I agree with the part about savings. If you know how to utilize the membership to satisfy your individual needs it is a huge bargain. Nevrmind the resort perks. Get way more fun outta our membership than I do outta my 350 shares of Berkshire Hathaway B stock Although the folksy annual letter from Warren is a kick
So I'm going on a referral in august. I was wondering what perks I will get to enjoy other then, white towels, top shelf booze, the nice new deck beside the sexy pool. As just want to make the most of this referral.
The wake up blowjobs and breakfast in bed is a nice premier perk too, maybe they only give those to the full members though and not just Referrals.
It absolutely has worked for us, not interested in dropping $40k on a membership but we paid honestly more for the little luxuries because we work way too hard and come vacation time, which is precious. we want, "bottle service" . Side note is it also insulates us a bit from the single males groups that tend to get a bit obnoxious at times . We have had an absolute blast every time with all the friendly people and by no means need vip service but when you are hungover sometimes it's nice
We were there on our first trip and we meet a group of people from this site one of couples happen to be members, they were able to share most of the perks with the group. They left on our second day so that morning when we couldn't go to the premiere bar anymore we skipped the people up front and went upstairs to the time share area. We had them pull our new friend’s contract and said match it. They had to do the song and dance saying that our friends deal was old and they don't offer it anymore. Spoke to 2 Mgrs and we got their same deal. So for the rest of our 10 day trip we could have friends on the members deck, get the good booze, we also made dinner reservations at preferred times for everyone, booked the yacht and got everyone the good seats at pattyo's. That stuff alone is worth the price we are paying. I haven't even tried the referral weeks or moving weeks to other resorts. So hopefully it keeps getting better.
Does anyone know what the rock bottom price you can negotiate down to for a basic membership is? Can you upgrade your membership a year of two down the road if you would like to? Do you have to pay for the membership up front or is it on payments? If it's on payments, is there a down and how long can you stretch them out?
From our meeting.. They want it all up front or for you to finance through their bank and I believe it had a pretty bad interest rate (can't remember exact rate).
I have heard as little as 5k. It depends on the type/location of the room you want. You also have to talk about referral weeks and free weeks. You can also get them to lower the cost of the yacht and couples massage. We got night for night credits for Desire its normally one week of your time for 3 nights. You can add more nights but you will be doing it at the current offer not what you might have got at the time of signing up its a whole new contract and new total price. Remember they will work harder to get a new member. They do payments the interest rate they were offering us was 10%. Down payment would have been required I think 5%. You can pay it for 10 years. We didn't take the payment plan. We got 500 nights that is 20 days per year. I also got equity in the hotel which in speaking to them was the main thing they do not offer anymore.
It has worked very well for us too. We pay little to nothing for flights because of my job and getting airline FF miles, so that would be the same members or not. I have been keeping track, we have been to TTR 4 times now. 1 regular, 1 as a referral, 2 as members. When booking I look for the lowest price from the popular travel sites, subtract what I actually paid as a member and reduce the our initial up front cost by the savings. The net-net, in the two years as members, we have made back 32% of our initial investment with the savings. This means after 6 total trips or less at this rate, (we stay a week) we will do nothing but save money and get the perks. And we will have 132 nights left. Rough numbers here... and based on some assumptions, that's a saving of over $20,000 for the life of the contract.
