Timeshare Users Group Membership Well Worth the Money

Timeshare Users Group (TUG for short) is a great community for people who own timeshare. The message boards are full of helpful people, who bring tons of experience and expertise to bear. You can register to be a guest of the site, which give you access to many of the different message boards. For $15, you can become a member of TUG, which gives you access to a private forum called the Sightings/Distressed forum. In this forum, participants post sightings of weeks in desirable resorts from Interval International and RCI. When I am actively looking to book a week via Interval International, I check the Sightings/Distressed forum at least daily, if not more often. Just this week, I took advantage of that feature of TUG membership and booked a week at Harborside at Atlantis for late January. I wasn’t really looking to go there, but it is a resort that doesn’t come up often and I was able to trade my 1 bedroom at Sheraton Desert Oasis for it. The major benefit of going to Harborside at Atlantis is that it comes with free admission to Atlantis each day you are there for every registered guest. Day passes are regularly sold for about $100 per person per day on the island. 

In summary, if you are a timeshare owner, a membership to TUG will probably be the $15 you’ve ever spent.

 

Royal Resorts Under Fire

Royal Resorts has come under fire on the Timeshare Users Group message board by both Royal Resorts owners and vacationers that exchange into their resorts.

The issue for exchangers is the mandatory all-inclusive (AI) dining plan that all exchangers must purchase when they exchange into the Royal Sands or Royal Haciendas. The AI runs $100 per person per night and for two people will run $1400 per week. This, unfortunately, will kill any exchanging I would do into both of these resorts.  I imagine others will come to the same conclusion.

Some owners are upset around the shroud of secrecy surrounding the sale of the Royal Mayan. At recent owners gatherings, Royal Resorts cited confidentiality agreements to withhold information from owners on who is marketing the resort, and how the Royal Mayan will be marketed. This, of course, makes owners nervous that some sort of deal will be reached that is not arms length and not in the best interest of the owners.  

It will be interesting to watch these two issues play out over time.

 

Planning A Trip To Aruba

We’re planning a trip to Aruba for next May.  We want to stay at the Marriott Aruba Surf Club, where we own a timeshare week. The week we own is a Gold Season (May -mid December at this resort) so we can simply reserve a week if we wanted to do that. But since May is a non-peak time of year, I’m thinking we’ll be able to snag a 2Br unit using only one side of the unit.  I’m going to need to stay on top of Interval International  as well as the Sighting board on Timeshare Users Group. Once the week is booked I’ll worry about getting the air travel squared away.