RCI is the largest timeshare exchange company in the world. They have had a long history of trading timeshares and, like most companies, have evolved over the years. They are fully automated and you are able to complete practically all transactions over the Internet.
They started out trading weeks for weeks. They developed the “RCI Points” system to provide better services and greater flexibility for the timeshare owner. Resorts would have to make the decision to go into the RCI points system and owners would pay a fee to turn their weeks into RCI points. This conversion fee usually ran a couple of thousand dollars and would often come attached with the requirement of buying additional timeshare time or points from your resort.
The number of points you got for your week would depend on size of unit, time of year, location, and gold or silver status of the resort. You would have the choice every year to use your week, or it would go automatically into the RCI points system. With your points, you could book your vacation; RCI would show you every possible week available and how many points it would take for that vacation. Fairly simple– you have this many points and it will take this many points– easy to do the math. They also let you bank points for the next year or borrow points a year ahead. You also could book for less than a week’s time, thus using fewer points. We own a couple of resorts in the RCI points system and book vacations every year this way.
Let’s take a look at the different choices you have to book vacations in the RCI point system and the time windows for setting up your vacation. There are booking fees for most of these, in varying amounts, also dependent on whether you do it over the telephone or online:
Home Week-You can reserve your home unit and week from 12 to 13 months out. (If you do not it goes into the points system)
Home Resort-At the resort you own you can book 11-12 months ahead.
Home Group-If your resort is part of group of resorts, you can book at the 10 to 11 months window.
Standard Reservation-You make your vacation plans at 10 months out or less.
RCI Weeks Reservations-You can tap into RCI weeks inventory and can book from 10 days to 24 months out.
Cruise Vacations- You can use your points to book a cruise.
Other Uses of Points-You can use your points to book airfare, hotel or car rentals.
Last Minute Inventory-These vacations require no points, are booked for a dollar amount, and are very close to the current date. Most cost in the $250.00 and up range.
Extra Vacations-These seem to be along the line of rental of timeshare resorts and are for dollar amounts, not points. They run high in dollar costs, most around $1000.00 or more.
A couple of observations are in order. We, along with most timeshare folks, do not think it is a good use of your points to book cruises, airfare, hotels, or car rentals. You can do better booking directly.
You can also book ( using standard reservations in the 45 day window) a vacation for 8,000 to 9,000 points if the resort has inventory and they participate in that program. However, some resorts in high demand areas do not reduce the points that are needed.
If you own a week’s timeshare that is not a points resort, you can deposit it into the points system. You are given points based on time of the year, unit size, location and gold or silver status. We do this very year with one of our week’s resorts that we own.
It seems that RCI was in the hopes that every one would jump on the points system. However, many resorts and timeshare owners did not choose to convert over to this system–they wanted to stay in the week’s system. So in the hopes of making the system easier and better, they have come up with a new way of handling week resorts and trading power. We have written a recent post on how the new weeks trading power points works. If you have week timeshares and want to trade those weeks into RCI, make sure you read this post.
We enjoy trading using our RCI points and generally seem to get a better selection of resorts than in using our week’s timeshare trading using RCI weeks. We own both weeks and points, several being in large timeshare systems, and use them all to get the vacations we want.
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