One thing that I think TUG offers is if you buy a certain service on TUG2 - I think it's like $120 or something, Brian (TUG owner) will do a Zoom with you for about an hour to go over your TS needs / system / usage. While I usually say you can get all the info for free here on the forum, and you can, if you were confused by the advice and conflicting opinions it might help to just talk it over with a seasoned TS owner and user. Hell, someday soon I might offer something like that too, though Brian has been doing this longer.
One of the things that is hard in a forum, especially with a dozen + opinions is that it feels like you have several potential options, but it's hard to go through the subtleties sometimes.
That said - there's like a matrix of methods generally used, though I'm making up the titles a bit as I go here:
| Method Name | Ownership focused | Trading Focused | Cash Stay focused |
| Explanation of method strategy |
- Stay mostly in the location or system you own
- Usually, but not always, booking options that give you more chance to get difficult locations and weeks
- You may need to buy a specific week for extremely challenging bookings you MUST HAVE every year.
- Usually costs more
|
- You buy a "trader" - low MFs for good trade power.
- This varies based on what you want to get - RCI based traders can be cheap but you pay more to book and most places have a fee when you check in. However, there are A LOT of RCI locations and availability, though "many" might be uninteresting to you.
- II if you want off season locations you can trade into nice places, if you want peak season Marriott then you need to buy a good Marriott trader to get those.
- Some have points (RCI had "Points", Weeks which are TPU points, II has weeks and some locations use "Gold Points", some of the minisystems use their own points values)
- Some are week for week (lots of II if independent)
- Can cost less
|
- You get a triennial or other really cheap TS to get you into whichever cash option you want. I recommend RCI.
- You use this specific owned week or if cheap enough eat the MF as a membership fee.
- You primarily look for Extra Vacations and Last Calls for most of your stays
|
| What you don't do |
- Trading or cash stays aren't used much.
|
- You might never stay in your owned location
|
- You probably aren't going to have much trading power so it'll only get you what you specifically own or other weaker stays that may be uninteresting.
|
| How you tend to use it |
- You get sufficient points in the minisystem or sufficient weeks in Marriott like systems to cover all expected trips
- You book through the minisystem or discounted exchange company
- There may be discounts you can watch out for, but in many cases if you don't buy retail (and DON'T) and have a lot of points, or extreme flexibility to fly/drive to a place with less than a weeks notice you don't realistically use the discounts or last minute deals.
|
- You look for a trader that has really low MFs to the unit power you get
- You roll the dice on getting a trade, if you're realistic you might upgrade frequently, if you're expecting prime time and location all the time with an independent you probably will be disappointed.
- Sometimes you get bonus weeks when you deposit an independent week.
- Some traders are "lock offs" where you can split it into 2 and get 2 trades (at weaker values) for the MF, but you still pay 2 trading fees and other fees.
- If you do it right, you tend to get more premium locations and places than cash focused but less than ownership focused.
|
- You spend time watching for deals. Ideally you have a list of places you might want to go, and rough times of year.
- You pay to book when they show up.
- You pay more for Extra Vacations for places that are more high end or desirable locations. ($800-$2600 depending on a lot of factors for a 2BR week)
- You're ready to go to some "overbuilt" locations multiple times - you can tell which "almost always show up" and just look to book at 45 days out.
- You're ready to snap up ones that show up on Last Calls with maybe 45 days notice.
|
Most of us on TUG that post a lot actually do a hybrid of 2 or all 3 of the above though. We also pay a lot in MFs to have multiple options and tend to go on multiple multi week trips a year - so we're still getting a lot of bang for our buck. So part of the reason we have different opinions is a mix of where we want to stay, when, and how much we want to spend to stay there. I.e. I've stayed on Hilton Head Island for $700, for $900, and for $1300 but the quality of the resort, the location (inland, on the beach, etc) varies and time of year varies.You can easily spend more for a summer week at a Marriott on the ocean than a January week in a Spinnaker inland you see. OTOH, if you're willing to drive / uber you can get to all the same attractions outside of the specific resort either way, and you might prefer mid 60s and no crowds to mid 80s and packed too . . .
