How stupid ARE people?!?!

[jp10558]

If the industry had to rely on Tuggers for the initial purchase most of the those resorts would never have been built.

Ok, but that's like saying we "take advantage" of the public roads or something. Most of us are coming in where the resorts already exist.

I have thought that there would be models that take less advantage like kickstarter or some of the open source software development models I've seen, or even the movies on broadcast TV methods - but I expect there'd be less money for the developers in that model, or you'd still be flim flamming some number of people on paying up to get the "latest and greatest".

 

[WaikikiFirst]

it's at least as good as chatting one of my co-workers for off the top of their head info or guesses. So ... is that a "win"?

A win? Only if you limit yourself to chatting with co-workers who pass themselves off as know-it-alls, which is basically what the zeitgeist is doing with AI.
Good at general FLUFF but 50/50 at narrow-domain stuff sounds about right.

 

[jp10558]

depends on who you know & whether they are Normally Distributed & whether you compare to themselves as a group or to the entire population & the attribute being discussed. Generally speaking, to ignore all that, Median might be a better metric, but with Median, that is technically true only half the time

My apologies to S Wright. He is an oldie but a goodie. Love the seashells joke.

Yes, the Carlin joke that "Half the population is below average" is more true. Though what you imagine as the "average intelligence" could well be skewed by any number of things.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

models that take less advantage like kickstarter or some of the open source software development models

Strange leap. Development of "resorts" fundamentally depends greatly on demand growth, and other than in niches, that depends on population growth.
How much pop growth is there in the US compared to the demand growth in niche kickstarters & in OSS? almost zilch

 

[joestein]

The entire timeshare industry is propped up by stupid people. Tuggers freely take advantage by buying up their contracts on the resale market for pennies on the dollar.

I would like to think of us as a discount timeshare disposition service.

 

[jp10558]

Strange leap. Development of "resorts" fundamentally depends greatly on demand growth, and other than in niches, that depends on population growth.
How much pop growth is there in the US compared to the demand growth in niche kickstarters & in OSS? almost zilch

Well, IDK how many (if any) new resorts there actually is demand for, but I personally think a major part of the developer "scam" is basically selling the same property many times at the "new build" price, rather than fair market value for the second owner etc...

I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that if they didn't basically lie to people about the resale value and treat every sale like they're selling a new build, the pricing after the initial sale of the intervals would be much closer to resale values. And that also would in some sense maybe incentivize the developers to do things to increase resale value of the intervals that would likely be good for owners.

Going back to whether resorts are niches or not is also a bit open to debate IMO. The ARDA numbers (i.e. the best spin possible I think) puts ownership of timeshares at like 13% of the population. A much larger percent goes on vacation and some number of those would be potential customers if the retail sales weren't so scammy I think. Or at least that's usually the basic argument most commentators and news articles make.

There's also been a hotel boom for years, and I know, hotels operate under lesser occupancy rates and are a different market, but they and AirB&B do point to there being demand for travel lodging and at least some appetite for alternate strategies for the customer.

There's not really a reason to limit the discussion to the US - I know a lot of people post on TUG of wanting to go international, but that does kind of just increase the pool - non US people want to come here, and plenty of more local people might well be interested in resorts "over there" too.

I also think that it's completely possible to do the same sort of system of "pay more for early access" and/or "pledge an amount to add a location to the system and also get the early access" for acquired properties in addition to new built. We are certainly seeing system and location purchases happen per TUG postings.