Once upon a time, when I was quite young and foolish, I bought a timeshare week in NYC.
The Manhattan Club is a boutique hotel that, back in the late ’90s, offered the first timeshare or vacation ownership program in NYC.
It’s in an ideal location: 56th Street between Broadway and 7th. It’s a terrific place to stay with elegantly appointed suites just blocks away from both Times Square and Central Park.
The Manhattan Club timeshare is also part of RCI, a respected timeshare exchange network that allows you to trade your NYC week for other resort destinations worldwide.
At the time, I knew I wouldn’t live in NY forever and I wanted to feel like I “owned” a piece of the city. I envisioned coming back to visit every year and using the Manhattan Club as my home base.
I did have several wonderful stays at the Manhattan Club. But even so, I was still very relieved to ultimately sell it (at a loss, unfortunately) and get out of the timeshare business for good.
Timeshare ownership was simply not for me. If I’m being honest, I got sucked in by a high-pressure, flashy sales pitch and didn’t do enough research of my own. So, here’s everything I wish I had known before buying that timeshare.
First, a timeshare locks you into a particular upscale vacation experience. But sometimes we want to do something a little different that’s not quite so fancy. For example, one year you might want to go on a camping trip and not stay in an upscale hotel or resort.
Since selling our NYC timeshare, we’ve gone back to the city many times. Typically we stay at hotels, but once we stayed in an AirBnB for that residential experience. Renting through AirBnB is fabulous and can provide that apartment feel and experience at a much more affordable price point than a timeshare.
In my experience, anything that locks you into a particular vacation experience is something that could eventually feel tiresome. Your whole family loves vacationing at Disney now, but will your kids outgrow it in a few years and want to do something else? That is entirely possible.
We knew a family who longed to own an RV for many years. After retirement, the couple bought an RV and apparently the experience got old pretty fast. They soon sold it. Once you’re locked into only vacationing one way, it can start to feel stifling. And, timeshares, like RVs, can be tough to sell (despite what they tell you when you first buy them).
Second, timeshare fees can be exorbitant. In my experience, the annual fees for a luxury timeshare are typically more than we would ever spend on a vacation hotel or resort in a year. By not committing to a timeshare, you can instead choose to spend your vacation budget exactly how you wish to – or maybe not spend anything at all some years. With a timeshare, you’re stuck paying that annual fee no matter what.
Timeshares are fabulous when someone else in your family owns it and invites you along, but I wouldn’t recommend ownership for anyone but the very wealthy. And that brings me to my final reason why timeshares are not for me…
Third, timeshares benefit the property owners most – not the timeshare owners. It’s so important to think critically in life, especially before big purchase decisions. It usually makes more sense to buy something than to rent it. People often say renting a house or leasing a car is “just throwing money away” because you don’t have anything left at the end of the experience, whereas when you buy a house and make payments, you get the house at the end.
Timeshare ownership is not like that. You don’t really “own” anything at all – it’s still really just renting. You’re simply buying the right to always take your vacations at that place (or to exchange your week for a vacation at another, similar place in a different location). And who benefits the most from an arrangement like that? The resort owners who no longer have to worry about filling that room, suite or villa. With timeshare annual fees, they get their money regardless of how full or empty their resort is.
Look, I’m not trying to be negative. Timeshares or vacation ownership is obviously right for some people! If you’ve stayed at a vacation destination and thought, “I never want to vacation anywhere else. I want to own this experience and keep repeating it year after year. I love this place and never want to leave,” then timeshare ownership may be for you.
As for our little family, we like to change things up. Sure, we have some favorite places that we’ve returned to again and again – like Mexico and Hawaii with the extended family.
But when it comes to spending our hard-earned money on a vacation for just the three of us, we prefer to keep traveling to new places and experiencing new things. The idea of locking into one resort, destination or type of travel experience is simply not as enticing to us as the big, wide world and finding cost-effective ways to travel and visit new and exciting places.
Even when we have ideal and idyllic vacation experiences, we’re not always super eager to repeat the trip. We might want to stay in a yurt sometime. Or a treehouse! For us to have a good time, we don’t always have to be at a fancy, upscale resort. Sometimes we prefer something a little more down-to-earth or authentic.
Have you had an experience with vacation ownership, either good or bad? I’d love to hear your timeshare tales in the comments below or over on Facebook or Instagram. Also, I’d be remiss not to include a link to this classic John Oliver segment about timeshares. Enjoy!
