This is the eternal question with timeshare, how much do I need.
First, don’t just look at Hilton. With young children you’ll use those Orlando locations, but what about when the children are grown? Yes Hilton has other options but, I find their booking window doesn’t work well for us for at least half of those locations. The booking rules of bHilton doesn’t work for us. Hawaii can be a difficult location and we really don’t like Oahu all that much. We love Breckenridge but, after over 20 years of ownership, we’ve only managed ONE reservation in October. While we enjoy Hilton, it just doesn’t work for us as a system. We keep our week because, of all the timeshares in Las Vegas, we prefer Elara and, it’s been easy for us to book when we want to go. Without that location we’d have sold our week.
We enjoy our one HGVC contract, but we only own the two bedroom standard room at LV Blv. We originally bought an EOY contract at LV Karen Ave, then decided we needed a few more points and preferred the LV Blv location. there were two more towers planned and the neighborhood was going through a renaissance until the real eastate market collapsed. As time has gone on, we now own more than we need with Hilton. We never saw the expansion they promised. At the time it was essentially the big three of Orlando, Las Vegas and Oahu. Because of the lack of locations at the time, we expanded ourselves with another system that better fit our needs. As time has progressed we find we now own to much with Hilton and that old, original contract would have been enough.
Once you’ve settled on the system that works best for you, learn what restrictions are placed on resale buyers. Hilton is one of the best for a resale purchase with very few restrictions. Other systems make it impossible to use their system without making a retail purchase or paying “junk” fees that greatly increase your cost. This can be a major factor when looking at resale and can add thousands to your final cost.
Learn about the differences in the two major exchange companies, RCI and Interval International. They have some good to great rental deals that can get you into over developed locations like Orlando. This could decrease your need for more points and keep you off the hook for yearly MF’s that must be paid wether or not you’re able to use those points in any given year. CoVid really messed up our timeshare usage. So much so we used timeshare to book a cruise vacation, which is a notoriously poor economic usage of timeshare points. This was through a different system where we own far more than with Hilton. With Hilton we ended up booking a three bedroom, expensive unit, to burn points and invited friends to go with us. We had a great time, but what usage will an older couple get out of a three bedroom unit under normal circumstances. Renting getaways or last minute deals instead of owning can be a good option for a younger couple looking to stay in over developed locations such as Orlando.
There’s a lot of things to learn and a lot of angles to look at before making a purchase to find the right fit. Two of our TUG members have YouTube channels that look at the value and rules of different systems. Cliff, the Timeshare Travler has a channel that has great info in Hilton, Hilton MAX and I believe Wyndham. Jeremy has Destination Timeshare, which is heavier into the Marriott/Vistana/Abound systems but also has a lot of industry news. I’d spend time on both those YouTube channels learning how they use their ownership, looking at the different resort tours and figuring out what will work best for your family.
