Hope you enjoyed your extra hour in bed over the weekend. Doesn’t matter what the time is, one thing for certain is that your next maintenance bill is just around the corner.
TCA have often wondered why the majority of timeshare developers have picked on the Christmas period to send out their annual demand for maintenance fees. Except for maybe the annual holiday budget, for many families Christmas is the most expensive time of year and the last thing wanted is an envelope popping through the door with a thumping great bill attached.
As timeshare owners know the monetary demand for maintenance seems to only ever go up and yet year on year the value for money is diminishing. TCA have received copious comments over the years stating the condition of some resorts is getting worse with every visit thus prompting the question of “what exactly is the annual maintenance fee paying for?” Recently we received a comment from a UK timeshare owner whose resort had been party to a “refurbishment”:
“To describe the work done, most have said it is rubbish paint on floors in the bathrooms etc not exactly the “luxury”
What exactly does the maintenance fee pay for?
Certainly in the past you could say it did what is said on the tin, pay for resort maintenance, but those days are long gone. Any resort, hotel and even camp sites have overheads, all of which need paying for. As TCA have reported numerous times over the past few years, new timeshare sales, especially those in Europe, have all but dried up. Given this fact, the substantial profit generated by new sales have pretty well disappeared so all that’s left is the annual maintenance fee to not only run the resorts but the developer costs as well. This is not entirely true as we will investigate later, but in general the lack of front end profit from new sales has made a massive impact on the bottom line.
So your maintenance fee now has to cover all resort costs, wages, utility bills, housekeeping etc, and of course an element of maintenance which nowadays is on a “by need” basis. We never hear stories of every apartment or lodge in a resort getting brand new TVs, the only time a new TV appears is if one stops working, the same for gym equipment, sun loungers, furniture etc, the list goes on. Filling the financial void created by the lack of new sales is the only saviour, and so this is exactly what developers have done.
Enter online booking platforms
We think it’s fair to say that there are globally but a handful of timeshare resorts that are still exclusive to members only, in fact we are yet to find one. By letting non members’ book accommodation this goes some way to fill the void we mentioned above. Some may argue that this is better than a developer or resort entering administration and eventual bankruptcy, as is the recent case of the Paradise Kings Club in Cyprus; however by solving one problem, developers have created a much larger one.
When using Google for searches relating to timeshare availability, by simply typing “timeshare availability problems” Google tells us there are 8,370,000 page results. Once upon a time, increasing maintenance costs held pole position, but that has changed. Again simply entering “Increasing timeshare maintenance problems” only 1,020,000 page results show, indicating that the largest complaint area is that of availability.
On the one hand it may then be argued that allowing non members access to timeshare resort has been the saviour of the industry, but on the other hand it has literally made the value of owning a timeshare worth nothing. What point is there in owning anything if you can’t actually use it?
A quick cost benefit analysis
With European entry level timeshare now costing around £20,000 (€23,087) we need to look at what in real terms this offers. Theoretically you buy a fairly long term contract that again, theoretically will give you a one or more weeks holiday every year, not forgetting those annoying words “subject to availability”. On top of this there is of course the contractual requirement to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is rapidly approaching around €1,000 per week. In a nutshell that’s it, the cost and the benefit.
For comparison sake, let’s take a look at one of Gran Canarias premiere resorts, Anfi del Mar and for assumptions sake we will use the figures above to demonstrate a point. First off, as a non owner, can you actually book at Anfi? Of course you can as demonstrated by a recent search for one week in June 2024:
We can see from this that yes you can book online at a cost of €1,508 for the week, so now to play with the numbers. If we say that to buy a timeshare at Anfi is €23,087 if we then divide that by €1,508, on the pay as you go basis you could holiday at Anfi for 15 years.
In the order of fairness, we know year on year the booking cost will inflate, however this is counterbalanced by the fact that the timeshare owners maintenance fee will also rise.
Again, using simple maths, on the surface if the Anfi owner has to pay say €1,000 annual maintenance and the non owner has to pay €1,508 for a holiday then the owner has saved €508, so if this pattern carries on then it will take 45 years before the owner is in profit (€23,807 / €508).
OK, as we said this is simple maths and there are factors such as inflation that have not been taken into account, that said, we think you get the drift.
TCA comment
Jumpers, socks, handkerchiefs, most of us receive unwanted Christmas presents but surely the most unwanted Christmas presents are bills, especially one the size of a timeshare maintenance bill. Unfortunately whether or not you use your timeshare, whether or not you can find availability, none of this matters. As a timeshare owner you are contractually liable to pay your annual maintenance fee. The only way to avoid this bill is to not buy a timeshare in the first place and holiday the normal pay as you go way, or if you are an owner you may consider terminating the contract although that may well be easier said than done, that’s a story for another day.
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk