A Brief History of TimesharesTimeshares are not unique to North America. Deeded ownership to a property for an interval at a hotel, resort condominium or any other type of vacation property originated in Europe in the 1960s. Limited resort space with high cost and demand created a need for guaranteed accommodation for an interval of time each year. Popular destinations for time-shares at that time were France and Switzerland. One of the most popular first ever timeshares was in the French Alps and was a ski resort called SuperDevoluy. Another popular timeshare vacation resort company that is still successful today was Hapimag, which is in Baar, Switzerland. It was conceived in 1964. The first vacation spot in the United States that offered a time-sharing program was Kauai Kailani on Kauai in 1969 and deeds for one week stays were sold for a period of forty years. In the 1970s this trend caught on in Florida where a boom in condo time-shares was begun. Soon they started popping up in Lake Tahoe and Sausalito California. By 1976 proceeds from timeshare sales totalled over $50,000,000.00. During the 1980s, new resorts opened up all over the globe but especially in Western Europe. By 1990 four million timeshare owners co-owned 2,300 timesharing facilities all over the world. In the 1990s this number expanded to include timeshares in Eastern Europe and Asia spearheaded by the Marriot Hotel chain, which got into the business to make millions. Their plunge into the time share business was soon followed by other big brand name hotels including Four Seasons, Radisson, Sheraton, Hilton, Ramada and Disney, which started offering time shares too. By the year 2000, timeshare was a booming multi-million dollar business and it is expanding every day. Today, timeshare resorts worldwide number about 5,400, which is an all time record high, with a trend towards further expansion of time shares in Asia.
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