Someone in the government who can provide some answers for timeshare owners at the Crowne Plaza Golf Resort and Casino at the Royal Oasis should make an official statement as to what the individuals who invested in these timeshares can expect to happen once the sale of the resort has been finalised.
Since the announcement last month that the resort had been sold, The Freeport News has been inundated with e-mails from frustrated timeshare owners requesting information on whether or not their timeshares will be honoured. That’s precisely the concern expressed by Marilyn Love of Howell, New Jersey, who claims that she has “written numerous e-mails to your government and have never received a reply.”
“You would think that the government of The Bahamas would be more helpful since tourism brings in jobs and money to The Bahamas,” Love writes. “I for one am most happy when visiting Grand Bahama and enjoy seeing the wonderful friends that we have met there, but I am not happy with the way things have been handled and would appreciate some answers.”
Love attached a copy of an e-mail that she sent to Prime Minister Perry Christie, in which she noted: “I have written and faxed you in the past and was very unhappy that I never received a reply. It’s bad enough that the Royal Oasis has treated us so badly when we put our hard-earned money into an investment of a timeshare, never notifying us about anything.”
To be fair, it is really not the government’s fault that these timeshare owners find themselves in this predicament. After Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne caused considerable damage to the Royal Oasis in 2004, forcing it to close its doors, the management of the resort should have notified the timeshare owners as to the status of their investments. But as practically everyone in the country now knows, this “dereliction of duty” was minor compared to some of the other major breaches of responsibility by the owners of the resort. Bahamians are still bewildered as to how the owners of the Royal Oasis could ended up owing the Grand Bahama Port Authority $2.7 million; National Insurance, $2.5 million; their Workers Pension Fund, $4.1 million; and $13 million in casino taxes.
Nonetheless, although it could very well be that the government does not have answers to the questions that are being asked, if the perception among timeshare owners is that the government should be providing them with some answers, then it simply makes good sense for the government to make an official statement giving them assurances that every effort will be made to protect their “investments.”
Knowing that tourism is a competitive business, this is something that Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe should be more than willing to do. Surely, he must be concerned about the complaints that are being circulated now by the Oasis timeshare owners, given the fact that these complaints could certainly have a deleterious impact on the country’s timeshare market, and quite possibly on tourism generally.
We spend millions of dollars annually to lure visitors to these shores, and last year it proved to be money well spent, with a record number of more than five million visitors coming to The Bahamas. Particularly in the case of Grand Bahama, where tourism has fallen off drastically, such continued bad publicity definitely is not helpful, if we hope to improve on last year’s numbers.
So if a statement from the government would help to placate these disgruntled timeshare owners, it should be forthcoming post-haste.
Source: The Freeport News
