There have been quite a few great timeshare presentation hotel offers lately: stay 3 nights for as little as $99 and even earn points on top. In this article, we’ll give a quick primer on presentation stays and timeshares.

Current good timeshare presentation offers

About timeshares

[From wiki] A timeshare refers to the right to use a vacation property during a specific period each year. It is a form of vacation real estate. The concept arose from two supply-and-demand mismatches in the market:

  • On one hand, most vacation travelers do not have enough financial means to buy a personal property in a resort destination, such as owning a villa in a vacation hotspot.
  • On the other hand, owners of vacation properties often leave those properties unused for long periods of time.

This led to the creation of the timeshare concept, allowing customers to share usage of a vacation property across different time periods. This sharing can be 1 week per year (1/52 share), 1 week every 2 years (1/104 share), or even 13 weeks per year (1/4 share). Some timeshare products are also sold in a packaged form. For example, ownership interests in multiple resort properties may be divided into small shares and sold to investors.

In general, presentation stays exist to sell timeshares. Many hotel brands periodically offer these deals, which let you stay in hotels in popular travel destinations at a very low price or even for free. Typically, you can stay for 3 to 5 days, but during the stay you must attend a two-hour presentation (often it runs longer), where a salesperson will pitch a timeshare to you one-on-one. If you decide to buy, you pay a sum of money to purchase the right to use a unit during a certain time period, receive a deed, and get lifetime usage rights for the deeded period specified in the contract. This amount is usually over $10,000. Even though it is a limited-time deed, just like any other real estate purchase, ownership comes with annual property taxes payable to the government. Of course, these are paid annually by the owner and typically collected by the resort on the owner’s behalf, similar to property taxes and management fees in residential communities.

If you are a reader of this site, we want to emphasize:

  • Do not buy one!
  • Do not buy one!
  • Do not buy one!

A lot has already been written online about the pitfalls of timeshares. In short, the biggest issue is getting locked in. After you buy, if you do not want to vacation there, it can be very hard to exchange into other destinations. You also have to pay annual maintenance fees, and those fees may increase over time. On top of that, reselling is very difficult, and in most cases you have to sell at a steep discount just to get rid of it. Of course, salespeople usually will not tell you any of this. These details may only appear deep in a thick contract where they are easy to miss. Bottom line: just do not buy—sit through the sales pitch and move on.

Example of a timeshare presentation offer

Let’s use a recent IHG presentation offer as an example. IHG offers 3-night stays at hotels in popular destinations for $149 or $249. On top of that, you also get 10,000 IHG points.

To get this offer, you must attend a two-hour timeshare presentation. The retail value of these 3-night offers is between $732-$1,651

THIS MATERIAL IS BEING USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SOLICITING SALES OF TIMESHARE INTERESTS.

To fulfill the terms of this offer, you are required to attend a two-hour timeshare sales presentation for the offering of a timeshare interest in Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake Resort (filed as Orange Lake Country Club Villas III, A Condominium or, also filed as Orange Lake Land Trust in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia) . This offering will be made at a Holiday Inn Club Vacations resort. The developer is Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated, whose address is 9271 South John Young Parkway, Orlando, Florida 32819 and whose phone number is 800-353-1966. This offer is being made to you by Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated. The retail value of this offer is between $732 and $1,651, depending upon travel dates selected.


There are also eligibility requirements to book this presentation stay. These conditions are basically there to screen for people with the financial ability to buy and to filter out people who only want to game the deal. For this IHG offer, the requirements include:

  • Must be at least 25 years old
  • Annual income of at least 50,000
  • Must not have attended an IHG presentation stay within the past 12 months
  • No bankruptcy; must have full-time employment
  • Multiple households may not participate together
  • If married, both spouses must attend; if unmarried, a solo attendee is allowed
  • Cannot be an employee of another timeshare company

In practice, sales staff usually do not verify all of these requirements in detail. As long as what you say is reasonably consistent and you do not act nervous, you should be fine. Just do not give them an obvious reason to disqualify you and charge you the full room rate.

There are quite a few destination options available if you are interested.

Choose the hotel you want to visit

Then fill in your information and pay. Note that the quoted price usually does not include taxes, so additional taxes may be added at checkout.

After that, just show up at the time you booked. Be very careful not to get the timing wrong, or you may be charged the full room rate.

Also, stays booked through timeshare offers generally do not earn hotel points or elite night credit. Even if you have elite status with the hotel program, you usually will not receive related elite benefits.

How to find good timeshare presentation offers

There are quite a lot of these offers, but I still recommend focusing on the ones with the best value. Otherwise, if you have to sit through a presentation and the hotel itself is not even comfortable, it may not be worth it. Common ways to find good deals include:

  • Email Offer: If you are a member of a hotel loyalty program, you may receive these offers by email. For example, below is an IHG presentation offer I received: 3 nights for $149 plus $100 back, making it effectively just $49.
  • Phone offers: If you are interested in a presentation offer from a particular hotel chain, you can call and ask whether any offers are available. A useful trick is that if you saw an offer somewhere else, call customer service and chat with them—often you may be able to get a better deal, such as cash back, more points, or even extras like attraction tickets or event tickets.
  • Public online offers: These links can be hard to find. Usually, people share them after receiving them in their own email. If we come across good offers, we may also post deal alerts for everyone.

Besides the offers that require you to show up in person, there have also been offers in the past where you just call to learn about the program and receive points. Those are especially good for people who prefer earning easy rewards from home. If we find similar deals, we will share them too.

We have also put together a timeshare tag page to help everyone find recent good offers.

Things to keep in mind

Once you decide to book a presentation stay, the most important thing is not to let the deal turn against you, so:

  • Do not buy their timeshare product
  • Do not buy their timeshare product
  • Do not buy their timeshare product

When booking a presentation stay, make sure to read the terms carefully. Some offers clearly specify income and age requirements, as well as the presentation length, which is usually about 2 hours. Be sure you understand the rules, because if they find an excuse to disqualify you and charge the full room rate, it can be a real hassle. Here are a few tips to help you resist the sales pitch and get through it unscathed:

  • Understand what a timeshare is. If you go in prepared, you will be much less likely to be confused by all the terminology. At that point, you are already halfway to success.
  • From the very beginning, make it clear that you are not interested. Do not pretend to be interested just to be polite, or you may end up dealing with multiple salespeople taking turns pressuring you.
  • Do not feel awkward and start chatting casually with the salesperson. They will use your interests and personal details to keep trying to persuade you.
  • Remind them when the allotted time is almost up, otherwise they may keep talking endlessly.
  • When they ask about your income, do not state a number that is too high—but also not too low, since some offers do have income requirements.
  • Prepare some excuses in advance: for example, you are not interested, you just bought a house and do not have extra cash, the style here does not suit you, or you are more interested in another timeshare brand (this last excuse can be especially effective, since they cannot sell you another company’s product).

It may feel a little awkward to say no in the moment, but actually buying one could leave you stuck with a very large expense.