Right, let’s talk about something a bit different today.
You know how I’m always banging on about finding smarter ways to travel: booking off-season, hunting down deals, making your budget stretch further than feels reasonable. This one surprised me. The people getting some of the best resort stays in the US right now aren’t booking through the usual channels. They’re renting timeshare points from owners who aren’t using them.
Specifically, Bluegreen Vacation Club points. If you’ve never heard of this, stick with me. It’s a clever way to access resort-style accommodation that most travellers don’t know is available to them.
What Even Is Bluegreen Vacations?
Bluegreen Vacations is a US-based vacation ownership club with over 60 resorts across America and the Caribbean. Think Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Nashville, New Orleans, Branson, Las Vegas, plus a handful of spots in the Bahamas and Aruba. Members purchase points and use them to book stays at any property in the network.
In January 2024, Hilton Grand Vacations acquired Bluegreen. The combined portfolio expanded to nearly 200 properties. The network these points can access is massive.
Here’s the part that matters for the rest of us: a large chunk of Bluegreen’s 220,000+ members don’t use all, or any, of their points every year. Life gets in the way. They still pay maintenance fees regardless. Those unused points expire at the end of the use year. They’re gone for good.
So there are owners out there actively looking to do something useful with their points before the clock runs out.
Why Owners Are Willing to Part With Their Points
If the points are worth something, why would anyone hand them over?
Here’s the reality of timeshare ownership that doesn’t make it into the brochures. Maintenance fees for Bluegreen owners include a base fee of $373 per year, plus a per-point charge. Those costs are owed whether the owner travels or not. The per-point fee for annual owners in the 2024–2025 use year was $0.1052, confirmed by the Timeshare Users Group forum, one of the most detailed owner communities online.
The average timeshare maintenance fee climbed to $1,480 per interval in 2024, up 17.5% from $1,260 the year before, according to the American Resort Development Association’s 2025 State of the Vacation Timeshare Industry report. Over the past five years, fees are up roughly a third.
So an owner who isn’t travelling this year is staring at a bill for points they can’t use, that will expire, with zero refund. Selling the timeshare outright isn’t realistic. The secondary market for these is notoriously poor. What owners can do is rent those points to someone who wants to use them, get cash back, and salvage something from the year.
That’s the gap that makes this whole thing work.
How Travellers Actually Benefit
When a Bluegreen owner rents their points through a specialist service, the renter gets resort-quality accommodation: spacious suites, full kitchens, proper amenities. Often at rates well below what you’d pay booking direct or through a hotel.
Bluegreen’s portfolio is particularly strong for US road trips and city breaks. Their resorts sit in the middle of popular American destinations: steps from the French Quarter in New Orleans, right on the beach in Myrtle Beach, surrounded by the Ozarks in Missouri, smack in the middle of Orlando’s theme park belt. For a British traveller doing a proper American adventure, this kind of access is genuinely useful.
The flexibility helps too. Instead of a single fixed week, the points system lets you book shorter stays, mix locations across a trip, or use points for midweek nights, where they go further than peak weekends.
Where the Points Actually Come From
This is where it gets interesting from a practical standpoint. That’s the gap a service like timesharerentalpros.com fills. Owners hand over their unused points, get paid before any booking happens, and walk away without lifting a finger on the rental side. No listings, no waiting on renters, no fees taken out of the payout.
Their dedicated Bluegreen points page walks through how the process works for Bluegreen owners specifically: from understanding what your points are worth, to getting a cash offer, to completing the handover. It’s a ten-to-fifteen-minute call, a clear action plan, and payment upfront before any renter checks in.
For the traveller side, it means resort stays become bookable in a way they otherwise wouldn’t be.
A Few Things to Know Before You Go Down This Route
If you’re thinking about booking a stay via rented timeshare points, keep a few things in mind:
It’s a US-heavy network. Bluegreen’s own resorts are in America and the Caribbean. If you’re planning a US trip, which tends to involve a fair bit of driving and multiple destinations, this suits you well. International travel needs to go through exchange partners like RCI, which adds a step.
Booking windows vary. Like any points-based system, popular resorts and peak dates fill up. The more flexible you are with timing, the better the value.
The accommodation style is resort, not hotel. Think full apartments rather than rooms: kitchens, living areas, multiple bedrooms. Great for longer stays, families, or anyone who wants a home base rather than just a bed.
The Bottom Line
Timeshare points have always sounded complicated from the outside, and for owners, they often are. But that complexity creates a supply of quality resort access that leaks into the market every year, as owners scramble to do something with points before they expire.
For travellers who know it exists, this is a clever way to access accommodation a step above your average hotel, particularly in the US, where Bluegreen’s resort network covers some cracking destinations.
If you’re planning a proper American trip and want your accommodation budget to work harder, it’s worth looking into.
Last Updated on July 2, 2026
