I wrote this post on my personal blog, but thought it may help other folks here on the TUG since so much of what I learned about my situation came from advise here on the forums.
I’d love any feedback you have, but more than anything, I hope this helps someone else. The original post follows:
My wife and I have gone to more than our fair share of timeshare presentations. I’d imagine that we’re somewhere in the neighborhood of ten different pitches. Most of the recent ones have been through Book VIP. The deal is always that you can get a significant discount on accommodations (and often they include All-Inclusive packages) in return for selling your soul for a few hours ( aka the obligation of sitting through a timeshare pitch.)
Having been through as many as we have, I’ve actually gained quite a bit of knowledge of not only how the sales pitches work and how to combat the tactics used by the parade of sales people, but I’ve also learned about the different timeshare systems themselves. And when you look past the sales info, there’s no doubt in my mind that there is at least some truth behind the story that you can either save money on travel or travel with nicer accomodations — ASSUMING that you are able to pay a reasonable amount of money to acquire your week.
It’s also no secret that we like to travel, which is why I’ve always given the idea about buying a timeshare some thought. But like many of you, I’ve often heard horror stories about them. You can’t book when you want. Maintenance fees are expensive. And you can’t get rid of them. Any of the ones that are worth owning are ridiculously expensive to purchase. Other than that, sounds great, right?
Based on the things that I’ve read, a lot of that can be true.
However, if you do your research and know what you’re getting into, owning a timeshare can improve the way you vacation… or at least that’s my theory and hope going into this. I’ve done quite a bit of research so I do feel good about it going into this.
Here are five reasons why I believe buying a timeshare is the right move for us:
1. We travel most years. Who am I kidding, we travel every year. Quite often a few times a year. We buy “things” on occasion, but we are definitely of the mindset that experiences and memories are more important than accumulating stuff or always driving a new car. Because we know that we like to travel, we include money to cover those expenses in our monthly budget, so that it’s covered when the time comes.
Knowing that we are going to prioritize travel means that I’m ok with the commitment to pay a maintenance fee every year.
2. We like going to places where there are timeshare locations. Well, perhaps more accurately, we like to go a lot of different places, and a lot of those locations also have timeshares. If you’re going to buy into a timeshare system, you should either really want to go back to that same location or the other locations that are operated by the same or partner companies. If your vacation destinations don’t line up with where there is resort availability, owning a timeshare isn’t likely for you.
3. We’d enjoy having a bit more space when we travel. This one is probably a bit more subjective to us right now. With the kids being the ages that they are, we’re all really ok piling into a single standard hotel room with two queen beds. Half the time, we end up splitting up the adult and kids anyway. When we were in Hawaii, we only had an adult bed and a kid bed for one night.
That being said, the kids are starting to get older, and it would be nice (not required, but nice) to have some more private space. We also bought enough HGVC points for a two bedroom unit, which would also give us the flexibility to have grandparents or friends potentially travel with us. We also don’t have to eat out every meal — especially breakfast — so having a working kitchen will be nice.
4. We’re getting a high quality unit at a low price. If you go out to timeshare sales sites, you can quite often find units for sale for $1 — or in some cases, I’ve even seen where people are paying all of others closing costs just to get them to take them. Quite often, those locations are with questionable companies with high maintenance fees. I have no idea what the prices of timeshares will do in the future, but I feel confident that in the worst case scenario, I won’t be out too much capital — and could easily pass on the unit to someone else. However, my expectation is that we’ll hold on to this for a long time.
The high quality unit also means that we should have good trading power if we wanted to go outside the Hilton Grand Vacation Club system. The location we’re buying into trades into both RCI and II — the two major players.
There’s one additional benefit from a high quality unit which takes me to my final point.
5. The week at the location that we’re buying rents for more than double the maintenance fees. Owning a high demand week in a high demand location also means that if we wanted to, we could reserve the week and rent it out and more than cover the maintenance fees for the year. If we actually did rent it out every other year, it would essentially pay for a free vacation for us every other year as well. I don’t know how often that we would consider renting it out, but I love having that as a fallback option if we don’t need it for one reason or another.
We’re definitely still early in our journey, but I’ve done enough research that I feel very comfortable with our decidsion. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out and thank you to the friendly folks at the TUG (Timeshare User Group) forums. They not only helped by answering a few of my specific questions, but just reading through others’ posts was exteremely beneficial.
Stay tuned for more updates as we actually begin to use our new timeshare. Do you have a good or bad timeshare experience to share? Let me know @TalkToErik.