Exchange of one week timeshare for airline tickets

Hello, I own the right of use of one week summer high season at the sought after Royal Resorts Royal Mayan in Cancun Mexico. Does anybody know of any schemes out there that might enable me to get free or heavily discounted airline tickets during high season end of July 2008 in exchange for my week at the Royal Mayan? Any suggestions that might assist me welcome!!

mercedesg5 wrote:

Hello, I own the right of use of one week summer high season at the sought after Royal Resorts Royal Mayan in Cancun Mexico. Does anybody know of any schemes out there that might enable me to get free or heavily discounted airline tickets during high season end of July 2008 in exchange for my week at the Royal Mayan? Any suggestions that might assist me welcome!!

The Royal Mayan is RCI affiliated. Therefore, if (and ONLY if) you have a RCI points account via some other resort, you could deposit your Royal Mayan week as "Points for Deposit" with RCI and then use those deposited points to purchase airline tickets through the RCI "Points Partners" program. Whether you'd get enough RCI points to cover your airline ticket purchase in its entirety, I do not know. And again, for this option to even be available to you at all, you must have a RCI points account in place.

ken1193 wrote:

mercedesg5 wrote:

Hello, I own the right of use of one week summer high season at the sought after Royal Resorts Royal Mayan in Cancun Mexico. Does anybody know of any schemes out there that might enable me to get free or heavily discounted airline tickets during high season end of July 2008 in exchange for my week at the Royal Mayan? Any suggestions that might assist me welcome!!

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The Royal Mayan is RCI affiliated. Therefore, if (and ONLY if) you have a RCI points account via some other resort, you could deposit your Royal Mayan week as "Points for Deposit" with RCI and then use those deposited points to purchase airline tickets through the RCI "Points Partners" program. Whether you'd get enough RCI points to cover your airline ticket purchase in its entirety, I do not know. And again, for this option to even be available to you at all, you must have a RCI points account in place.

------------------------------------------------------ Personally, my experience with converting any points program to other uses (air, hotel, etc) is not very cost effective and is only useful if your points would otherwise expire.

That being said, if you have the ability to deposit your week as points (see Ken’s post)…depending on the unit size, you would get 37,000 or 49,500 points for 1 or 2 bedroom, respectively. This is based on an RCI guide that converts week’s resorts to point values for the purposes of RCI Points member reserving a unit at a weeks resort. I believe these values are also used when converting a week’s unit to points. This guide also has the point values for Airline tickets. Tickets to 48 states, Canada, Caribbean, and Mexico range from 39,000 to over 80,000. Other destinations are even higher. The low-end point values probably have a bunch of restrictions (limited seating, blackout dates, etc). It might be more beneficial for you to rent your unit and use the money for airfare.

Many thanks for the info Ken and Mike. I was not aware of this scheme. Presently I don't have an account with RCI but I shall try to find out more details directly from them. Regards, Mercedes

mercedesg5 wrote:

Many thanks for the info Ken and Mike. I was not aware of this scheme. Presently I don't have an account with RCI but I shall try to find out more details directly from them. Regards, Mercedes

Please note that you must own at a RCI "Points" resort for this option to be even a remote possibility for you. And Mike is absolutely correct that it's not going to result in any "savings" ---it's just an available convenience if you have points with no plans to use them, or which are about to expire. Good luck...

mercedesg5 wrote:

Hello, I own the right of use of one week summer high season at the sought after Royal Resorts Royal Mayan in Cancun Mexico. Does anybody know of any schemes out there that might enable me to get free or heavily discounted airline tickets during high season end of July 2008 in exchange for my week at the Royal Mayan? Any suggestions that might assist me welcome!!

I gather you are not planning on using this ticket to fly to Cancun. Don't your maintenance fees cost more than the ticket would? Of course the cost of air depends on where you are flying FROM and flying TO. MD

Looking at everything said it certainly looks like it would not be in my interests to use my timeshare in this way as it does not seem that I would get a particularly good deal. Regards, Mercedes