Case study
How CLEAR eliminated payment risk and elevated security at Westgate Resorts
Westgate Resorts strengthens onsite safety by using CLEAR to identify threats early and prevent disruptive incidents site safety by using CLEAR to identify threats early and prevent disruptive incidents
Executive summary
U.S. timeshare resort company Westgate Resorts improved security and minimized financial risk by using CLEAR, part of the Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions suite, to identify guests who pose a threat of default on their payment obligations or individuals who could become disruptive. The company — which is headquartered in Orlando, Florida, and was founded in 1982 — now operates 22 vacation resorts across the United States. Thanks to CLEAR, the need to locate guests for payments after issues — once a regular, hours-long ordeal — has effectively been eliminated, while site security has been enhanced.
5 minutes
Time to run a CLEAR background check
0
Evictions and trespassing after CLEAR
2 to 3 hrs
Time saves on handling an incident
The opportunity: Enhanced guest vetting
Westgate Resorts needed a system to vet guests for potential financial or criminal risk. The company offers discounted room rates to guests in return for attending a sales presentation during their stay. It was spending a lot of time recouping monies owed by people who accepted the discount but failed to meet their obligation to attend, who defaulted on their timeshare payments, or who tried to get out of their timeshare agreement. The company also wanted information that would help perform a threat assessment to eliminate workplace violence concerns.
David Porter, Security Director, says, “We sometimes get guests whose background suggests they may not be a person we want to do business with, and they may become a problem once they’re on the property. We’ve had to chase payments and even evict people after they’ve defaulted on their obligations. We wanted a system where we could find out about potentially problematic people and cancel their reservation before they arrive.”
The solution: Intelligence to enable preemptive action
The company now deploys CLEAR, which provides in-depth public records searches, to help it detect issues before they occur. When the security team receives a guest list from head office, they use CLEAR to check for anything that might suggest a person could pose a financial risk, such as if they have any liens, judgments, bankruptcies, or fraud convictions against their name. Armed with this insight, security can decide whether to keep or cancel their reservation.
Westgate Resorts also uses CLEAR to vet individuals — staff or guests — who may have a history of aggressive or other criminal behavior. By doing so, the likelihood of incidents is minimized, and if any hostilities do occur, the security team is better placed to know how to deal with the situation.
“We host a lot of private events attended by prominent people. So, if we get information about people coming onto a property who may pose a hazard to our VIP guests, I can use that to do a threat assessment,” says Porter. “We've had several issues where having the information before interacting with an individual has been a substantial help in developing our response to incidents. We're going in with prior knowledge of a person's history, and we're able to interact either with resort personnel as needed, or maybe we need to involve law enforcement. With CLEAR, we're better prepared.”
Senior decision-makers at Westgate Resorts selected Thomson Reuters CLEAR after a careful search for a solution that could deliver truly reliable information to guide their security practices. As the Security Director explained, “My betters were looking for a system that was going to generate reliable information. It was shown to be a good and reliable system.” Beyond its reputation for data accuracy, CLEAR also stood out for its helpful features — most notably, the ability to quickly trace and identify vehicle owners on property. This capability has proven especially valuable in real-world scenarios, with the team noting, “It comes with the ability to bring back trace information about vehicles. That’s a great feature.” Together, these strengths made CLEAR the trusted choice for both strategic risk management and day-to-day operational efficiency.
The outcome: Significant time saved and better security
Preempting problems with CLEAR has effectively eliminated the risk of people defaulting on their payment obligations. This benefit prevents lost revenues and saves significant amounts of time in conducting investigations to recover monies. Incidents of trespass and evictions have been reduced to zero, and issues with threatening behavior have been minimized.
What used to be a “painful and elongated process,” as Porter describes it, is a thing of the past. Running a CLEAR check takes just five minutes, whereas Porter estimates that each incident used to take two to three hours to handle, and there were 10-15 incidents per year. Now, he never needs to spend time chasing down payments. He and his team have more time to focus on other priorities, and the intelligence supports better decision-making around the deployment of security resources.
“CLEAR has solved a lot of problems I no longer need to deal with ,” he says. “If people get out of control because they’re not happy with their new room rate or they failed to meet the financial criteria to buy a timeshare, these things are mitigated by doing a basic background check. We can see if they pose a risk to begin with, and stop it there, rather than have people come to the property and become disruptive after the fact.”
Overall, CLEAR enables Porter and his team to do a better job of safeguarding guests, staff members, and the company. He says, “We were looking for a system to help guide our security practices in the way we manage our properties, and CLEAR has been good and reliable. I use it almost daily.”
“I’m very impressed with the system and what it offers. CLEAR has paid for itself in spades.”
David Porter
Security Director, Westgate Resorts
Learn more about how Thomson Reuters can help you gather critical intel to keep employees and customers safe.
At a glance
Industry
Hospitality and travel
HQ region
Orlando, Florida, United States
Solutions
CLEAR
Year founded
1982
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