The Tennessee-Florida move is costing the international vacation condo management company $800,000 in moving bills and related severance. ResortQuest charged off $306,000 of that cost in its Q1 results.

Jim Olin, the company's president and CEO, anticipates the corporate relocation and the continued accounting department consolidation from existing operations in Colorado and Hawaii will save ResortQuest over $1 million annually, beginning in the second half of 2003.

Despite a lukewarm Q1 performance, Olin says the company is "pleased" with the per-share quarterly earnings and EBITDA results because they were "in line with our previous guidance, in spite of the challenges facing our industry."

He says, "the economy, the war in Iraq and the recent SARS outbreak impacted consumers' budgets and their willingness to travel during the first quarter, especially in our fly-to markets." However, he predicts an improved summer season.

"Historically, our summer drive-to markets have represented approximately 85% of our total summer revenues, and we see early booking signs that our drive-to markets will perform reasonably well this summer."

At March 31 of this year, the company had $18.4 million in total cash and total debt of $76.3 million. That generated a debt-to-total-capitalization of 37.5%.

To bolster the firm's corporate staff, Olin has hired John W. McConomy as SVP and general counsel. McConomy has 20 years of inhouse legal experience and comes from Storage USA Inc. where he was general counsel and secretary until that company was purchased by GE Capital in 2002.