I haven’t spoken to Christel DeHann since she became one of the wealthiest women in the country. But I talked with the 54-year-old German immigrant six months before she picked up $625 million for the sale of her company—Resorts Condominiums International (RCI) of Indianapolis, Ind. to Cendant, back in 1996.

Christel and Jon DeHann invented the first (vacation timeshare) exchange company back in 1974. They figured that if timeshare owners were able to trade their week for a week somewhere else, it would increase the perceived value of the product and more people would buy timeshares.

So RCI began arranging trades between owners of time-shares, allowing people who had purchased a one-week share at a ski resort, for example, to trade/barter their unit with someone owning a week in the Caribbean.

(For a nominal yearly fee each of RCI’s 2.2 million members worldwide get the right to exchange their time-share units for other units among the 3,100 resorts affiliated with RCI.)

Resort developers typically used RCI to handle all of their exchanges as well as for help in marketing.

When the DeHanns divorced in 1989, Christel bought out Jon’s half of RCI. In 1966 she sold the company to Hospitality Franchise Systems which merged in December 1997 with CVC International and the company created by that merger, Cendant Corp. took ownership of RCI.

In 2005 Cendant decided to split itself into 4 companies. Its hospitality division was renamed Wyndham Worldwide in 2006 and comprises the new company’s hotel, resort and timeshare businesses.

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