Opinions Please Sunterra - Wyndham or

[xnavyss Member Find all posts View Profile Close xnavyss]

Opinions Please

Not sure where to post this, so have placed it in Sunterra since we own a Sunterra timeshare and considering the purchase of Sunterra points.

Wanting to reorganize the timeshare we own for better utilization.

I am thinking about purchasing another week in Gatlinburg or perhaps Branson or both or purchase points on ebay in either Sunterra or Fairfield.

I am starting to think we should own in locations where we can use occasionally rather than placing in RCI year after year.

We can be flexible in our travel dates and often prefer to travel in off-season. We live in the Florida Panhandle and vacation mostly on the east coast and central USA with one week in the north east due to family. We currently vacation about 3 - 4 weeks of the year and in 5 years when wife retires we hope to vacation more.

We enjoy areas like Branson and Gatlinburg.

We currently own 4 weeks:

One at Sunterra Bent Creek, Gatlinburg, TN (Odd Year - 2 Br Lockoff - Non points)
One at Mariner’s Point, Crossville, TN
Two at Sudwalla, South Africa

The Sunterra week we use or break up and use one week and deposit the other in RCI. We can only stay during odd years.

We have the paperwork to sell the two South Africa weeks back to Ron at Fairfields.

The 2 weeks at South Africa and 1 week at Mariner’s Point have always been deposited in RCI and used for exchanges. The trade power has gone down on both resorts.

My RCI membership is paid up till 2012.

Thanks

Joe

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

I am thinking about purchasing another week in Gatlinburg or perhaps Branson or both or purchase points on ebay in either Sunterra or Fairfield.

I am starting to think we should own in locations where we can use occasionally rather than placing in RCI year after year.

That is what my thinking logic is.

So your question is do you want to buy more Sunterra or You want buy some Fairfield to work with your existing Sunterra.

Which I have no answer.

But here is what my thought logic will be
1. What kind of travel area if I bought another product will they cover if I only use internal exchange. I want they cover places where I will most likely go. The more the better. And if they have resorts cover different area (say drive in 2 or 3 hr range), it is better instead of resorts in the same area.
2. What kind of quality/MF do I cover. I believe in the long run, if HOA are capable, the MF will reflect the quality. I may in times want to travel just to the area, and in time, just for the resort (which will be the high the quality, the better), but you need to determine the min. quality you like.
3. Is there any benefit to add more points into one system. Some system will have MF stepped, so the more you buy, the lower per point you pay in MF. Some system will have point chart different in places, so I will have to at least own say x amount in that system to get anything I want.

Jya-Ning

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

I can't speak to Wyndham other than I like the variety of their resorts in the U.S.

Two of the timeshares we own we developed by DRI who has purchased Sunterra. After much debate we decided to join Club Sunterra and convert our ownership to points. At this point I am very pleased with the flexibility of the Sun Options points, both how they work within DRI/Sunterra and as an exchange commidity within I.I. They are considerably more flexible to use as far as I.I. exchanges and there is much less waste of resort value for us. At this point there are no fee's for internal exchanges and most club fee's are very reasonable. They do, however, charge members $151/year in club dues. So I you would have to decide if a once a year club fee is better ala carte fee's charged by other points based reservation systems.

DRI/Sunterra also has a good selection of oversea's resorts. As I understand it, there is good availabilty for Europe. I have yet to fully explore those options. I know that I do see good availability for Hawaii and St. Maartin for most dates I've looked at.

[mshatty Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close mshatty]

Probably the biggest difference I see between Sunterra/DRI and Wyndham/Fairfield is that when you buy Wyn/FF points resale, there is no qualifying purchase that you have to make to be a Fairshare Plus member/owner (Wyn/FF's points program) and you have access to all of Wyn/FF resorts immediately.

With all the gyrations of Sunterra/DRI, you often have to make a developer purchase to access their points club/resorts. Obviously, doug or Spence can help identify these situations.

It's just easier to understand what you are buying and what you get with resale Wyn/FF points vs. Sunterra/DRI.

[timeos2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close timeos2]

Since buying almost any timeshare at retail isn't a good move and since Sunterra/Diamond has made the owner unfriendly decision to require retail purchase to take part in the Club system there is no choice but Wyndham.

Besides that fact Wyndham is available at unbelievably low resale pricing, they have far more resorts and a growing system. We own both and while we are happy with Club Sunterra we would give that up before our Wyndham points for sure.

[dmjd Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dmjd]

We also belong to Club Sunterra and Wyndham and agree with the above comments by timeos2. We just received our 2008 maintenance bills for our Club Sunterra properties, and there have been significant increases (15-25%) with most of the increased expenses being for Management Fees. Due to less availability over the last few months since Diamond has taken over and these maintenance increases, we are not sure how long we will stay with Sunterra.