A surprisingly upbeat group of timeshare developers and wannabes met this week in Orlando. While attendance was down a little at this year’s Vacation Ownership Investment Conference, the mood was upbeat, with many speakers and attendees proclaiming an industry rebound is in the offing—not this year, but sometime in 2010.

That kind of attitude caught some observers off guard, as the common wisdom, particularly in the consumer media, has been that vacation ownership is reeling and may be down for a 10 count. As ARDA chief and timeshare’s top cheerleader Howard Nusbaum pointed out, as recently as this week Forbes magazine published a story blaming the industry’s woes on depressed consumer demand. “Demand isn’t the problem,” Nusbaum said in a one-on-one interview at VOIC. “It’s been the freezing of the credit markets that has humbled us as an industry. Even in the darkest hours, people still want to vacation.”

The good news, he says, is the credit crisis—specifically the inability of developers to continue reselling purchaser loans—has forced the timeshare industry to get back doing what it does best: develop, market and operate timeshare properties. “They need to be developers again, not bankers,” he says of many of the industry’s top players.

The result is a return to entrepreneurship in the business and a focus on finding and selling product to the best prospects. “It may be a while, but the industry’s best days are ahead of it,” says the always-upbeat Nusbaum.

Nusbaum cites three reasons for his optimism:

• The industry is in a “huge demographic sweet spot” as both the Baby Boomer and Gen X segments continue to mature. “With boomers, we see convergence of the health and wellness movement and resort development,” he says. “And add to that the growing number of Gen Xers who value family time.”

• Occupancies in timeshare properties have averaged above 80 percent during the ongoing downturn. By contrast, occupancies in the traditional hotel industry are hovering in the mid-50s. “Because of the pre-paid nature of the timeshare product, owners think, ‘I bought it, I’m going to use it,” he says. And that consistency in occupancy is a plus in resort communities otherwise endangered by the travel slump.

• Even though marquee brand-company timeshare developers have received a lot of press in recent years, Nusbaum believes the entrepreneurial spirit in independent operators in particular will spark creative solutions to the challenges the industry faces today and in the future. Already, many of the top companies have revamped their sales and marketing practices to target more credit-worthy prospects and to sell additional products to existing owners.