A Look at a Hyatt Residence Club Maintenance Bill

Generally, most timeshares generate their annual maintenance fee bills towards the end of the year.  As the year gets closer to the end, many timeshare owners are beginning to receive their maintenance fee bills. 

Since timeshares are not very transparent, I thought that I would show my readers what my Hyatt timeshare maintenance fee bill looks at and what makes up the fee. 

Here is my statement for my Hyatt Residence Club Beach House maintenance fee for week 47.  Fort his particular week, I receive 2,000 Hyatt Residence Club Points. 

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While the scan is less than ideal, you can see that my maintenance fee for 2018 is $1265.03 which includes a voluntary contribution to ARDA which is the American Resort Development Association. 

Here is the breakdown on how they came up with the total maintenance fee for 2018.

2017 Property Taxes:  $16.40
2018 Maintenance Fees:  $794.14
2018 Reserves:  $341.49
2018 HRC Dues:  $153.00
Voluntary ARDA Contribution: $5.000

The Meaning of these Categories:

2017 Property Taxes:  This appears to be my portion of the 2017 Property Taxes.  The Hyatt Beach House paid property taxes for 2017 and likely assessed each individual owner their pro rata portion of taxes based on owning 1 week for one (1) two (2) bedroom unit.    

2018 Maintenance Fees:  This amount is the bulk of the fee which covers all operational costs of the resort.  This likely covers upkeep, staffing, utilities, and the various other items required to run the day to day operations of the resort.  I will be posted a look at the 2018 budget that has more details on how this fee was compiled. 

2018 Reserves:  Like most businesses,  the ongoing monetary needs of the resort can be estimated but there are always items that come up that were either unplanned or cost more than estimated.  These reserves are additional funds that are kept by the resort for unexpected expenses and for those expensive items that will eventually need replacing.  This includes major items such as buildings, elevators, roofs, HVAC and other expensive items.  Instead of having to go out to the owners for additional funding, the resort includes a reserve amount for these unexpected costs. 

2018 HRC Dues:  These HRC dues are for use of the Hyatt Residence Club name, reservation systems and management services.  Most resorts are not owned by Hyatt but are rather branded with the Hyatt name and are operated by Hyatt management services.  These dues cover those services and fees.  

Voluntary ARDA Contribution:   According to ARDA's website: 

The American Resort Development Association (ARDA) is the Washington, DC - based trade association representing the vacation ownership and resort development industries (timeshares). With nearly 600 corporate members and 5,000-plus engaged associates, ARDA members hail from privately held firms to publicly traded corporations with extensive experience in shared ownership interests in leisure real estate. Developers, exchange companies, vacation clubs, resellers, and timeshare owner associations (HOAs), resort management companies, industry vendors, suppliers, and consultants - as well as owners, through the ARDA-Resort Owners' Coalition (ARDA-ROC) - all experience ARDA.

The voluntary $5.00 contribution apparently goes to ARDA to assist with ongoing legislation that attempts to help the timeshare business and timeshare owners.  I have posted some information that has been generated by ARDA which is helpful.  $5.00 is a nominal amount but you can easily elect to opt-out of this contribution. 

Conclusion:

The timeshare industry is not very transparent so a lot of information is simply not able to be found unless you own a particular timeshare.  My goal is to make timeshare ownership more transparent so that you can decide whether timeshare ownership makes sense for you and your travel style. 

I do not own all timeshare brands so it would be helpful to share other bills that you receive so that readers can see how different timeshares and brands bill their maintenance fees.   Please send your bills to theguru@thetimeshareguru.com so that I can post additional bills to show readers what to look for and how different brands differ on their bills and amounts.