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For terms and conditions for the RCI Travel Best Price Guarantee, go to RCI.com. Keep your travel currency and use cash to book a seven-night getaway at a special weekly rate. The flexibility to redeem your Week in multiple ways using your Trading Power travel currency is all yours. Plus, search, plan, and find the getaway that’s just right for you at thousands of destinations beyond your home resort. 1RCI Travel offers members a Best Price Guarantee subject to change without notice at the sole discretion of RCI Travel. 1 RCI Travel offers members a Best Price Guarantee subject to change without notice at the sole discretion of RCI Travel.
Your Vacation Benefits Take advantage of many of the same vacation options as your owners. Planning in advance and being flexible with your vacation dates, on-site amenities and location will open up more options for you. Consulting an experienced RCI Travel Guide to help you plan is another great way to make planning simple. 10% savings on Extra Vacations getaways and Last Call vacations, including those already on sale. A Points Saving fee occurs when you want to save your points for the next year to use. A Points Extension fee applies when you want to roll over those points to the third year.
RCI® Weeks Membership
Or you’ll discover shoulder-season or off-season locations like the mountains in the summer. If you’re open to the type of vacation you’re willing to take, it is a great way to secure extra weeks of vacation for very little money. So, say you’re looking to exchange a week at your resort for a timeshare family vacation in Hawaii.
Enjoy the freedom to choose when, where, and how you travel. Timeshare owners at RCI-affiliated resorts are part of a global travel network with 4,200+ affiliated resort properties, 600,000+ hotels, 30+ cruise lines, and 345,000+ local activities. Another perk of being an RCI member is the exclusive discounts and deals on cruises, flights, and more! As a member, you can also access Last Call vacations, which are last-minute and affordable week-long getaways.
TRAVEL GUIDES
Just like the all-inclusive resorts 99% of the time, it is not a good use of RCI. The best use of an RCI membership and your trading current points is to book “regular” resorts. That is where the real value is in timesharing and timeshare exchanging. Just to be clear – You don’t need to be an RCI Platinum Member to make an ongoing search request; you just have to pay your exchange fee upfront. You may start to get a sense why, when you search for certain RCI resorts in the inventory, it’s not there.
Of course, there is no reason to rush buying a timeshare, as it is a buyer’s market. But if you’ve already done this necessary work and are looking to make the savviest purchase out there, I’ve got you. Bougainvillas Barbados resort in 2021 for my birthday with our RCI Membership. Even the locals love this family-owned and operated resort located next to Sandals. Share the gift of new memories in all-new places with Guest Certificates.
Travel in Luxury With Diamond Resorts Hilton Head
Let me repeat that again – The resort or week you may be looking for may NEVER get put into the search inventory as they are all being taken by savvy members who put in an Ongoing Search. If you want to treat a family member or perhaps send someone on a memorable getaway like a birthday trip or even a honeymoon, that is possible with an RCI membership. And since I’m here to give you the honest truth, some resorts in the RCI system are older, run-down, and not well maintained. That’s why it is crucial to research the resort on TripAdvisor before you book. No system is perfect, and you must take 5 minutes to do your own due diligence.
Am I slightly bothered that I’ll never exchange into Marriott’s or Westin’s? If you’re looking for more information on RCI, you’ve come to the right place. As a happy timeshare owner of 16 years, I believe that an RCI membership is one of the key ingredients to making the most out of your timeshare ownership.
Two Other Differences Between RCI Weeks and RCI Points Program
When you trade, you can select a week with the same point value. Alternatively, if you choose a week with a lower point value than yours, the leftover points will become a credit for you to use for a different trade. You can also combine deposits, or add deposit credits for a fee, and trade up to a week with a higher point value. Another fun option is trading your week for a cruise vacation! There are fees for exchanging, so be sure to check out our RCI fees blog to learn more.
Maximizing your exchange vacation options is all about timing! The earlier you search, the more exchange options you're likely to find. The ideal time to book your next great getaway is 9 months to 2 years in advance of the check-in date you're looking for. The more trading power you have the more holidays you can access. The great thing about points-based programs is that you can generally roll over points from previous years to the next year. Additionally, you can save points from this year for next year.
For example, say you want to go to Yellowstone in August for a family vacation. You go to the RCI homepage and type in Yellowstone, and you can’t even check for a month because it says no inventory. The only global exchange network that provides your owners with complete transparency of deposit and exchange trading power. Unlike other exchange programs, RCI Weeks members can combine deposits to increase their total trading power, or receive “change back” when trading into a resort with lower trading power. It is an excellent option for owners with high-value weeks, as restoring your full trading power can translate into a trip during peak travel or multiple weeks of vacation in the future. And since there aren’t that many of them, they are very much in demand.
Deposit your week as earliest as possible with RCI and choose from the available weeks that other members have deposited to make your exchange. If, while browsing the RCI network, you come across a resort you like, but don’t have enough points for, don’t fret! I think it is well worth the cost if you can swing the extra $124 a year. If you want to stay in a super premium resort, you’ll need to combine weeks, like we did when we stayed at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort in Orlando over Spring Break . Some smaller units or non-peak travel time weeks will get fewer TPUs.
If you own a week-based timeshare and join RCI, you will have an RCI Weeks membership. A week is typically a 7-night reservation, with check-in generally falling on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. For years, exchanges were strictly week-for-week at a similar resort, but RCI uses a new system now. They use TPU, trade power units, as a way to establish a value for each week in their inventory. Resort popularity, season, member rating, location of the unit, and unit size all affect the timeshare’s trade power. When you deposit your current week into the system, it is assigned a TPU value.
These become available when another member cancels their trip, so these deals can pop up at any time. There are two types of RCI memberships, weeks and points, but we will focus on RCI Weeks. The number and amount of fees you pay with RCI depends on your membership package.
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