"We get the weeks we want"
Booking
One of the biggest concerns for many potential 21-5 families is naturally whether you can get the weeks you want.
If you own your own holiday home, you can use it exactly when you want. When you share holiday homes with others, you have to be considerate of each other.
It's important that there's room in the calendar each year for some weeks not to be booked. If we had created a formula where our families' holiday wishes for a year were only just mathematically fulfilled, it would not be optimal. There might be flexibility in the low seasons, but during the rest of the year the calendar would be very tight.
When 21 families share 5 homes, each family has an average of 12.4 weeks in the homes each year.
Experience from over 30,000 bookings in our 21-5 associations since 2012 shows that our families book 8.8 weeks on average, including lending to family and close friends.
Some families book 10-12 weeks or more each year, mainly outside peak seasons. While others - especially families with children - book 4-6 weeks each year. However, these weeks are often during school holidays.
The average usage, compared to what's actually available for each family, provides exactly the air in the calendar needed to feel flexible and have great opportunities for impulsive holidays.
More than
Bookings
Available on average
Weeks for each family
Allocation of the weeks
"We basically get the weeks we want"
Our current 21-5 families essentially get the vacations they want. In the new international owner associations, flexibility will increase even more due to the variation in peak seasons across nationalities.
“We can get the weeks we want - or very close to”.
Our booking system is designed to give our 21-5 families considerable freedom to book the weeks that suit them best. The system is built around a set of rules that allow for long term planning as well as spontaneous vacation booking.
The booking system is online 24 hours a day and is very easy to use, even for those of us who are not IT experts.
Sweetspot between price and flexibility
21-5 - the (almost) perfect formula
21-5 has proven to be the perfect solution for the vast majority of families.
Statistics show that in our nationally established owner associations, there is the possibility of booking on very short notice in most weeks of the year.
The image of the calendar is from a real 21-5 owner association. The green dots show how many weeks were never booked in a normal calendar year.
Our experience tells us that on average there are 60-80 weeks per year that can be booked at very short notice.
In the international owner associations with families from several countries, the flexibility is even greater.
How it works
The booking system
Smart points system
Each family recieves a number of points per year that can be used for booking. Each week costs a certain number of points, depending on whether the week falls in or out of the season - typically school holidays. Families with children normally book fewer weeks a year. Those weeks are booked especially during school vacations, while families without school-age children book more weeks spread across high, mid and low seasons. Families who don't work at all have the most flexibility, as they can stretch their points to well over 20 weeks a year, if they wish.
All points are dedicated to a specific calendar year. There are special rules for the ski season to ensure that everyone can ski at least one week if they wish.
The points are released in two stages to ensure that the booking process is calm, fair and stress-free.
The booking system is constantly being developed and updated
Our 21-5 families first started using the booking system at the end of 2012. Since then, many bookings have been made, creating a unique knowledge base that is constantly evolving. We use our experience to continuously improve the system, with the most valuable source of improvement being our 21-5 families who use the booking system every day.
The most important aspect of the ongoing development of the booking system is to ensure that it is updated based on the wishes and needs of our 21-5 families, so that it is always possible to plan important vacations well in advance and also to book spontaneous vacations at short notice.
Book as many consecutive weeks as you like
You can book as many consecutive weeks as you like. The only limits are your points and the bookings by other families. Many families book 2 or 3 consecutive weeks or more. The current record holder has managed to book 8 consecutive weeks at their home in Mallorca.
There is much more flexibility in a 21-5 owner association than most people imagine.
How we use our holiday homes
Family vacations
If we formed our 21-5 owner associations with 21 families all with similar vacation preferences, it wouldn't work well. If all the families wanted the same weeks in the same homes, it would be a battle to secure those weeks.
That's why it's perfect that international owner associations have a wide range of school vacation periods.
A family with school-age children is often constrained when it comes to vacations. Families become more flexible when their children finish elementary school, and even more so when they're out of the school system - and then the grandchildren come along.
When we look at our existing owner associations, about half are families with schoolchildren, the rest of the families are more flexible. We'd like to say that we arranged it on purpose, but the reality is that it just happened. Coupled with the different school terms, everyone can get the weeks that are most important to them.
