Exchanging:

The ability to use your timeshare week to visit a variety of locations around the world is one of the biggest reasons to own a timeshare. Timeshare owners enjoy vacation time flexibility and access to thousands of worldwide resort destinations. Once you own, you can join an exchange program, which will provide you with a variety of vacationing possibilities for a similar resort / unit / week elsewhere.

Let's say you own a 2-bedroom timeshare in the Caribbean, during the peak season. You love it, but you'd like to exchange it to celebrate a future anniversary in Europe. You contact your exchange company and deposit or "bank" your timeshare week into their existing resort "pool", which is made up of other exchange members' weeks from around the world.

After looking through the exchange company's resort directory, you determine where in Europe you'd like to stay. You call up the exchange company and give them a range of weeks (say a month) and an area (Spain) or a list of resorts. As exchange companies only offer weeks that are deposited by other members, the more flexible you are the easier it is for them to find a match. No more than 50% of requests are confirmed the first day. Most require an on-going search, as the resort pool changes from day to day. It comes down to demand versus supply.

Exchanges can be made almost anytime throughout the year or delayed for later use. Depending on your exchange program, you can also accumulate weeks of time by borrowing a week from the next year.

Exchange program benefits don't stop here. There are discounts on additional vacation weeks, airfares, cruises, car rentals and more. RCI and Interval International are the two largest exchange companies.