Under fire: Resort Development Organisation (RDO) timeshare lobby group fights to survive

The Resort Development Organisation (RDO) is a once-powerful timeshare lobby group that says it is “committed to high standards and integrity”. A closer look suggests a chequered history and uncomfortable links across the European timeshare industry.

Who are the RDO?

The Resort Development Organisation (RDO) describes itself as a trade body for European timeshare and related “vacation ownership” businesses. In practice, it operates as a lobby and protection group: member organisations contribute funding to promote and defend industry interests.

On its website, the RDO describes itself as follows: “RDO members represent the best in European vacation ownership and are committed to high service standards and integrity. They are bound by a code of conduct and an independent arbitration scheme, providing levels of protection beyond those required by law.”

However, the team at European Consumer Claims (ECC), along with various consumer organisations we speak to, say they have struggled to find a clear example of the RDO publicly backing a timeshare owner who has been mis-sold, has an illegal contract, or needs to exit an unfair agreement.

The “arbitration” cited by the RDO also appears, in our view, to lean heavily towards defending and protecting wealthy timeshare bosses, with little visible benefit for timeshare victims.

A rogues’ gallery of members

The RDO’s phrasing — “committed to high service standards and integrity”, “bound by a code of conduct”, and “providing levels of protection beyond those required by law” — is doing a lot of work.

The Resort Development Organisation’s membership directory, past and present, includes brands frequently associated with serious consumer disputes and alleged breaches across the timeshare sector.

Club la Costa World has been accused of ignoring consumer law and issuing illegal contracts for decades, and it is reported to owe hundreds of millions of pounds in damages to claimants. CLC World, under the leadership of Roy Peires, has resisted paying court-ordered compensation to people it has been found to have mis-sold to. It has done so, ECC says, through complex legal tactics, corporate structures designed to shield wealth, and repeated court delays.

Other major timeshare companies listed as RDO members, and accused of some or all of these behaviours at scale, include Anfi, MVCI Europe, Hilton and Diamond. In reality, we believe all RDO resort members are complicit to some degree. MVCI referred to the fact that its contracts “did not meet requirements prescribed by Spanish timeshare laws enacted in 1998” in its 2022 annual report.

Silverpoint in Tenerife, another long-time RDO resort member, has been covered by the media worldwide in connection with large-scale, systematic consumer fraud.

Seasons Holidays also deserves a (dis)honourable mention, with multiple alleged abuses of customers. Its history is currently being reported on by ourselves, Which Magazine, KwikChex and the Timeshare Consumer Association.

Tainted leadership

The RDO has, or has had, senior figures with highly questionable track records.

Mark Cushway, CEO of the aforementioned and disgraced timeshare fraud operation Silverpoint, served for years as an RDO board member. Silverpoint perpetrated hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of fraud under Cushway’s ownership. Mr Cushway is currently a safe distance from European justice. Rumours place him in far-flung locations such as Dubai, the Caribbean or Thailand.

Another RDO board member, Calvin Lucock, was head of sales, project director and later chairman at the Anfi Del Mar resort on Gran Canaria. Anfi operated illegally for decades under Lucock’s leadership, ignoring consumer laws and taking an estimated over one billion pounds from prospects — either touted from the streets of nearby beach towns, or via an illicit agreement with Thomas Cook, where guests were directed to Anfi sales presentations in return for a kickback of profits.

Eugene Miskelly is currently listed as the RDO’s “Legislative Council Chairman”, responsible for providing guidance to members on new laws and compliance requirements. Yet Miskelly was directly employed as “General Counsel” by CLC World — a company at the centre of what ECC describes as arguably the biggest legal scandal ever to hit European timeshare. With these roles running alongside each other, it is hard to see how Mr Miskelly could reasonably be viewed as an impartial voice on timeshare consumer protection.

Other board members include Lee Dowling, MD of Marriott Asia Pacific, Europe & Middle East. MVCI in Europe has also been deeply involved in court actions over illegal contracts.

Put simply, the RDO board appears to be made up exclusively of men who have generated vast sums from selling timeshare memberships in direct contravention of consumer law over the past quarter of a century.

Refusing to confront 25 years of illegality

The RDO says it is “important to consumers” on the grounds that (as quoted from the RDO website):

• Our members are committed to high service standards and sign up to a code of conduct
• We investigate fraudulent activity and work with the authorities to have companies closed down
• We offer a free complaint handling service to customers of our members
• We work with governments to bring in legislation that’s fair to both the industry and consumers

And yet, for the last 25 years, every timeshare sales operation that is a member of the RDO has been writing illegal contracts. ECC says this has happened with the full knowledge of the RDO, whose board members are largely senior figures from European timeshare companies. How does that square with the stated RDO timeshare code of conduct and its claimed “commitment to high service standards”?

The “free complaint service” the RDO points to is an online form that, in our experience, rarely receives a response (try it yourself and see).

There also appears to have been very little visible “investigation” into fraudulent timeshare operators, or meaningful “work with authorities” to close down bad actors. We have seen no RDO coverage at all of the industrial-scale illegal behaviour associated with European timeshare companies.

Instead, the RDO’s efforts appear directed towards shielding resorts that have taken hundreds of millions of pounds illegally from consumers. Rather than helping bring wrongdoing to account, the RDO’s self-described investigations seem focused on attacking the reputations of firms pursuing justice for timeshare victims.

Membership is falling

A couple of years ago, the Resort Development Organisation claimed 47 members. Its membership directory has since dropped to 30, and rumours suggest more are considering leaving. At present, only 12 members are actual resorts/developers.

Following an avalanche of court judgments against major timeshare companies in Europe, timeshare sales in Spain have slowed to a grinding halt.

A well-placed source has told ECC that, at the time of writing, the RDO has only three full-time staff carrying out day-to-day work — and that remaining staff are working reduced hours.

Another sign of the RDO’s financial strain is its cessation of relations with consumer organisation KwikChex and the sites it managed.

Trading Standards “Hero” KwikChex previously operated two websites funded by the RDO and presented as resources designed to improve fairness across timeshare-related industries.

Those websites have since been suspended. Public statements from KwikChex-related sources point to a lack of RDO funding and, more tellingly, “notable disagreements between the RDO and KwikChex over owner safeguarding.”

An expert warning

Greg Wilson, CEO of ECC, believes the RDO is now a spent force. “The RDO’s raison d’être is to lobby for timeshare companies’ interests. Those companies’ revenue has died down to practically zero, so there will be very little budget to spare for an entity like the RDO.

“The organisation has been, in our opinion, morally bankrupt for years.

“Now that the timeshare companies are no longer making significant money, there will be less funding available for the RDO. They may well be on the way to being financially bankrupt too.”

Wilson predicts increasingly aggressive tactics from the RDO as it tries to demonstrate value to a struggling timeshare industry.

“The RDO has no place in the modern, post-timeshare landscape,” says Wilson. “Like a wounded animal, we expect them to lash out. If they stay true to form, it will probably be aimed at the consumer organisations that support timeshare victims — or claims firms fighting for those same victims in the courts.

“It’s classic, narcissistic deflection — by proxy. If the RDO can convince their timeshare paymasters that they can still defend them, the RDO might get financed a little longer. Unfortunately, there is very little timeshare left to defend, and no credible moral high ground from which to do so.

“It’s self-evident that fat-cat timeshare bosses and their lobbyists have never been the good guys here, and that organisations fighting for victims’ rights are not the villains. Too many people have timeshare horror stories of their own — or know someone who does — to swallow this RDO narrative.”

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