RCI booking

As part of our vacation club membership we also have an optional membership with RCI.com. We get the first 2 years of access for free. Along with our buy in to the club we received 4 bonus weeks that must be activated in the first 2 years of membership (aka the free years). The weeks cost $299 each. When I registered my account it came with a bonus week already loaded to the account. I just used that week to book 7 days in Ruidoso for only $328.38. That comes out $46.91 per night.

During the sales process for the vacation club I was manually running the numbers in my head. I really didn’t have access to a laptop or other useful bits of information to help me make my decision. I rationalized that our typical vacation would use a VRBO and we typically spend around $1500 to $2500 on the rental. For example, our vacation to Albuquerque cost us $1254 to rent a home for 6 days. That’s $204/night. I rationalized that we want to take 3 – 4 vacations per year and having access to reduced pricing could be a significant value. Incidentally the retail price of the condo we booked is $139/night or $973 for the week. Given our cost, our value return is $644.62.

What we don’t know yet is the quality of the room. The reviews were decent but the pictures look dated. I really don’t care about the style but I do care about comfort. I’ll post the experience later. In the mean time I’m happy with the value received so far with the RCI membership.