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needs of our members, giving consideration to the location and type
of resort in which they are staying — some resorts are built for a family
vacation experience while others provide a more boutique experience
for couples or retirees. Our apartments feel homely, warm, and invit-
ing, with the addition of a variety of textural elements, accessories,
and color palettes. We offer an enhanced home-away-from-home
guest experience in comparison to a traditional hotel room.”
Let’s take a look at what that means throughout a timeshare unit.
Creativity Rules
With more than six hotel conversions completed or underway, Westgate
Resorts has found them to be a way to value engineer accommoda-
tions in many markets. The developer’s new Westgate New York City
project is perhaps the poster child for this approach. The hotel’s con-
version to timeshare saw the light of day 87 years after the historic
structure was built in 1931, its first phase of units seeing successful
completion in October 2019.
“This project would have been impossible to do from the ground
up,” says Mark Waltrip, Westgate’s chief operating officer. “It has
really great bones with Gothic Revival architecture and pre-war charm.
Because it had been renovated in the early 1990s and again more
recently, it has air conditioning and other physical infrastructure. What
we’re adding is the modern luxuries that our members are used to
having at Westgate properties.”
For Westgate, that means more space, too. “We believe size
matters,” he says. “Even in New York City, we’re coming out with
one-bedroom, two-key units that are twice the size of a normal city
hotel room. Our baseline is a 500- to 600-square foot (46 to 56 square
meters) unit. We’re even planning a three-bedroom lock-off unit. Our
customers are going to appreciate having a larger unit.”
At Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (MVW), Ed Kinney,
global vice president of corporate affairs and communications, has also
been part of several hotel conversion projects. “It takes shape differently
at every location,” he says. “Our rule of thumb is not to have a stan-
dardized product.” Still, the usual plan is to have one room become the
common area with a kitchen and family room, and one or two rooms to
each side are then used as bedrooms. One of the bedrooms may also
have a kitchenette, allowing it to be used as a studio. All three rooms
usually have bathrooms, allowing for a higher private occupancy. The
unit size and amenities will vary based on the resort’s location and brand.
At Marriott Vacation Club at Surfers Paradise in Queensland,
Australia, a location that’s both urban and oceanside, the one- and
two-bedroom suites feature kitchenettes with refrigerator, microwave,
dishwasher, and sink but no cooktop. All six of the club’s Pulse prop-
erties are hotel conversions, chosen for their prime city locations in
the center of the action. Marriott Vacation Club Pulse
®
, San Diego, for
example, has separate living areas and bedrooms, and many units
have stunning city views. “The San Diego property lent itself to more
spaciousness than what we could offer in New York City or Miami
Beach,” Kinney says. “We can usually do this without having to knock
down a lot of walls.”
Even when walls aren’t being removed, there are a number of
issues that need to be considered when converting hotels into a more
modular interconnecting configuration of accommodation. “These
include fire rating, sound rating, structural integrity, intended use
restrictions, etc.,” Wood says.
“Usually a good architect or engineer can be creative enough to
put together two or more units and turn it into a typical timeshare apart-
ment,” says Paulo Costa, the developer of Pousada Villa Camboa in São
Paulo, Brazil. “However, the cost of such a conversion can be high,
WESTGATE NEW YORK CITY