Owner's Update --- Westin Riverfront Mountain Villas

I've been a long time lurker on this site and wanted to provide a quick report on the owner's update my wife and I attended over Spring break at the Westin in Avon, CO.

By way of background, we own two weeks (2 bedroom Plat+) EOY at the Westin Lagunamar which is treated by SVO as 148,100 StarOptions for every year.

As expected, the sales guys pitched the new Sheraton trust program and stated that it is the future of timesharing, implying that all future SVO inventory and development would (in his opinion) end up in the trust. He claimed that this is more fair for all owners as to equalize the maintenance fees and taxes across the board. he also claimed that it would allow for the cheapest way for me to get up to 3-star elite b/c I would only need to buy enough trust options to get to 159K star-options. The price for this was roughly $4800 plus $650 in closing fees. I responded that the minimal benefits of 3-star elite were not worth (to me at least) $5400.

I mentioned that I was interested in an EY or EOY at the Sheraton Steamboat property that the press release noted was going to have more villa development. There is nothing for them to sell at this property yet, but that didn't stop the sales guys from speculating that the future inventory at Steamboat will end up in the trust in the future (which was directly contradicted later by the explorer salesman).

BTW to purchase 148,100 staroptions in the trust was $52,000. To which I commented that none of the properties currently in trust appeared to be worth such an outlay -- again in my opinion.

Finally, as noted above when I was talking to the Explorer package sales guy in our exit meeting, I again mentioned that I was interested in the Steamboat property, and he specifically stated that he did not see that development going into the Trust and that he expected the entire hotel to be converted to timeshares -- which would be great because that would certainly add a lot of inventory for skiers.

Do you have more info on the trust discussion. I am not aware of the implications.

Tfleming675 said:

Do you have more info on the trust discussion. I am not aware of the implications.

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There is a long on-going thread about this here on the Starwood forum.

However, it's mostly info. that has been gleaned from sales presentations, because there has been no official announcement from Starwood.

Just to add, the MF for the 148,100 Flex SOs is around $2200 (about the same for what I pay now for SVV) and the $52k cost is a bit more compared to buying a 67100 SOs and 81000 SOs SVV units which cost about $48K.

We just did an owner update at SVV. Our numbers were very similar to yours.
Our salesperson made it appear as if everything that sold in the future would be in this trust. She said it was "wildly successful". We asked if the new Hawaii property would be in the trust and she said it would be. They (Starwood) were working on the deeds and any leftover inventory would be converted into the trust.
Later I pointed out that it was called Sheraton Flex. Again, I asked if they were only going to pull Sheraton properties into the trust and not Westin. She said no, all properties would be converted into trusts. She did indicate that due to Mexican law the Cancun and the new Mexico properties would be handled differently.

This new Flex program is nothing more than, and should be appropriately be retitled "Starwood's churn." They are out of inventory and know it and they have to stay in business somehow and make any excuse to get you to essentially buy your week all over again. If you are Starwood why not tell all the owners that what you bought before is now crap and that you need to pay us more to "upgrade" to this "new" program. Unless there is a significant increase in resort options they'll churn just now, make up a new "system" and churn again later. This supports the advice buy where and when you want to go because Starwood can, and will, change the system.

Exactly. Before the sales pitch was that you needed to buy at the property that you wanted to spend the bulk of your time at because you had priority booking at 12 months. At our update this time, our salesperson tried to tell us that owners at SVV had no problem booking Maui at 8 months. Same with St. John. REALLY? So now as an owner of those properties you now want be to believe that what I own has no more value than owning Orlando and I can book at any of those high demand places at 8 months. Thanks, I'll buy more of what you're selling LMAO. Not to mention that I am using your system and know full well what can and cannot be booked at 12-8months.

canesfan said:

At our update this time, our salesperson tried to tell us that owners at SVV had no problem booking Maui at 8 months. Same with St. John. REALLY?

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Yah right. Took me weeks to get one of three units avail on any given summer day at WSJ. They were always gone in seconds.

Someone should make them sit down and not be able to give any more presentations until they successfully book something with SO's at a high demand property in high season.

Although it was represented by our salesperson and others according to other poster's owner updates - I do not believe all future SVO development will go into the Trust. In fact as noted in my first post, in the same owner's update, two SVO reps contradicted themselves as to the potential future inventory at Sheraton Steamboat.

The Trust appears to me a way to sell less desirable inventory that has been sitting unsold . . . SVO thinking appears to be that since there are no takers for low demand weeks for individual Florida and Myrtle Beach Sheraton properties than can combine the junk together and act like now this inventory has value in combination. In my opinion, it's still overpriced junk that you could rent annually for less than the maintenance fees and save your purchase price.

Another issue I have with the trust is if you have multiple properties and owners that can book at 12-months, how will this effect the availability of those properties at the 8-month period for non trust owners. For me, I am not interested in the current trust properties for vacationing, but if they added the proposed additional Steamboat Springs inventory then I would be interested. At that point even if I bought in the trust, would the 12 month window allow me to get a prime ski week when SVO has 5-6 different properties linked together? The only reason to buy a developer purchase is to obtain some sort of certainty that you can get the weeks you want to vacation at the location you purchased. The Trust seems to break that compact.

DTD1990 said:

Another issue I have with the trust is if you have multiple properties and owners that can book at 12-months, how will this effect the availability of those properties at the 8-month period for non trust owners. For me, I am not interested in the current trust properties for vacationing, but if they added the proposed additional Steamboat Springs inventory then I would be interested. At that point even if I bought in the trust, would the 12 month window allow me to get a prime ski week when SVO has 5-6 different properties linked together? The only reason to buy a developer purchase is to obtain some sort of certainty that you can get the weeks you want to vacation at the location you purchased. The Trust seems to break that compact.

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In theory, trust weeks would be separate inventory pools, just like they do for in theory for SVN weeks vs hotel controlled weeks vs ... with specific rules for weeks being transferred between pools (ie a SVN week is converted to SPG points, or a reservation with SO's at a different property, etc)

The million dollar question continues to be is that what's really happening.

YYJMSP said:

In theory, trust weeks would be separate inventory pools, just like they do for in theory for SVN weeks vs hotel controlled weeks vs ... with specific rules for weeks being transferred between pools (ie a SVN week is converted to SPG points, or a reservation with SO's at a different property, etc)



The million dollar question continues to be is that what's really happening.

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We need more transparency with Starwood, especially now that there are multiple methods to obtain a unit.


Sent from my iPad

Do you think this Trust will be like Wyndham for availability? Will it be only the inventory that is in the Trust? If they can have any availability it could be detrimental to those of us not in the Trust????

I also attended a sales presentation at the Westin Riverfront property in early March. We were told the inventory in the Sheraton Trust Flex program was or will be all the currently unsold weeks at those properties, plus foreclosures, trade-in (trade up) inventory, etc. Probably not a lot of prime weeks available there, except for Orlando. Sales rep said you would only be able to reserve weeks within the trust during your 12 month home resort period, but all properties would be available at 8 months just like all other Staroption points. Sales rep also stated he thought a similar trust arrangement would be set up for certain Westin properties, which would sell at a higher price point. However, he clearly stated that was just him speculating and not something that had been determined. My opinion on this whole arrangement is that it is a way to sell otherwise undesirable inventory. Maintenance fees were ridiculously high, but the conversion option to Starpoints at a rate of .52 is somewhat attractive.

I went to an Owners update last week at Westin Riverfront. As expected they talked about the spin off and how great these new destinations would be. They didn't know when they would begin selling at these new locations. They talked about Sheraton Flex, but surprisingly didn't try tell me that my SVR weeks would be way better off in the trust. In fact they didn't even quote me a price to move them into the trust. The MF's for what I own would be 25% higher in the trust.

The main thing they focused on was my SDO week that closed the week before I went to the update. They asked me where I got it and what I had paid for it. (I bought it from a fellow TUGger and paid $200) They said that I had got a great deal and that they have something I may be interested in. What he then pitched to me was an "upgrade" on my SDO week. I could upgrade it to 100,000 trust SO's for just over $34,000 with MF's just over $1800 and would get 50,000 SP's. Then they would give me $11,400 credit for something that I paid $200 bucks for! :rofl: I'm sure he knew this wasn't much of a deal, since he didn't try push this at all after he showed it to me.

We also talked about retro, and he told me that my 1-52 SDO unit would only get 56,300 SO's as a retro because it is deeded week 35. I was under the assumption that all 1-52 floats would get 81k SO's. Not that it matters, since I would never retro that week anyway.

As cubigbird said, Sheraton Flex should be called Starwood Churn. This could not be more true. I asked the salesperson about what is being sold where, and it sounds like Sheraton Flex is what is predominately being sold. Talk about having nothing to sell.