Timeshare owners save money, savor Paradise

Fifteen years ago, when Jill and Steve Richards bought their first timeshare vacation week, they weren’t sure it was a smoking idea. Paying $3,000 to own a one-bedroom unit with partial kitchen in a converted and old motel in the Florida Keys for one week each year seemed a bit foolish.

Could they really exchange it or even rent it? They answer was a big YES. The Richards bought Week 36. The first year they rented it for double their maintenance payment and never looked back.

The Jacksonville, Fla., couple now owns nine weeks of timeshare in five different resorts. They spend three to five weeks annually in timeshare vacations; they rent the remaining weeks, including the one in the Keys. They use the rental revenue to pay the maintenance fees on those and their other weeks.

They have exchanged their units for vacations at resorts in Venezuela,
New Hampshire, Colorado, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Arizona.

“And we’re only starting to really use our weeks,’’ says Richards, a just-retired banker. “We bought them when we both were working and used them as our children grew up. Now they are paid for and we are planning to see the world and stay in only the best resorts – for less than $500 for seven nights. You can’t beat that.’’

Frank Smith, his wife and three small children are timeshare newcomers. They spent a week in January in Orlando, “doing the Disney thing,’’ smith said. The family stayed at his parents’ timeshare at Orange Lake Country Club and loved it. They weren’t overcrowded into one motel room and they saved money buying groceries and cooking their meals in the apartment.

“I vowed we would start taking family vacations every year and we weren’t going to stay in a hotel, Smith says. When he got back home to Topeka, he started searching the Internet for timeshare sales, looking for a resort he could afford that also could be exchanged easily.

His timeshare in Texas cost $1,500 plus closing fees and Smith already has exchanged for Williamsburg, Va., in August 2006 and back to Orlando in 2007. Smith estimates the cost of seven days in a two-bedroom apartment at a full-scale resort at about $550 ($84.29 a night). That’s his annual maintenance fee at his home resort plus the exchange fee.

Not everyone goes into timeshare to resort hop around the country or the world. Dee Snyder, her husband and daughter bought their first timeshare week – a beachfront one-bedroom - on the Hawaiian island of Kauai 13 years ago during a vacation in which they spent 11 nights in hotels. They now own four weeks of floating time in Hawaii “so we can book four consecutive weeks every year during the winter,’’ the new england mom says.

“The huge advantage for us is to be able to sit on our lanai overlooking the ocean, watching dolphins at play, while eating a home-cooked meal. It costs us less for four weeks of timeshare than it did for those 11 days of hotels back in 1996.”

Hawaii timeshare maintenance fees are higher than most other locations – but then so are room rentals. Also, RCI and Interval International (the two major companies that arrange timeshare exchanges) offer special incentives to get Hawaii owners to exchange their units, Snyder says. It’s not easy to convince Snyder to trade her Hawaii weeks -- as anyone who has ever experienced a New england winter winter can understand.

“No matter how the rest of the year is going,’’ she says, “we can look forward to weeks in Paradise.’’