Maximizing Your Ownership with Internal & External Timeshare Exchanges

Utilizing Your Home Resort Stay

The most obvious choice for owners is to reserve their home resort stay – whether it is a fixed period ownership or a floating season ownership. This is usually easily accomplished by booking in advance of the home resort stay, often 12 months out and typically without incurring any additional fees. For many fixed period owners, such as a fixed week stay, there is no need to reconfirm the stay.

Renting A Home Resort Stay

Owners could also choose to rent their home resort stay. Sometimes, the resort or timeshare brand offers a program to rent the owner’s home stay, with the caveat that commissions can be very high, often around 40% of proceeds, and there is no guarantee the ownership will be rented at the listing price. In addition, some resorts may have strict requirements or processes in order to remove a week from the resort rental pool, once enrolled.

Listing Your Timeshare For Rent with a Broker

Another option is to list the timeshare for rent with a licensed real estate broker. Should you wish to do so, please contact our team of specialists at Premier Timeshare Resale. Our team can advise you of the fair market value of the property and list it for free – no cost and no obligation until a suitable renter is found.

Navigating Exchanges

However, for many owners, it is quite customary to wish to travel to another resort. When it comes to options for traveling outside of the home resort, choices can become quickly complex and confusing. This article helps navigate the basics of exchanging a timeshare property either through internal or external exchange.

Internal Exchange

The most immediate option for many owners is to travel to another resort within the same family/brand of timeshares. Most major timeshare brands, such as Wyndham, Marriott, Vistana, Hilton, Hyatt or Disney all offer some form of internal exchange to their members. Through this system, owners can book other resorts in the network and travel to another location besides their home resort.

Points Systems

Most timeshare brands use a points system in order to create and maintain an equitable internal exchange system. Every timeshare property is assigned a certain number of points based on how desirable the location and season is, as well as based on unit sizes, types and view categories. Allocating a certain number of points allows owners to have a “currency” to exchange between locations.

Internal Exchange Fees

Some internal exchange systems may charge an additional cost for an owner to book a stay at another resort. A booking fee or housekeeping (cleaning) fee may apply. Should the owner need to add a guest to an internal exchange reservation, there may also be a guest fee. Even with these potential factors, any fees for internal exchange are typically reduced and affordable.

Club Dues

Many timeshare systems that offer internal exchanges include a network fee, often called “club dues” in the annual maintenance fee, which covers most of the cost of internal exchanges. For example Hilton Grand Vacations and Vistana Signature Experiences collect annual club dues for owners who are part of the internal exchange program.

An Affordable Exchange Option

Therefore, internal exchanges are a great and typically very affordable option for traveling at a new resort. You will want to familiarize yourself with the chart of points and schedule of fees associated with internal exchanges that is specific to your timeshare brand family.

The downside of internal exchanges is that the choice and number of resorts may be limited, due to the narrower network of resorts. This is when the concept and opportunity of “external exchange” kicks in.

External Exchanges: Interval International and RCI

External exchanges open up the possibility for owners to travel to thousands of resorts throughout the world. Whereas there are a good number of choices for exchange companies, there are actually only two major exchange companies that most resorts are affiliated with and that offer an extensive inventory. They are Interval International and Resorts Condominium International, also known as “RCI”.

Some resorts are affiliated with Interval International, others are affiliated with RCI, and some are affiliated with both. Both exchange companies maintain a resort directory online that can be viewed by geographical area and provides information on member resorts. Your home resort association management company should be able to provide you with information on which external exchange company they utilize.

Whereas affiliation with each exchange company is on a resort-by-resort basis, major brands typically associate themselves with one of the two companies. Currently, as of the time of this article, Marriott/Vistana, Disney and Hyatt trade mostly through Interval International. Other brands such as Wyndham and Hilton Grand Vacations trade mostly through RCI.

Exchange Company Membership Fees

In some cases, your annual membership and club dues for your timeshare property may already include the annual fee of the exchange company. For example, Wyndham owners are automatically assigned an RCI account which can be accessed from their online Wyndham account. Another example is the Vistana Signature Experiences network. Owners that are part of the Vistana Signature Network automatically receive an Interval International account.

For some owners, signing up for a RCI account or Interval International account is optional. In this case, owners will need to pay a separate annual membership fee to gain access to the exchange network. You can click to expand the sections below to learn more about the annual membership fees for both RCI and Interval International.

In the rest of this article we dive into how each of the major two exchange companies works. We discuss the difference between weeks and points accounts, and the concept of upgraded memberships. We also provide some basic examples of how certain types of ownerships can be utilized for external exchanges.

RCI Membership

RCI offers two types of memberships: weeks and points. Some resorts exchange as weeks and others exchange as points. Some can exchange as both weeks or points but this is rather rare.  Owners must have membership in the specific type of account their resort uses. For example, if you already have a RCI weeks account and you acquire a new resort that trades as points, you will actually need a separate account for your RCI points ownership.

RCI Weeks Membership

With RCI weeks accounts, owners deposit an entire week stay and they exchange for another weekly stay. Each deposited week is assigned a trading power number known as TPU (trading power units). The owner’s deposited week is assigned a TPU based on the quality of the resort, the season, location and unit size. The owner can then pay an exchange fee and trade for other available weeks which all have various TPU’s required.

RCI Points Membership

With RCI points accounts, owners deposit their stay and receive RCI points in exchange. The RCI number of points depends once again on the resort quality, the season, location and unit size. All the other available stays for exchange in the RCI system will be priced accordingly; exchanging into any of them will require the payment of an exchange fee and the equivalent number of points. The advantage of RCI points accounts is that owners can book less or more than seven nights in one stay, which offers extended flexibility.

Example: Maximizing Your Ownership With RCI

Let’s look at an example. John owns the Grandview at Las Vegas resort in a two-bedroom 2 bath unit annual fixed week 52, which is New Year’s week. RCI values this resort home week at 122,000 points. John decides to travel to another resort instead of using his home resort week.

He pays an annual membership fee to RCI in order to maintain an RCI points account and he exchanges his points for two different stays. He books a one bedroom weekly stay in New York for 61,000 points for the week, and another three night stay in Breckenridge during the summer for 17,000 points in a studio.  In order to do so, he pays two separate exchange fees to RCI. He still has points leftover for another stay.

Interval Membership: Weeks and Points

Interval International also offers weeks and points exchanges. For example, Hyatt properties trade through Interval International using a points system. Owners in the Hyatt Vacation Club deposit points with Interval International and they exchange for other resorts based on the number of points required for the exchanged week, which is one again – you guessed it – a function of resort quality, location, unit size and season.

Travel Demand Index

Many resorts actually use the Interval International weeks system. Owners deposit their home resort week and they can typically trade for another full week stay. Each deposited week has a certain trading power which unfortunately is not visible to the owner. However, Interval International does publish in the resort directory a “travel demand index” which shows the desirability of each week of the year for each particular geographical area.

It is ideal for owners, should they decide to deposit their week with Interval International, to consult the travel demand index and book a home resort week in their season to deposit that has the highest travel demand index power.

Example: Maximizing Your Ownership with Interval International

Let’s look at an example of how the weeks system works for Interval International exchanges. Jane owns a two-bedroom winter floating week at Grand Lodge Peak 7 resort in Breckenridge. Jane decides that she will use the one bedroom portion of her two-bedroom suite to travel to her home resort in January to ski. However, for the studio portion, she decides to deposit the stay with Interval International for exchange.

Jane consults the Interval International travel demand index for the resort and notices that for the weeks in her winter season, the highest demand is for January through March weeks. She proactively books her studio portion that she intends to deposit 12 months in advance for a week in March. She then deposits this week with Interval International.

Next, she pays an exchange fee and trades her week for another weeklong stay in Hawaii. Because her studio ski stay has high trading power, she is able to book a one bedroom in Hawaii in exchange by paying a small unit size upgrade fee. The upgrade fee allows her to trade for a unit that is larger than her original deposit.

In fact, owners can even trade a studio for a two or a three bedroom with Interval International in the weeks system by simply paying an affordable unit size upgrade.

Gold and Platinum Membership Levels

Both RCI and Interval International offer upgraded membership levels such as gold and platinum memberships. For an additional annual fee on top of the basic membership, owners will receive specific discounts and privileges.

With RCI for example, a platinum membership will give discounts on guest certificate fees as well as access to specific high-quality inventory. With Interval International gold and platinum membership levels, owners receive a certain number of free guest certificates as well as reduced unit size upgrade fees.

These are just examples of core benefits associated with upgraded membership levels; be sure to consult the full disclosure of benefits published by the exchange companies to understand which one may be most advantageous to you.

For example, for an owner that has multiple weeks and performs multiple exchanges that will be gifted to family members to travel, it may be more cost efficient to purchase an upgraded membership in order to receive the free certificates.

Why Choose Premier Timeshare Resale?

Premier Timeshare Resale has over 20 years of experience with all the name-brand developers!  We pride ourselves on offering a seamless and stress-free timeshare resale experience. Our Licensed Real Estate Brokers are here to guide you through every step of the process, ensuring that you find the perfect property to suit your travel preferences and budget.

Premier Timeshare Resale offers a wide selection of listings to choose from, with many deeply discounted ownerships that sell quickly, so don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to save $500 on your purchase.