Most timeshare owners have now paid their 2026 annual fees. But how is the summer holiday availability looking?

It's that time of year. The celebrations are over, and you have probably already had to pay your annual maintenance fee demand for 2026. But are you going to get the holiday you want in return?

'Improvements' in the product

Timeshare membership used to be straightforward. You bought the week you wanted, and came to the same apartment, same time every year. You paid an annual fee to maintain and staff the resort, and the cost was considerably less than renting an equivalent unit through regular booking channels.

Canny resort bosses realised that this might not represent enough flexibility for the modern holidaymaker, and came up with ever 'improving' schemes promising more options for their clients.

Exchange systems, floating time and points were sold as ways to let members choose the location and dates of their holiday. This led to unserviceable demand for high season weeks in sought after locations, with most members having to take the less desirable inventory left over. Either that or pay for an extra holiday outside the timeshare system.

Billed as a way solve this problem, members were then sold 'upgraded' memberships allowing them extended one or even two year booking windows. The obvious downside to this is that many people do not know two years ahead of time what their holiday plans will be. Those that do follow the rules report calling the booking service one minute past 9:00am on the day the lines open, to be told they are still too late.

Exclusivity abandoned

With new-member timeshare sales practically extinguished in Europe, the resorts had to seek alternative revenue. Many of them achieved this by renting accomodation to non-members via sites like Booking.com

Members regularly find availability on such sites when there is none available to book with their points or floating weeks. This is generally because the allocations for members are smaller than those for the wider, rental market.

Clearly this is unfair on people who paid a premium to to guarantee a holiday in an members-only club. It begs the question:

What now, have they actually paid for?

Availability poll

Leading authority on the subject Timeshare Advice Centre ran a poll for owners to record their satisfaction levels with achieving the holidays they wanted through points systems or floating weeks.

The six options ranged from: "I always find availability" to "I've given up trying to request availability"

Final tallies

The results were as follows:

• I always find availability: 0.48%
• I sometimes find availability: 2.12%
• I rarely find availability: 61.10%
• I never find availability: 30.56%
• I've given up trying to request availability: 5.74%

A staggering 91.66% reported that they rarely or never get the availability they want. A further 5.74%, have given up even trying to make the system work.

The amount of people who get exactly what they want, and for whom the system works as it was sold to them is 0.48%, or less than one in two hundred.

These figures beg the question: What benefit does timeshare membership confer in 2025? The annual costs have risen to in many cases the same as, or sometimes even more than, it costs to stay in the same resort via regular booking sites.

Summer 2025

One minute we are revelling in the warmth and excitement of the Christmas and New Year holidays, and then suddenly its all over. Nothing to look forward to but months of soul crushing darkness and miserable weather.

This is why our TV sets and other media light up with holiday adverts from the second of January onwards. They know we are ripe for the picking. Desperate for the next glimmer of joy to anticipate, our thoughts turn to beaches, sunshine and blue skies. (Ok, not all of us want traditional seaside holidays, but feel free to substitute your own vacation ideal here).

For non timeshare owners, the choice is immense. With an estimated 187,000 hotels, and up to 33 million guestrooms worldwide a regular holiday maker can tailor their holiday to their needs at the click of a keypad. Add to that the non-standard holidays like caravans, camp sites, cruises and winnebagos and the choice increases exponentially.

The timeshare owner ostensibly has a choice of around 4000 resorts in their exchange system. In practice not all resorts suit all guests, the most popular resorts are very difficult to book into and many resorts are in the exchange brochure despite only having one or two rooms available to timeshare guests. So with around 20 million timeshare owners worldwide, it's easy to see why the 4000 resorts do not accommodate many members' first choice of holiday.

And remember, non timeshare owners can also access those 4000 timeshare resorts.

Expert comment

"Lack of availability and spiraling maintenance costs are probably the number one complaint that we hear from frustrated timeshare owners," notes Greg Wilson, CEO of European Consumer Claims, the company leading the fightback against mis-selling in the timeshare industry.

"It's important to keep in mind that timeshare owners are contractually obligated to pay these fees every year, whether they get the holiday they want or not. They have to pay even if they don't go on holiday at all that year. If the resort is destroyed by (for example) wildfires or a hurricane, they still have to pay.

"Perhaps most surprisingly, the members are legally obliged to pay whatever increases in fees the resort unilaterally decides to charge their members. They have little or no say in the matter.

"Assessed through a purely economic prism, timeshare members are a captive consumer base. There is no legal or financial incentive for a resort to provide value for money or keep prices down. Why should they? Their customers have to pay what they are told to pay.

"In a regular hotel, people won't pay a price that is too high, book a room that they don't want, or book a time of year that doesn't suit them."

For help or advice regarding any timeshare related issue, get in touch with our team at European Consumer Claims.