RCI to Hawaii??

For Hilton owners it appears to be cheaper to "trade" via RCI into HGVC properties in Hawaii then to use club points. Has anyone tried this and how easy or difficult was this to do?

Also, besides HHV, are their any other similarly nice resorts on Oahu in RCI (maybe Wyndham)?

-TJ

TJ,

I've not tried to do this, but I understand from other TUGgers that the loophole does (did?) exist to trade back into HGVC properties more cheaply than booking directly through the internal reservations system.

However, the issue becomes availability, and the fact that HGVC blocks you from booking a trade more than 9 months out from check-in (ie, a Hawaii property might be available at 12 months, and another owner -- like Worldmark -- can book it, but not HGVC).

I think it would be challenging to rely upon Hawaii availability less than 9 months out. I know it's a big deal on WMOwners.com when Hilton does a bulk deposit.

So.......good theory, but I think it will be tough to practically implement.

Best,

Greg

It is possible but very limited to many resorts.

I was lucky last year and found a kingsland deposit via RCI. I even traded into it with an average trader, not sure why or what happened, but I took advantage of a fluke.

You can easily trade into Bay Club, but unfortunately most of the other resorts are very scarce in RCI. There is an occassional unit available. The other issue is that often these weeks are available in RCI much longer than 9 months out, but HGVC prohibits you trading into Hilton properties greater than 9 months out. Often by the time the 9 months window opens the units are already gone.

So you have to find a cancellation that pops up every now and then.

It's fewer points to go through RCI, assuming something is available, but the exchange fee is much higher than booking a reservation through HGVC.

Thank you

Thank you for all the input on trading.

Besides Hilton HV in Waikiki, are there any non-hilton properties anybody can recommend? The new Wyndham look interesting.

-TJ

I've traded into HGVC resorts in HHV and Bay Club using HGVC/RCI and a straight RCI account. At least one of these was made prior to the 9 month mark from check-in. You can usually use less HGVC points to trade into the Hawaii HGVC resorts but it depends on the time of year. HGVC/RCI point costs are fixed while HGVC point costs are dynamic.

I always have an ongoing search in HGVC/RCI for the HGVC resorts that I want IN ADDITION TO having a reservation in the HGVC system. This allows me to cancel the HGVC reservation if a lesser point HGVC/RCI or RCI search is matched prior to check-in. This also allows me to trade for discounted TP RCI exchanges at the last minute (see other threads on how to "move and cancel" a HGVC reservation withing 30 days of check-in).

Hope this helps!

We traded RCI points into Kingsland back in June for this February. I found out that Hilton had done a deposit into RCI on this forum and acted on the info within hours. It was good luck even though it's a lot of RCI points - 80,500 for a 2 bed for 1 week. It's not something you can count on but they do come up from time to time. We then used some of our Club points to get Bay Club for another 5 days. Five weeks to go until we leave!