That timeshare in Myrtle Beach seemed like a good idea at the time. A week's beach vacation in your own place every year.
But last year, the kid came down with pneumonia just before your vacation in the sun. This year, a business trip got in the way. You tried to trade your weeks with other timeshare owners -- but it never worked out.
Bottom line: You didn't quite get what you paid for.
If VacationView has its way, that dilemma will be solved. The young company, which formed last year and launched its
Resort Rentals By Owner (RRBO) service in June, has built a web environment that will let you rent out your timeshare when you can't use it.
Think of it as StubHub for timeshares, explains co-founder Bob Kington.
"We started down this path of building a trading platform where owners could find each other online and do a swap between themselves," Kington says. "As we got into it, we said there's a better solution, and that's rental. If you could just rent your unit out and get cash for that asset and then use that cash to go somewhere else on vacation or put it in your pocket or whatever, it's a much better solution."
Unlike similar services, which bring renters and owners together to hash out deals on their own, RRBO takes care of both the transaction and fulfillment, Kington says.
Formed by former CompuServe and AOL alumni -- including former ShareThis CEO Mike Blackwell -- RRBO has raised about $800,000, including $225,000 from
TechColumbus, and is working on an additional $300,000 to $500,000 round. The additional funds will allow the company to make a full-fledged marketing push, Kington says.
RRBO has seven full-time and three part-time employees.
Source: Bob Kington, VacationView
Writer: Gene Monteith