Hi all
We're staying right now at the Sheraton Algarve/Pine Cliffs - like all of these places, it goes by many names! It is a very nice five star hotel with a wonderful beach, indoor pool, good breakfast and enormously overpriced restaurants. http://www.sheratonalgarve.com/en
So we went to the timeshare presentation out of interest, and here's what they pitched us:
- membership of the Registry Collection through buying a flexible week in the two-bed apartments on site here (not strictly timeshare; 20 years membership and you book your own week each year, carry it over etc)
- three levels of membership, Silver November-mid March, Gold mid March-end June and September/October (plus silver), Platinum all three
- joining fee £9k for silver, £17k for Gold, £35k for Platinum (one off, suspiciously round prices in pounds for a Euro-based place!)
then the usual sales offers:
.20% reduction on the above
.First year fee waived
.5% cashback to spend on site (so worth about 1% in real money :-D)
.Free exchange for first four years
- each year, you pay £750 membership, and receive a week on the resort - bookable within your 'seasons' according to grade of membership
- biannual membership also available for 60% of the above fee, and the £750 fee applies biannually, and you get your week biannually
- they claim access to 6,450 resorts in 102 countries - you get access to The Registry Collection, RCI (but 'premium/better properties'), and Starwood (but see below)
- an exchange week would normally cost £129, extra weeks between £175 (cheapest one bed) to £899 (four bed)
- 'mini breaks' are Fri-Mon £89-£175
What he seemed particularly keen to sell us, for some reason, was an 'Experience', costing £2,600 which would get us 21 days flexibly booked at the Pine Cliffs, plus a free golf lesson (we don't play - yet!) and 160euros to spend on food and drink (so about 40euros worth in the outside world) - at the end of this, the £2,600 would be put towards the joining fee.
So each year you can:
- use your week on the resort (in your available dates)
- swap and/or buy extra weeks elsewhere
- book the week and sell it back to the resort - IF they successfully rent it (and of course, they COULD tell you anything they liked!), you get 50 euros or 3,300 Owners Starpoints (which they say are SPG points?) - this seems to be the only way to access Starwood hotels etc, which is a shame...
Oh, and you get all kinds of discounts on the astronomical on-resort prices of things.
So, on the face of it, not such a bad offer. It all works out to £1000 per year or per two years, over 20 years, to stay in some really posh places. If we were mad keen on golf, committed enough to come back to this place every year or two (off-off-season - we are only looking at the silver deal). The very nice bigger room we are in has a rack price of 140Euros (we paid 100, breakfast included), and the two-room apartments sleep 6, so we could bring family.
I should emphasise that this really is a classy hotel, the salesman (Nuno) was extremely nice, and there was no hint of a hard sell- we talked for 90 minutes but could easily have left at the end of the allotted hour and he gave us all the papers to take away and think. I mention all this as the web seems short of really up-to-date information from a non-marketing point of view on the Registry Collection and clearly things have moved on in the last seven years since some of the earlier posts on this board; doesn't mean it's good value though!
We are quite open to a bit of an investment in some luxury stays, but would ideally like a lot of flexibility both to book nice hotels and find nice resorts. (We're going around the world in a month on business this spring, then spending a month in SE Asia - a nice compression of the kind of mix of 'resort as purpose of travel' and 'needing to find three nights in Denver' that we usually do - so the Fri-Fri or Fri-Mon thing only works for the 'holiday' not the 'travel' part for us). We don't have kids yet so are quite flexible - we love nice places and nice swimming in warm seas or properly warm pools (and have learnt the hard way how often 'outdoor heated pool' means 'heated by the sun'....)
We saw demos of
-the Registry Collection website - seemed very few resorts outside the US (where we don't generally go), but very nice indeed
-the RCI website (where the salesman seemed to be logged in as "Cormac Donnelly"!)
- also he said the hotel counts as level 6 in Starpoints, whereas the top is level 7 - so you could swap your week for a week in most places - I'm now concerned this might be only through the dodgy 'let the hotel sell your room for Starpoints' route.
Oh, and others can use your extra weeks, for a 60 euro guest certificate fee.
So I'm worried about flexibility, about ease of booking, and about the value we'd actually get from that. He was both encouraging us to take the 'Experience' to be swayed by the loveliness of this place 'in season' - so presumably we can use the 21 days any time of the year - AND to invest in the 'silver' for the trading and 'extra weeks' type benefits.
Also, about the value of their pricing. It's hard to compare price or quality of timeshare places with web searches, since they might or might not be the same accommodation at the same resort, but our web searches *seem* to show that the price you'd pay by an online booking is pretty much the same as the 'discounted' RC/RCI/Starwood prices!
Prices we saw were (all for a week - sorry not sure which of the three routes most of these were through - mostly RCI I think)
Mtc at the legacy river kwai. 155
Perdana beach resort, 215
Fiji palms deubamarch 399-459
Malol lailai lagoon resort club 399-429
Anantra 1400 dollars per week (this may have been through RC or Starwood - it came up as 350 points which he said you multiply by 4 to get the dollar price!)
Googling them all for mid April weeks seemed to show much the same prices.
We'll have another chat and a look at the apartments tomorrow.
So
- posting this for info
- any questions folks would like me to ask for more useful info?
- any advice you'd give us?
Questions I'm planning to ask:
- can we book the 'Experience' then right away the silver membership, so we get the extra three weeks and offers?
- can we use the Experience 21 days any time of year?
- more about others using - fee per week, per person? Mention of six names on our account - the only guests who can use, or are they fee-free?
- if we get silver, can we get additional and swap weekends without penalty? Why not swap and rebuy at this place in season? Or swap here for somewhere else, but just book her in season?
- how do we access use of starwoods and all the hotel groups - just through the 'starpoints'? Are 'Owners starpoints' the same as SPG points?
- does the £750 stay the same annual/biannual fee all twenty years? No increases? No other fees for maintenance etc? Admin?
- why the very round figures in pounds? Might we get a better deal in euros?
Thanks all - sorry for long post!!
We're staying right now at the Sheraton Algarve/Pine Cliffs - like all of these places, it goes by many names! It is a very nice five star hotel with a wonderful beach, indoor pool, good breakfast and enormously overpriced restaurants. http://www.sheratonalgarve.com/en
So we went to the timeshare presentation out of interest, and here's what they pitched us:
- membership of the Registry Collection through buying a flexible week in the two-bed apartments on site here (not strictly timeshare; 20 years membership and you book your own week each year, carry it over etc)
- three levels of membership, Silver November-mid March, Gold mid March-end June and September/October (plus silver), Platinum all three
- joining fee £9k for silver, £17k for Gold, £35k for Platinum (one off, suspiciously round prices in pounds for a Euro-based place!)
then the usual sales offers:
.20% reduction on the above
.First year fee waived
.5% cashback to spend on site (so worth about 1% in real money :-D)
.Free exchange for first four years
- each year, you pay £750 membership, and receive a week on the resort - bookable within your 'seasons' according to grade of membership
- biannual membership also available for 60% of the above fee, and the £750 fee applies biannually, and you get your week biannually
- they claim access to 6,450 resorts in 102 countries - you get access to The Registry Collection, RCI (but 'premium/better properties'), and Starwood (but see below)
- an exchange week would normally cost £129, extra weeks between £175 (cheapest one bed) to £899 (four bed)
- 'mini breaks' are Fri-Mon £89-£175
What he seemed particularly keen to sell us, for some reason, was an 'Experience', costing £2,600 which would get us 21 days flexibly booked at the Pine Cliffs, plus a free golf lesson (we don't play - yet!) and 160euros to spend on food and drink (so about 40euros worth in the outside world) - at the end of this, the £2,600 would be put towards the joining fee.
So each year you can:
- use your week on the resort (in your available dates)
- swap and/or buy extra weeks elsewhere
- book the week and sell it back to the resort - IF they successfully rent it (and of course, they COULD tell you anything they liked!), you get 50 euros or 3,300 Owners Starpoints (which they say are SPG points?) - this seems to be the only way to access Starwood hotels etc, which is a shame...
Oh, and you get all kinds of discounts on the astronomical on-resort prices of things.
So, on the face of it, not such a bad offer. It all works out to £1000 per year or per two years, over 20 years, to stay in some really posh places. If we were mad keen on golf, committed enough to come back to this place every year or two (off-off-season - we are only looking at the silver deal). The very nice bigger room we are in has a rack price of 140Euros (we paid 100, breakfast included), and the two-room apartments sleep 6, so we could bring family.
I should emphasise that this really is a classy hotel, the salesman (Nuno) was extremely nice, and there was no hint of a hard sell- we talked for 90 minutes but could easily have left at the end of the allotted hour and he gave us all the papers to take away and think. I mention all this as the web seems short of really up-to-date information from a non-marketing point of view on the Registry Collection and clearly things have moved on in the last seven years since some of the earlier posts on this board; doesn't mean it's good value though!
We are quite open to a bit of an investment in some luxury stays, but would ideally like a lot of flexibility both to book nice hotels and find nice resorts. (We're going around the world in a month on business this spring, then spending a month in SE Asia - a nice compression of the kind of mix of 'resort as purpose of travel' and 'needing to find three nights in Denver' that we usually do - so the Fri-Fri or Fri-Mon thing only works for the 'holiday' not the 'travel' part for us). We don't have kids yet so are quite flexible - we love nice places and nice swimming in warm seas or properly warm pools (and have learnt the hard way how often 'outdoor heated pool' means 'heated by the sun'....)
We saw demos of
-the Registry Collection website - seemed very few resorts outside the US (where we don't generally go), but very nice indeed
-the RCI website (where the salesman seemed to be logged in as "Cormac Donnelly"!)
- also he said the hotel counts as level 6 in Starpoints, whereas the top is level 7 - so you could swap your week for a week in most places - I'm now concerned this might be only through the dodgy 'let the hotel sell your room for Starpoints' route.
Oh, and others can use your extra weeks, for a 60 euro guest certificate fee.
So I'm worried about flexibility, about ease of booking, and about the value we'd actually get from that. He was both encouraging us to take the 'Experience' to be swayed by the loveliness of this place 'in season' - so presumably we can use the 21 days any time of the year - AND to invest in the 'silver' for the trading and 'extra weeks' type benefits.
Also, about the value of their pricing. It's hard to compare price or quality of timeshare places with web searches, since they might or might not be the same accommodation at the same resort, but our web searches *seem* to show that the price you'd pay by an online booking is pretty much the same as the 'discounted' RC/RCI/Starwood prices!
Prices we saw were (all for a week - sorry not sure which of the three routes most of these were through - mostly RCI I think)
Mtc at the legacy river kwai. 155
Perdana beach resort, 215
Fiji palms deubamarch 399-459
Malol lailai lagoon resort club 399-429
Anantra 1400 dollars per week (this may have been through RC or Starwood - it came up as 350 points which he said you multiply by 4 to get the dollar price!)
Googling them all for mid April weeks seemed to show much the same prices.
We'll have another chat and a look at the apartments tomorrow.
So
- posting this for info
- any questions folks would like me to ask for more useful info?
- any advice you'd give us?
Questions I'm planning to ask:
- can we book the 'Experience' then right away the silver membership, so we get the extra three weeks and offers?
- can we use the Experience 21 days any time of year?
- more about others using - fee per week, per person? Mention of six names on our account - the only guests who can use, or are they fee-free?
- if we get silver, can we get additional and swap weekends without penalty? Why not swap and rebuy at this place in season? Or swap here for somewhere else, but just book her in season?
- how do we access use of starwoods and all the hotel groups - just through the 'starpoints'? Are 'Owners starpoints' the same as SPG points?
- does the £750 stay the same annual/biannual fee all twenty years? No increases? No other fees for maintenance etc? Admin?
- why the very round figures in pounds? Might we get a better deal in euros?
Thanks all - sorry for long post!!
