New Owner With Questions

dioxide45 · Jun 10, 2016

The Vistana Villages week we bought is officially in our name and Vistana has transferred ownership :whoopie:. I have read through the stickies and FAQs but still have a few questions.

Making Reservations with Banked StarOptions - I ready through the banking thread in the sticky. The one thing I don't know about, if I bank options from 2016 they are good through 2018. If I make a reservation in 2017, what options do they take first? The banked options or the year 2017 options? I would think I would want to use the 2017 options since I wouldn't have to pay a fee to bank those to 2019. But do they try to use up the banked options first? Do you have to call to make the reservation if you want to specify the order of options to use? Can you make a reservation online and then call them them swap out what options are used?
VSN II Account - How does this work? Some old threads indicate that Vistana will setup the II account. Once that is done you will see information about your II account on the 'What I Own' page on Vistana.com. You can then take that and setup your II web profile. How long does it usually take for Vistana to setup the account with II? Does it still show up under 'What I Own'?
Inventory - How exactly does inventory work. Can owners reserve any amount of available weeks 12 months in advance at their home resort? It doesn't seem that this is like Marriott where there are two buckets of inventory? Owners can reserve all the available units in a given week or weeks 12 months out and then you can see on the Villa Finder that there is already no chance to reserve that week well before the 8 month StarOption reservation period starts?

SMHarman · Jun 10, 2016

1 fifo is the auto first choice but you get to choose.

2 Vistana.com will set up the account in a few weeks it is part of your Svn fee

3. Good question Svn Units and owner weeks are largely one pot at 8 months a week turns to points and is available to all points holders. All weeks may be booked by owners, say winter break or summer in hi. Then no Svn availability. Likely can see that on villa finder in advance.

DeniseM · Jun 10, 2016

dioxide45 said:
[*]Inventory - How exactly does inventory work. Can owners reserve any amount of available weeks 12 months in advance at their home resort? It doesn't seem that this is like Marriott where there are two buckets of inventory? Owners can reserve all the available units in a given week or weeks 12 months out and then you can see on the Villa Finder that there is already no chance to reserve that week well before the 8 month StarOption reservation period starts?
[/LIST]

Yes - Owners can make home resort reservations from 12-8 mos. out and reserve as many weeks as they OWN at the resort where the own.

During high season, it's common for the most popular dates to be booked solid, before the Staroption window opens at the 8 mo. mark.

At the 8 mo. mark, you can reserve anything you see available at any resort, as long as you have enough Staroptions.

dioxide45 · Jun 11, 2016

SMHarman said:
2 Vistana.com will set up the account in a few weeks it is part of your Svn fee

Thanks. I do understand that the II membership is part of the VSN fee and that Starwood will set it up. My question is, how do I know when they have actually done that? Do I get an email, do I see it online in the what I own section, do I get a letter? Just now sure how I actually know.

Markus · Jun 11, 2016

dioxide45 said:
Thanks. I do understand that the II membership is part of the VSN fee and that Starwood will set it up. My question is, how do I know when they have actually done that? Do I get an email, do I see it online in the what I own section, do I get a letter? Just now sure how I actually know.

You will see it on line in the what I own section. Once you click on this option your weeks will be displayed and the information on the exchange company will appear. You will then be able to go to the Interval site, register, if you have not already done so with previous Starwood weeks, and then see your ownership available for exchange.

Markus

SMHarman · Jun 11, 2016

dioxide45 said:
Thanks. I do understand that the II membership is part of the VSN fee and that Starwood will set it up. My question is, how do I know when they have actually done that? Do I get an email, do I see it online in the what I own section, do I get a letter? Just now sure how I actually know.

Email. Letter from Interval. Link in Vistana.com

GregT · Jun 11, 2016

dioxide45 said:
The Vistana Villages week we bought is officially in our name and Vistana has transferred ownership :whoopie:.

Dioxide,

Welcome to the Starwood board as an Owner!!!

Now you need to buy an HGVC....

Best,

Greg

dioxide45 · Jun 11, 2016

GregT said:
Dioxide,

Welcome to the Starwood board as an Owner!!!

Now you need to buy an HGVC....

Best,

Greg

Haha. Not sure we will go down that road any time soon. We are timeshare week heavy now with the new addition. Not sure we will get to use them all. We may start reserving full two bedrooms to try to confirm OGS in to two bedroom units instead of always locking off our Marriott units. Otherwise, we would have to sell a week to pick up another and I won't sell our enrolled Marriott weeks since we can never create those again for the prices that we paid. So we will play around with Vistana for a while to see how it goes.

dioxide45 · Jun 18, 2016

Just to add some data points our our purchase. We signed the contract with the broker on 4/26/2016 and our new ownership was recognized by Visatana on 6/7/2016. So it took 42 days start to finish.

Helios · Jun 18, 2016

dioxide45 said:
Just to add some data points our our purchase. We signed the contract with the broker on 4/26/2016 and our new ownership was recognized by Visatana on 6/7/2016. So it took 42 days start to finish.

IIRC, I once transferred a MB week in about 30 days. But I have also waited 4 months for others.

rog2867 · Jun 18, 2016

moto x said:
IIRC, I once transferred a MB week in about 30 days. But I have also waited 4 months for others.

I thought only Bella and Key west were mandatory for this resort and you could not use the options to go to another resort? The poster does not say what phase they purchased. Unless they are talking about always just going to this resort only..

Helios · Jun 18, 2016

rog2867 said:
I thought only Bella and Key west were mandatory for this resort and you could not use the options to go to another resort? The poster does not say what phase they purchased. Unless they are talking about always just going to this resort only..

Yes on the mandatory. I posted about time it takes to transfer.

dioxide45 · Jun 18, 2016

rog2867 said:
I thought only Bella and Key west were mandatory for this resort and you could not use the options to go to another resort? The poster does not say what phase they purchased. Unless they are talking about always just going to this resort only..

We purchased an SVV Bella phase.

dioxide45 · Jun 29, 2016

Okay. I now see where our II account has been setup. It just showed up one day when logging in to our account. I didn't have to do anything to connect it to our web profile.

One thing I am seeing is that the resort code they have tied to our account is SV3. It indicates that the 2BR is lock off capable. I actually see three unit placeholders for each use year of our week; a 2BED, 1BEDA and 1BEDB. Even though we own a dedicated 2BR unit. Is this just how they do it, or did someone goof? I don't really plan to trade trough II and will instead use the StarOptions, but in the event we ever did, I wouldn't want any hangups when trying to confirm our unit.

New Owner With Questions

dioxide45

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SMHarman

DeniseM

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Markus

SMHarman

GregT

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Helios

rog2867

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