Hello! I am Cheryl and one half of a couple who travels. In today’s post, I will talk about the Unlimited Vacation Club and whether or not it is a scam. For the record, I am not affiliated with nor do I profit from the Unlimited Vacation Club. The views expressed and opinions expressed here are my own.
First, I think it is important to understand what is the Unlimited Vacation Club. UVC is not a timeshare. You are not purchasing a week at one resort location to be used yearly. It is more like a discount club - you select where you want to go and you get a 25% discount. There are also many different parts of the membership that may or may not be of value to you.
What is a good deal? That is different for everyone and depends on how you like to travel. Are you a couple traveling to adults-only resorts? Or are you a family traveling to family resorts? Do you like to travel within your own country, the Caribbean, or Internationally - whatever is international to you? Do you want transportation, airfare, or the ability to rent a yacht? Do you like to take cruises? All of those are possible with a membership to UVC.
You are sitting in a sales room and they are throwing all of this information at you and they bring out the yellow legal pad and start jotting down all these prices that make your head spin and you say ‘Whoa”. The salespeople they put in front of you are trained to be high-pressure and aggressive. They are trying to make their sales quota and get as much money out of you as they can. It can be very overwhelming. It will feel like they are holding you hostage in that room if you aren’t careful. If you are an American, a Canadian, from a European country, or from any other country that is NOT where you are vacationing, remember that you are dealing with a foreign country and the laws of your country are not the same as theirs.
If you don’t like the product, don’t feel comfortable, or don’t want to spend the money, feel free to say no thank you and get up and walk out. Period. This is easier if you are attending a meeting at the resort you are staying at - if not, you may need to find transportation back to your resort. Sometimes they take you to a neighboring resort for the sales pitch.
So if you like the product and are even considering joining, you want to be an informed consumer. You can tell them you want to think about it and come back another day. While you are thinking it over, here are some basic guidelines to discuss between you and your contract partner - meaning the other name that will be on your contract.
I am going to cover three of the several aspects of the membership.
All-Inclusive Travel:
The price of these resorts varies from location to resort type. It also depends on the time of year you plan to travel. Are you looking to get away from December through April? That is peak travel time and the trip cost will be higher than if you travel late August through November - usually known as hurricane season. Depending on how and when you travel will impact the cost. A good ballpark amount to use is $3,500 for a week - 7 nights - at one of their all-inclusive resorts. Some will be more, some will be less. If you are used to using a site like Cheap Caribbean dot com or Costo Travel, they include the airfare in the price of the trip. With UVC, airfare is not included. I can do a whole video on booking airfare for members - there is a lot and I won’t go into it now. Just know that there are strategies you can use to get decent flight prices.
Levels of Membership:
There are several membership levels with UVC. Depending on who your salesperson is, you may or may not hear about some of the lower levels because they want you to spend more money. In general, the levels are from lowest to highest:
Choices
White Pearl
Silver or Silver + **needed to book preferred rooms
Gold +
Platinum
Diamond
Impressions
Impressions Black
The amenities included in your package change according to the level you purchase. If you are interested in preferred privileges, you need to purchase at least at the Silver level. They also tempt you with Premiere nights and VIP weeks. Premiere nights are ‘free’ or prepaid nights at one of their all-inclusive resorts. VIP weeks are 7-night vacations at one of their all-inclusive resorts at a fixed price. At the time of this recording, I believe it is $1900 for a VIP week.
What they don’t always tell you is that these ‘free’ nights and VIP weeks are at their 1 for 1 resorts. If you like the Secrets, Breathless, or Zoetry resorts, the majority of them are not 1 for 1 - they are 2 for 1. That means you need to use 14 Premiere nights or 2 VIP weeks to stay there for ‘free’. Ask for a list of the 1:1 resorts. If you plan to travel with family, nearly all of the Dreams resorts are 1 for 1. If you are sitting at Secrets Maroma and thinking I would love to come back here with my premiere nights, it will cost you 14 of them.
If you are Silver or higher, you have the ability to book preferred rooms with your premiere nights or VIP weeks. Also at this level, you get preferred amenities even if you don’t book a preferred room. This means the preferred lounge for check-in and drinks and the preferred restaurants if that resort has them. This would apply if you were paying for your trip vs using your premiere nights or VIP weeks.
Many people buy in at either Choices or White Pearl only to find they don’t have access to the preferred amenities.
UVC membership services
The membership comes with several other services that I will mention but it will take another video to go through all of them in detail.
Amstar - they offer services such as excursions and airport transportation. You will receive 25% off if you book them via UVC.
RCI - this is like the timeshare RCI, but different. The traditional RCI works on points, but this part of the membership offers weeks. You are able to ‘sell’ a week of your UVC Exchange nights for a fixed amount of TPUs - trading power units. The number of TPUs depends on your membership level. You then use those TPUs to find a condo-type unit within the RCI inventory. Some people have no use for this benefit. Some people, myself included, love this part of the membership. Again, this is a massive topic that requires its own set of videos.
Yachts - as part of your membership you also get access to book a yacht for the day. It is pretty expensive and only makes sense if you have a large number of people in your party. We have traveled with groups of 10 and 16 and this is when it becomes reasonable. They provided the food and transportation and we had to supply the beverages. It was a lot of fun.
Flights - UVC has a program where they offer flights from select airports to some of their destinations. They eliminated the airport in our state, but we used them once and had no complaints. The flights are super cheap - like $199 per person on airlines like Sun Country, Viva Aerobus, etc… They do this in the winter months only. If you are not a particular traveler, this is a great option if you live near the airports they service.
Price Matching - This is another gem of the membership but I’ve never heard it mentioned in the sales pitch. If you book your vacation and you find it cheaper at another site, they will give you the lower price. There is a list of sites they will accept and it has to be exact. This is another massive topic for another video. But, it is also a great perk. I have price-matched every vacation we have taken. Some people don’t want to do the work or be bothered with it so this may not be for you.
There are some other benefits as well, but those are the big ones. There are also cruise, hotel, and car rental discounts, a fly-back program, and an affiliation with World of Hyatt. This is just a high-level overview.
The short answer is No - it is not a scam. Is it for everyone? No. The only way to get good value for this program is to travel at least twice a year to their all-inclusive resorts and negotiate a good deal. What is a good deal varies from person to person. UVC has over 120,000 members - some love it and some hate it.
My husband and I have been members since 2015. We have upgraded 5 times. We are happy members. As of today, we have gone on 18 all-inclusive vacations and 9 RCI vacations using our membership. We have friends who signed up and only traveled once afterward. We have other friends who signed up and they travel every year.
If you do decide to sign up - I beg you to READ THE CONTRACT before you sign on the dotted line. Make them point out all the things they promised you in that contract. There is a short window to back out and once you get back home, that option is difficult or maybe even gone.
If you do decide to join, there are several Facebook groups to help you along the way. My friend Scott Simon runs the Unlimited Vacation Club - We Love It!!! Group and he does calls with new members all the time to answer questions.
I hope you found this helpful. The video of this blog can also be found on my YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@CoupleWhoTravels.
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