReSale Industry, as technology in the title industry is already being disrupted and completely piss off the monopolies and arda which will either 1) make them offer to buy out and shut down, or 2) force their hand to comply with changes to the industry for the benefit of the owners, regardless of the impact to developers (because the change will happen with or without them). 3) just lose a ton of market share and revenue as well as an over complicated system to benefit solely them.
This is how I'll do it without divulging too much before I create it:
Ledger Timeshare Owners - Digitize their timeshare ownership asset to the blockchain
When someone wants to sell or buy an ownership; it will be 100x easy with a ledgered timeshare as all the information is readily available digitally for the other party to verify (as well as the title company and resort/management company to confirm if needed but they have all that info anyway, etc). They will also be able to see the history thru time on that ownership since being ledgered and tracked as a digital asset (if sold and resold, etc). There can be additional smart contracts to facilitate incorporation of a title transfer company partner for when buyer/sellers do have a transfer to initiate, etc or just program it to automate the bulk of the process until the industry changes (remaining counties not doing erecording, etc). Can also legitimize ownership, and do much more. Could automate deedbacks when viable and offer quick solutions out to those that apply. With industry conforming, it would get much much easier. If a developer incorporated blockchain, then everything could be done at the root level and make this 1000x better and quicker, but no way they will be so quick to do that with the amount they'll lose control and money.
The second part is creating an Association or ledgered timeshares to govern the standard of the decentralized resale/exchange industry along with the technology programming and token itself... as a disrupted industry that needs to be conformed to new technology is a long education process for everyone, especially old owners...
the third part is of course the exchange; allowing timeshare owners a decentralized portal to exchange/trade or deposit reservations with others. So many benefits here such as verification, easy of access to information to confirm, escrow for money between renter and rentee before released all handled automatically along with ledgered accordingly. This can be done in many ways obviously and would need to be tweaked accordingly and voted on by the ledger timeshare owners or exchange users.
There isn't really any money tied to it initially as i'd go sole utility use route to make sure it's a viable model with no funding and not security route that just try's to get investments off of sentiment with no actual viable model... i could probably create it all in my own time and my own dime (as rough as it gets); I may be able to convince an angel investor to drop a few million into it or get funding from a state that wants to invest in a blockchain startup accelerators... but I also know there will be some hurdles; such as time... (it's up to the user to establish account and upload docs to digitize asset), and education (which i can make the process easy by an easy user interface like any other application), and inexperience with crypto (all of which will evolve in time).
But.. if there are really 8M timeshare owners in the US, they are getting younger, sales are still growing every year, the industry is still the wild wild west in the resale market and a nightmare to most that are stuck in it. Developers love this in my mind; disrupting that would be a devastating nightmare, which is why they have a huge PAC (arda) ingrained at every level to make sure it stays that way and people continue to buy from the developer instead of get for little to nothing on the resale market.. it is not a balanced association.... too much like the financial industry... and it's surprisingly easy to disrupt if there was a demand from owners for such a thing... which brings me to my question.
How many people would actually want their timeshare ownership (as an asset) digitized?
How many people would jump on the train as early adapters knowing it may not actually come to benefit them until they have a use for it (ease of information) or it progressed and scaled (decentralized exchange).
This would be created by someone who isn't an owner anywhere, but for owners everywhere. I use to know everything about developers/management companies/resorts/ownerships/contracts/deeds/title work,etc.. so I could do it all very well to the benefit of owners and the resale industry. For owners, the main benefit initially would be they'd have all of their ownership details at their fingertips digitally along with docs... but it would have the capability to handle so much beyond that with smart contracts being integrated to complete functions of the resale and exchange industries... it could go even farther with api's to resort management systems if they ever did comply or integrate blockchain into their own infrastructures. (would reduce cost and increase efficiency of any resort's reservation system entirely alone).
Feedback welcome.. my apologies for the wall of text in some paragraphs.. don't want to relay too much of the benefits nor inner-workings as concept could be stolen before i start... but it's been getting tossed around in my mind a lot and i have the perfect brands, knowledge to create the technology, knowledge of the industry, and I have the vision to seeing it work to the benefit of many owners when the time comes and wish things could be easier.
If you did digitize your timeshare ownership.. make no mistake - nothing changes to your ownership, it's just being recorded digitally that you are the owner... and making the ability to digitally trade such asset or usage possible with ease... in time and a ton of work on my part.
Thanks for reading.
Kaio
