When planning a vacation, I now always check to see what my costs are for booking the vacation via an exchange. In some cases it can be cheaper than booking direct. I compare the cost of an exchange vacation vs. booking direct by calculating the maintenance fees required to book direct. This calculation is to take your total maintenance fees divided by your total points to get the maintenance fee per point. Then multiply that figure by the number of points.
In this video, I looked at three of my favorite Exchanges and gave examples. I’ve been using a lot of RCI and GPX lately (currently in a room via RCI that Saved me almost $600 for the week). When you use an exchange company, you not only save money, but you often don’t use points which means you never had to buy the points initially (Saving you thousands)