Georgi Bohrod's Blog

Tired of the guessing game? Well I am.  So often I speak with clients who are quite sure they know who their target market it, what their customers are thinking and what the best strategy is for staying in touch with their base.  “We know who are raving fans are,” they say.  “We just need to engage the group of owners/guest/customers (fill in the blank, here) and they’ll all be happy.”   Well, what makes them happy?  Is it that they can depend on the friendly folks at the front desk to remember them year after year?  Is it that their unit always has the air conditioning on (or off) when they arrive?  How about that the garage is locked and secure at night or the resort uses recycled materials? Maybe they just like returning to the beach or the mountains and can be assured that the resort is well maintained with plenty of place for kids and kid’s stuff.   There is no way of knowing what makes clients tick unless you zone in on the particulars and slice and dice data in numerous ways. That’s what CustomerCount© does.  Developed by Mobius Vendor Partners for its client RCI, Customer Count was four years in the making.  Now it not only surveys the reservations, sales and vacation experience, but analyzes the data so that resort managers can make informed decisions.  It’s also easily adaptable to other businesses and industries outside of the timeshare / resort market.   In the next couple of weeks Resort Trades will launch a survey they commissioned CustomerCount© to create and build.  It will be a good example of just what the product can do, and in addition provide a ton of information which Resort Trades and www.askmando.com will make public.   GBG & Associates will write up that report for the Trades.  Those who participate are going to get a chance to enter into a drawing for a TruCash Certificate ($200) or another gift certificate for $100.  Be on the lookout for the survey because we need your input to pull good data.   If you have any questions feel free to email me:  georgi@georgibohrod.com

  Attending Fall ARDA turned out to be a mood elevator, not a downer as was feared by many.  Attendance was better than expected, yet not as high as previous years. Actually higher than last year’s Fall Conference.  It always surprises me that in addition to the usual suspects, we get to meet a few folks we hadn’t really had the opportunity to connect with. A special shout out to Gustavo Ripol (can’t believe we’ve never truly known each other face to face, but only by emails and reputation), Ross Perlmutter (head of CRDA who has the very same birthday as Howard Nusbaum and seems to be some what of a doppelganger in other ways), and Jeff Ingram who managed to point me in the right direction a number of times.  The Meetings Committee managed to re-arrange priorities while adding and subtracting subject matter and various speakers who are repositioning themselves during this “new normal” economic climate.  The Communications Committee once again bounced around myriad ideas and blab our way through an hour with some direction.  (After all we ARE communicators).  The WIN Advisors Board meeting was attended by Deborah Linden, Robert Kobek and JoAnn Lockard and after the BOD made our presentation we were all impressed with the strides Women in the Industry www.womenintheindustry.org has made in a year.  The Florida Regional Meeting should add even more members to our roster.  As will our special event at ARDA on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.  Finally, we want to wish Mobius Vendor Partners (www.mobiusvp.com) a very happy ten year anniversary.  That’s a long time to be part of this industry with such important contributions as CustomerCount®.  GBG & Associates has some damn good clients if I do say so myself.  Next time you’ll hear more about them.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out walking virtually it is an experience you don’t want to miss.  Seriously. WIN is walking as a team for those with Stage IV Breast Cancer.  Of course you don’t have to be on our team. You certainly can go it alone.  But either way let me encourage you to go to www.galtogalwalk.org and sign up.  The month is half over and we are falling short of our goal.   There is another walk with the same general theme at Grand Pacific Palisades Resort is in Carlsbad. However, this time you actually have to walk for real.   This one’s called Making Strides Against Breast Cancer ®, He’RO’es for Hope.  It memorializes Ro Fecko, a long time Grand Pacific Resorts employee.  To sign up go to http://main.acsevents.org/goto/gpresorts  It doesn’t cost a dime but donations are appreciated. So if you want to honor breast cancer survivors, remembers the ones we have lost, help raise awareness, support research and fight back against cancer show up at 8 .m. on Saturday, October 17.   There are so many ways to let our energies be directed toward healing this month.  We don’t have to wear pink cleats, or write huge checks, but we can be part of the community to show we care.

Summertime Blues? Would $200 from Amex help?    We seem to have been conditioned from grade school times. Summer is the time to kick back.  Our brains seem to go on slow-mo when the weather is hot, and we have special dispensation to wear a scaled down version of business casual we in the vacation industry like to call resort casual. While we shift into low gear and cruise along till Labor Day, it may be a good time to start planning ahead.  Find out what other resort managers are doing about maintenance fees in this economic era.  When we gather the data it will be published in The Trades.  We want to know what the trend is and I’ll bet you do too. Check out the CustomerCount® survey before you head out to the golf course or the pool.  You just might get $200 for your efforts! ……………https://www.customercountsurveys.com/front/TheTrades/

There’s a change in the air.  Checking around with my pals in the shared ownership industry it seems the phone is ringing a bit more;  there are more visitors to the web site; a couple of new proposals have gone out; some new contracts are actually signed.  Nothing gangbusters, but certainly motion.  Although some of my colleagues have ventured out across the seas to faraway places like China and the UK to keep up with the changing tide of the resort industry, I’ve managed to stay put in beautiful San Diego.  The most exciting development is a new relationship with Grand Pacific Resort Services and ResorTime.com.  For me, it’s like coming full circle. ‘Got my timeshare/PR start with Jim Watkins’ Winners Circle Resorts International.  Old-timers will remember him as the most down-to-earth, ethical guy in the early timeshare world.  Both Tim Stripe and David Brown who head up Grand Pacific Resorts came from the Winners Circle Resorts’ world. They now run a solidly successful, well-respected company here in wonderful Carlsbad, pretty much adjacent to LEGOLAND® and the famous Flower Fields.  With 11 fabulous resorts and 800 folks working there, Grand Pacific Resorts is what timesharing was always designed to be.  Check out their web site www.grandpacificresorts.com or visit ResorTime.com for more on the best timeshare rentals around.  For me, it feels like coming home.

ARDA attendees more upbeat.  ‘A- one and a -two and a…  In fact Lawrence Welk’s grandson just stepped down from Chair after two years.  New guy from Disney.  He’s got his work cut out for him, but I am NOT on the cutting edge so he’s not even an acquaintance.  The WIN   event www.womenintheindustry had lots of attendees.  Advisory board meets tomorrow to approve our strategic plan. Maybe more interest since so many are out of work or looking for biz development; but a great time to grow a network of dedicated professionals.  Met with Mark Silverman of examiner.com.  Should have asked if Herb Caen got started this way.  One of the original bloggers with 3 dot journalism.

ARDA Everyone I run into at ARDA is twittering, blogging, or bitching.  Well not everyone is bitching!  I feel like a player in the movie Hustle and Flow.  It’s hard out here for a …(YOUR PROFESSION HERE).  Surprisingly (or not so) attendees are looking at ways to either take advantage of or better themselves because of what is being referred to as “the issue at hand.”  The Communications Committee sat in stunned silence as the same old message points were debated.  And the web site questioned.  www.vacationbetter.org couldn’t have fewer visitors if they tried.  Where are they on plain old organic searches?  The Meetings Committee reports that almost 2600 have registered at the annual American Resort Development Association annual convention.  www.arda.org  Doing better than expected.  If you could get in to the Think Tank session you were fortunate.  50 people turned away at the door.  Let’s see if they solved the “issue at hand.”  I wasn’t there…solving GBG & Associates own “issue at hand.”  If you visit Booth #1018 you’ll see the wave of the future with Blue Media   and at #509 Customer Count ® surveys Resort Trades readers’ experience in real time!

GBG & Associates Inc

From 2/5/09  Never thought flip-flopping was such a bad trait. Who hasn’t had an opinion and then learned enough to change their mind? To stay on one path, when you have more information, not deviating “just because”-- never makes sense to me. So no surprise: I changed my mind. Previously my thinking was “why go to a conference on fractional development when nothing is cooking! What a waste of time and money!” Guess what. I’ve rethought the options and there are numerous reasons to show up in San Francisco the second week of March. Ragatz Associates may be offering some great incentives to attend, but that’s not the motivator. For me, the motivating factor is that now is the time to make the connections, start planning the campaigns and see what direction the fractional/shared ownership world will be taking in the next few years. Although some of the “mucky mucks” may disagree, I for one don’t believe that there are any real “gurus” left out there when it comes to real estate and finance, but the willingness to put our heads together and talk about new directions makes more sense than playing ostrich until the tides change. So if you are at the Ragatz Conference in March, be sure to touch base. Together we can all navigate along this bumpy road until there is smooth sailing. A bunch of clichés? Perhaps. But who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong these days.

From 1/22/09 Watching the inauguration (or dare I say “coronation”) of Barack Obama for hours and hours I felt a bit guilty. History was being made. My presence was required. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. What struck me besides the grandeur of the pomp, the shift on the axis of world wide consciousness and the momentousness of the occasion was something a bit down to earth. This place is familiar. I have spent time in our nation’s capital primarily because of my association with the resort, timeshare and shared ownership industry. My visits to Washington D.C. are because of my membership in ARDA (The American Resort Development Association) (www.arda.org). Depending on air fare my planes have landed at Dulles (and therefore can understand the traffic horrors of those roads into the District) or touched down at Reagan which continually feels like landing in the middle of a postcard or 5th grade history book. So when I saw Obama (and witnessed that terrific concert with something for everyone) at the Lincoln Memorial-- I truly could be present. During the limo procession to the Capitol I could visualize the route. Looking out at the mall I had memories of strolling along the reflecting pool toward the Washington Monument. And looking at the hopeful faces I can recall the youthful exuberance of another era coming to fruition. Our country is on an incredible journey. As are we. Who wudda thunk it could be felt even more deeply because of a trade association to support resort developers.