Timeshare

Timeshare is a business model in which resort accommodation is sold as a divided form of ownership or usage rights, with each buyer purchasing the right to occupy a unit for a set period, typically one or two weeks a year. The term originated in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s, building on an earlier practice of families jointly buying and rotating use of vacation cottages, before developers began dividing resort rooms into fractional shares carrying maintenance fees. The first American timeshare was sold in 1974 by the Caribbean International Corporation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as a 25-year vacation license to alternate weeks at resorts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Owners can use their allotted week, rent it out, gift it, or trade it through exchange companies such as RCI and Interval International for time at other resorts, and the model's profitability for developers rests on selling the same unit many times over to different buyers.