In the early sixties the story goes, a French engineer named Louis Pomier bought a holiday home in the French Alps. He and his family spent as much of their free time as they could in this vacation home. Like most vacation or second homes, theirs sat empty and unused most of the year. After a while, Louis started hearing some complaints from his family. They wanted to go to somewhere else for vacation. They were getting tired of the same vacation at the same place year after year. Louis thought that going someplace else was a waste of money since they owned and invested a lot of money in their vacation home. This is when he got an idea.

He wondered if his family could continue to go to their vacation home and also go to the vacation homes of others when they weren't using them. It seemed that other vacation homeowners had the same problem that Louis did. Except for one month in the winter and one month in the summer, the homes were vacant. By getting vacation homeowners interested in sharing time at their houses with other vacation homeowners, they could travel to each other's holiday homes in different locations yet still own their original holiday home. Timesharing was born! According to history, Louis Pomier formed a company called SuperDevoluy and started the first timeshare resort with a ski chalet in France in 1966.

Eight years later (1974), a Dutch emigrant named John DeHaan created a vacation exchange system that allowed timeshare owners to exchange their weeks for weeks at other resorts in other locations. DeHaan's company helped the timeshare industry by providing flexibility to an otherwise inflexible product.

The growth of the industry unfortunately attracted unscrupulous companies. Consumers complained about advertising tactics and misleading sales representations. By 1978 states like Florida and Utah had already adopted tough timeshare laws to protect consumers from shady developers.

In 1984 things began to turn around for the beleaguered timeshare business. That's when the first major lodging brand entered the business. Now, most of the major hotel companies in the world have a significant business stake in vacation ownership.

The vacation ownership industry has come a long way and is now the fastest growing segment of the travel industry and consumer satisfaction with the product is at an all time high.