White Sands owner Mark Harris shares why he loves his timeshare.

Why did we ever consider timeshare?  I think back to a particular package holiday in Italy in the late 1980s.  My wife and I together with our youngest teenaged daughter were on a half-board package holiday.

The accommodation was a disappointment. The en-suite facilities consisted of a tiny cubicle off the bedroom where the shower was over the toilet and hand basin. This meant everything got wet when someone wanted a shower.

The room itself was so small that we had to climb over my daughter's fold- up bed to get to the door or bathroom. And look out: if you were not in the dining hall by 8.30am for breakfast you went hungry.

Move forward a few months and an invitation to visit a new development in Devon. We were shown a well-furnished apartment with all the facilities one could hope to find on holiday. There was a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, sauna, tennis courts and a fabulous seaside location.

We purchased our first week of timeshare, which included membership to Interval International. We realised we were not buying into cheap holidays, but we were buying into holidays where we knew that we would get good quality accommodation.

Since then, we have stayed at our home resort as well as exchanging into other resorts in Europe and the States.

We have also tried other self-catering package holidays and have grown to appreciate the difference in quality and facilities.  In several of these packaged self-catering resorts we were invited to pay extra on arrival if we wanted a kettle, TV or any other such luxuries!

Move forward a few more years and we received an invitation to Menorca to discuss the LSI points system (which are now Diamond Resorts points).

We felt the flexibility of points would suit us. We could go away on our own and stay in a studio or we could take family with us and have a larger apartment with several bathrooms.  We could stay for a few days or a few weeks if we had the points.

In fact as the years have gone by we have purchased more points. At times, both in the U.K. and Tenerife, we have booked multiple apartments to allow us to take our children and grandchildren away with us while allowing them their own space.

Wherever we go we know we will have a comfortable apartment with excellent facilities.

We have had great timeshare holidays throughout the U.K., Europe, the U.S.A. and Australia.

Do we regret buying into timeshare? Not at all. Now we have retired we have even more time to enjoy our holidays and appreciate the quality of the accommodation and facilities in our homes away from home.

You can read why other owners love their timeshare in the summer issue of Sharetime magazine. You can read it here: Sharetime Magazine