Have you ever received an email or letter before inviting you and your family to take a vacation with a very ‘low-cost’ to a beautiful hotel or resort before? You know the one where you can stay an entire week for next to nothing but has the ‘hitch’ of taking a ‘tour’ for the purposes of convincing you to become an ‘owner’?
I have and we took the vacation! In fact, we took the vacation and enjoyed ourselves so much that we took the tour and decided to become ‘timeshare’ owners.
Now I have to tell you that my previous experience with vacations were staying at a hotel property. You know the standard room with two queen sized beds and a desk and chair with about 600 square feet kind of room? Well, after traveling with the family and a boat load of kids a number of times, we decided we should try this ‘condo’ style vacation once and see what all the fuss is about. Let me tell you it only took one vacation and we decided we are never going back!
We took our family two years ago over the Christmas holiday to a resort near Disney World called the Westgate Villas. The resort was nicely located about one mile from the main entrance of the Magic Kingdom and had every imaginable amenity you could ask for. We had a beautiful villa with 2 full bedrooms and a loft sleeping up to eight people along with a full-kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and a large living room area with a walk-out patio to the pool. It was wonderful.
So when we took our scheduled ‘tour’ of the property and sat through the presentation of becoming owners, we were interested. The idea of traveling this way with our family every year for the rest of our life was very appealing. The idea of paying ‘one-time’ for a fractional ownership of a unit that you could use for the rest of your life made a lot of sense so we bought it.
The cost was $10,000 for a bi-annual ownership contract which meant that we were purchasing the property for use every other year with a ‘floating’ week that could be used anytime throughout the year over a 36 floating week period. Each year that you take the vacation you will be billed for your ’share’ of the taxes, dues, and maintenance on the property which for us runs about $1000.
Our timeshare purchase was on the low end compared to some owners who were paying double that and more for their high-end premium weeks and new units just built.
After being an owner now for the past few years, we have discovered that this way of vacationing is filled with many ‘getcha’s and ‘gotcha’s along with many additional fees including ‘exchange’ fees. If you ever want to go somewhere else instead of your same location every time, you will have to pay an exchange fee in the range of $150-$200 each time plus possible upgrade fees to go to another resort property in their exchange network (like RCI or Interval).
With Globe Travel Network’s (GTN) Resort Weeks Membership, you can avoid most of these pitfalls by just using our simple membership plan where for only $199.95 plus a processing fee (and then $99.95 for future vacations) you can access over 4,200 resorts around the globe offering the same resort style accomodations and ammenities with a range of cost from as low as $299 up to a high of $950 for the 5 star properties.
You will have the opportunity to take the same week long vacation without the hastles of taking a tour, without becoming an owner and paying thousands up front, and without and being stuck to pay taxes, dues, and maintenance on the property every year you go. You can just take your vacation, enjoy yourself and then plan your next one at a different location for even less money!
With 79 million baby boomers now hitting retirement at the rate of 1 ever 10 seconds, the demand for affordable vacations is about to go into the stratosphere in the next 10-20 years.
GTN offers the most economical option for value-driven travelers who don’t want ‘own’ a payment for the rest of their lives, they want to just travel affordably without the hastles!
So when your planning your next vacation, forget about timeshare, and think about GTN!
Chief Marketing Officer, GTN
