The Death Of Timeshares

Timeshares attract people who like to travel. They are suppose to be a way for you to stay at beautiful resorts that you share ownership with and you get to stay at in most cases once a year. They can range anywhere from 15,000 to even $50,000. There are different types and there are some that you can stay at more than once a year.

Here is something that I discovered. There are travel memberships out there that let people stay at the same timeshares that many timeshare owners own, for even less than what owners are paying. These travel membership companies negotiate deals, make bulk reservations with resorts in advance and members of these travel memberships actually stay at these resorts at better rates than the timeshare owners themselves.

Timeshares require you to pay maintenance fees to maintain the resorts, yearly fees, and if you want to exchange your timeshare resort you have to join an exchange company. That is another fee that the owner has to actually pay. If you want to let friends and family use the resort you have to pay for guest passes.

One of these travel membership charges a one time fee of $2,995 dollars. That is a one time fee that a person pays and it is actually good for the rest of their life. Members get access to stay at thousands of resorts for less than $100 a day. These resorts are located at different locations worldwide. Members get 3 guest passes per year that they can give to family and friends and they have a special section in the membership that has all resorts priced at $37 dollars per day. They change the resort locations every few weeks for that section. What makes it even better is that these are four and five star resorts.

Another interesting thing about this resorts membership is that members do not pay maintenance fees, exchange fees, and no yearly fees. At $37 dollars a day they can stay at 5 star resorts which would equal to $298 for 8 days and 7 nights. Timeshare maintenance fees alone are more than $298 a year and there is no limit to the amount of resorts you can stay at worldwide with this membership. Another interesting feature about this same exact membership is that they gives access to members to find all types of cruises at wholesale prices.

When you compare a timeshare with what this travel membership offers, timeshares don't look very attractive at all. Right now the timeshare industry is very strong but after experiencing the benefits of this membership sometimes I wonder if timeshares will remain such a strong market. Will timeshares keep growing at the rate that they have been doing it for through the next five years, or are we heading towards the death of timeshares? I guess only time will tell and we will just have to wait and see.