Savvy visitors to Orlando have been enjoying the convenience of a service called Owner's Locker that allows them to store their personal items on site between visits rather than hauling them back and forth.

Recent moves by the airlines, including the announcement by American Airlines that it will begin charging for all checked bags, means that using the Owner's Locker service is not just a convenient way to have personal items on hand when visiting Orlando. 

Owner's Locker has become an extremely effective way to avoid the hassle and cost of dealing with luggage on airplanes.

Owner's Locker Members purchase a Locker for their vacation items; it's picked up from their resort when they leave and stored in a climate controlled warehouse until their next trip when it is waiting at the front desk when the Member checks back in to any one of over 200 resorts in Orlando.  There's a one-time fee of $75 for the Locker and the initial delivery and pickup and then it's $99 per year for storage and one free delivery/pickup per year.  And, best of all, there's no weight limit on what you can store in your Locker.

Owner's Locker-the purple place for storing your vacation stuff.

www.ownerslocker.com

Judy Wiley, Fort Worth Texas Star-Telegram Travel Editor wrote an article about what people could do avoid luggage charges and had this to say about Owner's Locker:

- Owner's Locker would probably save money in the long run for frequent travelers to Orlando. The service lets you fill a locker with the items you need on every trip, delivers it to any of more than 200 hotels in Orlando, then picks it up after you leave. While it's wildly convenient, it won't save you money if you don't travel often to Orlando. The initial set-up fee is $75 for the locker and the first delivery and pickup. Then, the basic service starts at $99 a year -- that's for climate-controlled storage and one delivery/pickup a year.
See www.ownerslocker.com for details.

you can read the entire article here.

The short answer to both of those questions is “no.”

A lot of people ask us how far in advance they need to sign up. Maybe they assume that there is some sort of 30 day deadline or something like that. That if they leave it until the last minute, they won’t be able to sign up for Owner’s Locker. Not true.

It won’t surprise you to learn that we want to make it easy for people to become Members of Owner’s Locker. If someone is on vacation, sees our van or someone carrying a Locker and thinks, “Gee, I need one of those,” we don’t want them to have to wait until their next trip to WDW.

So you can sign up for Owner’s Locker anytime---even if you’re already at your resort in Orlando and we’ll have your Locker to your resort the next day at the latest. We get a lot of calls from people while they are on vacation and I love signing people up over the phone from their room. My favorite story, though is the day I saw Brian flying out the door with an empty Locker saying he would explain later. He'd gotten a call from a Member who was in the parking lot of their resort about to head for the airport when they realized they needed another Locker pronto. Brian to the rescue.

It’s not just a quest for Members that’s involved here, though. The whole point behind Owner’s Locker is convenience and treating people the way WE would like to be treated.

When we were building our systems, Brian and I discussed the issue of deadlines and decided that we just wouldn’t have any. After all, we are dealing with people’s vacations. And we both hate that “gotcha” feeling you get when you wind up paying a penalty because a deadline was missed.

The issue really came up as we discussed what the cutoff time would be for scheduling and changing Visits. Should Members have to tell us ___ days in advance for us to have their Locker waiting for them? Well, we looked at each other and both said, “no.” That’s one of the reasons we use bar codes and have a highly sophisticated scheduling and tracking system. We think you should be able to tell us about a Visit any time—even if you’re already at your resort. And we feel that you should be able to modify your Visit at any time as well. Plans change, waitlists come through, people change resorts. And we didn’t think it was fair to charge people extra for last minute changes. We just pushed the developers to come up with a system to handle all of these possibilities.

And once we had this capability built for Visits, it was easy to use it for signing up as well. So sign up any time you want!

But are we sure that new Members don’t have to give us 30 days notice? Yes we are sure…..but I’ll tell you where that 30 days comes in…..and it will help me answer the second question about signing up. And that is that it is never too early to sign up.

While we want to be as convenient as possible to our Members, we also like to know as far in advance about when people are coming and, in particular, when people want to join. The first Visit is a lot of work for us as we have to build a new Locker and get it ready for the new Member’s first Visit. So we would prefer that new Members sign up as soon as they decide they want to use Owner’s Locker rather than waiting until the last minute.

But while we want to encourage people to sign up as early as possible, we don’t want to penalize you by making you pay for something months before you’ll see it. Again, we wanted to be fair. So, when you sign up, you will not be charged your Membership Fee until 30 days before you arrive for your first Visit. This way you can go ahead and sign up when you make your reservations or even before and not get charged. You can also use the site and use the online inventory function to list the things you are going to put in your Locker.

We think that’s a fair way to treat people. This is not a short term relationship we want to build! Just ask that family in the parking lot. Boy were they releived when Brian showed up with another Locker.

JDVM
www.ownerslocker.com

Did you know that fractional timeshare owners have a storage facility at their resort where they can keep their personal items? That way, their time share seems more like a second home….and they don’t have to haul as much stuff back and forth every time they visit their resort. Great idea, but why is it just for owners of fractional timeshare units?

In the first place, what’s a fractional, anyway? In the old days, timeshares came in one flavor: the fixed week. You bought the second week in October in a specific unit in Gatlinburg to watch the leaves change color. That unit was yours for that fixed week in October and that was that. In the late 1980’s, vacation clubs came on the scene providing much more flexibility. You could come at different times, and in some cases, not come at all and save your time for another year altogether. But here’s the important part. With both fixed week timeshares and vacation clubs, each unit has approximately fifty owners.

The new kid on the block is the fractional timeshare which has a vastly fewer number of owners per unit. Instead of fifty, it’s twelve or ten or, in some cases, only four owners per unit. So an owner of a fractional timeshare that only has four owners can spend roughly three months per year in the unit. Perhaps not all at once but spread out over the year. Now that’s a timeshare. Or more accurately, that’s a second home!

As you might imagine a fractional timeshare costs substantially more that a typical timeshare or vacation club. And the owners not only pay a lot more, they get a lot more. The units are bigger and more glamorous. The locations are very nice, too. But the fractional timeshare owner also gets special parking spaces, concierge services and storage space. A place to put all of the things that make a place seem like it’s really yours. A place to keep all of the things you like to have to make you feel at home

The companies who build fractional timeshares knew that they were creating a premium product that they could sell for a premium price. And, they knew that the buyers would demand an exceptional degree of service and amenities. No small bottles of shampoo/conditioner in these bathrooms. While they knew that storage was a desire of many of their purchasers, they didn’t quite realize just how important it was. In fairness, the purchasers of the fractional timeshares probably didn’t realize how important the ability to store personal items was until they began utilizing the storage space provided…and then asking for more.

A major developer of fractional timeshare resorts has said that the main difference between their first project and their second was the doubling of the storage place provided for each owner; and the difference between the second and the third project was the doubling of storage space for each owner yet again. It seems like the more storage space you have, the more you need.

So why should fractional timeshare owners have all the fun? Why can’t timeshare and vacation club owners have a place to store personal items between visits?

Well, can you imagine a resort building fifty storage areas for each unit? The storage areas would be bigger than the unit! It doesn’t mean that you’re out of luck unless you own a fractional, though. Now there’s a company called Owner’s Locker that will allow you to have the same convenience that owners of high end fractionals have. Even better, actually because we pick up your stuff from your resort when you leave, store it while you're away and have it waiting for you at your resort when you return. And it’s available now in the Orlando area. Let us know what you think of our service that helps make you feel like you own the place!


JDVM
www.ownerslocker.com