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Timeshare and Fractionals: And the survey says......
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From Fractional Life Expo, 2008
Fractional Life, the UK-based website focusing on the world of fractional ownership programs released the details of a survey posted on their site, with responses completed May 15th through June 16th.
The results are interesting, but not necessarily conclusive for a number of reasons. Incidentally, any criticisms leveled at the process are not directed to FL in particular. As a matter of fact, the very same flaws, in one way or another, exist in the survey the Examiner is conducting on timeshare usage.
Still some interesting tidbits can be gleaned.
Here is a sample of some of the questions, and the responses:
What is your household income?
£0-50k 22%
£50-100k 20%
£100-250k 29%
£250k+ 29%
Where is your ideal fractional property location?
Tuscany, Italy 48%
London, England 12%
Aspen, Colorado 20%
Garden Route, South Africa 20%
What fractional product are you looking to purchase?
Jet/ Jet Card 31%
Property 50%
Yacht 12%
Car club membership 6%
250 User Surveys completed between May 15th and June 15th inclusive
The results of the survey also indicate that 36% value location; 28% use price as the most important factor; 21% consider usage rights (deeded or right-to-use), and only 15% use quality of property as the most important factor in their purchase decision.
There are a number concerns the reader should consider when evaluating the results of this or any other survey, whether timeshare or political poll or any other topic.
First of all, who is being asked the questions, and in what format? For instance, this survey was an item to click on for visitors to Fractional Life’s web page. So that’s a self selecting group, right off the bat.
Next, the questions had multiple choice answers. So, for instance when selecting ideal location, your response had to be one of those four choices. Which, incidentally, I would assume, is impacted by the location of the respondent. In fact, according to Piers Brown, founder of the site, 60% of the respondents are from the UK, 25% from the United States, and the rest are from other parts of the world.
As to how prospective owner rate specific factors that go into the decision, they may downplay “quality of the property”, because they take for granted that it is an upper class product, and therefore not a variable they need to be concerned with, not that it’s not important to them.
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Piers Brown, Founder
What fractional product are you looking to purchase? The structure of the survey doesn’t take into account that the respondent may be looking to make multiple fractional purchases, or may be considering one of the many other products available via fractional ownership. FL’s site indicates that there are programs for everything from race horses to luxury hand bags to works of art.
The real danger, and again this is a concern for any release of this source, is when the results are quoted out of context, or by other sources with their own agenda or point of view. Or misinterpret the results out of well-intentioned ignorance.
Let me be clear, I’m using this particular survey as a means to illustrate the difficulties with using polls or surveys to influence decisions. This is certainly interesting but it's not exactly scientific.
It is significant, for instance that 22% of the respondents earn less than fifty thousand pounds ($82,000) per year. One could draw the conclusion that fractional product is becoming more of a mainstream ownership alternative. Or not. I dunno.
