I don't know where this whole proportiong idea comes from. If I just happened to own 10% of the weeks in my season (and hold them in a trust and dole them out to friends and family according to my rules) do you think Marriott would automatically give me reservations "in proportion" to that 10%, or would they make me call or go online to reserve the intervals I want like everyone else? We all know the answer to that. So why does Marriott get to do it (if in fact they do as has been reported)?
I don't know if I'm saying it correctly but here's how I think things have worked/are working in practice.
First, prior to the DC inception, assuming 100 same resort/same size unit/same season Weeks with 80 sold and 20 still held by MVCI. These 100 Weeks are the result of ten like units on property with the seasonal calendar running 10 weeks, which allows for 8 units each of the 10 weeks to be allotted to Owners and 2 each Week to be allotted to Marriott. For purposes of the 12- and 13-mos Reservation Procedures, this allows for 5 like units to be held back for the 12-mos window while the other 5 like units can be booked prior to the 12-mos windows as parts of concurrent/consecutive-interval bookings.
In the simplest metric the 80 owned Weeks are booked by Owners and the 20 held by MVCI are used as lodging for Preview stays. In the most convoluted metric MVCI as the management company has to account for and apportion Weeks by factors such as which Owners are and are not eligible for the 13-mos window, Owners exchanging out through II, Owners ineligible to use their Weeks due to mortgages/mf's in arrears, Owners who don't follow the Reservation Rules resulting in MVCI gaining unbooked intervals, eligible Owners electing MRP's, Owners simply not using their Weeks, and any number of other things that I'm not thinking of. Over all the years when Weeks were the only game in town MVCI wasn't completely transparent about inventory allocation but what they did say was that their allocation was fine-tuned as best it could be to the point that like units were spread out over the available check-in days, and we didn't automatically assume that they were acting out of compliance when we weren't able to book our first choice of home resort stays.
Now comes the DC and MVCI's separation from MI, re-branding as MVW. The same 100 like intervals still exist but Owners now have an array of DC-related options via enrolling their Weeks that didn't exist before, some of the intervals are conveyed to a Trust, and MVW's responsibility as the Management Company is to allocate inventory such that the usage rights of Weeks Owners (enrolled and un-enrolled) and Trust Members are protected. If I'm reading you correctly you think that means the Trustee must conform to the Reservation Procedures for Weeks on the same basis as every other Weeks Owner, effectively pre-designating specific intervals by check-in date for usage by DC Members. I think differently, that MVW can in advance of the Reservation Windows opening, pre-designate the proportional number of intervals that will be available for Weeks Owners using their 12- or 13-mos windows, DC Members using their applicable windows, MRP stays, cash stays, II exchanges, etc etc etc, but that MVW doesn't pre-designate any specific intervals to DC usage instead releasing it as it's requested by eligible DC members.
I think that the Weeks Reservation Procedures and the DC Trust and Exchange Procedures governing docs allow MVW the leeway to manipulate the inventory in such a way that after the Reservation Windows are open, the over-riding first-come-first-served mandate is protected so long as MVW doesn't release too many Weeks into either the Weeks system or the DC system. In that way, the inventory is properly proportioned on an ongoing basis but the DC Members aren't limited to only the intervals which the Trustee can successfully reserve. What I see is that they've implemented safeguards to ensure that if 40 of the existing 80 Weeks Owners in my example have not elected other usage and are in good standing, then no more or less than 40 like intervals will be available to them on the same f-c-f-s basis. Sure, the DC introduces all kinds of metrics that didn't exist before, that make a simple scenario all but impossible, but that doesn't automatically equate to MVW needing to be out of compliance in order to make it work.
Since the DC introduction, MVW has tried to assure Weeks Owners and DC Members that they are as committed to proper inventory allocation as MVCI always had been, that careful consideration was given during the DC design process to ensure that the rights of Weeks Owners were of primary importance. And notably, they've continued to say that their allocation metrics still are fine-tuned right down to proportionally allocating check-in days. If they didn't allocate proportionately, how could any of that be possible? If they hadn't been able to protect Weeks Owners' rights while simultaneously allowing Weeks to be integrated in the DC via the DC Exchange Company, then the regulatory agencies wouldn't have approved MVW's introduction of the DC as is. Instead MVW would have been forced to introduce the DC as wholly separate from the existing Weeks program, allowing for no integration between the two. But we, at least here on TUG, are so much less willing to accept those reassurances since the DC inception. I don't get it.
I know that anything is possible and MVW may very well be doing nefarious things that I haven't even thought of, or that my read on all this is so far off base it's out of the park entirely. But always I go back to, what would be the point of them doing anything that would put their business at such a high level of risk? That just doesn't make sense when the products they do have, their co-existing systems that have been approved by the regulatory agencies, allow their business a healthy revenue source while they're delivering to Weeks Owners and DC Members the usage rights that they've been promised.
Sorry, this is another novel. If I could figure out how to use fewer words and say the same thing then I'd do it, but I think we're in agreement that a complex system can't be explained with simplicity. (Still, I'm sure some TUGger will come along and do a better job of it than I have. No doubt I have many more "DOH! Why didn't I think of that?!" moments ahead of me.)
