About Marriott. Related News:. Subscribe to the one-and-only Hotel-Online! Time shares, or vacation ownership properties, are in essence pre-paid luxury hotel rooms. They offer buyers lifetime rights to a resort, typically in one- or two-week intervals annually, for a set price, plus annual maintenance fees.
But time shares have proved to be more profitable than hotels for a variety of reasons, and major brands such as Marriott and Hilton now have huge vacation-ownership operations.
The higher profitability for time shares is partly because the prepaid aspect boosts returns and occupancy. The rebranding process is expected to take a year and will begin immediately with the Fairfield Resorts change, involving 15 to 18 properties.
Collectively, these brands will continue to operate as Wyndham Vacation Ownership, one of three business units that comprise Parsippany, N. When completed, more than time share resorts throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and South Pacific will carry the Wyndham brand. On October 3, , Fairfield declared bankruptcy, seeking Chapter 11 protection from a page list of more than 2, creditors.
It was the largest filing in the state's history. Nearly two years after shrouding itself in the veil of bankruptcy, Fairfield emerged from Chapter 11 protection after exchanging much of its bondholder debt for equity. The new era in Fairfield's history began in September The new version of Fairfield comprised 14 resorts frequented by more than , members and a new time-share plan called FairShare Plus.
Unlike its predecessor, FairShare Plus offered Fairfield members considerable flexibility in arranging their vacation time through the adoption of a point-based system. Members' ownership stakes were assigned symbolic points that could be used for vacation stays of a few days, a week, or longer, in any season members chose. The points, or credits, were renewed annually and, in some cases, could be borrowed from the next year's allotment.
Fairfield's new marketing plan, like others implemented by other time-share companies, no longer restricted members' choices to a fixed week in fixed seasons. By , Fairfield, having fully recovered from the travesty of the s, had 15 resort locations in operation. Among the properties were resorts in Orlando, Florida; Branson, Missouri; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Williamsburg, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Pagosa Springs, Colorado, but aside from these resorts and the company's nine other properties, Fairfield members had thousands of other locations to choose from.
Through affiliations with several worldwide vacation exchange companies, Fairfield offered access to approximately 2, additional domestic and international resorts, including Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The number of vacation destinations available to Fairfield members grew dramatically during the latter half of the s, when the company expanded as aggressively as it had during the early s.
Based on the total properties in operation in , the number of Fairfield-operated resorts more than doubled by the end of the decade, with a handful of the new resorts added through a major acquisition in Vacation Break owned and operated four developments in southern Florida, a time-share in Orlando, and a hotel in the Bahamas, giving Fairfield 20 time-share properties comprising 3, units.
Although there were major costs associated with the acquisition, Fairfield's stock value soared during the year, increasing an impressive percent. The acquisition of Vacation Break was credited with Fairfield's surge into the small pack of the country's elite time-share companies. After moving its headquarters from Little Rock to Orlando in , the company became the third largest time-share organization in the country, trailing only Marriott Vacation Club and Sunterra Corp.
By the end of the s, there were 33 Fairfield resorts located in 12 states and the Bahamas, with additional properties under development. In , the company began sales operations on a start-up basis at six resorts still under development. As Fairfield entered the 21st century, an announcement in January suggested the beginning of a new era for the company.
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