I'm interested in finding out about Palmera Vacation Club in Hilton Head. Formally Coral.
Thanks
The original post for this thread asked about Palmyra Vacation Club at Coral Resorts in Hilton Head.
My wife and I are owners of a Coral Sands unit (Hilton Head) (also owners of a Coral Reef unit – part of the same resort group, Coral Resorts). We stayed at Coral Sands in August, and we attended an owners update presentation.
We were informed during the update by a Palmera Vacation Club sales representative that Palmara Vacation Club had purchased Coral Resorts last year. Further clarifying, the representative said that Palmera purchased the Coral Resorts management company. She explained that Palmera is withdrawing from RCI and, instead, converting units into the Palmera Vacation Club program. The sales rep said that Palmera thought RCI was “terrible.” She said that RCI was increasing the number of points for Coral Resorts units, and that apparently was a bad thing, she said. We told her we would not mind if RCI gave a higher number of points for our units (because we might be able to use the higher number of points elsewhere), but she then said that RCI was charging people who want to use RCI points at Coral Resorts a higher number of points to use a unit similar to ours, but not giving us more points when our weeks are “deposited” into RCI. This did not make sense, because that is not our understanding of how RCI works. Then she told us that beginning in 2018, we would be able to use our units at Coral Resorts only during the weeks we actually were deeded, and that we could not use RCI points to exchange into other weeks if we could not travel during the weeks we owned. This also did not make sense, because the Coral Resorts master deeds are clear that deeded weeks are more or less “floating” weeks and that owners may reserve other weeks. She said that even though we would continue to receive RCI points for our units, we could use those points only at other resorts.
The point of the presentation, of course, was to convince us to buy into the Palmera Vacation Club. Palmera has its own points system, separate from and unrelated to RCI. I did not pay any attention to whatever resorts are available other than the Coral Resorts. The sales rep told us that the minimum number of points we could purchase was 6000 (but later one of the options she presented to us was 5000). (We later talked to someone who attended a Palmera presentation as a potential new owner – owned no timeshare anywhere – and learned that they were offered a program for 3000 points.) I am a little fuzzy on the figures, but the following figures are close enough. They wanted to charge us about $21,000 for the program (I cannot remember whether it was the 5000 point or the 6000 point program), and they would give us a credit for the $10,100 we originally paid for the Coral Reef triennial unit, so that we would end up paying a little over $10,000. It was unclear to me whether we would remain owners of the Coral Reef unit. I did not ask because by that time we were quickly losing interest in the presentation. The sales rep said (at least for credit purposes) they would not recognize the Coral Sands triennial unit we own for a credit, because we purchased it on the resale market. But they said we could transfer that unit back to them and they would send us a check for $680. (I did not ask how they came up with that figure – it has nothing to do with what we paid for the unit – but in thinking about it, it works out to roughly 2/3 of the triennial maintenance fee, and we are one year into the three-year maintenance fee period. Maybe that’s how they came up with the $680.) There also was an annual fee involved for the Palmera Vacation Club, which they said would be $229 more than the total we are now paying for the Coral Reef maintenance fee and annual RCI membership.
This did not sound like a good deal for us, and we did not buy into the program. There may be aspects of the program that are appealing to some people (maybe access to places that are not accessible through RCI), but not to us. It also may have been an annual points program, as opposed to the triennials we currently own, but as I said we were losing interest and not asking a lot of questions. We told them we were not interested and went on our merry way. The update lasted about an hour. They gave us $150 in “island cash,” which we spent at various places during the week.
My next stop was the front desk at Coral Sands. The previous management company (Elite Resort Group) still has its sign up, and the Elite Resort Group business cards are on the front counter. I asked the guy at the desk about this, and he told me that Elite is still managing the place, and that Palmera and Elite have common ownership. I do not know whether he is correct, and I have not verified that information.
Then I talked to the on-site RCI representative at Coral Sands. She was aware of the Palmara situation, but she told me that some of the information we received from the Palmera sales rep during the presentation did not seem to be correct. She said that she was unaware that Palmera was telling owners that RCI was “terrible.” She said that RCI is not charging anyone more points to reserve any unit than what the owners of those same units are receiving. She told me that Coral owners still can use their RCI points to purchase stays during weeks other than what they were deeded. And she told me that the Palmera Vacation Club is a separate entity from the Coral Resorts management company. She did explain to me that, as people convert their units into the Palmera Vacation Club, those specific units would no longer be available through RCI, so that the availability through RCI may go down over time if enough people convert. For example, if all three-bedroom owners during a specific week convert into the Palmera Vacation Club, then three-bedroom units during that specific week would no longer be available through RCI. I do not see that happening any time soon.
I then checked our RCI account. As the RCI rep indicated, we still have choices to reserve units at Coral Resorts. There does not seem to be any limitation to the weeks we actually own.
I have no idea whether Palmera Vacation Club memberships are available on the resale market (such as the 5000 or 6000 point varieties we were offered or the 3000 point variety that our non-timeshare-owner friend was offered). And I have no idea whether the program is beneficial for anyone, because we were not paying enough attention to learn whether there are any real benefits other than what we already have as unit owners and RCI members. But as I said, we quickly concluded the program was not for us.
