Robert J. Webb, RRP
Robert J. Webb maintains a diverse real estate, business, and hospitality law practice with a strong emphasis on resort development, timeshares, fractionals, hotels, condominium hotels, second homes, cruise ship and residence vessel programs, and the growing national travel and leisure industry.
Board Certified in Real Estate Law by the Florida Bar since 1987, Rob is the senior member and was the founding leader of the Baker Hostetler Hospitality Industry Team. He has practiced in virtually all aspects of the international resort and leisure industry over the past twenty-eight years, including hotels, timeshares, fractionals, resort condominiums and condotels, cruise ship and residence vessels, membership campgrounds, vacation and travel clubs, exchange companies and point systems, development finance, owners' association operation, management and finance, and new product development. Rob was instrumental in the creation, design, and development of many of today's leading multisite timeshare plans, including the Disney Vacation Club, the Hilton Grand Vacations Club, the Hyatt Vacation Club, the Allegro Vacation Club, Club Navigo, and the Four Seasons Residence Club. He also has a strong background in lender workouts, title insurance law and practice, and general real estate development, and is rated (AV) by the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.
Rob has participated in the drafting and adoption of every Florida statutory amendment and administrative rule affecting the timeshare industry since 1983, including the lock-out law, the timeshare solicitor and owner referral laws, the timeshare resale broker law, the vacation club law, Florida's streamlined timeshare foreclosure law, and the personal property timeshare amendments of 2003. He was also principally involved in the negotiation of the 1995 Puerto Rico Timeshare and Vacation Club Act and was active in more recent successful efforts to secure dramatic changes to the timeshare laws and rules in Illinois, New York, Hawaii, Arizona, South Carolina, and California. Rob was appointed as a member of the Florida Troubled Resorts Task Force by the Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and he chaired the task force subcommittee on ad valorem taxation issues.
Rob also has a special interest in leisure and mixed-use developments in the Caribbean and Central America, being involved over the years in several projects, financing or regulatory issues in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, St. John, St. Kitts, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. His most recent Caribbean project is The Colony at Half Moon at the beautiful Half Moon Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Rob has been active in the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the national timeshare trade association, since 1981. He currently serves as Treasurer of ARDA, as a member of the ARDA Board of Directors and its Executive Committee, as a board member of the ARDA International Foundation, as an ARDA Trustee, as Chair of the ARDA Legislative Council, and as counsel to ARDA-Florida. He is the immediate past chair of the ARDA Legislative and Regulatory Policy Advisory Committee (LARPAC) and the ARDA State Legislative Committee. ARDA has also recognized Rob as a Registered Resort Professional (RRP).
During an absence from Baker Hostetler in 2000, Rob served as president of firm client Island One, Inc., a timeshare developer with five resorts in Orlando and Ormond Beach, Florida. Prior to joining Baker Hostetler in 1988, he was a shareholder in the Orlando law firm of DeWolf, Ward & Morris, P.A. He serves as a director and general counsel for Spottswood Companies, Inc., a hospitality company based in Key West, Florida, and as strategic director and general counsel for The Venn Company, a new hospitality company that is developing mixed-use leisure products. Rob also serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Citrus Club in Orlando.
Rob is a member of the American, Florida and Orange County, Florida, Bar Associations.