Posted as FYI- Round Two- a near miss. I'm currently on holiday in Oahu, Hawaii. My wife saw that we could get two tickets for the Hilton's Hawaiian village luau ($100 each) for listening to a presentation. I suggested just paying the money but she saw it as an opportunity to save $200. Next thing I know I'm inundated with "good deals", I argue (not fight) with my wife why I don't want to do this (explanation to follow), the salespeople come in and start throwing points at us, enough points for an additional 3 weeks of stay in the Hilton. They tell my I have 10 days to change my mind, I give in, sign up, then go to my room and dream about time shares all night, get up the next morning, stop by their office and cancel the deal. BTW, Wife not happy.
Here are the details. The time share by Hilton is called the Hilton Vacation Club, for $40000, and oh, we have a special discount, knocking the price down to $30000, along with a $1200 annual maintenance fee subject to go up annually. What I get is 5100 points (that equates to about 1 week a year, but can be more if lesser rooms are picked in lesser properties) can be used at any of the Hilton vacation club properties, I can roll them over for one year, plus they are going to give me 15000 points which I can use at any time, but must be used within 2 years. Well that's about 3 weeks of vacation that has to be used in two years besides the 1 week that I would normally be rewarded. They also have an arrangement where RCI rentals can be secured in Europe and they claim it is easy to find available properties. These points expire at the end of the year unless they are rolled over with an actual reservation.
Based on what I saw, staying at Hilton clubs is a definite step up with suites including kitchens and there are many of them, although probably not every where you want to go. The time share I initially bought into was at the Hawaii Waikiki location, a location which has high demand for most of the year.
Here is the rub- if you consider a time share as a means to save money forget it. Lets say you have 20 years of travel left in you, you would incur a cost of $30000 + $22000 ($1200 annual) for a total of $52000. If I look at this vacation, it's probably going to cost me $15000, the hotel $2700 for 8 days for rooms in Hilton's Waikiki resort. We plan on one big vacation a year, about a week long. If I had been in this program for this vacation, I would have saved $1500 ($2700-$1200 annual fee) for a very nice place, nicer than where we are staying which equates to a standard Hilton room, which anywhere else can be rented for about $80-120 depending on location and time of year. If this is the big typical annual vacation, to break even on the total cost of investment, it would take 34 years to break even, and with this agreement, I'd end up having to plan on staying at a Hilton property which may or may not be where I want to go. For myself, I won't break even cause I figure I have about 10 years of effective travel time left in me. The other issue is that hotel room costs are only part of the costs of a vacation. At the Hilton Hawaiian village, EVERYTHING costs extra, this is our first big "resort" and neither of us are happy with it. In addition 3 weeks of additional hotel time, equates to 3 weeks of extra overall vacation expenses. If you look at my example above the hotel room rental costs about 18% of the total costs, so while the temptation is to say, here are 3 weeks more of free vacation, that is simply not true, it might also include another $1000-30000 of vacation expenses, depending on how airfare figures in, which is not in the budget.
Recently I discovered
VRBO rentals by owners. To stay on Maui in the Marriott resort the room runs about $450 a night, but in VRBO there are a variety of entire houses that are available for rent in the range of $125-650 a night, or $2000 a week. Now compare this to $2700 for a week in a lousy hotel room. This is obviously the way to go as far as I am concerned...
Anyway, I'm happy again with the Time Share weight lifted off my shoulders.
