Good point. It’s not that we couldn’t book a year out, we just typically haven’t in the past for any vacation. It would just be a small behavior change but easy enough I’d say. We just didn’t want to buy in and then end up not being able to get into the places we want. If booking early and then having the opportunity to change our minds later on location, that makes me feel better.
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You mainly would only have a hard time finding availability in the following scenarios:
1. You’re trying to book a four bedroom presidential during prime season. It is probably obvious that there are fewer big rooms then smaller rooms. Large Presidential are usually the first to go. Most of the times in the 13 month window. Then the larger regular rooms. One and two bedrooms are usually the easiest to get 10 months out.
2. You’re booking New Year’s Eve in New York, Mardi Gras, or Daytona bike week. You need 13 months for those, as they are some of the highest demand events. In the case of New Year’s Eve in New York, there is only one Club Wyndham resort on New York. RCI has resorts but those get booked well in advance. There are other high demand holidays but I hear more about those being more difficult then most.
3. You’re booking an associate or affiliated resort. Those always have extremely limited availability. If you’re looking to buy, because they have resorts in locations you like, make sure they are not affiliate or associate resorts because those are hard to get in most cases.
4. You’re booking a resort with limited accommodations. Limited accommodations means less then 50 units. Chicago is one of those. There are more. Again, look at the directory for the resorts you want to go to, and see if it says “limited accommodations” on the details of the resort. Look up Chicago Riverfront. It has it there. Some say Margaritaville Pigeon Forge only has a handful of rooms. If you look at the resort page, it does not specify “Limited number of accommodations” so there has to be more the. 50 available. One thing to consider, Wyndham has a total of 25,000 units spread out among 110 locations. Marriott has 20,000 units spread across 54 locations. They have fewer locations but more rooms in each location. So even though Wyndham has twice the amount of locations, they only have 5,000 more units then Marriott.
5. You’re booking prime season less then 8 months out. At this point, you may not find any two bedrooms left at the more popular resorts, so you may have to go for option B. One bedrooms will likely still be available until around 4-6 months from checkin. The exception being the scenarios I described above. After that you have to check everyday to see if new inventory pops up because someone canceled.
All that said, you can always find something available. The question is, is it what you want, in the location you want, during the time you want. If you are booking less then 3 months out, you might have to be very flexible if it’s prime season.
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