Accusations of unfair — and sometimes unlawful — conduct in the timeshare industry are nothing new. So why is Seasons Holidays PLC attracting so much attention?
Seasons Holidays PLC: background and claims
However, Companies House records show the business was incorporated 13 years later in 1996. Seasons promotes resort locations across the UK, plus Spain and the Canary Islands, and claims to have delivered “holiday experiences” for more than two million members.
The company is owned by Barry and Sharon Hurley (AKA Sharon Kinsella). Seasons also self-reports a 90% customer satisfaction rating, and says operations have expanded by over 30% in the last five years.
From Seasons’ own marketing, you could reasonably conclude it is a successful timeshare operator with a satisfied membership base.
But reports from owners to European Consumer Claims (ECC), posts on consumer websites, and Facebook member groups present a very different story….
Slaley Hall Lodges dispute and claims of ‘subterfuge’
Slaley Hall Lodges in Northumbria was once able to claim something rare in the sector: a broadly happy and loyal timeshare owner community.
Members viewed their 99-year lodge contracts as excellent value, with maintenance fees well below the cost of comparable accommodation. The original memberships were with Q Hotels, but in 2019 Seasons Holidays took over Slaley Hall.
In 2020 — at the height of COVID, when UK holidays were in exceptionally high demand — long-standing Slaley Hall members, initially represented by Tim and Fiona Norman, went public about what they described as the start of a campaign of harassment by Seasons.
The company was widely reported to have pressured Mr and Mrs Norman and other members to rescind their memberships — and even pay Seasons £15,000 for the privilege. Tim, a hotelier, believed Seasons wanted owners out so the lodges could be rented for significantly more than the existing maintenance fees.
“UK holiday accommodation is at a premium now,” explained Tim at the time. “Seasons probably want us gone so they can rent out our lodges for high prices. They are bombarding all the owners with what can only be described as bullying phone calls trying to take our memberships back.”
Owners fought for as long as they could, and their situation was sympathetically reported by the media. Ultimately, following what was alleged to be a campaign of dirty tricks, Seasons sold the properties out from under the owners. A look at the Slaley Hall Lodge Owners Facebook group indicates the scale and duration of the dispute between members and Barry/Sharon Hurley.
Sales and finance complaints
In 2021, Seasons made the media again after a couple from Stirlingshire complained about being “railroaded” into taking £21,000 of finance to buy a timeshare they say they were only able to use once. The Ashbys later lost their house after Joe (an engineer at Switzerland’s CERN Large Hadron Collider facility) was laid off and they could no longer keep up loan repayments — a loan they say they should never have been granted.
The couple had initially “won” a “free holiday” from Seasons, on condition they attended a timeshare sales presentation during their stay. After what they described as “real high pressure sales” tactics, they signed up to a membership and were then upgraded on their first timeshare holiday, at Club Tahiti in Lanzarote.
The couple say they knew they should not qualify for finance because Joe had been made redundant. However, they claim the sales representative boasted that, despite this, he would be able to “find a way” to get the loan approved.
Linda was experiencing mental health difficulties at the time, but the couple say this did not deter the sales representative, who advised them to apply for the loan in Linda’s name rather than Joe’s. “We felt like we were talked into a corner. We had said we loved it and would buy if we could get finance (thinking we never could because of my redundancy and Linda’s health problems). Then suddenly we were in the position of having to go ahead. Foolishly we did,” said Joe at the time. The couple later defaulted on payments and lost the membership, but still had the full debt to pay.
The Ashbys’ case was picked up by the media, and Seasons ultimately reached an undisclosed agreement with them.
But was their experience part of a broader pattern of Seasons Holidays PLC complaints — or an isolated case?
Media coverage and consumer organisation scrutiny
In 2020, Seasons attempted to renege on promises made to long-term members Wendy and Andrew Wilkinson about access to leisure facilities at Clowance Estate & Country Club.
The couple paid £25,000 for a one-week-per-year ownership of a studio in 1990 — far above the going rate for comparable memberships. “The appeal to us was that all of our family were allowed to use the leisure facilities all year round, as we lived a couple of hundred metres from Clowance. We never use our accommodation week, which is of little interest to us,” explained shop owner Andrew.
The Wilkinsons contacted consumer organisations for help after they claim Seasons tried to cancel their family’s access to the facilities.
After a wave of negative publicity, Seasons reopened the family access it had previously promised at Clowance.
In 2021, Seasons was accused of financial mis-steps in connection with the filing of corporate accounts at Companies House, and questions were raised about why annual maintenance fees were being paid into a Seasons bank account rather than the Owners Club account.
Questions were asked about whether late filing was down to cashflow issues or simple complacency. If it were the latter, Slaley Hall Lodge member “Christopher” noted on Facebook that this could incur a fine of between £750 and £1,500 — money that would ultimately come from members’ annual maintenance fees.
More recently, Seasons has faced heightened interest from consumer organisations, media and legal observers following allegations that sales staff have been presenting Fractional Timeshare memberships as a financial investment.
“We await the outcome of these investigations with concern,” says Greg Wilson, CEO of ECC.
“If true, it would be an unacceptable breach of consumer law and could lead to serious consequences for Seasons Holidays. There are very good legal reasons why any kind of timeshare is prohibited from being sold as a financial investment.
“The natural assumption for consumers is to see timeshare as a form of property — and property is often expected to rise in value,” continues Wilson.
“In reality, standard timeshares lose substantially all of their financial value the moment they are bought. A buyer may pay tens of thousands of pounds for a membership, and immediately find they cannot even give it away for free — even if they have not used it.
“Fractional ownership claims to give the buyer part-ownership of a property, which can reinforce the impression of an investment. Sometimes this is real and sometimes it is not. In any event, even fractional owners have very little chance of recovering money from their purchase. This is why the law is clear that no form of timeshare may be sold as a financial investment.”
Help at hand
If you feel you have been treated unfairly by Seasons Holidays — whether it relates to a sales experience, finance, contracts, or a wider Seasons Holidays timeshare dispute — please get in touch with our team at Timeshare Advice Centre.
We can help.
