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View Full Version : So who has a timeshare?



Chris Padilla
07-29-2008, 11:58 AM
I'm curious who here has one and with whom.

The wife and I just got back from Maui and I'll be darned if Starwood Resorts didn't talk us into purchasing 2-weeks at The Westin Ka'anapali in Maui.

At first we were quite excited about the deal...then I felt like we got ripped...and now I'm about halfway between the two and have decided to give it time to see how it all works out.

Anyone have any experiece with Starwood and their timeshares? I'd like to hear about it since we're new to the game.

Mahalo!

Rob Russell
07-29-2008, 12:35 PM
I can't speak to Starwood, but we own in the Marriott Vacation Club system - 3 weeks. 2 of the weeks are at an oceanfront resort in Palm Beach Shores where we go every year. The other is in Myrtle Beach, bought mostly because it would accrue us lots of Marriott Rewards points that we can turn in for vacation packages (1 week hotel certificate, frequent flyer miles good for roundtrip coach airfare and car rental discount).



IMO, the key points to timeshare ownership are:

Whose place is it - quality or a dump?
Do you want to go to the place every year?
If "Yes", is it affordable and convenient to get there? (Aruba may be nice, but is a heck of a flight to get there).
I'd be leery about buying weeks just to trade through II or RCI, although Hawaii is a very high demand location.
Lastly, is it a converted hotel or was it built for timeshare? The Marriott Vacation Club resorts are 2-bedroom suites with full kitchens. Personally, I wouldn't want to be at a place where we had to eat out every meal.
Here's a link to the place we go to in Florida. Marriott's Ocean Pointe (http://www.timeshares.marriott-vacations.com/ownership/beach-resort-detail.jsp?resort=PS&page=default)
There are a lot of other things about timeshare ownership to be aware of - way too much to type out. If you want to chat - PM me.

Mitchell Andrus
07-29-2008, 12:44 PM
I have one week (twin unit - one bedroom upstairs, studio downstairs - Croton building for those who've been there) in the Pelican Resort on St Maarten. We bought pre-construction in 1983.

We've gotten our money's worth over the years. The one thing I find nice about it is that when we go there (we don't go every year) we get to see the same bunch of people and it's kind of like a built-in party with friends. Nice.

The bad thing is that St Maarten hasn't stopped building stuff, so we're always sharing the roads with trucks filled with day laborers and construction equipment. The roads are always clogged... etc. If the area you've purchased is fully built-out, you should be OK on that stuff - I'm tired of it.

We have traded to other resorts with no problems, you just have to plan well in advance because they are first-come, first-served.

There are forums devoted to this....
.

Ed Breen
07-29-2008, 12:51 PM
Betsy and I have 5 at this point. 3 in Arkansas including a 1 bedroom, a two bedroom and both sides of a cabin (2 brs each) We also have a 2 br at Sudwala and a 1br at Dikhololo both in S. Africa. We use the ones in Arkansas for respite and the two in S. Africa for trading. The maintenance fees on all of them are rather small.
Ed:):)

Jim Kirkpatrick
07-29-2008, 1:17 PM
Chris, My wife and I almost bought a Starwoods week at Kierland Villas in Scottsdale. 2 things that kept us from buying, 1. they only had 6 nite package left (no 7 nite) and 2. I had a tee time in a half an hour and they said deal was off the table after we left meeting. We felt too rushed. Kind of kicking ourselves now, the accommodations were really nice and we loved the resort. If your experience was anything like ours, I'm sure it was tough to say no. They really fish you in with plush presentation and smooth talking sales persons. A plus with Starwoods is you can go anywhere in the world with Starwood. I like their "points" idea.'
Not sure if you really save any money but it does "force" you to take a vacation every year...which is a plus. Good luck!

Brent Ring
07-29-2008, 1:54 PM
I can't speak to Starwood, but we own in the Marriott Vacation Club system - 3 weeks. 2 of the weeks are at an oceanfront resort in Palm Beach Shores where we go every year. The other is in Myrtle Beach, bought mostly because it would accrue us lots of Marriott Rewards points that we can turn in for vacation packages (1 week hotel certificate, frequent flyer miles good for roundtrip coach airfare and car rental discount).




IMO, the key points to timeshare ownership are:

Whose place is it - quality or a dump?
Do you want to go to the place every year?
If "Yes", is it affordable and convenient to get there? (Aruba may be nice, but is a heck of a flight to get there).
I'd be leery about buying weeks just to trade through II or RCI, although Hawaii is a very high demand location.
Lastly, is it a converted hotel or was it built for timeshare? The Marriott Vacation Club resorts are 2-bedroom suites with full kitchens. Personally, I wouldn't want to be at a place where we had to eat out every meal.
Here's a link to the place we go to in Florida. Marriott's Ocean Pointe (http://www.timeshares.marriott-vacations.com/ownership/beach-resort-detail.jsp?resort=PS&page=default)
There are a lot of other things about timeshare ownership to be aware of - way too much to type out. If you want to chat - PM me.

Rob echoes most of my feelings and concerns, although buying a Hawaiian week to trade or lease can be valuable, IMHO and help recoup the cost. We are also MVC Owners as well. Just one week at Park City, UT, but we have used and traded and been to the Bahamas, Hawaii, Florida, and a few other places. We love ours. I don't think I would buy anything but Marriott, but Starwood is not one of the countless other presentations I have attended.

Someone in the family has to stay on top of when to trade, and whats available. It always has made vacationing more fun, and I hate eating out all the time. Thats one of many reasons why we love ours. :)

Chris Padilla
07-29-2008, 1:57 PM
Jim,

Thanks for your thoughts. It pretty much went that way but it is so hard to make a qualified decision when you really need a good week to sort through everything but they layed everything out nicely and we lapped it all up:

100,000 Starwood Points to SIGN NOW
Bonus 80,000 Starwood Points for like a grand
Etc.

It remains to be seen how easy it is to trade our Maui timeshare to other Westin Resorts in Mexico and the Bahamas. Maui is a prime destination so maybe it'll be easy, maybe it'll be hard. You don't really know until you go through the process and try to get times that work for you.

We loved Maui but don't want to go there every year so the ability to transfer to other resorts was paramount for our decision. Like I said, we'll see how it goes for vacation 2009! :)

Chris Padilla
07-29-2008, 2:02 PM
I can't speak to Starwood, but we own in the Marriott Vacation Club system - 3 weeks. 2 of the weeks are at an oceanfront resort in Palm Beach Shores where we go every year. The other is in Myrtle Beach, bought mostly because it would accrue us lots of Marriott Rewards points that we can turn in for vacation packages (1 week hotel certificate, frequent flyer miles good for roundtrip coach airfare and car rental discount).




IMO, the key points to timeshare ownership are:

Whose place is it - quality or a dump?
Do you want to go to the place every year?
If "Yes", is it affordable and convenient to get there? (Aruba may be nice, but is a heck of a flight to get there).
I'd be leery about buying weeks just to trade through II or RCI, although Hawaii is a very high demand location.
Lastly, is it a converted hotel or was it built for timeshare? The Marriott Vacation Club resorts are 2-bedroom suites with full kitchens. Personally, I wouldn't want to be at a place where we had to eat out every meal.
Here's a link to the place we go to in Florida. Marriott's Ocean Pointe (http://www.timeshares.marriott-vacations.com/ownership/beach-resort-detail.jsp?resort=PS&page=default)
There are a lot of other things about timeshare ownership to be aware of - way too much to type out. If you want to chat - PM me.

The Westin Resorts are minimum 5-star type of places and they have 2-bedroom suites with a lockout so you can split your time between a studio or a 1-bedroom. All are fully appointed and we had plenty of meals "at home". Westin has resorts in Mexico and the Bahamas and you can trade time to go there and in some cases, get more than 2 weeks because Maui is a "valuable" timeshare. So it provide flexibility to go elsewhere instead of the same place every year. Flying to Hawaii every year could be pricey but if I work the miles angle and we go to Maui say every other year, it could work out.

Great stuff, Folks...appreciate your thoughts.

Jim Kirkpatrick
07-29-2008, 5:42 PM
You shouldn't have any problems going to other resorts. It was my understanding you can use the points at any Starwood resort. No need to trade. And Maui must be the creme de la creme. i.e., X amount of points will get you 2 weeks in Maui but might get you 3 weeks in Mexico or 6 weeks in St. Louis. No?
Let me know how it works out. Keep me toasted.
Jim

Tom Godley
07-29-2008, 6:20 PM
Rob's post hits the main points.

I think the most important one is to make sure you like the resort that you are buying in and plan to use it -- most I know that go in planning to swap end up being disappointed.

I have looked into buying them at different times - but the numbers never worked for me. My entire family has units in Cabo Mexico for two weeks in October. They love it, and don't seem to mind going to the same place every year. Although last year some were dismayed at the changes that rapid development is now making. Having the whole family together is nice!

I have two different sets of friends that love going to Aruba each year -- one couple has a time share and loves it the other wants to be in a top resort hotel and would never think of going the time share route.

Chris Padilla
07-30-2008, 10:03 AM
You shouldn't have any problems going to other resorts. It was my understanding you can use the points at any Starwood resort. No need to trade. And Maui must be the creme de la creme. i.e., X amount of points will get you 2 weeks in Maui but might get you 3 weeks in Mexico or 6 weeks in St. Louis. No?
Let me know how it works out. Keep me toasted.
Jim

Jim,

There are a couple of tiers in the Starwood system when it comes to "trading out" to leave your home resort. First, of course, is your home resort (Maui for us). We get to plan out 12 months in advance so we are practically guaranteed to get any time we want; we just have to plan our trip 1 year in advance.

The next tier is to trade your time in your home resort to another resort. Let's take St. Johns as an example. I think we can get only two weeks at the St. Johns resort so it is a 1:1 swap. However, we can only plan 8 months in advance for that one so perhaps our choices for time get narrowed down? Dunno...need to try and get time there to see.

Next is to simply convert your time to Starwood points, which is 80,000 points. With these points, you can get hotels/resorts all over the world from 2-star all the way up to King/Queen type of places. Some nights in some of the fancier hotels cost 35,000 Starwood points!! Once you have the points, you can reserve rooms/time whenever you can get them.

Finally, there is the trading time on the interchange system thingy whose exact name escapes and it costs money to do the exchange and it only sounds "okay" going this route. I kinda doubt we'll go this route but who knows.

I believe for Padilla Vacation '09, we'll be converting to Starwood points (80,000) and adding to the 100k points they gave us plus the deal on the other 80k points and we'll see how we can work a trip to Europe on that. Unfortuantely, Starwood has no resorts in Europe right now so points are the only way to use our timeshare in Europe.