Hello All,
Thanks so much for all the information you share here on HGVC. Based on a lot of reading here and help from
@GT75, I puchased a 7k points platinum week at Craigendarroch Lodges. It was about $6300 all-in with legal, club, activation and current year MF. The MF is ~$800. I'm very happy.
I plan on booking following locations in next few years:
- Lagoon Tower Oahu
- Sunrise Park City
- Marbrisa
- Carlsbad Seapointe
- King's Land
- Vilamoura Portugal
- Tuscany Italy
Most of these locations were not available for bookings for rest of 2019, so I redeemed my points this year for my sister's family to go to Craigendarroch in October during the English school holiday break. I was surprised that a school holiday week was available. So Scotland will always be a backup option for us as it is driving distance for my sister's family.
I have read the HGVC TUG article a few times now. So I do have a grasp of the basics. I have read about a few tips like:
- moving a reservation 30 days out and then cancelling so no need to pay points protection unless the reservation is in December.
- try to use points from next year this year so you have low risk of points expiring and avoid fees to save points
- make club bookings at 9 months 9 PM PDT for high demand locations
- use reservation walking to secure reservations for high demand locations
I see that HGVC uses a unbundled pricing approach and there are fees for most things. Any tips to avoid those fees would be really helpful. I don't know what I don't know so if you can point me to particular tricks, I'll read about it and try it out.
A couple of other questions:
- Is HGVC a good option for Mexico bookings?
- The Japanese options seem to be very high cost in points. I assume they are just for sales & marketing purposes.
- Can I still do the 5 night package timeshare presentations? They pitch me those every time I make a booking with Hilton. My wife is not listed as an owner.
- Are there any old and tired properties that should be avoided? We don't plan on visiting the east coast properties except for an occasional Orlando trip.