What’s the Difference?

Are you confused as to what timeshare product is best for you? Wyndham Worldwide is one of the most popular vacation companies in existence. Wyndham Worldwide possesses multiple timeshare clubs and many hospitality / vacation subsidiaries. For the purposes of this article, we are comparing and contrasting two of the developer’s most popular vacation ownership products: Club Wyndham (formerly Fairfield) and WorldMark, the Club (formerly developed by Trendwest).

Deed or No Deed

One of the major differences between WorldMark, the Club, and Club Wyndham (formerly Fairfield), is that WorldMark works on what’s called a pure-points system and Club Wyndham is based on deeded ownerships that were later converted to utilize a points system.

Club Wyndham

– All Club Wyndham ownerships have a designated location which is referred to as a home-base, which your points are deeded to. For example, by owning at a specific home base, like Wyndham’s Grand Desert in Las Vegas you are able to book a reservation at your home resort 13 months in advance. You can still utilize your points towards other resorts, but are limited to booking 10 months in advance for non-homebase resorts. When selecting a Wyndham account for purchase, your best bet is to choose a home base close to either where you live or where you mostly vacation, while balancing maintenance costs.

– Maintenance fees are based on the location of the original deed as well as other factors. For example, if you own in Nevada, you will have a lower state tax liability than owning in Hawaii, and therefore will pay less in maintenance fees, even if both ownerships were purchased with the same number of points.

– Points do not ‘roll-over’, meaning the vacation time will expire once outside of the use year that the points were awarded in. Plan ahead to make sure you get the best value out of your Wyndham points.

More Fairfield Frequently Asked Questions

WorldMark, the Club

– All maintenance fees are averaged based on the amount of annual credits owned (you won’t pay any more than another owner that has your size of account).

– There is no “home-base”, all owners have an equal chance of booking any resort and can book 13 months in advance.

– WorldMark credits do not expire for 2 years, and can be “banked” inside your WorldMark account, without the use of an exchange company for traveling outside of their particular use year.

More WorldMark Frequently Asked Questions

Concentration of Resorts

One major consideration when buying into any points ownership is, where are the resorts located? Wyndham generally dominates the east coast, whereas WorldMark has many more west coast locations. Dependent on where you would like to travel, you may find one club is more centrally located for you, or the locations are cheaper to fly to. You can review which set of resorts are best for you by visiting the Club Wyndham Resorts page and the WorldMark Resorts page.

Also, you can read about the details of timeshare exchange by visiting our trading power page.

Cost Vs. Vacation Time

Simply put, which timeshare club offers the better bang for your buck? A worthy question, but the answer may be a complicated one. The best answer is.. it depends. Due to the fact that Wyndham ownership maintenance fees vary from ownership to ownership, it’s quite hard to compare the two. Especially if you want to talk about resale value and liquidity of the ownerships, it becomes very subjective which one will cost you more in the long run. Overall though, we tend to find WorldMark to be generally less expensive when considering it’s low maintenance and impeccable liquidity for a timeshare ownership, but your mileage may vary.

Get Help

Don’t be afraid to reach out for help. Your learning curve can be greatly shortened by speaking to a licensed Real Estate professional who specializes in timeshare resale. You can fill in a contact form, and we’ll be more than happy to offer a free consultation with one of our agents.

If you are wondering what different roles are played by the club and the developer, you can find more information about Wyndham’s involvement with WorldMark and Club Wyndham by visiting our Developer vs. Club vs. Management page. Read on to find the differences between the Club Wyndham (Fairfield) and WorldMark, the Club systems.