Timeshare Pros and Cons

Pros and Cons of timeshares

The timeshare industry has been widely criticized and even sometimes likened to a travel scam. Unlike the customary renting arrangement, where the customer decides every year on the quality and price of accommodations, timeshare requires to make a major payment up front. However, this payment guarantees the highest quality of holiday accommodation for life. There exist grave doubts as to whether the timeshare buyers ever recover the money spent, but the vast majority of timeshare owners have no desire to exit the system and find the high quality of their holiday accommodation makes their financial outlay a logical expenditure and excellent value for money.

There are also some complaints that owners have to return to the same resort every year, but there now exist a couple of companies - the best known being RCI - that enable timeshare owners to exchange their weeks into literally thousands of high quality resorts around the world.

Other complaints include issues surrounding the yearly maintainence fee. Some critics talk of ever escalating fees that mean owners cannot afford to keep their weeks due to financial pressure.

One of the major benefits of the product is the fact that vacation timeshare is real property. Resort developers purchase land in a location and develop a timeshare resort. They are actually selling consumers deeded weeks of real property at a specific location, meaning customers can do what they wish with the weeks they own. This flexibility includes the opportunity to rent out weeks that are not used or indeed to lend them to friends or family.

Like any other product, timeshare exchange is subject to the law of supply and demand making the exchange mechanism a fair and meritocratic system. For example if you own a studio apartment in low season you are unlikely to be able to exchange into a villa during a country’s high season. These restrictions are logical and a pure example of the “you get what you pay for” maxim."

Theres Pros and Cons with everything...why should timeshare be any different?