Wyndham buys Shell Vacations for $102M in cash

[lawren2]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57512924/wyndham-buys-shell-vacations-for-$102m-in-cash/

Wyndham buys Shell Vacations for $102M in cash


PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Wyndham Vacation Ownership has purchased privately held Shell Vacations LLC and its subsidiaries for about $102 million in cash.

The company said Friday that the transaction also includes $153 million of debt.

The acquisition gives Wyndham Vacation property management operations at 19 Shell resort locations in Hawaii, California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Wisconsin, Texas, New Hampshire and Canada.

It will also run Shell Vacations Club, a points-based reservation and exchange system, and manage all of the club's marketing, sales and financial services operations.

Wyndham Vacation, a subsidiary of lodging company Wyndham Worldwide Corp., says the deal will immediately add to earnings.

Wyndham Worldwide is based in Parsippany, N.J. Its shares finished at $53.97 per share on Thursday.

[GrayFal]

Wonder if they will honor the Bluegreen Select Connections contract.

Or could this by why there is a new name on the Bluegreen Travelers Plus website???

Interesting times.

[gandalf252002]

I cannot say for one that I am surprised as the significant vacancies always surprised me. Not sure if getting rid of them was such a great move now after all. I would be interested to see how it affects those who are still current owners. Any current owners have any additional insight?

Ironically a quick visit to Shell's vacation club website and there is nothing listed under their Press Centre.

I would suspect this may also be one of the reasons the direct exchange never came to fruition.

[GrayFal]

I cannot say for one that I am surprised as the significant vacancies always surprised me. Not sure if getting rid of them was such a great move now after all. I would be interested to see how it affects those who are still current owners. Any current owners have any additional insight?

Ironically a quick visit to Shell's vacation club website and there is nothing listed under their Press Centre.

I would suspect this may also be one of the reasons the direct exchange never came to fruition.

I just called the other day to reserve at the Donatello San Fran thru Selct connections - so as of right now it is alive and well.

BG annual meeting is this month, it will be interesting to hear what is said there about Shell - I hope they are adding another resort group and maybe that is why the name has changed???

[gandalf252002]

You keep referring to a name change? Where exactly are you talking about?

[GrayFal]

Subject: RE: [bluegreen] Re: Prizzma Direct Exchange

I was on the BG site went to My Account, then BG Premier Home. It shows the different fees for Prizzma Direct Exchange. It starts at $39 for bronze up to no charge for platinum. When I go to Traveler’s Plus in the FAQs it talks about Select Connections where you have to call to book and is available for $49 for charter members. It says there may be a reduced fee for premier members. There is no mention there about Prizzma in the FAQs with the discussion on Select Connections and no mention of Select Connections in the Premier list where it identifies Prizzma


From the yahoo owners group....

[timeos2]

The Shell "system" was a poster child for an inadequate amount of resorts to be a viable system. A small group like Shell or the even smaller Holiday Inn / Ornage Lake "system" is worse than no system at all. These groups need to big - ideally they would have ALL resorts (as RCI Points once seemed ready to do) but that hasn't and isn't ever likely to. But bigger is better in any points system and this is a nice addition to the already outstanding selection of resorts AND locations (not concentrated in 3-4 areas like too many Hiltons are) IF they bring the Shell resorts into the existing system. If it stands alone or requires a big buy in then its a negative for both groups (Wyndham owners & former Shell owners). We'll see I guess.

[T. R. Oglodyte]

The Shell "system" was a poster child for an inadequate amount of resorts to be a viable system. A small group like Shell or the even smaller Holiday Inn / Ornage Lake "system" is worse than no system at all. These groups need to big - ideally they would have ALL resorts (as RCI Points once seemed ready to do) but that hasn't and isn't ever likely to. But bigger is better in any points system and this is a nice addition to the already outstanding selection of resorts AND locations (not concentrated in 3-4 areas like too many Hiltons are) IF they bring the Shell resorts into the existing system. If it stands alone or requires a big buy in then its a negative for both groups (Wyndham owners & former Shell owners). We'll see I guess.

Totally agree. The only real advantage of any mini-system is the opportunity to book directly at a variety of resorts without needing to sweat out an exchange request. I've always thought of the fee for being in the mini-system as being akin to the price you pay in annual dues to an exchange company plus the exchange fees incurred when you do make an exchange. If a mini-system has resorts in many of the places you want to visit, you can actually come out money ahead. And I'm sure that many of the resort groups were looking at the money that II and RCI have been raking and figured why shouldn't they keep that money for themselves.

All of that works better when the mini has more resorts in more locales. The minis that don't have enough coverage really are sucking hind teat. They don't have enough resorts in enough locales to have a really broad appeal. And they aren't big enough to have the leverage with an exchange to extract favorable treatment. I suspect that the smaller minis also are getting hit harder in the recession. I suspect we're going to see the sharks swallowing up more minnows before this is done. Sometimes it will be an outright acquisition like this; in other cases it will be alliances and linkages.

****

Another area of consolidation is call centers. I expect that increasingly, the minis will outsource call center services and request fulfillment to RCI and II, depending on which company the mini is affiliated with.

[gandalf252002]

Okay that kind of clears things up. As a Premier you must be seeing different things than I. The charter memberships are probably people like myself who bought retail but where able to maintain travellers plus, but where not bronze level.

My understanding of Prizzma is that was just the software that was supposed to allow online booking of the select connections and nothing more.

There's a thread about this from 2011 when they first talked about Direct Exchange that was supposed to arrive and never did.

Subject: RE: [bluegreen] Re: Prizzma Direct Exchange

I was on the BG site went to My Account, then BG Premier Home. It shows the different fees for Prizzma Direct Exchange. It starts at $39 for bronze up to no charge for platinum. When I go to Traveler’s Plus in the FAQs it talks about Select Connections where you have to call to book and is available for $49 for charter members. It says there may be a reduced fee for premier members. There is no mention there about Prizzma in the FAQs with the discussion on Select Connections and no mention of Select Connections in the Premier list where it identifies Prizzma


From the yahoo owners group....

[rikkis_playpen]

Great move for Wyndham to really give them a powerful Western front. With the Worldmark and Shell resorts in their portfolio, it is a very impressive collection. The real question to me is whether Wyndham will be able to reduce maintenance fees for the week's owners at Shell properties. I used to sell HOA foreclosures and liquidations for several Shell resorts, but the maintenance fee amounts made it extremely difficult to even give the deeded weeks away. Hopefully, Wyndham's management system will allow them to reduce operating costs and have enough buying power to drastically reduce the overall physical costs for maintenance and replacements.