We recently finished a 7 night promotional stay at Holiday Inn Club Vacations Smoky Mountain Resort in Gatlinburg that cost $299 upfront and included the usual required timeshare presentation. I wanted to share how the experience went overall.
Check in was very smooth and quick. The front desk handled everything in a few minutes and gave us the usual information about the resort along with details for the sales presentation scheduled for the next morning.
Our unit was a spacious two room villa that was clean and well maintained. It came stocked with a lot of basics like laundry detergent, dish soap, and other small essentials. Housekeeping was helpful whenever we asked for extra items. The kitchen had plenty of dishes and cookware, and the balcony with rocking chairs was a nice spot to relax in the evenings. The weather was mostly nice too, with a bit of rain and even some snow one morning.
The timeshare presentation lasted about an hour and a half. At the beginning I told the representative we weren’t interested in buying anything because we usually travel using points and miles. He appreciated the honesty but still went through the presentation since it was required. It ended up being pretty relaxed and not very high pressure. After it finished, the manager offered a couple discounted packages which we declined, and that was the end of it. We then received the perks from the promotion: our $299 refunded and 20,000 IHG One Rewards points.
There were a few issues during the stay though. Maintenance had to come to our room several times because guests below us reported water dripping from their ceiling, which they suspected was coming from our bathroom. Eventually they found a leaking valve in the wall. The maintenance staff were polite, but the repeated visits were a bit disruptive.
The walk in shower also had a small issue because the door was missing weather stripping, so water would leak out onto the floor. We ended up using towels to stop the water.
The biggest annoyance was the smoke detectors. On the second, third, and fourth nights they randomly started going off late at night. This was especially frustrating since we were traveling with toddlers and an infant. Maintenance replaced the detectors but it didn’t fix the issue right away. Eventually I unplugged them and took them to the front desk. They were later reinstalled while we were out and thankfully didn’t go off again.
Despite those problems, the deal still worked out well. For the initial $299 booking we ended up getting a week in a large two bedroom suite, attending a relatively low pressure presentation, getting the $299 refunded, and receiving 20,000 IHG points.
If you don’t mind sitting through a short presentation and being clear that you’re not interested in buying, these promotional packages can be a pretty inexpensive way to take a vacation.
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