The Timeshare Alternative

Time sharing as a concept began in the French Alps in the 1960's and quickly spread to the United States. Until recently time shares were created by individual developers who sold off specific units for a specific week of the year. What this meant is that you owned a unit at a specific location and the use of that unit for a specified week.

This concept had a lot of limitations. First and foremost was the fact that you had almost no flexibility. If you could not use your specified week you were out of luck. In 1974 an exchange company called RCI was formed to allow timeshare owners to exchange or swap their weeks. This became a big selling point for timeshares when you originally went to buy them you were told about the tremendous flexibility you would have. You were then shown the thick catalog put together by RCI with units supposedly available all over the world. It was a good concept and RCI has made a lot of money over the years. The problem was that most people were exchanging the weeks they no longer wanted in hopes of getting a unit in a prime location at a prime time.

My own personnel experience was that I was never able to get the place I wanted at the time I wanted it. The really good units in the really nice places at the prime times just weren't available. That is not to say that no good units were ever available but only that the chances of exchanging a week for a prime week in a prime location were only slightly better than winning the lottery. If you wanted to exchange you usually had to settle for what was available when it was available and change your travel plans accordingly. To a great extent it is still like that today with the big exception that a number of large national companies have entered the timeshare industry and they are transforming the rules and developing a much more flexible system.

New Changes

Multiunit Clubs
The first major change was the entry of a number of large resort companies into the field including: Marriott, Hilton, Fairfield and Sunterra. Rather than the traditional single unit developers these companies now offer ownership not in a single but as a member of their resort club. For legal purposes you are usually given ownership of a specific property but for functional purposes you have access to all units.

Flex-Time
Originally you bought a specific week the new concept is to provide you with flexible time. This is implemented in general two different ways:
Rating Value
Units are usually rated primarily with a color scheme something like red for prime, blue for good and white for off-season. You pay more for prime time than off-season time and that entitles you to use prime-time or off-season time, etc. The basic concept is that the rating of what your purchased effects what you can get.
Points System
You buy into the system for a specified number of points. The use of all units are then valued in points, the more desirable prime units in prime time being valued at more points than then a lesser unit. This system allows for a much greater variation in valuation and seems to be the way that most new systems are being set up.
So where you originally were buying a specific week, you are now buying into a club that lets you use any week at any club depending on availability and valuation. In the points system you can borrow points from an upcoming year or save points for the following year if you don't use them. You can even purchase additional points if necessary. The concept is to allow for maximum flexibility within the club.

Non-Week Time
Most clubs are still based on the concept of a weekly use, usually going from Saturday to Saturday. Some of the points based clubs are now allowing shorter rentals allowing you to stay at a place for as little as two days. This now gives maximum flexibility to someone traveling who maybe wants to move around on the trip.

Exchange
Most clubs also give you the option of exchanging your unit outside of the club through either RCI or Interval International.

Upside
The upside of this new approach is that you can now travel and stay anywhere within the club at any time. The advantage of this approach over just exchanging a week through RCI or Interval is that since all the units in the club are part of the flex time all units at the beginning of the availability time are available. Most clubs let you book 10-12 months in advance. If you can plan that far ahead and try to book as far ahead as possible you have a very good chance of getting exactly what you want.
The Downside
If you can't plan 10-12 months in advance then often the most popular places are no longer available. The size of the club and the location of the units will significantly affect what is available and where you might need to go as a second or third choice.