iwanttoflyaway
TUG Member
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2018
- Messages
- 91
- Reaction score
- 36
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- 78
So I'm on the verge of buying my first timeshare. I've sat through several sales pitches, and can certainly see the value for people like us (we travel pretty much as often as we can get away with) but we can't justify retail price for extra perks that retail owners get. Resale it is - we're starting small with an inexpensive biennial points contract at a resort that we've actually stayed in as a hotel several times before. If you count our RCI membership in the cost, we're overpaying MF
oints, but we aren't paying for the timeshare itself and I'm content with the annual fee - because it turns out that the actual points program suits us, we'll buy more and radically reduce our cost per point.
Anyway, this might not be the best place for this, but I still need a bit of validation and hoped you all might oblige - this isn't a totally crazy proposal, right? Our situation is:
We travel a lot. At least monthly we stay somewhere in Florida - we particularly enjoy Daytona Beach - and we try to fly somewhere at least once a month as well. Our normal trip is three nights. I'm good at the points game with hotel chains, so we average <$100 hotel rooms pretty much everywhere we go, anytime we try, but they're... well, we don't get to be choosy with where they are and we've honest-to-god been woken up by a lady of the night trying to find her john. Anyway, now I'm older and getting tired of that. As timeshares have moved to points systems, and then to nightly options, it has seemed more and more optimal for our schedule.
Basically, I want to make sure that my assumptions are correct re: RCI and their system, and also ask a few questions about the details.
First: If I have points, weeknights are 12% of the weekly rate, and weekend nights are 20% of the weekly rate. So a resort listed for 17,000 points would be a little over 6,000 points, plus a $99 exchange fee. There may/should also be a housekeeping fee - unfortunately I have no idea how to estimate this. Regardless, against our $100 a night budget and assuming I'm stuck with this 2c per point ratio, I'm looking at breaking even as long as the housekeeping fee is <$80. Is this usually the case?
Second: The Last Calls and Extra Vacations are very appealing - but we can't usually make a whole week work. Can we check in late? By late, I mean like Wednesday for a Saturday checkout. If not, it leads me to wonder if we can have a friend come 'take over' our reservation halfway through without needing to purchase a guest certificate. Either way, the sales available to RCI member interest me a lot - are they really 'out the door' costs? No additional exchange or housekeeping fees for most resorts?
Sadly, I still have more questions, I just realized this is already too long and noone will bother to read to the questions phase =p Still, good to type it all out - it's not exactly a small simple purchase and I want to make sure I have my head wrapped around it all first.
oints, but we aren't paying for the timeshare itself and I'm content with the annual fee - because it turns out that the actual points program suits us, we'll buy more and radically reduce our cost per point. Anyway, this might not be the best place for this, but I still need a bit of validation and hoped you all might oblige - this isn't a totally crazy proposal, right? Our situation is:
We travel a lot. At least monthly we stay somewhere in Florida - we particularly enjoy Daytona Beach - and we try to fly somewhere at least once a month as well. Our normal trip is three nights. I'm good at the points game with hotel chains, so we average <$100 hotel rooms pretty much everywhere we go, anytime we try, but they're... well, we don't get to be choosy with where they are and we've honest-to-god been woken up by a lady of the night trying to find her john. Anyway, now I'm older and getting tired of that. As timeshares have moved to points systems, and then to nightly options, it has seemed more and more optimal for our schedule.
Basically, I want to make sure that my assumptions are correct re: RCI and their system, and also ask a few questions about the details.
First: If I have points, weeknights are 12% of the weekly rate, and weekend nights are 20% of the weekly rate. So a resort listed for 17,000 points would be a little over 6,000 points, plus a $99 exchange fee. There may/should also be a housekeeping fee - unfortunately I have no idea how to estimate this. Regardless, against our $100 a night budget and assuming I'm stuck with this 2c per point ratio, I'm looking at breaking even as long as the housekeeping fee is <$80. Is this usually the case?
Second: The Last Calls and Extra Vacations are very appealing - but we can't usually make a whole week work. Can we check in late? By late, I mean like Wednesday for a Saturday checkout. If not, it leads me to wonder if we can have a friend come 'take over' our reservation halfway through without needing to purchase a guest certificate. Either way, the sales available to RCI member interest me a lot - are they really 'out the door' costs? No additional exchange or housekeeping fees for most resorts?
Sadly, I still have more questions, I just realized this is already too long and noone will bother to read to the questions phase =p Still, good to type it all out - it's not exactly a small simple purchase and I want to make sure I have my head wrapped around it all first.
