The Crane Beach Resort, on the island of Barbados, is one of the best exchanges I’ve ever done.  It’s said that it is the first resort ever built in the Caribbean! The main building, which still exists, started accepting guests at the end of the 1700’s.

The Crane sits on a bluff above one of the most beautiful palm lined, pink sand beaches you’ll ever see.  You take a switchback staircase down to it where the staff will bring you drinks and rent you umbrellas and body boards.  The shallow slope of the beach makes it safe for swimming and even though there were good waves for body surfing, I detected no undertow or rip currents. 

It’s also on the quieter and more remote side of Barbados and is very romantic.  It’s away from the hustle and bustle of Bridgetown, the capital, and the more popular resort area of St. Lawrence Gap. 

The pool has one of the most dramatic settings you’ll ever find.  At far end of the pool are  sets of Dorian columns that are backed by the ocean.  It’s truly a breathtaking setting.  You can see some pictures of it here.

There are a great restaurant and pool bar on site and a grocery store nearby.  Because the Crane is more remote you’ll either want to rent a car or take tours to see the other parts of the beautiful island. 

Be warned, Barbados is a former British Colony so you drive on the left, which takes some getting used to for many of us.  Also, be sure to look both ways when stepping off a sidewalk because the cars will be coming from a direction you’re not used to.

Make sure you visit Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary, a beautifully manicured mangrove swamp filled with the natural flora and fauna of Barbados.  Look for the beautiful Rainbow Eucalyptus trees the bare trunks of which are covered with the pastel colors of the rainbow.

Barbados is also outside of the hurricane zone so you can safely travel there anytime of the year.  Winter is best, of course, but the hardest time to exchange.  I was there in May and it was great.

You can check it out at http://www.thecrane.com/.

You’ll find this one of the most challenging timeshare exchanges you’ll ever do.  If you want any chance of exchanging to this resort, make sure you pick up

“The Insider’s Secrets to Exchanging Your RCI Timeshare -
The Da Vinci Code of Timeshare Exchanging.

In the next post find out which resort you can stay at with its own penguin colony while still wearing shorts all week.

Exchange Tip #2, like the first tip, is one you may have heard before but read it carefully.  In it I reveal a strategy and technique
that few timeshare owners know or use.  Used correctly, it will give you an unfair advantage over millions of timeshare owners when exchanging.

TIP #2 REQUEST EARLY

O.K. I know you’re probably rolling your eyes at this one because it’s so obvious.  But keep reading to learn some Insider’s Secrets few timeshare owners know of or use.

Requesting early, in either RCI or Interval International, especially combined with banking early, will really increase your exchange power.  But again, many timeshare owners don’t put in their requests until they know exactly where and when they want to go.  It’s natural.

So what do you do?

INSIDER’S SECRET

Put in a request for a resort that you have little if any chance of getting, to timestamp your request date as early as possible. 
 
In the timeshare world, if I request a resort today and you request the exact same thing tomorrow, and everything else between us is
equal, I’ll get confirmed before you because I requested one measly day before you did.

When do you think the bulk of millions of timeshare owners put in their exchange requests in RCI and Interval International?  If you guessed the first quarter of the year you’d be right.  That’s because the holidays are over, people are looking forward to a fresh start on the year AND they’ve just received and paid their HOA’s. 

This serves to remind them to start planning for their vacation. You want to be ahead of the multitudes of exchangers and get your
request in before the first quarter of the year.

This means you had better get a request for next year in this year.

I request from RCI, Borgo di Vagli in Tuscany, Italy in the summertime at the same time I bank my week just to get my request
time stamped early. And later, when I know where I really want to go, I call back simply change my request.

I use the same technique with Interval International requesting the Franz Klammer Lodge, a Fairmont Hotels and Resorts property, for Christmas and New Years and Ocho Cascadas in February. 

Interval International once told me that they only get 30 exchanges a year from Ocho Cascadas and I’d venture a guess that
none of them are February weeks.

If you want to read about how you can learn many more ways to supercharge your exchange power, and exponentially increase your chances of exchanging into the best resorts in the world, go to

www.TheTimeshareExpert.com/rcisecrets.html

That’s it for now.  Look for Tip #3 to tie it all together.