Timeshare Ownership vs. Luxury Travel Membership Club: You Make the Call, Part I

Whether it’s the week we look forward to all year or the quick getaways scheduled throughout our busy lives, we all need our vacations. For decades, timeshare ownership has offered people an alternative to spending precious time away from home in a hotel or motel by providing prepaid vacations at resorts around the world. The options are endless and the accommodations are often far superior to a hotel room.

However, as a timeshare owner, I can tell you that there is also a huge downside to this industry. First, the purchase price of timeshares is often several thousand dollars. My husband and I have one in Myrtle Beach that my parents passed down to us; they bought it in 1980 for $7,000.00. In 2001 my husband and I purchased our first timeshare in Las Vegas for over $22,000.00. Second, once you have purchased the unit, you are obligated to pay maintenance fees. Annual maintenance fees on our Myrtle Beach unit are now $798.00 and in Las Vegas they are over $1200.00. These fees are required whether or not you can use your vacation week that year.

One of the much-touted benefits of the timeshare presentation is that you can exchange your unit for a similar unit anywhere in the world that participates in that resort network. If you don’t want to go to the place where you actually bought your unit, you can pay an exchange fee and reserve an available unit elsewhere. These fees vary, but our exchange fee has increased steadily over the years and is now $169.00. This means that if we were to trade our week in Myrtle Beach for a week in St. Thomas, our cost that year would be $967.00. Although the Myrtle Beach timeshare is a highly coveted three-bedroom unit, it was purchased for about a week in the shoulder (non-peak) season. The last few times I tried to trade it, there was nothing available that I would trade for, except in the overbuilt area of ​​Orlando. How many times do you want to go to Disney World anyway?

Because it is dead property, you can let your family and friends use your week. It makes sense, right? But if you don’t travel with them, you need to buy a guest certificate. The bears are now $59.00 each. When my niece recently asked me how much it would cost her to use my week in Myrtle Beach to exchange for a week in the Poconos, I told her the total would be $1026.00 (maintenance fee plus exchange fee plus guest certificate = $1026.00). She called me two days later and she said no thanks; she had found a better deal on her own: same week, same resort, for only $789.00.

So are timeshares really a good vacation option after all?

When my parents bought their first timeshare, the only option was to buy a designated week. You could trade that week for a week at a different resort, but you always had to travel during that specific week. Years ago, there was a move towards a points system. This system provides much more flexibility for the owner because he is not limited to a particular week. As long as you buy enough points, you can apply them anywhere, anytime. Of course, the timeshare companies knew everyone would want this added flexibility, so they offered owners the chance to redeem their weeks for points. And, needless to say, there was also a high price for doing this. To change the week that my parents gave us in the Polynesian Isles in Florida to points, we paid more than $2,000.00.

It’s amazing how quickly the costs of timeshare ownership add up. One year we were charged a $300.00 fee, on top of the regular maintenance fee, because it had been a particularly bad year because of the hurricanes in Florida, and our resort owner had to make “unexpected” repairs. And did I mention that we also pay over $100.00 per year for our membership in the network that handles our transactions?

It’s hard to argue that we’re traveling cheaper because we own a timeshare, and it’s just as hard to argue that we have more options. Years ago, my husband and I discovered that our ideal travel destination is Lake Tahoe, California. Despite our large number of points and the excellent market value of our Las Vegas property, we have consistently had difficulty making an exchange in Lake Tahoe during ski season.

I am obviously a disillusioned time share owner. And if I didn’t already know that the companies that solicit me once or twice a month in the mail, and almost weekly by phone, trying to help me sell or rent my timeshares, are total scams, I would put all of my timeshare up for grabs. sale with them and say good trip. Unfortunately though, I know how bad they are because I’ve spent a ton of money with them. I’ll never forget one of the salespeople, Dominic, telling me, “We’ve never had a week we can’t rent.” Well, I hope you stopped using that tone, because you couldn’t rent any of my three weeks in Myrtle Beach, one week in Florida, or one week in Las Vegas for me. Come on, we’re not talking about cheap motels at the end of the earth here!

Fortunately, there is a better way. There is an alternative to high purchase prices, high maintenance fees, change fees, and the difficulty of getting where you really want to go. I will tell you everything in Part II of this article.