The Trials and Tribulations of Travel Planning with Timeshares: "Fail to Plan is a Plan to Fail"8/31/2016
As my father tells me, Fail to Plan is a Plan to Fail.
If money was not an issue, travel planning would not be an issue at all. You choose flights, irregardless of costs, and choose accommodations, irregardless of cost. Unfortunately, I do not have that luxury and most people do not as well. Exchanging your timeshare can unleash tremendous value and you can end up staying in properties that far surpass the quality of your own timeshare or those available to you through the internal exchanges. While there are opportunities to make great exchanges, availability for specific weeks and destinations can be extremely hard to come by and may never become available. The issue with vacation planning with timeshares is that you need to plan very far in advance. Some timeshare systems allow you to reserve weeks 2 years in advance of the actual week. Most people do not plan ahead and typically only plan vacations a few months in advance. As I will detail below, if you plan to exchange into prime weeks, this strategy may not work very much and you will quickly become disgruntled with timeshare ownership with the claim that your desired week, destination or resort never becomes available. The goal of my site is to help you avoid this fate and get the maximize value out of timeshare ownership. Further complications with travel planning with timeshares involve airfare if you are traveling to a destination outside of driving distance from your home. Airfares fluctuate and destinations during prime travel weeks can easily far exceed the budgeted amount for the vacation. I personally use frequently flyer miles to get airfare for free but frequent flyer miles can be even more complicated than timeshare exchanging and having availability with free airfare along with the desired week and resort can be next to impossible. However, I have successfully navigated this system for many years and it is doable with diligence, planning, patience, flexibility and websites such as mine! In order to get the two goals to meet up requires a ton of time, work and flexibility. My goal is to give you some tips on how to navigate timeshare exchanging in order to get the desired weeks. I will also detail some basic tips on how to get frequent flyer miles and use them to get airfare for free! TIP ONE: PLAN AHEAD, WAY AHEAD AND BE FLEXIBLE: The first tip is that you must plan ahead. One of my vacation rules is to always have a trip planned. This keeps me motivated to work and keeps me excited to see new destinations and spend quality with my family. Generally, I plan one year in advance and put in a Request First with Interval International or an internal request with one of my timeshare programs. (i.e Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, etc.) I put in a request with various top quality resorts around the world that I would like to travel to. You need to make sure that you choose the specific resorts that you want and not just put in a destinations. There are some crummy timeshares out there so you need to make sure that you choose the high quality luxurious ones. I make sure that the potential destinations have decent flight paths from my home airport so that I can make sure to only have one stop and to make sure that there are no overnight stays. We travel with young children so an overnight stay or more than one stop can be more difficult than desired. Request First with Interval International is a great tool and highly recommended since their system will constantly check their system and automatically confirm you into the desired resort for the specific week. I always make sure to use E-Plus which provides three free exchanges for a one-time fee of $54. This is absolutely necessary for added flexibility as without E-Plus, the reservations are non-cancellable except for a large fee for cancellation as well as the re-booking fee. I will discuss E-Plus in more detail later but this is an absolute must to give you the needed flexibility to change destinations Many times I change destinations because nicer resorts become available or fantastic airfare deals become available. SECOND TIP: HAVE A PLAN B The second tip is that you always need to have a Plan B. Most hotel reservations allow you to make reservations and cancel up to 24 hours before check-in. Once I put in a Request First, I also review hotel options in the desired areas of travel. I will make a few speculative bookings for the desired weeks so that there are options for accommodations in the event that the timeshare accommodations do not come through. Booking directly through the major chains is preferable as they generally make it easy to reserve and cancel your reservations with a few clicks. While I highly prefer timeshares for many reasons, you need to make sure that there are viable hotel options. One of my favorite ways to have a Plan B is to use hotel points to reserve a week in the desired location. I can reserve a hotel room that is fully cancellable with hotel points so that the week will be free in the event that the timeshare option does not become available. I will explain in later posts how to arm yourself with hotel points so that you too can have this option. THIRD TIP: USE INTERVAL GETAWAY ALERTS: As discussed in this post (Getaway Alerts), I explained how to use Getaway Alerts on the Interval International App. I routinely populate various dates and times and become alerted when a desired resort and destination becomes available. As discussed, many times it is economically beneficial to reserve a week with cash instead of using your deposited weeks or points. In addition, there are some fabulous deals with Interval Getaways so a deal at a great resort may end up dictating the ultimate destination for your vacation. A great deal for accommodations may open up the budget for an increase in the price of airfare. FOURTH TIP: USE HOPPER TO TRACK AIRFARE The fourth tip is to populate the airfare searches using Hopper. Hopper was discussed in this post here and is a great way to easily monitor airfare. Since at this stage, you will not necessarily know the ultimate destination, you can put in multiple itineraries and Hopper will constantly monitor the cost for the flights. If one destination is significantly cheaper than another, you can opt in to booking the airfare at that time. Once you book airfare, you are generally locked in to the destination as change fees can be as high as $200-$300 per ticket so you need to make sure things are lined up with the timeshare or have a reasonable Plan B that you are prepared to use in the event that the timeshare availability does not become available. Once your airfare is locked in, I would revise the request first to make sure that only the resorts in your request are for the destination desired. While you will have 24 hours to cancel it free of charge, if you miss this window, it can be problematic. FIFTH TIP: USE SOUTHWEST AIRLINES IF POSSIBLE Alternatively, if you are in destination that is serviced by Southwest, I highly recommend booking tickets with Southwest. Southwest is the only airline left that allows changes and cancellations free of charge. Southwest even allows you to receive travel credits if the price of the airfare goes down. Southwest will give you travel credits to use at a later date in the event your flight cost went down from the date you originally booked. However, there are a few issues with Southwest that should be understood. Southwest only opens its flight schedule for approximately six months in the future. Therefore, if you confirm into a resort a year in advance, you may not be able to book airfare with Southwest until six months from the trip. You will also be subject to the price of the trip once it opens up. While Southwest is known for its low fares, the prices for some trips and high demand weeks can be extremely expensive. The second issue with Southwest is relating to cancellations. Southwest does allow cancellations but the do not provide refunds. They provide you with a travel credit that must be used within one year from the initial reservation date. They also require you to keep the reservation number in order to access those travel funds. This does require a bit of record keeping and organization. The best method for Southwest is to use their Rapid Reward Points. Instead of booking with cash, you can use Rapid Reward Points and if you needed to cancel or change destinations, the points are immediately redeposited to your account. I will explain this in later posts but for the purpose of this post, Southwest is a great airline to use when timeshare planning. SIXTH TIP: USE AUTOSLASH As discussed in this post here (autoslash), Autoslash is a great tool for rental cars. You can make reservations using Autoslash without any credit cards and they will track your rental to ensure that you receive the lowest price on your car rental. Since it is conceivable that you have many potential destinations for the trip, you can make multiple reservations for the same week. Do it as far in advance as possible and autoslash will do the rest to make sure that the cost of your rental car is the lowest. SEVENTH TIP: CONTINUE MONITORING AIRFARE, HOTELS AND TIMESHARES AFTER CONFIRMING Going through these various steps seem exhausting but once you get a system in place and have alerts set, it becomes on autopilot and just requires monitoring. The key is that once everything is booked, that you continue to monitor everything to make sure that there are no unintended surprises. I try to book my airfare 330 days in advance which is when most airlines open their schedules. When I book this far in advance, airlines continue to make schedule changes throughout the year. Many times, the reserved flight path changes, times are altered or non-stop flights all of sudden require a stop. These can completely derail all the travel planning put forth above and could require a complete re-do of everything above. This is why is is highly beneficial to continue to monitor all these items to make sure everything is on track. You do not want to be surprised on the check in date that your flight now requires an overnight stay. Also, while schedule changes with airlines can be problematic, most if not all airlines allow you to re-book or cancel your flights for no charge or fees if the airline make a schedule change that impacts the travel time by greater than two hours. In other posts, we can discuss schedule changes and how to use them for your advantage but for the purpose of this post, you need to monitor your airfare. Airlines will generally inform you of schedule changes but those e-mails may go to spam or simply be missed. In writing this post, I realize that travel planning can be daunting and difficult. Working with timeshares adds even more complexity. These tips are meant to allow my readers to begin using these tools and becoming informed on how these tools can help alleviate these issues and obtain the desired weeks and resorts within a reasonable budget. I highly recommend that you subscribe to my Guru Deals below so that you can be alerted to various exchange opportunities, travel deals, flight deals and other opportunities to allow you to travel to luxurious destinations for a fraction of the retail cost. Travel planning as described above may not be for everyone so when airfare deals become available, I will try to include some options for timeshares and see how you can easily book quality weeks for reasonable costs and avoid all the steps above! Subscribe below so you don't miss out!
One common question that gets asked over and over are whether timeshares should be considered an investment.
Deeded weeks are actual real property interests that are recorded in the real property records of the county of the resort. When you purchase a deeded week, you do received an actual deed just as when you buy your house or other real property. Due to this fact, many timeshare sales have indicated that real property appreciates over time so your "investment" in the timeshare can be worth more in future. Most real property interests do appreciate over time but we now know, as what happened during the great recession, that not all real property appreciates over time. Just with any other asset class, real property is not immune from significant price fluctuations. Timeshares, (technically deeded weeks are real property), are fundamentally different that other real property. While you are an owner, you own 1 week of 1 unit in a large resort than can have hundred of units. For example, if we are talking about a relatively small resort with 200 units, the timeshare developer can have 10,400 deeded weeks to sell. The math is as follows: 200 units multiplied by 52 weeks equals 10,400 deeded weeks to sell. In the event that the timeshare developer elected to sell bi-annual weeks, (the right to use every other year), there would be 20,800 available weeks. If you purchased one week and the developer sold 10,400 weeks, your ownership interest in the resort would be .0096%. As a minuscule minority owner, you have no input on operational expenses, control, overall direction of resort, or any other input. Additionally, you have absolutely no right to the furniture, equipment or other assets of the resort. Since you own only one week instead of actually owning the specific unit as you would in a condo, you cannot decorate the unit or do any modifications to the resort at all. You are simply granted the right to use the one week. Additionally, all operational expenses, property taxes, liabilities and other recurring expenses are passed down to the owners as maintenance fees. Even though you won a week, you have no ability to adjust these fees. As you can see, a timeshare is fundamentally different that owning your house or other real property. Due to this difference, most and arguably all timeshares WILL NOT appreciate in value. If you are interested in purchasing a timeshare and someone indicates that the timeshare will increase in value, stop talking and walk away. This is simply not the truth and clearly false. Knowing that a timeshare is not an investment can help you re-think the purchase decision. I would personally view the initial purchase price as a sort of membership fee and not as a real estate purchase. As I set forth in this post, my argument is that the initial purchase price of the timeshare should be a sunk cost meaning that once purchased, the initial value is gone. However, my view is that timeshare ownership does have many redeeming qualities and does allow an owner to travel around the world at discounted rates which generally far surpass the retail price. TIMESHARES ARE NOT MONETARY INVESTMENTS. Anyone telling you differently has a different agenda. If you are interested in obtaining timeshare ownership, view the initial purchase price, whatever it may be, as a initiation fee or vacation club membership fee. As with those types of fees, you know that they are non-refundable and that you will not get those fees back. If you view timeshare ownership in this capacity, you can do the calculations and see if the potential savings over time do make sense for the initial fee. I believe that it does but the initial cost could impact that decision. If you found this website, then you should continue to research the purchase of timeshares and make sure you understand this concept. I believe that you can maximize the ownership through the different available programs and exchange opportunities in order to save you a tremendous amount of money as compared to renting hotel rooms or other accommodations. I also believe that there is some significant value associated with being able to choose destinations around the world based on your desire to travel to that location rather than based on cost. This is difficult to quantify but I do enjoy picking vacation destinations based on other items irregardless of cost. This always depends on availability and cost of airfare but there are additional ways to minimize these expenses that we can cover in other posts. Please follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Make sure to also subscribe below!
An accommodations certificate is basically an extra week that is given to Internal International members. These certificates generally randomly appear in you account at various times. It appears that some members get them and others do not. I anticipate that Interval International awards members for depositing high demand weeks or high demand resorts. If you are lucky to get one of the accommodations certificate, they generally entitle you to exchange into a week at various locations and times. These certificates tend to come with a lot of restrictions and the inventory allocated to these certificates can be quite limited. High demand locations and high demand weeks will almost never be included. However, there can be certain gems located in this inventory that provides tremendous value.
I was recently given an accommodations certificate that is valid until February 5, 2017 and up to a three bedroom unit which would accommodate up to 8 people. In order to use the certificate, Interval provides a grid with available times and locations. While the grids can change, they mostly include the same locations over and over again. Here is the current list:
As you can see from the above list, there are some good destinations. You need to search daily as availability differs. Interval does charge an exchange fee for using the accommodations certificate. The current fee is $274 plus taxes.
In reviewing the current offerings, there are a few sweet spots: I currently see the Marriott Grande Vista Resort in Orlando for October 30 through November 6. This is for a 2 bedroom unit. Using the certificate, the total cost for the week is $308.25! While not exactly free, just over $300 for week in a 2 bedroom unit is quite a deal. For comparison purposes, if I chose to book directly with Marriott for the same week, the total cost is just of $1500. 1 room(s) for 7 night(s) Prices in USD Sunday, October 30, 2016
Total taxes and fees 169.12 Total for stay in hotel's currency
This is just one example of how these accommodations certificate can provide tremendous value. While there is no telling when or how to receive them, they are valuable if you can use them. I am not positive if I can use my certificate this time around so contact me through Facebook if you could use it. I do not mind doing some searches and finding some gems for your use! Make sure to sign up to our mailing list for further details!
As I have mentioned before, timeshares definitely have a bad reputation. This is the result of pushing sales practices, scams, hidden or non-explained fees and a general misunderstanding of the general complexities of timeshare ownership. However, with some practice, insight and knowledge, timeshare ownership is very good way to vacation at very nice resorts around the world. The key is to understand the intricacies of the programs, planning ahead and being flexible.
Timeshare ownership is definitely not for everyone but a large portion of the population would immensely benefit from owning a timeshare. I think the following non-exclusive list gives my personal opinion on who should own a timeshare: 1. Couples who enjoy traveling and make it a primary objective to take one or two week long vacations per years. 2. Families who travel at least once per year for a week and want or need to have extra space. 3. Couples and/or families who like to have the comforts of home on vacation and enjoy making meals while on vacation instead of eating out all the time. 4. Couples and/or families who travel extensively for multiple weeks per year and want to have full kitchens at their disposal. 5. Budget conscious travelers who enjoy luxury accommodations but don't necessarily want to pay hundreds of dollars per night for a hotel room. 6. Families with children who want space for children to sleep separate from the parents. 7. Families who travel with extended family members and want to avoid having to have multiple hotel rooms. 8. Couples and/or families who travel in and out of the United States by plane. These are some general parameters where I think timeshare ownership can make sense. Conversely, I think the following are general characteristics where timeshare ownership will not make sense and renting can be more advantageous. 1. Vacations are not done annually. 2. Vacations are usually done for long weekends or only for a few nights away from home. 3. Vacations are usually done within driving distance of your home. I came across an interesting article put out by the American Resort Development Association that put out an updated overview of the demographics of a timeshare owner. My initial thought of the demographics of timeshare ownership usually consisted of retirees in their golden years who had purchased a timeshare decades ago. However, it appears that the demographics have significantly changed from my initial perception. According to ARDA, the demographics of timeshare owners are as follows: New owners are nearly 10 years younger 39% are Gen Xers 30% are Millennials Median age is 39 42% are African American or Hispanic 72% are college graduates 23% also have graduate degrees And this new owner has plenty of disposable income: Median household income is $94,800 47% made just a single payment to cover their timeshare purchase 57% spent $10,000 or more on their timeshare They are savvy consumers: 75% had some form of interaction with a timeshare resort before purchasing 44% initially stayed at the resort where they bought as a guest of another owner 42% experienced timeshare vacations through renting first 35% attended multiple sales presentations before buying In my opinion, this information is fascinating as timeshare owners are not being duped into purchasing timeshares with the lure of reasonable priced vacations. Rather, they are wealthy, educated and savvy consumers. I personally fit right into the demographics above and think that they accurately portray may unofficial assessment of timeshare owners that we have met throughout our travels. Here is the great depictions of the new demographics of timeshare owners. I highly encourage you to subscribe and to follow me on facebook at The Timeshare Guru and follow me on Twitter @thetsguru for more information. The timeshare industry tends to have a bad reputation because the fees and financial responsibilities of the owners are generally not highly discussed during the purchase period. Only afterwards, when the owner begins getting bills do they fully understand the financial commitment of a timeshare. As a timeshare owner, you will be responsible for annual fees to your home resort each and every year, regardless if you use the timeshare or not. This basic understanding seems to be a surprise for a lot of people as all timeshares are not a pay as you use system. Each year, the owner will be billed for maintenance fees regardless of use. The maintenance fees generally include the owners pro-rata portion of all operating expenses of the resort as well as reserves for future upgrades and maintenance. Operating expenses include property taxes, furniture, management fees, landscaping, advertising, and basically any other expenses that the resort incurs. The resort passes through all expenses to the owners. In addition, resorts reserve the ability to access its owners special assessments. These are non-budgeted or unplanned expenses that are incurred by the resort and need to be paid for. These can include damage from storms, flooding, roof replacements, pool refinishes, or any other large scale expenditure that was simply not in budget. These special assessments are usually an unwelcome surprise to timeshare owner since it is an unexpected expense. Most timeshare companies recognize that this is not a popular way to build trust with its owners so they generally only do special assessments in those truly unforeseen circumstances that warrant immediate expenditures. Maintenance fees can vary widely and will depend on the size of the unit, resort location, operating expenses of the resort, age of the resort and other factors. Since maintenance fees are a recurring expense that will almost always increase over time, it is extremely important to understand the financial commitment before going forward with a purchase. Maintenance fees almost always increase year by year so do not assume that the expense will remain the same at the time of purchase. Maintenance fees and special assessments are definitely not the best thing about timeshares but you need to understand them and understand the ongoing financial commitment. Timeshare ownership is not for everyone. However, for those people who do travel every year and know that they will travel, timeshare ownership can make real financial sense and save you money over time on accommodations. Exchanging for prime weeks or for highly sought after timeshare resorts or destinations can easily exceed the maintenance fees as compared to nightly rental rates. Make sure to subscribe to the Guru Deals to keep informed of valuable exchange opportunities and other travel deals to show you how to maximize timeshare ownership and take advantage of the various systems and exchange opportunities. |
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