Mexico Timeshare

[Laurbeth24]

Does anyone have a Share in Mexico at Palace Resorts or Hard Rock? I am looking to see how they work with the AI when buying there?

 

[dioxide45]

I thought Hard Rock was only a hotel? Is it even possible to buy a timeshare there? If it is, I would suspect it is AI all around.

 

[pittle]

I thought Hard Rock was only a hotel? Is it even possible to buy a timeshare there? If it is, I would suspect it is AI all around.

Hard Rock bought several of the Palace Resorts a few years ago. They are still listed in RCI to use for exchanges and I would not be surprised if they still did sales presentations - membership guarantees that people will be coming back.

 

[tiel]

The Palace and Hard Rock resorts in MX sell right-to-use memberships. Memberships are offered at several different levels entitling members to different privileges when staying at one of the resorts, and include a specified number of weeks, sometimes limited to a season.

While there are no maintenance fees, you must pay the AI rate to stay there. The AI price for members is for two (2) people staying in the same room and varies by season, and it is typically lower than the price for non-members through other outlets or the resorts themselves, though the difference may not always be significant.

 

[dioxide45]

So can you buy a Palace or Hard Rock contract on resale?

 

[Laurbeth24]

Yes I have actually seen some resales. Hard to know what you are buying because the deals are all so different. Also the AI fees are different

 

[tiel]

Yes, you can absolutely buy a membership resale. In the contract, there is some information about selling the membership, including some fee that must be paid to the resort company upon resale, but I have no idea what the fee is, nor how the transfer takes place.

Another option for going to one of these resorts is to "rent" a week from a member. In this case, the renter gets any benefit the member would. When renting, it should be kept in mind the renter has to pay the AI fee (covers 2 people in the same room) on top of the rental of the week, so the rental price for the week should be relatively low. The renter would pay the member directly for the week, and would pay the AI fee directly to the resort.

 

[dioxide45]

I spoke with a Palace membership owner while on our stay at Lagunamar the last two weeks. They were actually moving the the Hard Rock the day we checked out. They paid about $17,000 for 52 weeks eight years ago. Was this before it was the Hard Rock. They have yet to use any of their 52 weeks, but they have been using the free weeks that came with the purchase. It seems that the free weeks pay for the upfront membership fee since the free weeks don't have any AI fees attached to them. Though the 52 weeks do. I didn't get any more details about how it all works though.

 

[tiel]

When you buy a membership from Palace, you do get some number of free (referred to as "imperial weeks") and incentive weeks (where the AI rate paid when used is less than the full AI member rate) as part of the membership package. The number of weeks you get is related to the price you pay, and can be negotiated to some degree. I believe, though, the total value of the free/incentive weeks closely approximates the price paid.

The number of other weeks in the package, can vary wildly, and IMHO, is fairly meaningless. We paid $12K, and got 120 weeks in addition to a number of free and incentive weeks. We have yet to use a paid week, and are not likely to. When we purchased, we considered our contract payment as pre-paid vacations, more or less.