I would not purchase into RCI points solely for the purpose of using points partners. First, there is a limit as to the number of points you can use in the program each year and this is based on your points contract, not how many points you may put into your account through points for deposit. I would treat points partners as a possible icing on the cake. You need to work the numbers and some things that were available directly through the airlines were not available through flights booked through points partners.
I successfully used it for flights this past summer to Orlando. I have a pretty detailed excel spreadsheet that calculates the cost of everything I do with my timeshares and because my cost per point was low enough, it made sense. One thing that led to the low cost per point was free points thrown in when I made my RCI points timeshare purchase, so that helped considerably.
Their search engine was pretty good with findng the lowest cost airfare. However, it did not always show the same priced flights that the airlines website did. RCI would show an 8:00 flight for $100, but the airlines website would have an 8 and a 10 flight each at $100. And there was no way RCI could or would access the 10:00 flight.
I had a pretty messy time planning this past vacation (due to family members constantly changing plans), so all of our airfares both coming and going were booked at different times in different ways. My girls and I flew Frontier to Orlando and booked it direct through Frontier. Frontier has a basic class that was about $120, but you had to pay either $20 or $25 for each bag. However, Frontier has another class that was approx. $150 that included 2 free bags, plus some other minor benefits. Since the basic plus one bag was almost the same price as the higher class which included 2 free bags, it was a no brainer to book the higher class. When I later tried to book similiar flights going home utilizing RCI, they could not offer the higher class. I would have been stuck with the lower class and having to pay for my bags.
Moral of that story is do your homework and look into all fees.
Since my husband and son had different travel dates and since they were not going to be with us as long plus they are guys, they were able to get by with only carry ons, so we were able to utlize our RCI points for their flights and it came out lower than what we would have paid elsewhere.
When doing my research, I used the RCI travel booking site, Kayak, and the actual airline's website to compare prices and fees, in order to make sure we were getting a good deal. I don't think it would have worked out if we didn't get one year's worth of points for no maintenance fees. That really kept our price per point down.
So, if all of that makes you want to use points for airfares, car rentals, etc, then by all means pick up an RCI points contract.
