What Are Hot Week Vacations? 

Hot weeks are designed to give folks who can take week-long vacations at a moments’ notice some of the best prices in the industry. The key to determining if hot week vacations are for you is flexibility.

• Short Notice Flexibility: Hot week vacation deals for the upcoming week are usually posted anytime between Monday and Thursday. Departure dates are usually Friday or Saturday.
• Location Flexibility: To get the best deals, travelers will need to watch for locations that may be appealing to them; however, traveling in this manner is not the time to be particularly picky, as you never know which venues will have great deals that pop up any given week.
• Credit Card Flexibility: When a venue you’ve always wanted to visit pops up, you’ll need to have the funds available right then. And yes, when traveling, you use a credit card, not cash.
• Bags Packed and Ready: By keeping an essentials bag packed with must-have items, you’ll be ready to simply throw in a few clothes and your medicines and ready to go. Being prepared is the key to being flexible. BTW, a pre-packed bag may be a decent place to store your passport.
• Flexible Spirit: Let’s face it, the travel industry has taken a few hits lately. It is possible, therefore, to find a venue with a vacation home or unit that really is available, but the resort itself has closed. In this case, you will need to have packed your enjoyment and brought it with you.

Now if the above describes you, then you can find some incredibly sweet deals through a vacation membership with hot week vacation stays starting from $149 or $199 for seven days with the whole family or group.

But not everyone can find a hot week special on Thursday, pack the bags and be out the door on Friday or Saturday. True, you can find some really great prices at the last minute, but for some folks, they just aren’t feasible.

Not to worry. There are longer-range deals that may work better for you.

But if flexible is your travel style, then hot week vacations are an i-deal option for you.

As illustrated in a previous post, you have options for accessing discounted travel venues, but each carries a cost for access, even the “free” hotel search engines. I mention hotels for two reasons:

1. Most travelers think of hotel accommodations, and
2. Online Booking Engines (OBEs) such as Hotels dot com, Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire,  Priceline, and others specialize in discounted hotel stays as well as discounted transportation, not resort rental savings.

Hotels are great for certain kinds and groups of travel:

• Business or other travel alone
• People who have no problem sharing a small hotel bathroom and vanity
• Travel to areas with no resorts available, and
• Overnight layovers

When it comes to best travel value for couples, teams, groups of women or families, however, hotels are not a good first choice. Why? Because they are:

• Crowded — usually one closet or rack nook, which is simply not enough room for two or more people’s luggage and other “stuff,” and one small bathroom and vanity area
• Expensive per person pricing
• Noisy neighbors, next to, above and below you — or your family/group is the noisy neighbor!
• Not as private as you might think! I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to know my hotel neighbor’s personal grooming or amorous habits. And yes, you can hear that!

Don’t get me wrong! I’d much rather stay in a noisy, crowded, expensive hotel room than camp out in my car (and I have done that — once!). But when you have the option, resort stays are much roomier, easier on your nerves, offer great activities, and are way more private!

But if you’re not careful in selecting the right source for your resort stay, you could wind up paying more than you have to! Let’s take a look at some examples. Because my purpose here is to neither promote nor bash any of the OBEs, I have selected only four, identified by numbers 1-4. You are encouraged to do your own comparisons.

The point here is to demonstrate the advantage behind paid vacation memberships versus your “free” online booking engines. Each venue is selected in September 2009 for either a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday visit. The trick to getting the best discounted resort rates is to wait as long as you can before booking your stay.

Rule of thumb: the closer to the date you want to visit, the better the rate offered.

However, for these holiday visits, your best airline deals are booked early, not late. So unless you’re planning on driving to your destination, and because of the last minute scheduling that can disrupt family gatherings, I don’t recommend you wait for potential hot weeks. Besides, during my research, I discovered the rooms for these specific holiday weeks were already disappearing fast!

Here’s what you’re getting instead of a hotel.

Research your price comparisons on the OBEs:

1. Refer to the resort venue as a hotel. Pretend you’re looking for a room that accommodates only two adults. It’s OK. All room options will come up, and listed resort options are generally the same price for four people as for one. That’s one of the cost saving advantages of resort vacations!
2. Next, type in as little of the name of the “hotel” (resort) as you can. For the Samoset venue, I typed in Samoset. For the following Christmas comparison, I simply typed in Welk.
3. You may discover that resort bookings are not always available on the OBEs, even when you find them there. That makes it hard to shop price, so change your week around a little, as I did.

Now let’s take a look at a Christmas week booking example. Keep in mind that this is a particularly high demand week, so you’ll need to be a little flexible, and you’ll need to start booking as soon as possible!

Again, here’s what you get instead of a hotel.

Get Creative With Flexible Planning:

With flexible planning, the Christmas vacation week shown above can open some creative possibilities. For example, you can stay in one of the U.S.’s most popular family resorts, invite your extended local friends or family to join in any of the numerous available and memorable activities, experience Christmas Eve and/or Christmas morning with your loved ones, and then head back home Christmas Day to celebrate your own traditions with your kids. You get a great visit without wearing out your welcome, and for seven days you have peace on earth, good will toward everyone.

And these are just two examples showing you the value of selecting the right travel source.

The Resort Cost Factor

There are three ways you can gain access to resort vacations. Two of them are expensive. One of them is cost saving:

1. Hotel Bookings — We’ve covered that above.
2. Vacation Club or Timeshare Ownership — These memberships cost 10s of thousands of dollars with annual maintenance fees.
3. Vacation Program Membership — You pay a fee up front to gain rental access to condo resort units. We’ve covered samples of the pricing above, and that was for peak, high demand weeks. This membership fee is usually several thousand dollars less than the cost of ownership. If not, keep shopping! I’ll focus on this option in a separate post.

Here’s a sneak peek into the vacation program membership option: depending on the program, you could save the entire cost of membership after only one or two vacations!

Happy Traveling!

Resorts, condo resorts, timeshare resorts, even pool home and log cabin vacation rentals are all terms used when referring to vacation resorts. They are highly sought after for comfort, roominess, and amenities not generally found in hotel chains around the world. Here’s why:

• Families are able to vacation together for one weekly price instead of a nightly, per person rate. One person or four, the price is the same.
• Depending on the venue, there may be several on-site activities and possible inclusives such as horseback riding and meals, not offered by hotel chains.
• Amenities often include full kitchens, washer/dryers, full living areas, and other home-like features, making it possible to maximize the space without having to trip over suitcases and their contents.
• Ladies, one word: Bathrooms! Unlike hotels, where everyone shares one tiny vanity and water closet, resorts frequently feature multiple fully equipped bathrooms, up to one per living quarter!
• And whether it’s your hotel neighbors’ amorous activities at 3:00 a.m. or your own group’s raucous game of Mexican Train, the noise factor in resorts is greatly reduced, if not completely eliminated — as in the case of the pool homes and log cabins.

Timeshare Ownership v. Timeshare Rental

A Pricey Affair

With all these advantages, one would suspect that resorts would be a pricey affair. They can be. Especially the better ones. In fact, resort amenities are often one of the strongest selling features of timeshare sales.

As a former timeshare owner myself, one of the problems I discovered was that I was charged a rather large purchase price (in my case, around $23,000, mortgaged over a period of 15 years — I forget the interest rate), with an annual maintenance fee of around $600. I would not be charged for my visits. But wait . . . yes I would! Hello! I was being charged a monthly mortgage payment, plus $600 annual maintenance fee. Because I can’t remember the interest rate, let’s pretend there wasn’t one. (Yeah, like that happens.) Anyway, my monthly payment would have been around $128. Multiply that by 12 = $1,536. Add $600 to that and total expense each year = $2,136.

Limited Access

With ownership also comes limited access. Is it just me, or does that sound backwards? Anyway, my timeshare was available to me only one week — and an assigned one at that — per year. If I couldn’t make it that week, too bad.

Of course I was supposedly able to bank my week and exchange it. I was even supposed to be able to exchange my venue for either a sister venue (no extra charge) or a member venue through RCI at a discounted rate. On paper, that looked great. In reality, I could never make it work.

The real kicker here was that when I was not able to take my vacation during my timeshare week, and not being able to exchange it for a time and place I could actually use, I was charged the same as if I had.

Timeshare Resorts: Good ~*~ Timeshare Ownership: Not So Much!

Look, I’m not bashing timeshare resorts. I just listed several reasons why these venues are the preferred choice for great vacations! The thing I found cumbersome and expensive was the ownership part.

Solution: Timeshare Rentals

Keep in mind this blog is all about saving you time, money and hassle when traveling. So let me tell you there is a solution to getting the great resort stay while saving time, money and hassle! It’s by renting the units, not buying them.

How? Here Are Three Ways:

1. Private Rentals: Some owners are allowed to and do rent their units. You can find these by typing in condo resort rentals into your search engine. There are some online rental programs where you can search for available condos, but with this option, you’re pretty much on your own for booking, support, and handling. Also, the deals are all over the place, so you’ll need to do your research!
   Savings Recap:
   • Time: No savings
   • Money: Possible, but not guaranteed
   • Hassle: No savings
2. Booking Engines: I’ll go into this in much more detail in a separate post, but suffice it to say that the online booking engines such as Hotels.com, Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline and HotWire are geared toward discounted hotel bookings, not resorts.
   Savings Recap:
   • Time: Hotel search, yes; resort search, no time savings
   • Money: Hotel search, sometimes; resort search, no savings
   • Hassle: OK as long as you fit their online program model
3. Resort Access Memberships: I’m not referring to vacation clubs. Those operate very similarly to timeshare ownership. But vacation memberships are not actually a new concept — offline. The online version is relatively new. This subject will also be covered in more detail, but you will need to know that there are access fees for these services. The fees depend on the membership itself as well as what you want from your membership.
   Savings Recap:
   • Time: Huge savings after membership selection; shopping for the right membership can take a little time.
   • Money: Huge savings, which is the idea — you can even save enough to pay for your membership.
   • Hassle: Huge savings after membership selection; shopping for the right membership can be a bit of a hassle. But I’m here to help.

Of course some of you have friends, family, or employers who let you use their timeshare. If they aren’t charging you for the privilege, you’ve just latched on to the best deal in town! Lucky you! Until something goes wrong. Ouch. Let me know how that works for you.

When selecting a travel program to use, be it an online booking engine or a vacation membership program, it helps to know where you’re spending your money to get the best value for your travel style.

.

I call the hotel-focused online booking engines the Big 4. They are:

1. Hotels.com
2. Orbitz
3. Expedia
4. Travelocity

• Priceline is of course one of the big players, but with its customer bidding structure, it operates a little differently, so we’re zeroing in on the others for this discussion.

These travel sites are all primarily discount hotel based booking services. They work similarly by working with various hotel venues to ensure rooms are filled, but at a discounted rate, which they agree to cover. They make their commissions from booking fees and an up-charge percentage, which still offers end-users a discounted hotel stay under normally published hotel rates.

Visitors to these sites are not charged a membership fee up front to access the hotel savings. Yet that’s essentially what visitors wind up doing — in addition to booking fees. The best value is offered, therefore, to those who do not travel often and who either need to or prefer to stay in hotels (as opposed to other venues such as resorts, pool homes, log homes, etc.) while visiting their destinations.

The key here is: “do not travel often.” Given there is no upfront access fee, the small up-charge may be worth the difference in cost.

But how often is “often”? Up-charges can be way over 100% of the rates secured by these services. It is in this way they are able to promise you 50% or better savings on your hotel stay and still make a profit. So for purposes of argument, let’s say you want to stay at a hotel that normally costs $200 for the night. You get it via one of the Big 4 for $100. That’s pretty good! But again, for the sake of argument, the room cost the online booking engine (OBE) providers only $50. That leaves the provider with a $50 profit. Per person. Per night. A week-long stay for two people would generate a $700 profit for the OBEs. Plus booking fees.

A fair exchange, you say. It made them $50 (per person, per night), but I saved $100 per person, per night. Yes, that is a good deal. Until you do this enough times to pay for a membership that provides you either the same or better hotel discount, not to mention other significant travel venue discounts. So how many times is that? Well, it depends on the membership. Some memberships cost about $3,000. Some $2,000. Some 1,000. And some less.

Let’s look at this using the same $50 profit per/* example:

For the $3,000 membership, you’d need to stay only 60 nights (30 nights for two people) to cover the service fee incurred by the online booking agency. Naturally, if over a period of years, you plan on traveling alone and you do not plan on staying overnight for 60+ nights, this membership would not be worth the investment.

But the above example is only using only one travel style for one hotel cost. Naturally, as a traveler you will likely visit more than one hotel for more than one night at more than one rate during your lifetime. And you will likely not be traveling alone each time.

For the $2,000 membership, you’d need to take only 50 nights to cover your expense (25 nights for two people)

And for the $1,000 membership, you’d need to take only 20 (10 nights for two people).

_______________________________

Getting a personal, real-life perspective:

By age 16, I had visited Cabo San Lucas, Baja, CA for two weeks (13 nights) and Grand Cayman, BWI for two weeks (another 13 nights).

By age 20, I had added a second trip to Grand Cayman, BWI and one to Bonaire, Dutch Antilles (13 nights)..

By age 30, add on a week’s visit to Jamaica, one to Honduras, a SCUBA cruise in the Caribbean, a 3-day jaunt to Cozumel and more than a couple cross-country tours that expanded a period of months, not weeks. (OK, I give up counting nights.)

By age 40, add a week-long California touring honeymoon, a 3-day mission trip to Mexico and several weekend and holiday getaways here in the U.S.

By age 50, work had taken me to several trade show venues across the country, and I wound up staying in Galveston for about a month during my daughter’s hospitalization.

It’s amazingly easy to rack up those 60 nights! And those discount access costs add up quickly! Remember, for purposes of the above booking engine profit example, that’s $50 (+ or -) per night, per person over age 12. Access for a week-long hotel stay for two people would then = $700 using a “free” online booking engine. And each time another week-long hotel stay is booked at this or a similar venue or rate, the access fee is paid again!

_______________________________

As you can see, you also need to consider the type of travel you take most often. Hotels may be the first thing you think of for travel accommodations, but they are certainly not the only option! You may wish to take the family on a resort vacation, for example. Or you may wish to take a second honeymoon in Paris. You might even want to cruise the Caribbean Seas. Who knows? Each travel style tacks on one more up-charge, plus commissions to the online booking engines. The point is, if you travel with even modest frequency as I have, you are spending more with “free” online booking engines than the cost of a good vacation membership.

Only you can determine the long term value in the travel programs you select. Just be aware that you’re paying for access to discount programs one way or the other. The question is, which program is best suited to your own travel needs? Click here to find out.

Happy Traveling!