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TRAVEL RCI: wants to influence people to invest in timeshare resorts and condo hotels.

If, like many urban Indians, you were badgered into attending a sales presentation for timeshare resorts in the nineties, it probably left a pretty awful aftertaste "" of strong-arm tactics to sign up or else, of unfulfilled promises, tacky maintenance and so on. It wasn't a good time to be in the business, but a company's gotta do what it's gotta do.

And for RCI, the global timeshare exchange network, times couldn't have been worse. When it set shop in India in 1992, Sterling Resorts had already introduced the time share concept into the market, and the RCI affiliation should have helped it piggyback onto its international network "" typically, someone buying a "week" at a resort in, say, Mussoorie can exchange that for a week in another domestic or international location on payment of a fee to RCI.

Unfortunately, Sterling proved too ambitious, forward financing its projects through increasing its base of members rather than through borrowings or accruals.

And, in 1996, when the real estate bubble burst, Sterling found itself floundering with several incomplete or part-built resorts, and RCI took the brunt of that loss of face.

"Yet," says Bangalore-based Radhika Shastry, who heads RCI's business in South Asia, "we don't own anything. Our strength is our technology and human resources."

Therefore, when Shastry says the business has been growing 20 per cent year on year in India, it's difficult not to smirk. Really? Shastry, who was RCI's first employee 14 years ago, explains the logistics.

"From 2000-04, we consolidated our market, slowed down affiliations with resorts, and disaffiliated several hotels." The point being? RCI went on a loyalty overdrive.

Thankfully, Club Mahindra launched its resorts, and that gave exchange affiliate RCI an opportunity to expand and offer options within its membership base to its Indian members. As a result "RCI's perception is hugely improved", according to Shastry.

Sales volume for RCI went up from Rs 100-150 crore at the turn of the century to Rs 250 crore by end-2005, the annual membership base increased from 7,000-8,000 per annum to 12,000 per annum, despite a dip in the number of resorts from 95 then to 66 now (13 Mahindra resorts, nine Sterling properties, four Royal Resorts in Goa, two Toshali hotels, and several standalones).

According to Shastry's findings, timeshare grows at twice the rate of the entire travel industry, but this might not quite apply to India where timeshare infrastructure is still limited.

"But a timeshare member is a committed member," says Shastry, "which is why when hotel sales in the US dropped after 9/11, timeshare occupancies for Marriott and Hilton in leisure locations increased by 15-20 per cent."

In India too, Shastry is keen to enroll some high profile chains/hotels on to the RCI network, and she is keen to push the concept of "condo hotels" with real estate developers, where an investor can buy 4-6 weeks in a condo; the developer runs the hotel and returns 8-10 per cent on his investment annually, and everyone is happy.

A similar, more luxurious version of this, the Registry Collection, was recently launched in Asia (but not in the Indian market yet) for fractional ownership of upmarket residences.

Last year, 17,000 Indian families used the RCI exchange programme (30-35 per cent of them for international exchanges). At Rs 2,000-2,5000 for an annual membership fee (70-75 per cent renew their memberships), Rs 3,600 for a domestic and Rs 9,500 for an international exchange, a fee from the affiliate hotel, and consultancies on offer for everything from operations to management or marketing of a property, RCI's non-investment revenue model has ensured that RCI India has always delivered on the bottomline "" even in the bad times.

But while Shastry tries to increase the timeshare business in India, travel agents remain unconvinced about its potential. That could be a case of sour grapes "" typically, timeshare eliminates the travel agent from most transactions "" but as a senior industry professional says, "What scale are we talking of in India? At the moment timeshare probably has 3,000 rooms on offer. What impact does that have on such a huge market?"

That at least explains why Shastry is talking to real estate developers, industrialists, just about anybody with deep pockets "to attract them into the business", she says.

The main thrust, then, is still to come.