Here We Go!

When we joined UVC in 2019, my wife and I were both still working full time.  We each had a limited amount of time for vacations. This was pre-Covid when working from home (or from a resort) was not a thing. We decided one celebration we did want to use our vacation time for, with our new UVC membership, was our anniversary.

I visited the UVC members' website regularly trying to understand exactly what I bought and how to best use it. It was complicated. The amount of learning I needed to make UVC worthwhile was daunting, especially for someone who was also working full time. I found some Facebook groups that were helpful in my learning.

My only disappointment in not understanding what I bought was the difference between 2:1 and 1:1 resorts and what that means for using Premier Nights and VIP Weeks.  Over the years, I've heard a lot of stories from members about how badly they were misled into thinking they were buying something they weren't at their sales meeting. I've come to understand that there are some resorts and some UVC salespeople who are more notorious than others about how brazenly they will mislead prospective new members to make a sale. I think our salesman at Secrets St. James was pretty forthright. There is specific language in my contract addressing the 2:1 issue, but I didn't appreciate it until after I started using the club.

Some resorts require 1 Premier Night for each night you want to stay at the resort. A member would use 7 Premier Nights to book a 1-week reservation for two people at those resorts. Other resorts, the more expensive and better rated ones, require 2 Premier Nights for each night you stay. A member would need 14 Premier Nights to book a 1-week reservation for two people at those resorts.

VIP Weeks work the same way except reservations using a VIP Week are made at a fixed, contract-specified price, which was $1,600USD when we joined (More on that later). So a 1-week stay for two people at a 1:1 resort would cost us $1,600. A 1-week stay for two people at a 2:1 resort would cost $1,600 x 2 or $3,200. The current cost of a VIP week is $2,400USD.

Essentially, the 2:1 resorts are twice as expensive if using Premier Nights or VIP Weeks. You get more value out of your Premier Weeks and VIP Weeks if you use them at 1:1 resorts.

All Zoetrys, most Secrets, most Breathless and a couple of Dreams resorts are 2:1 properties. The 1: 1 list includes a handful of Secrets, one Breathless, most Dreams and all Sunscapes.

There have been instances when a resort has changed from 1:1 to 2:1. Whether a resort wants to charge UVC members as a 2:1 or a 1:1 is a resort decision and not a UVC or Hyatt decision. In the olden days, when ALG owned UVC, they allowed UVC members to continue using a resort at the level it was when the member joined. For example, Secrets Royal Beach was 1:1 when we joined in 2019. They chose to become a 2:1 resort in 2022. Although new members have Secrets Royal Beach as a 2:1, it remains a 1:1 resort for me. Hyatt has honored what ALG did with grandfathering, but hasn't continued the practice. Secrets Tides and Secrets and Dreams Bahia Mita all opened as 1:1 resorts but all have changed recently to 2:1 resorts. All members have these resorts as 2:1, now, regardless of when they bought into the club.

We liked the idea of an adults-only property and Secrets Royal Beach was one of the few 1:1 Secrets.  It got good reviews from members in my FB groups and on TripAdvisor, so I booked it for January 2020 using Premier Nights. My Premier Nights balance was reduced by 7 nights for our one-week stay. This would be our first vacation with UVC and we had never been to Punta Cana. We were excited.

The week went great. The weather was fabulous. We took an excursion to the largest, hand-rolled cigar factory in the world (I smoke an occasional cigar), and another to swim with dolphins, and we spent plenty of time at the pools and on the beach and eating and drinking to our hearts' content. This was only our second all-inclusive experience, and we were living it to its fullest. 

We learned on this trip that UVC wants you to upgrade your membership even when you've had it only a year and have used it only once. The UVC rep on site invited us to an upgrade meeting (even after you buy in, you can't get rid of the salespeople) and gave us free massages to attend. We attended. We didn't upgrade, but we loved the massages! It was a great time. We left thinking we made a good decision buying into UVC.

Swimming with the fishes in Punta Cana

  

In the Beginning...

It began in January 2019. 

My wife and I were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, and she wanted to go some place special. I told her to plan whatever she wanted and not to worry about the cost. Believe it or not, she made the reservation based on which Caribbean island was predicting better weather the week we were traveling. So we found ourselves celebrating at Secrets St. James in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It didn't rain, and it was fun! 

It was the first time we had ever been to an all-inclusive resort and the first time we had traveled overseas together since our honeymoon in 1994. It was so much fun, we talked and decided to spend more of our time traveling together. Our three boys were grown and starting their own lives, and we had more time and more money to spend on ourselves. 

We were approached by the Unlimited Vacation Club (UVC) rep at Secrets St. James and agreed to sit down with him to see what the club was all about. We found out it was all about discount travel at many resorts, mostly in Mexico and the Caribbean. It looked great. There were several dozen properties where we could use our club benefits under different brands affiliated with AMResorts, the company behind the Unlimited Vacation Club: Zoetry, Secrets, Breathless, Dreams, Now (defunct), Reflect (defunct) and Sunscape. Each brand seemed to have its own vibe: Zoetrys were quiet and relaxed, Secrets were for couples, Dreams for families, Sunscape was the "budget friendly" brand.

There were a few other benefits to the club: RCI,  Lifestyle Collection, Amstar and a Yachts Certificate. We didn't really know what any of those were about, but we didn't care. They were there to use if we decided to use them, but we were mostly interested in the all-inclusive AMResorts properties. They gave us a bunch of pre-paid (Premier) nights and some more discounted (VIP) weeks. When those were all used up, we'd be able to book vacations for our remaining years at AMResorts properties for 25% less than what AMResorts charged everyone else.  It was just what we were looking for. We negotiated a price we could live with, and we left Secrets St. James as Unlimited Vacation Club, Gold Plus members!