Two actions of interest: CEO was quoted in a Vegas paper as saying that if anyone was unhappy about their ownership in one of his resorts he would be glad to refund their money. I'd stand in line for this.
Secondly I received an assessment to pay my portion of rebuilding a timeshare complex that I had no idea I owned or had any responsibility to rebuild after it collapsed due to faulty construction.
Anyone have any thoughts about this?
If your house falls apart, who's responsible for rebuilding it? You own it, you rebuild it. Same with a timeshare. You own an interest in the property and, you pay the fee's associated with maintaining that property.
The problem with some properties is that HOA's don't put enough aside for future repairs, refurbishments or catasrtrophic events. Sunterra had to know about the water intrusion yet they continued to underfund the resorts cash reserve. DRI got caught with the hot potato on this one.
I know owners are yelling at DRI but they should be upset with the prior management companies that put them in this position in the first place. Sunterra was, IMHO, one of the worst management companies for timeshares. They had no interest in maintaining their resorts. Their only interest was in keeping MF's low in a misguided attempt to drive additional sales. A resort could be rotting to the ground around their owners and all Sunterra would have cared about is making another sale. Once you were an owner, the only interest you held for them was making additional sales. I can't tell you how many Sunterra owners I read who bragged about owning such an inexpensive timeshare but they could exchange into the very expensive timeshares like Marriott. I was even told I was a fool for owning Marriott timeshares. I should own Sunterra, which was so much more inexpensive, and trade into the well maintained and more expensive resorts.
Sunterra is the management company that hung owners out to dry but DRI is getting all the blame for correcting past mistakes. If things were allowed to continue on the path they were on, owners under the Sunterra banner would have paid thousands for timeshare interests only to be left holding the bag when the resorts began to fall apart for lack of adaquate maintenance and repairs. It had already begun to happen when Sunterra filed for bankruptcy protection. Sunterra principles are now safely hidden behind the protection of a bankruptcy ruling. Owners, that's you and me, are the ones left paying for their misdeeds. That is unless the owners want to file bankruptcy along with Sunterra as well.
In the end, all resorts managed by DRI will be brought back up to industry standards and will be resorts owners can be proud to stay at rather than points as trade bait to get into the nicer resorts. DRI resorts will set a standard that others want to exchange into rather than exchange out of. Owners will know that when they make a reservation using DRI's THE Club, the resort they reserve will be as nice as their home resort or, as nice as any other resort offered for exchange by I.I.