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The landscape of vacation accommodations has never been so fluid, and one old stalwart is trying to re-establish its place.
Wyndham Destinations, the timeshare management company that spun off Wyndham Worldwide last year, has announced a plan to spend as much as $1.5B over the next five years to expand into more markets and update its infrastructure, FOX Business reports.
The timeshare company will spend as much as $300M per year acquiring new properties to manage and sell or lease, CEO Michael Brown told FOX Business. Meanwhile, it will invest about $25M in renovating its sales centers and $10M on its customer interaction tools. Wyndham Destinations has a 100-year licensing agreement in place with the now-separate Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
By updating its approach and growing its physical footprint into new markets that appeal to a younger generation such as Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, Wyndham Destinations hopes to "reshap[e] the way not only the industry, but specifically our company is viewed," Brown told FOX Business.
Since Airbnb exploded onto the international hospitality scene, the startup and its competitors have aimed to incorporate more and more elements of hotels. At the same time, hotel companies such as Marriott have looked for ways to tap into the short-term rental and home-sharing industries.
Timeshares carry similar compromises between ownership, hospitality and renting to Airbnb, but predate home-sharing by decades. A 2018 survey found that the concept of timeshares was losing travelers' interest in favor of the relative flexibility afforded by short-term rentals and home-sharing, but Brown believes demographic changes could soon favor Wyndham's business.
“As the millennial has gotten a little bit older, incomes are a little higher, households have begun to form, their vacation tolerance for volatility is a little bit lower,” Brown told FOX Business. “It really starts to get into our sweet spot.”
Brown said its Austin and Portland properties came online at the start of 2019 and are already full for the remainder of the year. Wyndham reportedly expects 7% annual revenue growth and 8% ownership growth annually as a result of its expansion.
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