Holiday Inn, not just Hotels Anymore
Although Holiday Inn Club Vacations is a newcomer to the timeshare marketplace, the companies on which it is built are legendary cornerstones of the hospitality industry.
InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG, the parent company of Holiday Inn hotels) is the provider of more hotel rooms, in more locations than any other hotelier in the world. In 2008, IHG timeshare expanded its extensive network of travel and vacation services by launching its new timeshare brand, Holiday Inn Club Vacations.
Today, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Holiday Inn Club Vacations is the thriving outcome of a creative licensing and marketing alliance between the Orlando, Florida-based timeshare company, Orange Lake Resorts, and the hospitality giant, InterContinental Hotel Group.
Holiday Inn Club Vacations: Built on an American Icon
For generations, families planned their summer getaways around Holiday Inn hotels. To post-World War II couples and families hitting the road to tour Route 66 and “See the U.S.A. in their Chevrolet,” the company represented a brand they trusted for consistently safe, clean, and appealing accommodations.
The development of Holiday Inn vacation ownership takes the traditions of family travel to the next level of great vacations. The company offers a points-based timeshare ownership program, which provides owners of HICV timeshares several different ways to enjoy its timeshare network as well as over 4,500 IHG timeshare branded hotels and resorts worldwide.
Where Will You Find Holiday Inn Club Vacations Resorts?
Continually expanding its list of timeshare properties, HICV is committed to offering its member/owners vacation resorts at all the most popular destinations, steadily growing its resort list in ways that are strategic and fiscally responsible. Currently you’ll find Holiday Inn timeshares in the following high-demand vacation spots:
1) Near Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida
2) Waterfront, on a canal less than two miles from Gulf of Mexico beaches in Marco Island, Florida
3) At a golfers paradise in Panama City Beach, Florida
4) Beachfront in Panama City Beach, Florida
5) At the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee
6) A two-minute walk from the beach in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
7) At a year-round woodland retreat in the mountains near Brownsville, Vermont
8) In the rolling hills of Wisconsin at Lake Geneva
9) Less than a block from The Strip in Las Vegas
10) Beachside at Galveston, Texas
Timeshare Points, Deeded Ownership, and other Options in Holiday Inn Timeshare
Holiday Inn timeshare ownership means your timeshare has an assigned value that functions like timeshare points.
Owners who purchase their timeshares at full price have the ability to exchange their points for vacations at any available Holiday Inn Club resort or for vacations at Club Partner properties. An additional benefit of their full price purchase is an automatic upgrade to Gold Elite status in the IHG Rewards Club, which is the loyalty program of the company’s hotel properties. Timeshare owners also have exchange access to resort properties that are affiliated with Resort Condominiums International timeshare exchange (RCI).
Resale buyers save thousands (and thousands!) of dollars on their purchase, but they should be aware that not all HICV timeshare points transfer in the same way when sold as value-priced timeshare resales. Many properties retain their full points benefits when transferred from the current owner to the new buyer but others revert to a fixed or floating deeded week.
With deeded ownership, the resale buyer has full access to the resort interval and all its wonderful amenities, but may have limited access to internal exchange or points exchange within the Holiday Inn loyalty program. However—and this is very important to recognize—resale buyers have excellent options for enhancing their ownership while still benefiting from the savings of buying timeshares as a resale product.
1) Resale owners can regain full membership benefits for their resale points by purchasing a limited number of additional points directly from HICV.
2) Resale owners can join RCI through a paid membership and enjoy external timeshare exchange.
3) Membership in the company’s loyalty program is free, and anyone (regardless of whether he or she owns a timeshare), has the right to join.
When you understand your options, it is easy to see that buying Holiday Inn Club Vacations as reduced-priced timeshare resales is a smart way to enjoy all that this new timeshare company with its iconic history has to offer.
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Holiday Inn Club Vacations Timeshare FAQ
There are a couple of ways you can sell your Holiday Inn Club timeshare. Putting it up for sale on the timeshare resale market is the best way to sell, especially since Holiday Inn Club Vacations doesn’t have an internal resale program so they aren’t really in a position to help.
There are essentially two ways you can go. One is to advertise your timeshare for sale yourself and the other is to hire a timeshare broker to handle it for you. Either way, you are selling on the secondary market and will have the final say as to the agreed sale price.
Advertising to sell your timeshare allows you to control the sales process by using photos, descriptive text, and negotiating with the prospective buyer. Be sure to choose a company that specializes in online timeshare resales, rather than an outlet that functions as a glorified online garage sale. Buyers are going to go to a website that uses marketing tactics to attract buyers and has the best selection of timeshares, not one that offers second-hand furniture.
Once you have a deal in place, your company can refer you to a trusted closing company that will complete the transfer process to the new owner. With this option, you’ll keep all the proceeds from the sale instead of paying a commission. All this requires is an advertising fee to promote your ownership.
With a timeshare broker, you would be hiring an agent to handle the process for you. While this may sound like a good deal, keep in mind that the commissions are often 15 percent of the sale price or $1,500, whichever is higher. In the long run, this would be the more expensive option to sell.
Yes, it is a timeshare even though it may not always look like a traditional timeshare product. Holiday Inn Club Vacations sells timeshare weeks at specific “home” resorts either with fixed or floating usage, which is the way timeshare has been sold for decades. This gives the owner the use of their vacation week at their resort during their designated timeframe.
What is different is that Holiday Inn Club Vacations also operates as a Club program, with points that can be either added to existing ownership or purchased outright as a pure points product. There are 29 resorts in the HICV program and Holiday Inn points owners can use their timeshare points as a type of vacation currency to book a week or exchange into a different resort within the network.
Weeks owners can also exchange the use of their timeshare for a different Holiday Inn timeshare destination, but they will need to add points onto their ownership in order to do that. Some owners have added points, which is why you may see both weeks and points advertised for sale on the same ad on our website.
Both weeks owners and points owners can also exchange their timeshare through exchange companies such as RCI or Interval International, depending on which company is affiliated with their resort. This gives the owner a choice from over 3,000 resorts around the world for their next vacation.
The only chance you may have to cancel your Holiday Inn Club Vacation timeshare is to contact the company directly yourself and see if they can help. Understand that in these cases the owner walks away with no money and must meet certain criteria to be considered such as having mortgage-free ownership and all fees paid up. Even then, there is no guarantee that they will accept your timeshare.
Holiday Inn has a program in place called Horizons, which is a customer service outreach program to listen to owners who want out of their timeshare. Some companies have used similar programs as a way to upsell owners into new programs, so be cautious when discussing possibly canceling your ownership.
One area to avoid is dealing with the so-called timeshare exit or timeshare cancellation companies. They will charge upwards of $5,000 and claim they can get owners out of their timeshares. The reality is that they will contact Holiday Inn Club Vacations and only Holiday Inn has the authority to cancel a timeshare contract – unless it is part of a legal proceeding. Exit companies have run into legal trouble of their own as well as state Attorney General investigations.
If you are looking to cancel your timeshare, best to sell it and get some money back for it.
There are 29 Holiday Inn Club Vacations resorts across 14 states in the United States. The company boasts 365,000 owners in its program and continues to look for more resorts to add to its network.
The short answer is yes, but it really depends on how the timeshare is purchased as to whether owners think their timeshare is worth it.
According to the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), 85 percent of owners rate their timeshare experience as either excellent, very good or good, so most owners are happy with the product. For the other 15 percent, that adds up to potentially 1.5 million owners who are not happy with the product.
As with most products, whether it is worth it often comes down to what they paid for it and whether they get satisfaction out of using the product. Using the product is important and many owners simply no longer use it for a variety of reasons – whether it is financial, family, or health reasons. Often, this creates a need to sell since keeping the timeshare doesn’t make sense.
Regarding the price paid – that depends on whether the timeshare was originally purchased at the resort or on the resale market. Timeshares costs vary depending on criteria such as the location of the resort, unit size, and season of ownership. Even so, the average cost of a week of timeshare is just under $23,000 according to ARDA, and this measures the prices paid at the resorts. These higher resort prices go a long way toward determining whether an owner is happy with the product, especially if they had to finance the purchase.
On the timeshare resale market, timeshares cost significantly less because the buyer is purchasing from an existing owner instead of the sales team at the resort. As much as 60 percent of the cost of a timeshare at the resort goes to pay marketing costs and sales commissions – costs that don’t exist on the resale market. So the resale buyer gets a great discount just by buying online instead of at the resort.
The resale owner could be staying next door to an owner who bought at the resort – same resort and same experience but at vastly different prices. If they have a conversation at the pool bar about what they paid … well, you can figure out who would be the happier owner.
