Forth Bridge Corporation - Timeshare Information

Weeks vs. Points

Timeshare ownership can be Fixed Weeks, Floating Weeks or Points. No one method is better than the others; they’re just different. As a buyer, you should figure out which method best meets your needs based upon the vacationing style you want. The “best” method is the one that works for you!

The resort decides how it wants to market its timeshares. In the beginning, all timeshares were “Fixed” weeks, sold for a specific week of the year and that’s what you owned. You would own the same week in the same unit at your home resort each year.

Then, to give owners more flexibility in managing their own vacation schedules, Floating Weeks came about. Floating Weeks give you a choice of weeks you may use, and you call the resort each year to reserve the week you want. Reservations are taken on a first-call, first-served basis, and you are assigned any available unit when you call to make your reservation. Your deed will specify which weeks are available to you, what unit size you will have, and sometimes a particular building or section of the resort or a certain feature like “oceanview”, and each resort does it a little differently. Some Floating Weeks may be used any week of the year. Some have only certain periods of the year available, such as “summer” or “winter” or “January through April”. In Orlando, it’s common to divide the floating periods into the weeks when the kids are on vacation vs. the weeks the kids are in school. In Mexico, it’s common to exclude the religious holiday weeks because the resorts know they can rent those weeks to Mexican citizens for mucho pesos. In other destinations, major event weeks are excluded for the same reason, such as Mardi Gras, Daytona 500 Race Week and Bike Week. Before you buy any floating week timeshare, make sure you know which weeks are available to you. Also ask if the resort allows you to buy a lesser-demand package and upgrade to a better week by paying a fee. Some do; some don’t.

Points plans were developed by corporations that own multiple resorts, and points provide maximum flexibility. On the other hand, you have to exert a lot of energy managing your points to get the most out of them. There are dozens of points systems – Fairfield, Marriott, Starwood, Worldmark, Bluegreen, Hyatt, Hilton, and many more. The purpose of points systems is two-fold. They give you, the owner, lots of flexibility in planning your vacations, and for the developer they keep you coming to his resorts to spend your money. So there’s a benefit for both parties. One important thing to note is that you can not use one developer’s points at another developer’s resort! You can’t use Marriott points to go to a Hilton resort for example. Remember, one of the ideas behind points systems was to lock you into a certain developer’s resorts.

When you have a points program, your regular timeshare week will be equated to a certain number of “points” based upon the week you own and the unit size. Each year, you will have that number of points available for your use. Then you use your points like currency to reserve nights in the developer’s resorts. You can request any resort in the system, any week, any unit size, and even partial week vacations. You “pay” the appropriate number of points until your allocation for that year is used up. Large units cost more points than smaller units; prime seasons cost more than lesser seasons; weekend nights cost more than weekday nights. You get to allocate your own points to optimize your own vacations.

In any case, the type of ownership you have does not affect your ability to exchange your timeshare for the other resorts worldwide. Before you request an exchange, you must first have a known week at your home resort to bring to the trading table. If you own a fixed week, you already know what it is. If you own a floating or points week, you must first make a reservation at your home resort (or another resort in the developer’s points system), then take that now-known week to the exchange company for your exchange.

That’s the upside of the three ownership forms. What are the downsides?

Fixed weeks lock you into the same week at your home resort. On one hand, that can be a good thing if you want to be sure you can vacation during a certain week. If you want to be sure you can go to DisneyWorld for Christmas week, you should probably buy a Week 51 or 52 timeshare there. Or if you’re a teacher and you need President’s Week 7, you should probably buy a fixed week. Fixed weeks give you certainty, but not flexibility.

Floating weeks are subject to availability. So if you wait too long, there may not be anything available during the week you request. You have to plan ahead and make your reservation well in advance. Most resorts start getting full about 2-3 months ahead, and prime season weeks or holiday weeks even earlier. If you fail to get a reservation, you lose your week for that year. Plan ahead or you might get snookered!

Points can be a nightmare for you to manage! That’s the price you pay for all that flexibility. And there are lots of nickel-and-dime fees associated with the use of your points too. Obviously, you have to plan how you want to use your points each year, and you can’t wait until the last minute either. Some programs require you to confirm if you plan to use your deeded week at your home resort each year, and you have to confirm 10 months in advance. If you do not confirm, your week goes into the points pool and is available to anyone who owns points. There can be a mad scramble for certain weeks as soon as they hit the points pool, as you can imagine.

Then there are the fees. Each time you make a reservation, there’s a registration fee; so if you maximize your flexibility and make three different reservations, you pay three fees. If you want to pull some points forward from a future year to the current year so you can take more vacations this year, you may incur a fee. If you want to carry over this year’s points until next year, you may incur a fee. If you want to “rent” additional points in a certain year, you will certainly pay a fee. If you go for a partial week vacation instead of a full 7-day week, the resort may charge you a mid-week cleaning fee.

Remember we said you can not use your points from one developer to go to another developer’s resorts? Well, there is one exception, and it’s important. Recall that points plans were devised by developers that own multiple resorts to keep you within their family of resorts, and that can be a major constraint. A few years ago, RCI, the exchange company, recognized the opportunity to set up a points system that would include all their 3,700 affiliated resorts, regardless of who owns them. They started the system, and now have over 50% of their affiliated resorts signed up to participate. So if you own RCI Points, you CAN jump across those boundaries and use lots of resorts by allocating your points. Furthermore, one of the major developers, Fairfield Communities, Inc., is owned by the same parent company that owns RCI (Cendant Corp.). So you can own Fairfield Points and use them in the RCI Points system. The RCI Points system is modeled after Fairfield Points.

For more on buying and selling various forms of timeshare ownership, please refer to the “Selling Timeshare” and “Buying Timeshare” pages of this web site.