I happened to visit a sales event for Finland’s largest timeshare seller, Holiday Club.
If I were to try to describe the event with some nice words, then it was…uh, interesting.
Now, if any reader has the impression that timeshare sales events are somehow “pressuring” and that sales are made with a stubborn attitude, like “you can’t leave until the names are on paper”, I had some prejudices like that…they turned out to be wrong. It was a significantly calmer and more relaxed sales event.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t have its own special characteristics, but perhaps more on those later if anyone is interested.
The following points left me wondering: no list prices were available. In fact, I didn’t receive anything in writing from the event. (I haven’t made any purchases yet, at least)
The customer wasn’t really offered different options; instead, they went to a back room to whisper, and after that, there was an offer on a piece of graph paper: “Week 7 (the week before ski holiday), destination Y, price Z”. The price was around ten thousand euros.
I understood that, in practice, the buyer apparently becomes a shareholder in a housing company, owning shares equivalent to their small week? A maintenance fee of over 200 euros per year must be paid to the company. Which, of course, isn’t much in itself, but it’s quite a lot when you add up all the shareholders’ hundreds of euros per month; after all, a housing company fee of 1000 euros is rarely paid for a two-room terraced house. (I don’t know if the property was leveraged.) The main point here is that the maintenance fee is an enforceable payment and can be collected even by force if the shareholder cannot pay. And if you can’t get rid of the share, the effect is the same as in other housing companies (AsOy): you pay forever. The sum isn’t large, but still.
Reselling timeshares seems sluggish. Tori.fi and Huutokauppa.com are full of sales listings for them, and the price level is only a fraction of what the original buyer likely paid to Holiday Club. Thus, the purchase price seems to be mainly an entrance fee to the club - and whoever pays it had better abandon hope of getting it back.
The biggest advantage of an HC timeshare was said to be the possibility of exchanging it for properties of the RCI timeshare company, which are apparently numerous worldwide. Having researched the matter myself afterwards, this might indeed be the case. After that, of course, I started looking into whether there are cheaper routes to the RCI system than what Holiday Club offers.
Based on a quick review, this does not seem to be the case. Does anyone know more about this, i.e., can a holiday company be found, for example, from “Spain” that offers an RCI timeshare cheaper than “ten grand”?
What about buying “used” HC timeshares, for example, from Huutokaupat.com? What pitfalls are associated with that? Apparently, the benefits of a Holiday Club shareholder are only obtained by buying directly from the club, meaning the club’s doors close if you buy second-hand?
But apparently, one can become an RCI member even if they don’t get into the HC club? Is that the case?
I eagerly await what the usually so knowledgeable panel of the discussion forum will comment.
