This article is to inform novice vacation ownership consumers what to look for when purchasing a vacation ownership.

Well, there are many differences in timeshares. The variations will be listed briefly in the next award, but I’ll expand on them in depth later in this article. Some of the main differences include full week vs. property points, deeded vs. Leasing, RCI vs. II, bargaining power and availability within your club.

let’s talk week vs. points. This really relates to how you normally travel. Do you travel frequently in one week increments or do you do more weekend trips and 5 or 10 day vacations? Personally, a points system is the best option for me due to the fact that I hardly ever travel for exactly one week. Points are used as currency for your vacation. I personally own Hyatt and GEVC, and their point systems work just as well. I used to find better availability with Hyatt, but recently GEVC has had better availability.

How about the deeded and leased property? The differences here are self-explanatory. Either you own or rent the property. I want to pass my property on to my children, so my preference is to own it. I won’t be too opinionated in this article, but I stayed at a Hyatt Resort in Carmel that was phenomenal. It was priced at over $500 a night on Expedia. I ended up spending less than $500 for the entire week. So if I can give that gift to my kids as well, I think that’s great. You can also swipe right to use down most of the time as well; they simply expire after a certain number of years.

RCI and II are the main trading companies that you can trade with to go to different places other than your property. This is one of the biggest advantages of vacation ownership today. I have saved a lot of cash with my timeshare, and the exchange also allows me to maintain flexibility. As for what is better between RCI and II, both have advantages. II and RCI have very nice and very different resorts. I have a property in each, and it works fine for me. My GEVC is with RCI and my Hyatt Ownership is with II.

Learning about trading power is very important. RCI will even tell you on its own website that not all vacation properties are created equal. Buying a timeshare in a great location is priority number one when it comes to business power.