Are discount membership holiday clubs timeshare?

No, they are simply not timeshare.  These clubs offer to give members discounts on future holidays, and there is no ownership or property rights involved.  Pre-paid holidays over a short term timescale are also not timeshare.  As legally defined under the present Timeshare Directive, ‘timeshare’ is ‘the right to spend a period of time (e.g. one or more weeks) in a holiday property for a specified or specifiable period of the year for three years or longer'. It is then, incorrect to call these other products ‘timeshare’. It is confusing and can mislead purchasers of such products. There is also evidence as well that some of these clubs have brought the true, established timeshare product into disrepute by being called timeshare.

These products include Discount Travel Membership Clubs and Holiday Packages that are not based on real estate. True timeshare sees the real estate directly or indirectly giving ownership or secured guarantees of occupancy rights to individual owners.