Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan

Just about everyone visiting the Caribbean stops in Puerto Rico. Not enough of them stay, however, so the island’s government recently instituted a series of tourism development-friendly laws and incentives to bolster all aspects of tourism, including hotels, convention, condo projects and timesharing.

“Puerto Rico holds an immense potential for tourism,” Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno told delegates to the recent Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference in San Juan. “Yet, such potential has only been half-tapped in the last few years, so we’ve decided to redouble our efforts with a series of initiatives designed to foster rapid and vigorous growth.”

The commonwealth provides a bundle of tax credits, exemptions and utility discounts for developers who build new hotels, timeshare resorts and other hospitality projects around the island and in particular in the district surrounding the new Puerto Rico Convention Center. By spurring development, the government hopes to close the tourism gap it has with the rest of the countries in the region. According to Fortuna, Puerto Rico has about 30 percent of the total inbound seat capacity of the region and boasts nearly three times the seats from the U.S. mainland as the next largest Caribbean island. Yet tourism represents just seven percent of Puerto Rico’s GDP, compared to more than 20 percent for the region as a whole.

Development of timeshare projects, either standalone or most likely as part of mixed-use resorts, holds a lot of opportunity for Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean. David Gilbert, executive vice president of Interval International, told the CHTIC attendees that 80 percent of the exchange company’s two-million-plus members identify the Caribbean as their first choice in vacation destinations.

Puerto Rico has a long history with timeshare. One of the first resorts to affiliate with Interval was ESJ Towers, a beachfront mixed-use hotel, condo and timeshare project in San Juan. And the island has a new twist on timeshare: properties marketed almost exclusively to residents of Puerto Rico. Aquarius Vacation Club has two resorts, one in Dorado in the north and one in Boqueron in the south. The Dorado project is sold out and the one in Boqueron nearly so, with Puerto Ricans buying almost all of the intervals.

Other hospitality entrepreneurs are turning to timeshare to round out their Caribbean offerings. Columbia Sussex, a Kentucky-based operator of mostly full-service hotels with brands like Marriott, Hilton and Westin, recently carved a luxury timeshare component out of its Westin in St. Maarten. The Dawn Beach Club, an Interval affiliate, is the firm’s first entry into shared ownership.