# Abound Sales Pitch - Buy Vistana Now?



## Burton504 (Oct 9, 2022)

Looking for some insight into the sales pitch I got at Westin Lagunamar. They said that for Vistana owners, you take how many star points you have and divide by 30 to get Club Points. They said that the lowest number of Marriott Club points you could buy from Marriott would be $25,000.  However, if you bought a "cheap" resort now in Vistana, for example a 37,000 star point one for $16,000, you would be able to get 1,234 club points.  That works out to $12.966 a club point.  
Having no idea how much a Club point is really worth, I wanted to get insight from a Marriott person, is that a "good deal?"
They were also pushing "status" hard.  A large percentage of Vistana owners have a 81,000 Star Option Unit.  If I bought an additional 37,000 unit, I would get Select status (aka over 4000 club points), which ment I could book 13 months out instead of the standard 12.  How worth it would that really be?  Are there a lot of Marriott resorts you have no chance of booking a spring break week as a lowly "non-status" owner?
Really appreciate any insight!


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## jabberwocky (Oct 9, 2022)

Not worth it.  Walk away and enjoy the rest of your vacation!  If you want you can buy 1500 resale Abound points for around $10k and get the same status level.


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## Venter (Oct 10, 2022)

Mmm....
Were they trying to sell Aventuras points?  Looking at Dioxide's point tracker Aventuras converts to Abound by dividing by 30.
At the moment the MF's for Abound points for next year is estimated to be $0.71/point(I think).  Your MF would be $876.14 for 1234 Abound points.

Next year 37 000 Aventuras points will have a maintenance fee of $600.51.  If you convert to Abound the points would have cost you $0.4866/point.

So there is some merit in buying this package instead of resale as your yearly MF will be less.  If they throw in some incentives like start MF in 2024 and receive 74 000 Vistana points it may bring the cost down even further.  Sometimes they will also discount a recent paid stay if you play hard to get.

Select gives you the opportunity to book 7+days at 13 months out.  The next level is executive and in my opinion the sweet spot as you can book 1+ days at 13 months out.  You can still book 13 months out if you are owner level but will have to pay a percentage extra for the reservation, that you loose if you cancel.  Cannot remember the percentage.

So if you want to be select and have the money it may be worth it in the long run.


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## vacationtime1 (Oct 10, 2022)

Start with the basics:  where do you want to vacation, in what season, and for how long?

Don't play the "status game" (Select, Executive, etc.); that is secondary. Salespeople like to sell status because it sounds good to buyers and sets specific numbers of points to sell.

Points are flexible, but at a steep price.  The best answer may be a resale week somewhere you would like to return to annually (or bi-annually) which would cost a fraction of the amount required using points.


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## DRH90277 (Oct 10, 2022)

Where does this go with many of us buying resale weeks because of advantages, disappointment in the points program, and the cost of the points program.  And then, what's the point program's future if we don't deposit our weeks in the program for whatever reason? Status doesn't mean so much without available inventory that "we" want.  Encouraging us to use points for overpriced outsourced vacation options is not the answer.

Seems selling more points and adding Weston/Sheraton properties is the perceived answer, but will this really help us as participants?  I know it will help the VAC shareholders.


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## winger (Oct 10, 2022)

vacationtime1 said:


> Start with the basics:  where do you want to vacation, in what season, and for how long?
> 
> Don't play the "status game" (Select, Executive, etc.); that is secondary. Salespeople like to sell status because it sounds good to buyers and sets specific numbers of points to sell.
> 
> Points are flexible, but at a steep price.  The best answer may be a resale week somewhere you would like to return to annually (or bi-annually) which would cost a fraction of the amount required using points.


There is the flip side,  that some realize and are OK with the extra cost to have flexibility. In this case, buying Club Points, even with higher maintenance fees than deeded weeks, to have flexibility of non-7 night stays, choosing unit sizes, and instant exchange vs waiting on II to match exchange requests.


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## vacationtime1 (Oct 10, 2022)

winger said:


> There is the flip side,  that some realize and are OK with the extra cost to have flexibility. In this case, buying Club Points, even with higher maintenance fees than deeded weeks, to have flexibility of non-7 night stays, choosing unit sizes, and instant exchange vs waiting on II to match exchange requests.


I agree; the flexibility offered by using points is nice.  But OP's post focuses entirely on point cost and "status" -- rather on how the points might be used.  If OP's intent is (for example), an annual week at Lagunamar, a resale week is not only cheaper, but also easier to use.


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## winger (Oct 11, 2022)

vacationtime1 said:


> I agree; the flexibility offered by using points is nice.  But OP's post focuses entirely on point cost and "status" -- rather on how the points might be used.  If OP's intent is (for example), an annual week at Lagunamar, a resale week is not only cheaper, but also easier to use.


In an ideal world, a person would have enrolled deeded resale weeks at his favorite resort(s) that offer low MF/point ratio. He would then have the best of both worlds, ability to book weeks & very low costs, and yet have the flexibility to elect points for use.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 11, 2022)

vacationtime1 said:


> Points are flexible, but at a steep price.  The best answer may be a resale week somewhere you would like to return to annually (or bi-annually) which would cost a fraction of the amount required using points.



It's also important not to directly compare buying a resale week to a points purchase. They are really two different products, with different advantages/disadvantages. Which product is best for any one person depends on what that person is looking for.

Resale weeks are generally the best solution for travel to places you want to go in 7-night increments every year (or every other year, in the case of EOY ownerships). You can buy the season, view, and unit size you always need. But newly purchased resale weeks can't play in the Abound points system (without a large points purchase to enroll them), so the only way to book something other than what you own is to use II and deal with its frustrating (for us) deposit/wait/hope reservation model.

On the other hand, points are generally a less cost effective way to go to the same place repeatedly, but they excel in offering flexibility to travel for shorter or longer than 7 nights, choose the unit size/view you need for each trip, and travel anywhere with availability in the points network of resorts - albeit at a generally higher cost than resale weeks. It's also generally easier to book what you want with points versus doing an II trade, but as is the case with any trading/points system, if you must have spring break, summer school break, Christmas/New Years, even points may present booking challenges. I've never felt timeshares - other than fixed weeks - are all that great for travel during these peak demand periods.

So, if you want to be able to go to a favorite vacation destination every year in peak times - buy a resale week there that meets your needs. If you want to travel to a variety of places, for differing trip lengths, in differing unit sizes, and don't absolutely have to travel during peak demand/school break times, then find the best deal you can on a points system.

I'll also add that a big factor in being satisfied with timeshare ownership is going in with reasonable expectations. If you expect timeshares to do things for you that they don't excel at, you will frequently be disappointed.


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## ljmiii (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I'll also add that a big factor in being satisfied with timeshare ownership is going in with reasonable expectations. If you expect timeshares to do things for you that they don't excel at, you will frequently be disappointed.


While I agree with everything @JIMinNC said I would add one additional factor I often mention over in the DVC world - in any timeshare system you should be able to book when the window opens. If you can't predict when and where you would like to vacation 7 or 9 or 11 or 12 or 13 or whatever months in advance you are unlikely to be happy with your timeshare purchase.

In the MVC world this translates to understanding the different effective windows weeks and points have at each resort.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> It's also important not to directly compare buying a resale week to a points purchase. They are really two different products, with different advantages/disadvantages. Which product is best for any one person depends on what that person is looking for.
> 
> Resale weeks are generally the best solution for travel to places you want to go in 7-night increments every year (or every other year, in the case of EOY ownerships). You can buy the season, view, and unit size you always need. But newly purchased resale weeks can't play in the Abound points system (without a large points purchase to enroll them), so the only way to book something other than what you own is to use II and deal with its frustrating (for us) deposit/wait/hope reservation model.
> 
> ...


The biggest problem with a points system is that you actually do not know what you are buying. I think you mentioned before that Marriott only discloses the aggregate number of points per resort and not a more granular information in terms of size, view, or season. Wouldn't they disclose more if the quality of the inventory was a reason to brag?


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## JIMinNC (Oct 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> The biggest problem with a points system is that you actually do not know what you are buying. I think you mentioned before that Marriott only discloses the aggregate number of points per resort and not a more granular information in terms of size, view, or season. Wouldn't they disclose more if the quality of the inventory was a reason to brag?



I doubt it. They don't even disclose the points owned by the Trust at each resort. The meaningful question for a points owner wanting to book something, however, is not just what the Trust owns, but also which weeks get elected for points and thus added to the MVC Exchange. That is fluid and the only relevant metric is the availability that shows up at any given moment in the reservation system. That is the only truly relevant disclosure for most people - real time availability whenever a person wants to book. Anything more is just fodder for timeshare geeks like TUGgers.


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## daviator (Oct 11, 2022)

It's worth noting that NONE of the Vistana resorts will ever be bookable at 13 months, because the underlying ownerships don’t allow it.  So it doesn’t matter what level of ownership you have in MVC or Abound, Vistana properties will not be available to reserve before 12 months.  Only the Marriott properties might be available at 13 months.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I doubt it. They don't even disclose the points owned by the Trust at each resort. The meaningful question for a points owner wanting to book something, however, is not just what the Trust owns, but also which weeks get elected for points and thus added to the MVC Exchange. That is fluid and the only relevant metric is the availability that shows up at any given moment in the reservation system. That is the only truly relevant disclosure for most people - real time availability whenever a person wants to book. Anything more is just fodder for timeshare geeks like TUGgers.


A lot of people seem to complain about the availability, so they seem to come short on that measure as well. Regardless, I do not think that what you actually own is not relevant. You cannot rely just on other owners depositing, patterns and rules can change anytime.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

daviator said:


> It's worth noting that NONE of the Vistana resorts will ever be bookable at 13 months, because the underlying ownerships don’t allow it.  So it doesn’t matter what level of ownership you have in MVC or Abound, Vistana properties will not be available to reserve before 12 months.  Only the Marriott properties might be available at 13 months.


We shall see how it goes, the Vistana resorts do not allow booking by non-owners at 12 months either if you read the rules the way they were written.


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## DRH90277 (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> It's also important not to directly compare buying a resale week to a points purchase. They are really two different products, with different advantages/disadvantages. Which product is best for any one person depends on what that person is looking for.
> 
> Resale weeks are generally the best solution for travel to places you want to go in 7-night increments every year (or every other year, in the case of EOY ownerships). You can buy the season, view, and unit size you always need. But newly purchased resale weeks can't play in the Abound points system (without a large points purchase to enroll them), so the only way to book something other than what you own is to use II and deal with its frustrating (for us) deposit/wait/hope reservation model.
> 
> ...


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## DRH90277 (Oct 11, 2022)

Sorry, I inadvertently indicated I liked the last post.


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## Fasttr (Oct 11, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> Sorry, I inadvertently indicated I liked the last post.


I just figured you were finally coming around and expected your next post to be pro-Abound.


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## DRH90277 (Oct 11, 2022)

Fasttr said:


> I just figured you were finally coming around and expected your next post to be pro-Abound.


Absolutely not, I just don't understand why you and others are so complacent about the inadequacy of a product amid known problems for users.  And Abound is very likely a perpetuation of those problems.  Abound brings no solution.

I do agree the only safe haven is in buying resale where you can better control the outcomes.

Enjoy your day.


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## Fasttr (Oct 11, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> Absolutely not, I just don't understand why you and others are so complacent about the inadequacy of a product amid known problems for users.  And Abound is very likely a perpetuation of those problems.  Abound brings no solution.
> 
> I do agree the only safe haven is in buying resale where you can better control the outcomes.
> 
> Enjoy your day.


It works for me.  I’m happy with the product.


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## Burton504 (Oct 11, 2022)

Hello, I appreciate everyone's comments and do believe I will be canceling.  If the points option were to go away, I would never be able use it for a week as the only times I would be able to use it would cost far more points.  The seemingly logical idea was, with the ability to convert it to points, when added to what I already own, would allow me to stay at any MVC location in a premium unit at a premium time, plus be able to book it a month before anyone who had less than the select status.  
However the other part of the story is the contract says if bought after July 1 2022, I can't sell it!  I can only Will it if I die or give it to my kids.  That's insane to me!  What did I buy if I can't sell it!  That part scares me.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 11, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> Sorry, I inadvertently indicated I liked the last post.


I just tested it with my Like of the same post - any that you inadvertently click can be undone by simply going back to the same post and clicking Like again.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 11, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> Absolutely not, I just don't understand why you and others are so complacent about the inadequacy of a product amid known problems for users.  And Abound is very likely a perpetuation of those problems.  Abound brings no solution.
> 
> I do agree the only safe haven is in buying resale where you can better control the outcomes.
> 
> Enjoy your day.


I haven't bought Trust Points, have no intention to buy Trust Points, but I'm very happy with the points allotments of my enrolled Weeks (which are among the highest points-value Weeks in Marriott) and I am OVER THE MOON with the value of exchanges I get with Abound compared to what I ever got from Interval Int'l.

For me Abound (formerly Destination Club) is simply an exchange company, and compared to the others it works the best for my needs. I don't have any illusions about being able to book whatever I want wherever I want whenever I want, but I have a working knowledge of how to best position myself for the highest-demand inventory and I know which low-demand inventory fits into my travels. That's about the best we can hope for from a floating (as opposed to fixed) timeshare ownership where "subject to availability" is always the most important caveat, isn't it?


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## JIMinNC (Oct 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> A lot of people seem to complain about the availability, so they seem to come short on that measure as well. Regardless, I do not think that what you actually own is not relevant. You cannot rely just on other owners depositing, patterns and rules can change anytime.



Yes, some complain, but those tend to be folks who are focused on getting some of the highest demand reservations. In timeshare, that’s always been something of a crapshoot. Points don’t change that. Fortunately for us, most of those super high demand times are the absolutely last times we would want to try to get reservations. YMMV.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Yes, some complain, but those tend to be folks who are focused on getting some of the highest demand reservations. In timeshare, that’s always been something of a crapshoot. Points don’t change that. Fortunately for us, most of those super high demand times are the absolutely last times we would want to try to get reservations. YMMV.



There is no way of knowing who those people are. But even if you were right and you could prove it with a study, there are typically cheaper alternatives for the lower demand reservations: Interval getaways and exchanges, renting from owners or renting discounted nights on the traditional online booking channels. You do not need to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have access through Abound.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> There is no way of knowing who those people are. But even if you were right and you could prove it with a study, there are typically cheaper alternatives for the lower demand reservations: Interval getaways and exchanges, renting from owners or renting discounted nights on the traditional online booking channels. You do not need to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have access through Abound.



All true, if you assume everyone is motivated by the best “deal” or the lowest price. But not all of us are. There is no way I would EVER deposit a week in Interval again unless that was the ONLY option, because I hate the deposit/wait/hope model at ANY price. I would also never pay an individual owner up front for a rental reservation with little or no recourse or without the resources of a multi-million dollar corporation behind the reservation in case something goes wrong. I’ll pay more for convenience and ease, and so will many others. We are the targets for points, not the folks who always have to get the best deal possible. Points aren’t for everyone, but there are enough of “us” that it is a viable business for Marriott.

And when I talk about reservations that are not “highest demand”, I’m not talking about January in Hilton Head. I’m talking about all those weeks that aren’t Spring Break, prime Summer, Christmas, etc. Many are still high demand, just not PEAK demand. We have never had difficulty booking great high demand weeks with points, but we don’t want the prime school vacation weeks. Spring and Fall and Winter in Hawaii works for us with our timeshares.


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## TravelTime (Oct 11, 2022)

If you book a longer vacation than you need and you want to reduce the number of nights, is this possible without canceling and rebooking? On Facebook, people were saying that you were technically not even allowed to do this. But if you did, you would risk losing the original reservation.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> All true, if you assume everyone is motivated by the best “deal” or the lowest price. But not all of us are. There is no way I would EVER deposit a week in Interval again unless that was the ONLY option, because I hate the deposit/wait/hope model at ANY price. I would also never pay an individual owner up front for a rental reservation with little or no recourse or without the resources of a multi-million dollar corporation behind the reservation in case something goes wrong. I’ll pay more for convenience and ease, and so will many others. We are the targets for points, not the folks who always have to get the best deal possible. Points aren’t for everyone, but there are enough of “us” that it is a viable business for Marriott.
> 
> And when I talk about reservations that are not “highest demand”, I’m not talking about January in Hilton Head. I’m talking about all those weeks that aren’t Spring Break, prime Summer, Christmas, etc. Many are still high demand, just not PEAK demand. We have never had difficulty booking great high demand weeks with points, but we don’t want the prime school vacation weeks. Spring and Fall and Winter in Hawaii works for us with our timeshares.


 I can take as example Lagunamar, a spring break week is 5900 Abound points. To own 5900 points, you would have to pay about $90,000 upfront and $3705 in maintenance fees. I can easily make a case it is cheaper _and_ more convenient to book on Expedia, not to mention I can book many other resorts in Cancun, not just Lagunamar. Compare that with the MF at Lagunamar that are around $1600.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> I can take as example Lagunamar, a spring break week is 5900 Abound points. To own 5900 points, you would have to pay about $90,000 upfront and $3705 in maintenance fees. I can easily make a case it is cheaper _and_ more convenient to book on Expedia, not to mention I can book many other resorts in Cancun, not just Lagunamar. Compare that with the MF at Lagunamar that are around $1600.



If all you want to do is go to Cancun, then yes, buying Abound points is unnecessry. Buy a resale week at Lagunamar or if you don’t want to be locked in, just got to Marriott.com or any other booking engine and pay cash.


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## timsi (Oct 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> If all you want to do is go to Cancun, then yes, buying Abound points is unnecessry. Buy a resale week at Lagunamar or if you don’t want to be locked in, just got to Marriott.com or any other booking engine and pay cash.


To me the only way to save money is to buy resale and either use your own week or exchange in Interval. The moment you pay developer prices, the potential saving goes away and that is particularly the case with Abound that is expensive both in terms of initial cost and MF. I have not seen yet a sweet spot to excite me.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> To me the only way to save money is to buy resale and either use your own week or exchange in Interval. The moment you pay developer prices, the potential saving goes away and that is particularly the case with Abound that is expensive both in terms of initial cost and MF. I have not seen yet a sweet spot to excite me.



I don't disagree with buying resale where possible, obviously. We own resale Hawaii weeks and those are our most cost effective ownerships, for sure. But using Interval is a nonstarter for us, so for any other trips we take, it's either pay cash or use DC/Abound points. All of the DC Trust points we have ever bought from Marriott were bought primarily to enroll our resale weeks to give us more flexible usage options, but we've still been able to get decent value from those points as a way to get additional time in Hawaii and for other trips as a supplement to our resale weeks.

For example, over the last three years - 2020, 2021, and 2022 - and counting a couple stays in California that we have coming up starting next week, we have booked a total of 39 nights using our points. Over half of those nights were in 1BR or 2BR OF/OV units in Maui or Marco Island. When you look at our maintenance fee costs for those 39 nights, it's about $280/night. Given even hotel costs today, that's pretty darn good for condo units in quality hotel-affiliated resorts. I'm not sure what the cash rental cost for those same 39 nights would have been (if we could have even gotten the same accommodations on Marriott.com), but given the number of 1BR/2BR OV/OF units that we stayed in, I suspect the rental cost would have easily been double or more than what we paid in maintenance fees.

While our in-year savings will take some time to recoup the upfront purchase cost, we could have greatly reduced that pay back period had we bought resale MVC points. The only reason we didn't do that and bought direct was we wanted to enroll our resale weeks to give us more flexibility in how we use them. So far, we haven't yet taken advantage of that flexibility, but going forward, I could see us electing points for our 2BR OV Maui week, and using those points to book a 1BR OF in the newer Lahaina/Napili towers instead. Points offer so much more flexibility and having enrolled weeks gives you the best of both worlds.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I don't disagree with buying resale where possible, obviously. We own resale Hawaii weeks and those are our most cost effective ownerships, for sure. But using Interval is a nonstarter for us, so for any other trips we take, it's either pay cash or use DC/Abound points. All of the DC Trust points we have ever bought from Marriott were bought primarily to enroll our resale weeks to give us more flexible usage options, but we've still been able to get decent value from those points as a way to get additional time in Hawaii and for other trips as a supplement to our resale weeks.
> 
> For example, over the last three years - 2020, 2021, and 2022 - and counting a couple stays in California that we have coming up starting next week, we have booked a total of 39 nights using our points. Over half of those nights were in 1BR or 2BR OF/OV units in Maui or Marco Island. When you look at our maintenance fee costs for those 39 nights, it's about $280/night. Given even hotel costs today, that's pretty darn good for condo units in quality hotel-affiliated resorts. I'm not sure what the cash rental cost for those same 39 nights would have been (if we could have even gotten the same accommodations on Marriott.com), but given the number of 1BR/2BR OV/OF units that we stayed in, I suspect the rental cost would have easily been double or more than what we paid in maintenance fees.
> 
> While our in-year savings will take some time to recoup the upfront purchase cost, we could have greatly reduced that pay back period had we bought resale MVC points. The only reason we didn't do that and bought direct was we wanted to enroll our resale weeks to give us more flexibility in how we use them. So far, we haven't yet taken advantage of that flexibility, but going forward, I could see us electing points for our 2BR OV Maui week, and using those points to book a 1BR OF in the newer Lahaina/Napili towers instead. Points offer so much more flexibility and having enrolled weeks gives you the best of both worlds.


39 nights in Maui in a 1 BR would be 19500 points or 12286 in MF and $292,000 in upfront cost. I used an average of 3900 points per week. If we use the 10% rule, the cost for the 39 nights using points would be $1063 per night at MOC.

39 nights at Crystal Shores in a 2BR OV during the winter would be say 5000 points per week. 39 days would cost 27857 points. The MF would be $17550 and if we add 10% of the 417,857 upfront cost, a night would cost an average of $1521.

You can amortize the upfront cost in your own way, but I just do not see how a new owner can save money by using trust points, even bought resale.  I understand that your own cost may be lower (hard to know how much lower without more granular information) but that would not help anyone buying today trust points from the developer.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> 39 nights in Maui in a 1 BR would be 19500 points or 12286 in MF and $292,000 in upfront cost. I used an average of 3900 points per week. If we use the 10% rule, the cost for the 39 nights using points would be $1063 per night at MOC.
> 
> 39 nights at Crystal Shores in a 2BR OV during the winter would be say 5000 points per week. 39 days would cost 27857 points. The MF would be $17550 and if we add 10% of the 417,857 upfront cost, a night would cost an average of $1521.
> 
> You can amortize the upfront cost in your own way, but I just do not see how a new owner can save money by using trust points, even bought resale.  I understand that your own cost may be lower (hard to know how much lower without more granular information) but that would not help anyone buying today trust points from the developer.


Your math is way off. My example was 39 nights spread over *three years. *You are assuming we have to buy the points again every year. We have 4750 annual Trust points, bought at an average cost of about $11/point, plus an additional 1625 from a resale enrolled week we bought from Marriott as part of our initial points buy in 2014. Our total upfront cost for those 6,375 points was about $54,000 (a week/points bundle for 3375 total points in 2014, plus 3000 more Trust points we bought in 2020 to enroll our Maui and Kauai weeks). I figure if we sold the week and the Trust points, we might net somewhere around $18,000, so the net we need to try to recoup over time is at most about $36,000. Our blended MF cost/point for our Trust points and the small amount of enrolled points that we elect annually is about $0.66. We spent a week in a 1BR OF in the Lahaina/Napili towers in early 2022 and have another booked for early 2023. Each booking was 5675 points, so each week cost us about $3750 in maintenance fees based on our costs.

I checked online at Marriott.com and a 1BR OF for January or February of 2023 (for the very few time periods that are even available) would be $1184 per night plus $1444 in taxes and fees, for a total cost for 7 nights of $9735. On paper, one Maui 1BR OF points booking "saved" us about $6000. Virtually all of the ocean-oriented hotel properties are also priced north of $800 to $1000 per night. So, if you assume the 2022 costs were similar (maybe a little less?), then just those two Maui stays combined "saved" us at least $10,000 to $11,000, maybe more.

Our November 2020 six night stay at Marco Island cost us 2600 points, so using the cost above, that would be a MF cost of about $1700. I can book a 2BR at Crystal Shores this coming November for $1055 per night, plus $760 in taxes and fees, or about $7000. Our "savings" are again about $5000.

So, on paper, the two Maui stays, plus Marco have theoretically saved us over $15,000. If you add in our Feb 2020 Maui stay in a 1BR OV in the older towers, I bet we are approaching $20,000 in "on paper" savings from just four recent trips - three weeks on Maui and 1 week on Marco Island. That doesn't even assign any value to our other stays over the last three years - Palm Desert/Newport Coast (upcoming), MVC Ocean Pointe in 2021, one night in Orlando in two units for six people, and a night in South Miami Beach. It also doesn't count our stays between 2015 and 2019, which included several weeks in Hilton Head, a week in Kauai, a few nights in Las Vegas, and a few other short stays in HHI and elsewhere. We may not have yet fully recouped the full upfront cost, or maybe even the $36k net, but I'm confident we will.

The numbers above are just from using our points. I'm not even analyzing in that the value we get from our two EOY Hawaii deeded resale weeks. Those are an even better value, they are just relatively inflexible.

The reason I used quotes around "saved" and used words like "theoretical", is the reality is, we would probably not have taken all of these trips to Hawaii had we not owned our timeshares. Our points have allowed us to go to Hawaii in the even years (our weeks are odd years) or add an additional week to our deeded week years. No way we were going to pay $7000-9000 for a hotel that often. Timeshares make it easy to decide to travel because they convert what would ordinarily be variable costs into fixed costs each year. Every time we plan a trip to somewhere we can't use our timeshares, I thank my lucky stars we have them to use in the places we can. We are working on a trip to Italy next June, and are planning to book 4 or 5 nights in Florence at the end of a week at the HGVC timeshare in the Tuscan countryside, and those four or five nights in Florence are going to cost around $1000/night for the Westin Excelsior.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope it illustrates that if you do your homework and know what you are buying, you can make Points work for you. Is II more cost effective in general? Sure it is. But for people who don't like traditional trading, Points can be a viable alternative, albeit at a higher total cost. If you use them right, they can still pay for themselves.


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## byeloe (Oct 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I checked online at Marriott.com and a 1BR OF for January or February of 2023 (for the very few time periods that are even available) would be $1184 per night plus $1444 in taxes and fees, for a total cost for 7 nights of $9735


That might only be a good comparison, if you would have been willing to pay the $1184/night.   I usually check the owner rental sites to find a cost more inline with what I might be willing to pay.


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## jmhpsu93 (Oct 12, 2022)

byeloe said:


> That might only be a good comparison, if you would have been willing to pay the $1184/night.   I usually check the owner rental sites to find a cost more inline with what I might be willing to pay.


Also, as Jim indicated, he might never have actually gone to Maui at all without his timeshare ownership.  

A cursory check on Redweek shows around $700-800/night for an OF 1 BR during Jan/Feb 2023.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 12, 2022)

byeloe said:


> That might only be a good comparison, if you would have been willing to pay the $1184/night.   I usually check the owner rental sites to find a cost more inline with what I might be willing to pay.



We have never been comfortable using the owner rental sites. I've always preferred to avoid person-to-person transactions with individuals I don't know. So for us, it's pay the rates for the direct booking or don't go.

As I said, having the timeshares has allowed us to go more often than we would have if it cost us $7k to $9k for every week in Maui. We would have likely still gone, but maybe just not as often. But we are finding more and more that $800 to $1000 per night hotel rates are sadly becoming more common for our non-timeshare travels when we travel to the places we want to go. We paid over $1,200 per night for a few nights at the Hilton Moorea in French Polynesia after a cruise in 2019. We're getting a "deal" next month for the Westin Vendome in Paris since it's very off-season there, but even then, six nights are setting us back about $3000. The summer stay in Florence that I mentioned earlier is going to almost certainly be close to $1k per night. There are some cheaper options in Florence, but the Westin Excelsior is so centrally located, the convenience makes it more worth it - but still very painful to pay that much for a hotel, especially since we are staying at the HGVC timeshare in Tuscany using our HGVC points for a week for a MF cost of less than $1500. The average cost over a 11-12 day trip will average out pretty good, but those hotel nights are killers.


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## TravelTime (Oct 12, 2022)

@JIMinNC @byeloe

I am booked for a 2BR OF in Lahaina/Napili towers from April 8-15. This is peak season since it is Easter week and one of the most expensive weeks for using points.

1) My weekly cost is $4600 based on my average MF per point compared to $7000 renting from an owner.

Redweek: There are only 3 listings on Redweek for these dates. The cost is approx $1000 per night / $7000 for the week.

2) The policy for my points is I will get 100% back if I cancel 60 days out. If it is within 60 days, 100% of the points are returned to a holding account.

Redweek: The 3 listings all have refund policies stating you will lose 50% of what you paid if you cancel within 60-90 days (depending on which policy they have, other weeks even have a strict policy of losing 100% anytime). This is a huge disadvantage of renting from an owner. It is $7000 a week and if you change your mind, you will lose $3500 to $7000.

3) With Redweek’s new listing policy of collecting service fees for verified and protected listings, that adds another $525 to the cost of a Redweek owner rental.

So basically we are comparing $4600 vs $7500 and an inflexible cancellation policy with Redweek rentals.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> We have never been comfortable using the owner rental sites. I've always preferred to avoid person-to-person transactions with individuals I don't know. So for us, it's pay the rates for the direct booking or don't go.
> 
> As I said, having the timeshares has allowed us to go more often than we would have if it cost us $7k to $9k for every week in Maui. We would have likely still gone, but maybe just not as often. But we are finding more and more that $800 to $1000 per night hotel rates are sadly becoming more common for our non-timeshare travels when we travel to the places we want to go. We paid over $1,200 per night for a few nights at the Hilton Moorea in French Polynesia after a cruise in 2019. We're getting a "deal" next month for the Westin Vendome in Paris since it's very off-season there, but even then, six nights are setting us back about $3000. The summer stay in Florence that I mentioned earlier is going to almost certainly be close to $1k per night. There are some cheaper options in Florence, but the Westin Excelsior is so centrally located, the convenience makes it more worth it - but still very painful to pay that much for a hotel, especially since we are staying at the HGVC timeshare in Tuscany using our HGVC points for a week for a MF cost of less than $1500. The average cost over a 11-12 day trip will average out pretty good, but those hotel nights are killers.


Jim, we're just like you with preferring to pay the lowest "official" prices rather than using owner rentals. Sure, the savings are measurable, but if you're not comfortable using redweek etc for transactions with strangers, then you're not comfortable with it! I get it. Even as someone who occasionally rents out my timeshares (only with one trusted vendor or privately one-on-one with known TUGgers) I get it. It always surprises me when our shared position has to be defended so strongly.


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## Fasttr (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> Jim, we're just like you with preferring to pay the lowest "official" prices rather than using owner rentals. Sure, the savings are measurable, but if you're not comfortable using redweek etc for transactions with strangers, then you're not comfortable with it! I get it. Even as someone who occasionally rents out my timeshares (only with one trusted vendor or privately one-on-one with known TUGgers) I get it. It always surprises me when our shared position has to be defended so strongly.


I’m right there with you and Jim.  I would have much more angst over wondering if I was going to get screwed at check in (“We’re sorry sir, we don’t have any reservations matching your name/number”) than I would over paying a bit of a premium to rent on Marriott.com directly.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Your math is way off. My example was 39 nights spread over *three years. *You are assuming we have to buy the points again every year. We have 4750 annual Trust points, bought at an average cost of about $11/point, plus an additional 1625 from a resale enrolled week we bought from Marriott as part of our initial points buy in 2014. Our total upfront cost for those 6,375 points was about $54,000 (a week/points bundle for 3375 total points in 2014, plus 3000 more Trust points we bought in 2020 to enroll our Maui and Kauai weeks). I figure if we sold the week and the Trust points, we might net somewhere around $18,000, so the net we need to try to recoup over time is at most about $36,000. Our blended MF cost/point for our Trust points and the small amount of enrolled points that we elect annually is about $0.66. We spent a week in a 1BR OF in the Lahaina/Napili towers in early 2022 and have another booked for early 2023. Each booking was 5675 points, so each week cost us about $3750 in maintenance fees based on our costs.
> 
> I checked online at Marriott.com and a 1BR OF for January or February of 2023 (for the very few time periods that are even available) would be $1184 per night plus $1444 in taxes and fees, for a total cost for 7 nights of $9735. On paper, one Maui 1BR OF points booking "saved" us about $6000. Virtually all of the ocean-oriented hotel properties are also priced north of $800 to $1000 per night. So, if you assume the 2022 costs were similar (maybe a little less?), then just those two Maui stays combined "saved" us at least $10,000 to $11,000, maybe more.
> 
> ...



My math is not off at all. I was talking from the point of view of someone new who would buy trust points today, and not your personal average cost per trust point. It is great that you got them for 11 dollars pp a long time ago, how is that going to help someone who would pay today 15?.  Guess what, not only the trust points went up since 2014 (or earlier) but also about everything else. Had you invested 54,000 dollars in 2014, would you be up just 36%?  Both you and @TravelTime do not take into account any opportunity cost. At say 6% per year, you have an additional anual cost of $3240. People recommend taking 1/10 of the initial cost and add it to the annual maintenance fees to find your total annual cost. I find it reasonable although when you buy from the developer, I would argue it should be more than 1/10 because the drop is very steep. Whether it is 6%, 10% of 20% of your initial cost per year,it is not zero. By the way, many new owners pay 14% or so interests for their timeshares so their annual cost is a lot higher than MF plus 10% of the upfront cost. In your comment you include the resale week to make the overall situation look better, but if you calculate just from the point of view of your trust points, the deal is not good at all, even if you consider your cost of 11 dollars pp.


It does not matter if you calculate 13 nights per year or 39, the cost per night is the same if you use the current price per point amortized in 10 years  plus MF: $1063 per night at MOC 1 BR and $1521 at Crystal Shores 2BR for spring break (some variations depending on the actual week)



A lot of the Redweek listings are inflated IMO and we can only talk about the market price if you know the real transaction values which in many cases are a lot lower than the listing prices. Guess what, the most expensive listings will sit there but the ones that are reasonably price will rent. Did you know that you could get 1 BR oceanfront in Maui for $514 per night? Please convince me that is not better than your cost when you use just your trust points. 

01/20/23–01/27/23 7nights        $5,250 ($750/night)       2 Bedroom Oceanfront        RENTED!

03/03/23–03/10/23 7nights        $3,600 ($514/night) 1 Bedroom Unit Oceanfront RENTED!



Concerning Florida off season, you have so many other options including cheap Interval getaways and exchanges that it is not even worth discussing about those deals. Of course, I am not referring to this season because Ina has closed many hotels and resorts.


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## Huskerpaul (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> I was talking from the point of view of someone new who would buy trust points today, and not your personal average cost per trust point. It is great that you got them for 11 dollars pp a long time ago, how is that going to help someone who would pay today 15?.



Today resale MVC points sell for $6-$8 and work just like points bought from Marriott.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> Jim, we're just like you with preferring to pay the lowest "official" prices rather than using owner rentals. Sure, the savings are measurable, but if you're not comfortable using redweek etc for transactions with strangers, then you're not comfortable with it! I get it. Even as someone who occasionally rents out my timeshares (only with one trusted vendor or privately one-on-one with known TUGgers) I get it. It always surprises me when our shared position has to be defended so strongly.


It is a valid point, and this is why many renters prefer to look just at "verified and protected" which significantly reduces the risk. Another advantage is that renters can choose from many available weeks even at times when the inventory is long gone for the owners who did not book yet. 

You have a legacy week with a low cost per point. If you were to buy today trust points, I am pretty sure your comparison with Redweek would be very different because your cost would not be just a little bit higher.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

Huskerpaul said:


> Today resale MVC points sell for $6-$8 and work just like points bought from Marriott.


True but even so I find them very expensive, and I always seem to be able to find better alternatives. A 2BR OF in February at MOC OF is 7800 points. You would need to spend 56,000 upfront for resale plus $5040 in MF and $200 in network fees annually. In my books this is the equivalent of $10,840 per week.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> It is a valid point, and this is why many renters prefer to look just at "verified and protected" which significantly reduces the risk. Another advantage is that renters can choose from many available weeks even at times when the inventory is long gone for the owners who did not book yet.
> 
> You have a legacy week with a low cost per point. If you were to buy today trust points, I am pretty sure your comparison with Redweek would be very different because your cost would not be just a little bit higher.


I seriously don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp, but some of us simply don't prioritize costs over every other metric when considering our timeshare purchase and usage options. And we don't focus or rely on third-party players to make the numbers or usage work. We just don't.

If I were interested in purchasing Abound Points (which I'm not) I'd probably first talk to my trusted Marriott sales rep and then with TUGgers who I know have studied both the direct and resale markets, and most likely I'd decide on a direct-purchase bundle package of an enrolled Week and Points. One thing I wouldn't spend any time thinking about or exploring is an anticipated rental market for those points. The only reason I'm in the rental market now with the Weeks I own (which I elect for points and then reserve high-demand inventory with those points) is because a second home purchase and COVID put a temporary halt to our traveling these last few years, and I luckily have a good connection with a trusted TUGger who handles everything related to the rentals for me. But life is getting back to an even keel and we'll be thrilled to begin traveling again, and to leave the timeshare rental market behind - it wasn't a consideration when we bought and it won't be the reason we remain as owners.

And I'll note here, the fact that "renters can choose from many available weeks even at times when the inventory is long gone for the owners who did not book yet" is not a positive in my view. Prior to Abound my usage was mostly at my home resorts during Memorial Day and Labor Day holiday periods. We have very few II exchanges in our history (because 3BR non-lockoff high-demand intervals don't get good exchange value in II) but even if we had, unlike Abound exchanges those we get from II cannot be rented. All those years of competing with like Weeks Owners for the intervals I owned, sometimes losing out even at the 13-mos window, and then learning that there were rentals available six months prior to check-in ... well, that's what led me to want Marriott to impose restrictions on owners who intend to rent out their usage to strangers. Like I've said, if they were to do it tomorrow catching my last few rentals in their snare, I'd still be happy with their decision.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> I seriously don't understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp, but some of us simply don't prioritize costs over every other metric when considering our timeshare purchase and usage options. And we don't focus or rely on third-party players to make the numbers or usage work. We just don't.
> 
> If I were interested in purchasing Abound Points (which I'm not) I'd probably first talk to my trusted Marriott sales rep and then with TUGgers who I know have studied both the direct and resale markets, and most likely I'd decide on a direct-purchase bundle package of an enrolled Week and Points. One thing I wouldn't spend any time thinking about or exploring is an anticipated rental market for those points. The only reason I'm in the rental market now with the Weeks I own (which I elect for points and then reserve high-demand inventory with those points) is because a second home purchase and COVID put a temporary halt to our traveling these last few years, and I luckily have a good connection with a trusted TUGger who handles everything related to the rentals for me. But life is getting back to an even keel and we'll be thrilled to begin traveling again, and to leave the timeshare rental market behind - it wasn't a consideration when we bought and it won't be the reason we remain as owners.
> 
> And I'll note here, the fact that "renters can choose from many available weeks even at times when the inventory is long gone for the owners who did not book yet" is not a positive in my view. Prior to Abound my usage was mostly at my home resorts during Memorial Day and Labor Day holiday periods. We have very few II exchanges in our history (because 3BR non-lockoff high-demand intervals don't get good exchange value in II) but even if we had, unlike Abound exchanges those we get from II cannot be rented. All those years of competing with like Weeks Owners for the intervals I owned, sometimes losing out even at the 13-mos window, and then learning that there were rentals available six months prior to check-in ... well, that's what led me to want Marriott to impose restrictions on owners who intend to rent out their usage to strangers. Like I've said, if they were to do it tomorrow catching my last few rentals in their snare, I'd still be happy with their decision.



Something does not make sense with the Marriott inventory if the week owners have a hard time booking when the window opens. How many units does Marriott own at Barony Beach and Surf Watch?


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## SueDonJ (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> Something does not make sense with the Marriott inventory if the week owners have a hard time booking when the window opens. How many units does Marriott own at Barony Beach and Surf Watch?


It makes perfect sense. The 13-mos Reservation Window for Weeks* is available to any owners of multiple Weeks and requires that two or more of those Weeks, or two or more lock-off components from two or more of those Weeks, be booked concurrently or consecutively. In addition, Marriott is restricted to releasing no more than 50% of the available intervals prior to the 12-mos Reservation Window. Then at the 12-mos window all remaining inventory is released.

One of my SurfWatch Weeks is a Plat 3BR Oceanside. The Plat season is 13 calendar weeks, roughly Memorial Day through Labor Day. There are two Oceanside buildings at the resort with ten 3BR units in each. So, 260 like intervals/owners competing with each other, but with the 13-mos release limited to ten units at most for each calendar week, the "subject to availability" caveat is still very much in play especially with the two holiday calendar weeks. Then you add in the fact that during the same phone call you have to be able to book a second owned Week consecutively or concurrently in order to get the 13-mos window advantage ... well, it's not as simple as it sounds. It's probably not as difficult as writing it all out, either, but it's nowhere near a guarantee and never has been.

I know here is where you'll find something to say about how with the addition of the DC/Abound, Marriott is probably screwing over the owners taking inventory for Abound that should be available to Weeks Owners and we're all just too stupid to understand that, but before you go down that rabbit hole you should know that - for me, at least - nothing changed after the DC inception. I had as good a track record booking my typical consecutive/concurrent reservations at the 13-mos window after the DC as I'd had before it. That can be ascribed simply to the fact that for every Week interval that was removed from the Weeks bucket, the Owner of that Week (whether Marriott or an Owner who enrolled the Week and then elected points for it) could no longer book the interval out of the Weeks bucket.

*The 13-mos Reservation Window for Abound Members using Points is completely separate from the Weeks windows, subject to its own rules. Be careful not to confuse the two.


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## DRH90277 (Oct 12, 2022)

I own a Marriott timeshare week at a particular resort.  Is it true that a week owner is absolutely entitled to reserve an in-season week at their owned resort?   The only question would be whether they would get the precise in-season week they wanted.  And, even if they didn't reserve until two weeks before, an in-season week would still be available for them. 

Further, MVC would have no right to enable a points reservation for the aforementioned owned week.  If the owner fails to reserve, the week would remain unoccupied during an in-season rental period.


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## Fasttr (Oct 12, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> And, even if they didn't reserve until two weeks before, an in-season week would still be available for them.
> 
> If the owner fails to reserve, the week would remain unoccupied during an in-season rental period.


I don’t believe either of these statements are correct.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 12, 2022)

DRH90277 said:


> I own a Marriott timeshare week at a particular resort.  Is it true that a week owner is absolutely entitled to reserve an in-season week at their owned resort?   The only question would be whether they would get the precise in-season week they wanted.  And, even if they didn't reserve until two weeks before, an in-season week would still be available for them.
> 
> Further, MVC would have no right to enable a points reservation for the aforementioned owned week.  If the owner fails to reserve, the week would remain unoccupied during an in-season rental period.


It's mostly true. If you own a Week then you are guaranteed to have a like interval (same resort/season/unit size and view) available to you, provided your account is in good standing, you follow the rules for reserving usage and you don't elect any other usage for that same Week. No certain calendar week would be guaranteed, just a week.

But ... at every resort Marriott is entitled to take for its own use any Weeks intervals which have not been reserved (or designated for some other use by the owners) at a certain point prior to check-in. Marriott can use this inventory for rentals and other options but some low-demand intervals might sit empty. For my two resorts that period is 75 days prior to check-in but I know that all resorts are not the same so you'd have to check your resort's docs to confirm. Over the years there have been one or two reports to TUG of owners coming up against this, and it happens fairly often with external resales that are sold during or after the Week's season has already opened. Marriott is generally willing to work with those who find themselves in this situation by giving them an II certificate for that year's use.

Marriott can not take owned Weeks from the Weeks bucket and put them into the Points bucket until and unless an Abound-enrolled owner elects Abound Points for the Week. I don't remember ever reading on TUG a report that made me think, "yep, Marriott is definitely screwing Weeks Owners by taking Weeks for the DC."


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## DRH90277 (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> It's mostly true. If you own a Week then you are guaranteed to have a like interval (same resort/season/unit size and view) available to you, provided your account is in good standing, you follow the rules for reserving usage and you don't elect any other usage for that same Week. No certain calendar week would be guaranteed, just a week.
> 
> But ... at every resort Marriott is entitled to take for its own use any Weeks intervals which have not been reserved (or designated for some other use by the owners) at a certain point prior to check-in. Marriott can use this inventory for rentals and other options but some low-demand intervals might sit empty. For my two resorts that period is 75 days prior to check-in but I know that all resorts are not the same so you'd have to check your resort's docs to confirm. Over the years there have been one or two reports to TUG of owners coming up against this, and it happens fairly often with external resales that are sold during or after the Week's season has already opened. Marriott is generally willing to work with those who find themselves in this situation by giving them an II certificate for that year's use.
> 
> Marriott can not take owned Weeks from the Weeks bucket and put them into the Points bucket until and unless an Abound-enrolled owner elects Abound Points for the Week. I don't remember ever reading on TUG a report that made me think, "yep, Marriott is definitely screwing Weeks Owners by taking Weeks for the DC."



Many thanks for clarifying this.


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> *Marriott can not take owned Weeks from the Weeks bucket and put them into the Points bucket until and unless an Abound-enrolled owner elects Abound Points for the Week*. I don't remember ever reading on TUG a report that made me think, "yep, Marriott is definitely screwing Weeks Owners by taking Weeks for the DC."


But this is not true in practice, Abound will "anticipate demand" based on its sole discretion. The best example is your resort where the platinum season ends before the end of the election period. You do not know what formula they use to give MVC a certain number of Memorial day weeks. It is possible they are "anticipating" deposits that will only come in October. What happens by the way if they did not anticipate correctly?


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## JIMinNC (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> My math is not off at all. I was talking from the point of view of someone new who would buy trust points today, and not your personal average cost per trust point. It is great that you got them for 11 dollars pp a long time ago, how is that going to help someone who would pay today 15?.  Guess what, not only the trust points went up since 2014 (or earlier) but also about everything else. Had you invested 54,000 dollars in 2014, would you be up just 36%?  Both you and @TravelTime do not take into account any opportunity cost. At say 6% per year, you have an additional anual cost of $3240. People recommend taking 1/10 of the initial cost and add it to the annual maintenance fees to find your total annual cost. I find it reasonable although when you buy from the developer, I would argue it should be more than 1/10 because the drop is very steep. Whether it is 6%, 10% of 20% of your initial cost per year,it is not zero. By the way, many new owners pay 14% or so interests for their timeshares so their annual cost is a lot higher than MF plus 10% of the upfront cost. In your comment you include the resale week to make the overall situation look better, but if you calculate just from the point of view of your trust points, the deal is not good at all, even if you consider your cost of 11 dollars pp.
> 
> 
> It does not matter if you calculate 13 nights per year or 39, the cost per night is the same if you use the current price per point amortized in 10 years  plus MF: $1063 per night at MOC 1 BR and $1521 at Crystal Shores 2BR for spring break (some variations depending on the actual week)
> ...



Just to clarify on your math, this is one place where it is off. You said:


> 39 nights in Maui in a 1 BR would be 19500 points or 12286 in MF *and $292,000 in upfront cost.*
> 
> 39 nights at Crystal Shores in a 2BR OV during the winter would be say 5000 points per week. 39 days would cost 27857 points. The MF would be $17550 and if we add 10% of *the 417,857 upfront cost*, a night would cost an average of $1521.



Those upfront costs would be correct only if you owned enough points to book 39 nights *every year*. Even *I'm* not that big of a points advocate. Again, our total cost for the 6375 annual points (4750 Trust/1625 elected) that we used to book those nights over the last three years was $54,000. That's the upfront cost that needs to be amortized over 10 years using your methodology, not $292,000 or $417,857.

And as far as my $11/point cost for our Trust points, they weren't all bought a long time ago. While 1750 were bought in 2014, 3000 were bought in 2020, although those were discounted more to boost sales during Covid. Obviously at today's higher prices, the economics are slightly different, and the benefit margin is decreased somewhat for current buyers, but if hotel prices keep rising over the next 5-10 years, their one-time upfront cost is still locked in at today's prices, so their economics may also improve in time as ours have. Even if our cost of points were at today's prices, the total upfront cost would be about $70,000 or so instead of $54,000, with the same $18,000 residual/resale value. So instead of a $36,000 payback gap it would be a $52,000 payback need for a current buyer. Still not unreasonable/unattainable over a few years if compared to booking ocean front rental accommodations in prime locations.

Your 10% of the purchase price approach is just a way to amortize the upfront cost to compare to a nightly rental rate. I'm not amortizing the upfront to create a pro forma nightly cost, but instead I'm actually recouping the upfront cost over some time through real time savings when comparing annual cost of points to real rental costs. As I said, three weeks in Maui and one week on Marco have recouped over half of our upfront cost. How close I am to recouping the full cost would require a more detailed analysis of every points booking we have ever done. We are just using two different methods to account for the up front cost.

And I didn't include the resale week just to make the numbers look better. I used it because its a 100% point generator for us now, and to get a true cost of current and past reservations we have to include it. I'm only counting the single resale week (HHI Barony) that we always now use as a points generator. That Barony week, however, when elected for points, actually *raises* our maintenance fee cost per point since its per point MF cost is several cents higher than the Trust points MF. So, while those points were cheaper to buy upfront, they cost more each year and reduce our benefit margins slightly. We could, of course, get rid of that week and replace the points with Trust points to reduce our annual MF cost slightly, but the upfront cost of more Trust points is high, so the payback on that swap would be about 40 years - so not a good deal at all. Even with the lower upfront cost of resale points the payback would still be about 25 years, so still not good.

As far as Florida offseason, good luck finding Crystal Shores as a Getaway almost anytime. And our stay at Ocean Pointe wasn't off-season at all, it was March 2021, prime season in Florida. Our Hilton Head bookings at Grande Ocean and Barony back in 2015-2018 were in April, May, and September, strong shoulder seasons. Good luck getting Getaways there, too.

Finally, these are REAL numbers. While our experiences and booking patterns aren't reflective of everyone who owns points, they are indicative that it is possible to make DC/Abound points work economically.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> But this is not true in practice, Abound will "anticipate demand" based on its sole discretion. The best example is your resort where the platinum season ends before the end of the election period. You do not know what formula they use to give MVC a certain number of Memorial day weeks. It is possible they are "anticipating" deposits that will only come in October. What happens by the way if they did not anticipate correctly?


Gosh, you are exhausting!

I'm convinced that every time we Marriott regulars on TUG tell you that there haven't been any proven, valid complaints about Marriott mismanaging Weeks or Points inventory in order to benefit itself since the DC/Abound inception, and we debunk the latest of your rabbit hole scenarios, you'll just come up with another and another and another and another ... until we're all so sick to death of it that we sell our Marriotts just so that we don't have to listen to it anymore!

Marriott has had the right to anticipate demand since they first established their timeshare business. It was written into the earliest docs at the oldest fixed week/fixed unit resorts and into every resort's docs since. (I'd guess the same is true of all the other big timeshare players because none of them miss when another gives itself some measure of protection that doesn't violate owners' rights.) The argument you're presenting now is not new, it was probably debated around the pool onsite forty or fifty years ago whenever the first Marriott resort came online. And again, no one has ever won a lawsuit that claimed Marriott mismanaged its timeshare business.

So from now on, I'm choosing to not entertain your suspicions that Marriott is acting unethically or in violation of owners' rights, unless and until you present proof that that's exactly what they're doing. I like my timeshares, in my experience companies with the Marriott name on them are good companies to do business with, and I'm out of patience with people who go around looking for negativity for the sake of irritating others on message boards.

It's time to put up or shut up, please.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> Both you and @TravelTime do not take into account any opportunity cost. At say 6% per year, you have an additional annual cost of $3240.



I forgot to address this point you made. Not including opportunity cost is a fair criticism of any financial analysis for a large expenditure like a timeshare points purchase. I've flip-flopped over the years on whether to include it or not. I agree from a theoretical financial analysis perspective, it should be included. But my analyses of purchases tend to be more real world than theoretical. In our case, the money we've used to buy all of our timeshares has been excess cash that was just sitting in almost 0% interest cash accounts. It was also cash that was over and above our residual cash/emergency fund needs. As a result, factoring in a 5% or 6% opportunity cost seemed academic and unrealistic for our specific situation. Had we sold dividend paying stocks or growth stocks to buy our timeshares, then including that opportunity cost would make sense. But factoring in opportunity cost for essentially 0% cash has always seemed wrong for me. Even with today's higher interest rates, the total cash in that account generates significantly less than $100/year in interest. Some opportunity cost!


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## timsi (Oct 12, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> Gosh, you are exhausting!
> 
> I'm convinced that every time we Marriott regulars on TUG tell you that there haven't been any proven, valid complaints about Marriott mismanaging Weeks or Points inventory in order to benefit itself since the DC/Abound inception, and we debunk the latest of your rabbit hole scenarios, you'll just come up with another and another and another and another ... until we're all so sick to death of it that we sell our Marriotts just so that we don't have to listen to it anymore!
> 
> ...


Before you wrote that "*Marriott can not take owned Weeks from the Weeks bucket and put them into the Points bucket until and unless an Abound-enrolled owner elects Abound Points for the Week". *Then you wrote that* "Marriott has had the right to anticipate demand". *The comments contradict each other and despite the length of your second comment you made no effort in explaining how they handle the inventory it in practice. It is not hard to understand why you can't explain it.

Edited to add:
Please explain how "*Exchange Company shall have the right to forecast anticipated reservations and use of the Accommodations and is authorized to demand balance, reserve, deposit, or rent the Accommodations for the purpose of facilitating the use or future use of the Accommodations or other benefits made available to Program Members through the Program in its sole discretion." *is consistent with the official narrative that they only make available in Abound units deposited by the week owners.


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## DanCali (Oct 13, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> So from now on, I'm choosing to not entertain your suspicions that Marriott is acting unethically or in violation of owners' rights, unless and until you present proof that that's exactly what they're doing. I like my timeshares, in my experience companies with the Marriott name on them are good companies to do business with, and I'm out of patience with people who go around looking for negativity for the sake of irritating others on message boards.
> 
> It's time to put up or shut up, please.



Whether they are acting unethically or not is almost irrelevant if there is the appearance that they are acting unethically... The reality is that there is very little transparency with the inventory, and it is intentional. After 12+ years of DC Exchange I still don't know, for example, what happens if 280 Platinum week owners at NCV elect points... Does Abound get 10 weeks of each of the 28 weeks in the Platinum season, or do they get to pick and choose 40 owner weeks during each of the 7 most highly demanded weeks in July and August? Do they get Friday, Saturday and Sunday checkin dates, or just the more sought-after Saturday and Sunday checkins? What happens if they over-anticipate owner point elections and predeposit too many weeks in Abound? Do they release that inventory back to weeks owners? When do they do that? If owners elect Bonvoy points, what weeks exactly does MVC get to choose and rent out? *Why is it that the most knowledgeable owners still need to speculate about these issues after over a decade?*

In my own experience, I've had 3 or 4 years in a row that I cannot get a Saturday checkin for the same week when trying to book it 14 (not a typo) months out. I string together a bunch of reservations at the same resort, Saturday is available for all, but for that same one week I can never get it. Do I really get beat by that many multiple week owners every single year at 14 months out, and it only happens for that one high-demand week? I call at 9:00:00am at 13 months out from the 1st reservation, get an agent with no hold time, and I get beat every single year on the 5th reservation?? I don't have a good answer and nobody else here will. In the absence of transparency, one can only speculate...

On the Vistana side, the online reservation system used to allow owners to see exchange availability for Staroptions (points) bookings way in advance of the 8-month booking window. For example, I could see at 9 months out that there is plenty of availability at Westin St. John and, since most owners usually get what they can at 12-11 months out, it would be reasonable to assume that much of that would be there at 8 months when I can actually book it, so I could plan accordingly. MVC made them remove that feature and now we can't see anything outside the 8-month booking window. Why in the world would they do that, and decrease transparency like that? It certainly doesn't help owners...

You don't have to entertain his suspicions but just because you have the power to silence him, doesn't mean you should. As long as there is intentional lack of transparency, people should be at least allowed to assume the worst and of course it's all speculation. Nobody has proof that Marriott is violating owners' right, but nobody has proof that they are not either... Looking at a different industry, there are myriad reputable financial services firms that have violated their fiduciary duties to boost short-term profits, and got heftily fined by the SEC over the years. Corporations are not saints, and the timeshare industry is much less regulated. I'd like to think MVC is acting in owner's interests, but quite often those diverge from their own interests, so who knows??


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## timsi (Oct 13, 2022)

DanCali said:


> On the Vistana side, the online reservation system used to allow owners to see exchange availability for Staroptions (points) bookings way in advance of the 8-month booking window. For example, I could see at 10 months out that there is plenty of availability at Westin St. John and, since most owners usually get what they can at 12-11 months out, it would be reasonable to assume that much of that would be there at 8 months when I can actually book it, so I could plan accordingly. MVC made them remove that feature and now we can't see anything outside the 8-month booking window. Why in the world would they do that, and decrease transparency like that? It certainly doesn't help owners...



That was bizarre, especially in a year when the plate of the IT department is quite full. Why would that be a priority for 2022?


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## daviator (Oct 13, 2022)

timsi said:


> That was bizarre, especially in a year when the plate of the IT department is quite full. Why would that be a priority for 2022?


I suspect, without any inside knowledge, that the removal of the availability viewing was done because they didn't have the resources to keep it working in the face of all the behind-the-scenes changes they are implementing to support Abound, as well as the switch to Marriott's reservation system.  It probably would have taken a lot of work to re-implement that feature on the new platform, and they needed to deploy their IT/software development resources on more pressing stuff.

You do have to remember that, while the "front end" of the Vistana site that we all see has not changed much, *everything* on the back end has changed, and our reservations are being made and stored in a completely different system and architecture than they were a year ago.  The Marriott system is reportedly old and clunky.  So my guess is they had to shed that availability feature, at least temporarily, in order to focus on getting other things to work.

Now I could be completely wrong about all of this.  It could also be that with the addition of even more "buckets" of inventory with Abound, it is too slow or complicated to show real time availability.  

I hope the feature will eventually return, it was very useful.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 13, 2022)

DanCali said:


> *... You don't have to entertain his suspicions but just because you have the power to silence him, doesn't mean you should. ...*



Like I said, I'm done entertaining all these recent/related allegations that Marriott is mismanaging inventory to the owners' detriment and in violation of the governing docs unless and until evidence is presented that that's exactly what they're doing. But this comment above needs to be addressed.

As I and other TUG moderators have repeatedly been made to explain, @TUGBrian allows us volunteers to participate on TUG subject to the exact same rules as everyone else who's allowed to participate. When I post as a moderator I make that perfectly clear by including deliberately-bolded qualifiers like, "*and now, as moderator ...*" or "*[Moderator Note: ...*" or something similar that leaves no room for doubt. In the absence of such qualifiers my posts are exactly the same as yours, worth as much or as little, and any reader is welcome to take them or leave them. My posts can also be reported, and although I can't provide proof of it, you have my word that when others report my posts for content I step aside and expect the other mods/Admin to review them for rules violations on the exact same basis as yours might be.

All of that to say, I haven't done ANYTHING to "silence" @timsi. Everyone reading his comments still has the right to read his posts and support, encourage, respond, argue for or against his points, whatever. Just because I am choosing to not entertain his baseless suppositions that Marriott should be expected at every turn to screw over its owners/members, doesn't mean any of you are required to leave his unsupported allegations on the dust heap, too.


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## timsi (Oct 13, 2022)

@JIMinNC 
Ok I misunderstood initially that the 39 days were booked annually but if you spread them over 3 years the result per night is identical, so I am not sure why you keep on mentioning it like it made Abound any cheaper. 13 nights in Maui in a 1 BR OV would be 6500 points or $4095 in MF and $97500 upfront (at $15 per point). I used an average of 3900 points per week. If we use the 10% “rule”, the cost for the 13 nights would be $4095 + $9750 ($97500/10) = 13,845 using point or $1065 per night at MOC. 

Do you think your situation is representative for the new trust point owners? Just because the money was sitting in cash at the time, it does not mean it would have stayed uninvested for 3 or 8 years. Even if you knew for sure that the money would have stayed in cash forever, it does not mean that every other MVC trust buyer is in the same position. The 10% rule works for a lot of folks who want to compare alternatives. Most people do not think that money is “free” especially when you buy something that goes down in value 80% the moment the cancellation period ends. Also, for most part your “saving” comes from lowering the average cost per point and the average MF because of the weeks you own and not because of what you book with the trust points. This is also not necessarily true for the new trust point owner.
According to MVW: “In 2021, our *financing propensity was 53%* and *the average loan* originated by us for vacation ownership products totaled approximately *$27,800, which represented 71% of the average purchase price*. For financing on the majority of our brands, we require a minimum down payment of 10% of the purchase price, although down payments and interest rates are typically higher for applicants with credit scores below certain levels and for purchasers who do not have credit scores, such as non-U.S. purchasers. *The average interest rate for originated loans in 2021 was 12.9% and the average term was 12 years*.” Can you relate to the average buyer and if not, how relevant is your own situation in this discussion? 

I maintain my position that based on MY calculations and MY experience with what I own, the trust points are very expensive for the average person because for almost every scenario I can find better alternatives.


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## CPNY (Oct 13, 2022)

DanCali said:


> Whether they are acting unethically or not is almost irrelevant if there is the appearance that they are acting unethically... The reality is that there is very little transparency with the inventory, and it is intentional. After 12+ years of DC Exchange I still don't know, for example, what happens if 280 Platinum week owners at NCV elect points... Does Abound get 10 weeks of each of the 28 weeks in the Platinum season, or do they get to pick and choose 40 owner weeks during the 7 most highly demanded weeks in July and August? Do they get Friday, Saturday and Sunday checkin dates, or just the more sought-after Saturday and Sunday checkins? What happens if they over-anticipate owner point elections and predeposit too many weeks in Abound? Do they release that inventory back to weeks owners? When do they do that? If owners elect Bonvoy points, what weeks exactly does MVC get to choose and rent out? Why is it that the most knowledgeable owners still need to speculate about these issues after over a decade?
> 
> In my own experience, I've had 3 or 4 years in a row that I cannot get a Saturday checkin for the same week when trying to book it 14 (not a typo) months out. I string together a bunch of reservations at the same resort, Saturday is available for all, but for that same one week I can never get it. Do I really get beat by that many multiple week owners every single year, and it only happens for that one high-demand week? I call at 9:00:00am at 13 months out, get an agent with no hold time, and I get beat every single year on the 5th reservation?? I don't have a good answer and nobody else here will. In the absence of transparency, one can only speculate...
> 
> ...


I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed out on inventory at the 12:00 mark. It’s as if they only make one unit available for high demand weeks at 8 months. Where did all of the other inventory go!? Just one unit is available? I don’t buy it.

I agree, why does one have to prove that Marriott IS being nefarious with their inventory, when someone else doesn’t have to prove that Marriott ISN'T??

I think it’s based on experience. For those of us who have experienced shady things when it comes to availability, we are suspect of what they do with and how they control inventory. I only need to burn myself once to know that the stove is hot.

Others who use their weeks ownership at their home resort/season and can generally get what they want will have a positive experience and not question inventory practices. But to not entertain another’s concern or experiences is bad for all owners. It allows Marriott or other big TS companies to do whatever they want.

Companies like Marriott make more money renting unused inventory than making them available for the owners who spent tens of thousands of dollars on the promise they can go anywhere at anytime with points. With that being said, am I supposed to trust them to give inventory to one group of owners vs another or rent the units for their own profit? It’s within their right to rent units for profit, so why wouldn’t they? How much is the question? Since they made inventory available for owners instead of their rental business due to the COVID pent up usage, the amount of inventory at a place like HRA is plentiful. This leads me to believe that Marriott takes a disproportionate amount for their rental business vs what’s left for owners at 8 months. It took COVID to prove that they are nefarious in how they either anticipate demand, or take units for their own profit. Same goes for interval, it’s been years since we saw HRA in II. All of a sudden we have bulk banks two years in a row?


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## DanCali (Oct 13, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> Gosh, you are exhausting!
> 
> ....
> 
> ...





DanCali said:


> ...
> You don't have to entertain his suspicions but just because you have the power to silence him, doesn't mean you should. ...





SueDonJ said:


> Like I said, I'm done entertaining all these recent/related allegations that Marriott is mismanaging inventory to the owners' detriment and in violation of the governing docs unless and until evidence is presented that that's exactly what they're doing. But this comment above needs to be addressed.
> 
> As I and other TUG moderators have repeatedly been made to explain, @TUGBrian allows us volunteers to participate on TUG subject to the exact same rules as everyone else who's allowed to participate. When I post as a moderator I make that perfectly clear by including deliberately-bolded qualifiers like, "*and now, as moderator ...*" or "*[Moderator Note: ...*" or something similar that leaves no room for doubt. In the absence of such qualifiers my posts are exactly the same as yours, worth as much or as little, and any reader is welcome to take them or leave them. My posts can also be reported, and although I can't provide proof of it, you have my word that when others report my posts for content I step aside and expect the other mods/Admin to review them for rules violations on the exact same basis as yours might be.
> 
> All of that to say, I haven't done ANYTHING to "silence" @timsi. Everyone reading his comments still has the right to read his posts and support, encourage, respond, argue for or against his points, whatever. Just because I am choosing to not entertain his baseless suppositions that Marriott should be expected at every turn to screw over its owners/members, doesn't mean any of you are required to leave his unsupported allegations on the dust heap, too.




I appreciate your response and understand your point.

I will just say that you ended that earlier post with _"It's time to put up or shut up, please"_ - so perhaps you can understand why I (and possibly others) may have misinterpreted it, given that you are in fact a moderator...


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## JIMinNC (Oct 13, 2022)

timsi said:


> @JIMinNC
> Ok I misunderstood initially that the 39 days were booked annually but if you spread them over 3 years the result per night is identical, so I am not sure why you keep on mentioning it like it made Abound any cheaper. 13 nights in Maui in a 1 BR OV would be 6500 points or $4095 in MF and $97500 upfront (at $15 per point). I used an average of 3900 points per week. If we use the 10% “rule”, the cost for the 13 nights would be $4095 + $9750 ($97500/10) = 13,845 using point or $1065 per night at MOC.
> 
> Do you think your situation is representative for the new trust point owners? Just because the money was sitting in cash at the time, it does not mean it would have stayed uninvested for 3 or 8 years. Even if you knew for sure that the money would have stayed in cash forever, it does not mean that every other MVC trust buyer is in the same position. The 10% rule works for a lot of folks who want to compare alternatives. Most people do not think that money is “free” especially when you buy something that goes down in value 80% the moment the cancellation period ends. Also, for most part your “saving” comes from lowering the average cost per point and the average MF because of the weeks you own and not because of what you book with the trust points. This is also not necessarily true for the new trust point owner.
> ...



In my original numbers, I was using actual, real numbers, and all of the nights weren't on Maui, of course. You are trying hard to prove that Trust points are never cost effective, but my numbers show they can be - maybe not for every owner and every usage - but for many of us who bought the right way, they clearly can be. That is the point. The "average" buyer should probably not buy timeshare, and obviously, anyone who needs to finance a timeshare purchase of *any* kind should not buy. I'm talking about TUGgers who are generally more knowledgeable and know how to get the most out of their ownership.

And about the invested vs uninvested question on factoring in the opportunity cost, I don't think we would have changed our cash allocation or reinvested that cash had we not spent it on our timeshares. Most likely that excess cash would have just been spent on some of those $7,000 to $8,000 hotel rentals that we would have had to do without our MVC and HGVC timeshares, or some other kind of travel. We would have to travel somehow - we ain't staying home - so that's probably exactly what would have happened to that cash. Using excess cash just like that is exactly how we paid for pre-Covid cruises on Azamara to the Mediterranean and Paul Gauguin to French Polynesia.

Also, this statement is totally wrong:


> Also, for most part your “saving” comes from lowering the average cost per point and the average MF because of the weeks you own and not because of what you book with the trust points.


None of my numbers factor in my deeded weeks from Maui and Kauai, since up to now, we have *never* exchanged those for Points. The *only *elected points used in my calculations were the small amount from our Barony Beach Club week that we now always elect for points, and as I stated in my previous post, those actually *increase* our average MF per point cost, not reduce it. I did find a small error in my averaging of our MF cost/point (I used an old number for the Barony MF), so our real number is $0.69/point blended average for us (not $0.66 as I posted earlier), versus $0.63 for pure Trust points. So, as you see, adding in that deeded week actually hurts my cost profile, not lowers it. While that raises our costs slightly versus what I posted a ways back, it doesn't change the basic result of the numbers. I'll use our upcoming Feb 23 stay as a single simple example, but will use two approaches to account for the upfront cost - my payback period approach and your 10% amortization approach:

*1) PAYBACK APPROACH
Seven nights at 1BR OF Maui Ocean Club Lahaina/Napili - 5675 points.*
Maintenance fee cost of those 5675 points at our cost of $0.69:  $3916 or $560/night
Cost of rental of same accommodation on Marriott.com, including taxes: $9735 or $1390/night
Cash flow savings from using Points vs cash: $5819 or $830/night

So, the way I look at it, from the payback approach, that one trip will offset $5819 of our roughly $54,000 cost of our Trust points, plus the one week we always elect for points. Over time, both from trips we have taken since 2014 and trips we will take in the future, we will certainly recoup the full $54k we spent for points. My guess is it might take 10-12 years. We're even better off if you assume we can eventually sell the ownership for some residual value - I had suggested $18,000 might be a reasonable number, which lowers our value gap to $36,000. We may actually be getting pretty close already to offsetting that lower net amount through our cash flow savings. One day I may go back and do a spreadsheet on it to see. Those are all our *real *numbers, not theoretical. Someone else may have a different financial equation based on how they use their points and the costs they incur.

*2) 10% AMORTIZATION APPROACH*
Your alternative approach of amortizing the upfront cost over 10 years is another way to account for the upfront cost, but in that case, since we are analyzing just one 7 night trip, we must only use the upfront cost for the points used for that *one* trip. So, for upfront cost, I'll use *our* real average per-point upfront cost of our Trust points of a little over $11/point, heck I'll even round up to $12/point to account for closing costs, etc. I'm intentionally not averaging in the upfront cost of the points we get from that resale Barony week to calculate the average cost, since those only wound up costing us about $2/point to buy. If you calculate the total upfront cost of our entire 6375 usable points (including the week), our cost actually falls to only $8.63/point, but I'll use the higher $12/point number to be more reflective of the return on the Trust points specifically. So, using that:

*Seven nights at 1BR OF Maui Ocean Club Lahaina/Napili - 5675 points.*
Maintenance fee cost of those 5675 points at our cost of $0.69:  $3916 or $560/night
Upfront purchase cost of 5675 points at $12/point: $68,100
10% amortization of upfront cost: $6810 or $972/night
Total pro-forma "cost" of the Maui week including actual costs and amortized up front cost: $10,726 or $1532/night
Cost of rental of same accommodation on Marriott.com, including taxes: $9735 or $1390/night

So, in this case, you are correct and the rental is slightly cheaper. It looks even worse for someone who has to pay current Points prices. But, in my opinion, the fallacy in the 10 year amortization approach is you are artificially forcing the *entire *upfront cost to be spread over just ten years. In my option, anyone who makes a timeshare points purchase decision - especially one at developer prices - with just a 10 year time horizon is making a big mistake. We have already owned our MVC points for 8 years and expect to use them well into our 70s if not longer into our early 80s, so we purchased with a 20+ year horizon. Given that, amortizing the upfront purchase over just 10 years is not reflective of reality. For us, 20+ years would be more realistic. If you did that, that $6810 ten-year upfront cost amortization changes to a $3405 twenty-year amortization. So the per night amount falls to $486, making the total pro-forma cost $1046/night - $344/night less than the $1390/night rental cost.

Again, I'm not talking about the "average" buyer. But the numbers are clear that informed knowledgeable buyers like TUGgers can use Points to their advantage if they buy them the right way and use them the right way. And as I've said repeatedly, those who are willing to deal with II trades or Redweek-type rentals can travel cheaper than by using points. But as my and some other folks comments above attest, there are a lot of us who don't like the risk of by-owner rentals or the inflexibility and frustrating waiting with II trades. For us, those less expensive options are just as much of a nonstarter as Trust points are for you. The best target market for Points is not the value conscious bargain hunter.

I'm not saying and have never implied that Points are for everyone. Like everything in timesharing they work for some, not for others. Your comments have been more absolute that Points are always a bad deal. That is just not the case.


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## timsi (Oct 13, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> In my original numbers, I was using actual, real numbers, and all of the nights weren't on Maui, of course. You are trying hard to prove that Trust points are never cost effective, but my numbers show they can be - maybe not for every owner and every usage - but for many of us who bought the right way, they clearly can be. That is the point. The "average" buyer should probably not buy timeshare, and obviously, anyone who needs to finance a timeshare purchase of *any* kind should not buy. I'm talking about TUGgers who are generally more knowledgeable and know how to get the most out of their ownership.
> 
> And about the invested vs uninvested question on factoring in the opportunity cost, I don't think we would have changed our cash allocation or reinvested that cash had we not spent it on our timeshares. Most likely that excess cash would have just been spent on some of those $7,000 to $8,000 hotel rentals that we would have had to do without our MVC and HGVC timeshares, or some other kind of travel. We would have to travel somehow - we ain't staying home - so that's probably exactly what would have happened to that cash. Using excess cash just like that is exactly how we paid for pre-Covid cruises on Azamara to the Mediterranean and Paul Gauguin to French Polynesia.
> 
> ...


10% per year does not mean that I am spreading the entire cost over 10 years. If you look at a reasonable opportunity cost (say 6%) and you spread the cost over 20 years, you are actually at about 10% per year, even considering you may recoup something at the end. If you actually spread it over 10 years, your annual cost is around 15% when you take into account the opportunity cost. Of course, the poor fellows who pay 13% interest have a cost closer to 20% per year and in their case (even spread over 20 years), it is not even an opportunity cost in their case since they do pay interest for their "investment". Again, I based my numbers on the current prices because I thought we were discussing from the prospective of someone who might buy points today, not from our personal perspective. 

Concerning renting from an owner, once you get a confirmation from Marriott or Vistana, I do not see it as a big risk. Since you can trace the reservation to the ownership is very unlikely the owner is a crook and if you pay through Redweek, your risk is measured in possible frustrations, not in $. IMO the 40-50% discount vs the alternative is good enough to reward the minimal risk and that should include the possible cancellations not covered by a credit card insurance. Not to mention, the trust points do not guarantee you availability and they may come with a whole different set of frustrations.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 13, 2022)

timsi said:


> 10% per year does not mean that I am spreading the entire cost over 10 years. If you look at a reasonable opportunity cost (say 6%) and you spread the cost over 20 years, you are actually at about 10% per year, even considering you may recoup something at the end. If you actually spread it over 10 years, your annual cost is around 15% when you take into account the opportunity cost. Of course, the poor fellows who pay 13% interest have a cost closer to 20% per year and in their case (even spread over 20 years), it is not even an opportunity cost in their case since they do pay interest for their "investment". Again, I based my numbers on the current prices because I thought we were discussing from the prospective of someone who might buy points today, not from our personal perspective.



The 10% per year "rule of thumb" that you've quoted repeatedly, actually *is* intended as a 10 year amortization. That's a number/analytical approach that has been thrown around and debated here on TUG for years. It has nothing to do with opportunity cost, as that is an entirely different calculation and should be done with a Time Value of Money (i.e. a Present Value/Future Value computation). So, if you didn't mean a 10 year amortization, I don't really understand your numbers at all. But if it's good for you, then use that in your decision making. I'll use mine.



> Concerning renting from an owner, once you get a confirmation from Marriott or Vistana, I do not see it as a big risk. Since you can trace the reservation to the ownership is very unlikely the owner is a crook and if you pay through Redweek, your risk is measured in possible frustrations, not in $. IMO the 40-50% discount vs the alternative is good enough to reward the minimal risk and that should include the possible cancellations not covered by a credit card insurance. Not to mention, the trust points do not guarantee you availability and they may come with a whole different set of frustrations.



Different strokes for different folks as they say. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night wondering if my reservation was good. I also don't use VRBO or AirBnB. And as I've said, I've never found booking Trust points frustrating to any degree. YMMV.

Just think of it this way, if I stay in the Abound points world and you stay in the VSN and weeks/II world, you'll never have to worry about me beating you to the reservation you want!


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## timsi (Oct 13, 2022)

SueDonJ said:


> Like I said, I'm done entertaining all these recent/related allegations that Marriott is mismanaging inventory to the owners' detriment and in violation of the governing docs unless and until evidence is presented that that's exactly what they're doing. But this comment above needs to be addressed.
> ***
> 
> All of that to say, I haven't done ANYTHING to "silence" @timsi. Everyone reading his comments still has the right to read his posts and support, encourage, respond, argue for or against his points, whatever. Just because I am choosing to not entertain his baseless suppositions that Marriott should be expected at every turn to screw over its owners/members, doesn't mean any of you are required to leave his unsupported allegations on the dust heap, too.


I think you generally misrepresent what I wrote. I advocate for transparency and accountability. I do not think it is bad to have a better understanding of the units owned by the developer, to know WHEN and HOW they are booked, how their bookings influence the other buckets, and how each bucket is fed. If a Sheraton Flex owner deposits 80,000 HomeOptions into Abound, what unit is taken from the Flex inventory since it contains many resorts and seasons? Is it unreasonable to ask? You seem to be generally bothered more by the competition from other owners, if they end up renting. I looked at MOC in Redweek for the month of February (too many to search every month) and the vast majority of the rentals come from owners that have one or two listings. I did not see anything outrageous. The reason they do not bother me is because they have to use the same reservation methods that I do. An individual owner cannot buy 10-20% of a resort, it would be impossible to book all the units at once. Marriott on the other hand can allocate to itself any number of units for any calendar week. How do they do it and why are they not transparent about it?  Why don't they use the same booking tools as anyone else? I did not see anywhere in the Vistana rules that any owner (individual, company, trust or MVC trust) would have special booking rights.


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## rthib (Oct 13, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> *1) PAYBACK APPROACH
> Seven nights at 1BR OF Maui Ocean Club Lahaina/Napili - 5675 points.
> 
> Seven nights at 1BR OF Maui Ocean Club Lahaina/Napili - 5675 points.*


The problem with both of these and also with "points are always bad" is that they are looking at a seven night stay, which is a bad way to use points.
I rarely stay 7 nights. I want 8,9 or 10 nights. With weeks that means I would use two weeks.
Or for my upcoming trip of 15 days across 4 islands, starting on a Wednesday. Doing that with weeks would be a nightmare.
And I must be doing something wrongs. since I was able to book my whole trip at six months after I found cheap airfare?
So right now I don't really care what Marriott is doing. I have 15 days in Hawaii and also Spring Training week with my week and Spring Break for my daughter at my other week resort. And extra night on one to get a cheaper airfare. Their evil plans don't seem to be working well.

(forgot to add that used my holding points for a cancelled reservation to send family on a Disney trip for Thanksgiving - darn that evil Marriott)


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## JIMinNC (Oct 13, 2022)

rthib said:


> The problem with both of these and also with "points are always bad" is that they are looking at a seven night stay, which is a bad way to use points.
> I rarely stay 7 nights. I want 8,9 or 10 nights. With weeks that means I would use two weeks.
> Or for my upcoming trip of 15 days across 4 islands, starting on a Wednesday. Doing that with weeks would be a nightmare.
> And I must be doing something wrongs. since I was able to book my whole trip at six months after I found cheap airfare?
> So while right now I don't really care what Marriott is doing. I have 15 days in Hawaii and also Spring Training week with my week and Spring Break for my daughter at my other week resort. And extra night on one to get a cheaper airfare.



Of course, points really excel with those shorter or longer than seven night stays. That's a big part of why they are more flexible than weeks. But since timsi and I were debating points bookings versus cash rentals, both offer essentially the same flexibility in length of stay, so I just picked 7 nights, since that is what we usually book in Maui, regardless of whether we book using our deeded weeks or using our points to add another week (which is what we are using some points for in 2023 - a second Maui week to pair with our deeded week).


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## DRH90277 (Oct 13, 2022)

A bit of diversion.  

Legacy owners with pre-2010 enrolled weeks (weeks that can be exchanged for VCP's) - Many have the potential for lots of points from deposits of legacy enrolled weeks.  They use these for their VCP reservations, and it works pretty well if you are resourceful and/or have a higher status level based on ownership.  The points system also works very well for off season, less compelling resorts, and for resorts where the Trust owns lots of inventory.  The points system works "less well" for high demand resorts and those with less weeks owned by the Trust.  Excessive system reliance on the willingness of enrolled week owners to deposit their high demand resorts is a problem.  It's kind of like "if you can't fill my order with my points, why exchange my week for points."   

The hypothetical pure point owners - I suspect these owners would be at the same happiness level as the aforementioned group if they had enough points and a qualifying higher status level.  Unfortunately, I doubt there is an abundance of these owners primarily due to the cost.  This might get better as individuals buy more points over time.   

I suspect the goal in all this should be to create enough available desired inventory to meet everyone's needs.  Do you think this could happen in the second 10 years of the points program?   

Thanks for listening, these may only be my thoughts and they may only be for today.


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## rthib (Oct 13, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Of course, points really excel with those shorter or longer than seven night stays. That's a big part of why they are more flexible than weeks. But since timsi and I were debating points bookings versus cash rentals, both offer essentially the same flexibility in length of stay, so I just picked 7 nights, since that is what we usually book in Maui, regardless of whether we book using our deeded weeks or using our points to add another week (which is what we are using some points for in 2023 - a second Maui week to pair with our deeded week).


But with points you can do a hybrid and really maximize value.
Who goes to Hawaii for 7 days?? If you look at 9 or 10 days which is the minimum vacation.
And mix and match: Rental night, Bonvoy night and points night.

Also, you used $12/point but talked about knowledgeable buyer. They price should be $7 point (or even less if you bought during a pandemic)


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## JIMinNC (Oct 13, 2022)

rthib said:


> But with points you can do a hybrid and really maximize value.
> Who goes to Hawaii for 7 days?? If you look at 9 or 10 days which is the minimum vacation.
> And mix and match: Rental night, Bonvoy night and points night.
> 
> Also, you used $12/point but talked about knowledgeable buyer. They price should be $7 point (or even less if you bought during a pandemic)



I agree just 7 days in Hawaii isn't very practical, but the points we own aren't the only vehicle we have to use. Except for Oahu, we would always stay at least one week on each island we visit, since it takes at least that long to hit all of our favorite restaurants! That's why we own our Hawaii deeded weeks instead of just points. We can mix and match points & weeks and visit for multiple weeks. In February/March 2023, we are using our EOY Waiohai week for one week on Kauai, our EOY Maui Ocean Club week for a week on Maui, our Abound Club Points for a second week on Maui, and then our HGVC points for a fourth week on the Big Island. We try to save our hotel cash stays and Bonvoy stays for places like Europe where we can't use timeshares. For the debate with timsi, I focused mainly on the Trust points usage portion since that was what that debate was all about.

On the points costs, I was also trying to address timsi's specific arguments against Trust points, so was trying to focus on those economics specifically, knowing if I introduced the concept of hybrids, that would confuse the issue he was concerned about. In fact, our first purchase in 2014 was indeed a week/points hybrid, that resulted in us owning 3375 points at an average cost of about $6.88/point (about $2/point for the points assigned to the resale week and a little over $11/point for the matching Trust points). When we bought our second batch of 3000 points in November 2020, it was to enroll our two EOY Hawaii weeks, so it was a straight points buy. Due to the Covid price discounting, MVC was still doing a little bit of that at the time, so we wound up paying about the same $11+ price for that second batch as we did six years earlier. For the discussions with timsi, I just rounded up to $12 since he felt my costs were too low anyway. When you average our $6.88 hybrid purchase cost from 2014 and the $11+ purchase cost from 2020, our total average cost for the 6375 annual points we actually use is $8.63/point. I'm happy with that.

I'll will note that in 2020, instead of buying the 3000 Trust points, we could have bought an Aruba week from MVC as an alternative way to enroll our two resale Hawaii weeks. We had briefly considered that option previously and had found the Aruba option wasn't all that much different cost-wise than Trust points for just enrolling two EOY weeks (equal to one EY week), so when the sales person at Marco Island offered the 3000 Trust points enrollment option, we just did it rather than reaching out to Central Sales to see if they could beat the deal with an Aruba week. My impression is the Aruba packages tend to work better for folks trying to enroll multiple EY weeks.


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## TravelTime (Oct 13, 2022)

7 night trips to Hawaii are really common among people in CA for many reasons. I have known professionals who can only get away for 5N. So 7N can feel like a luxury to many people who are working in high pressure jobs.


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## CPNY (Oct 13, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> 7 night trips to Hawaii are really common among people in CA for many reasons. I have known professionals who can only get away for 5N. So 7N can feel like a luxury to many people who are working in high pressure jobs.


I’m going to Hawaii for 7 nights from nyc. Although I’m flying to Dallas and spending the night, then I’m flying to Maui the following day. On the way back I’m spending the night in LA. I’m hoping the break up in flights won’t make 7 nights in Maui seem too little


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## timsi (Oct 13, 2022)

rthib said:


> The problem with both of these and also with "points are always bad" is that they are looking at a seven night stay, which is a bad way to use points.
> I rarely stay 7 nights. I want 8,9 or 10 nights. With weeks that means I would use two weeks.
> Or for my upcoming trip of 15 days across 4 islands, starting on a Wednesday. Doing that with weeks would be a nightmare.
> And I must be doing something wrongs. since I was able to book my whole trip at six months after I found cheap airfare?
> ...


The flexibility can come at a very high cost. Booking through Abound a 9 day stay in a 2 BR spring break at Lagunamar would cost 7400 points or $5032 in maintenance fees (using trust points). The MF for 2 weeks in a 2 BR are about $3300.


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## bazzap (Oct 14, 2022)

We have increasingly been using MVC enrolled weeks elected points for bookings, alongside regular weeks bookings, for several reasons
- for home resort stays in Phuket, there is no skim (only a premium for a few peak holiday dates which we never want anyway)
- for non home resort stays, to secure availability as early as possible rather than holding out and hoping for Interval exchanges
We always book long stays, so we have to incur the increased weekend points rates, but to at least minimise these we typically try to check in on a Monday and check out several weeks later on a Friday.


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## timsi (Oct 14, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> *2) 10% AMORTIZATION APPROACH*
> Your alternative approach of amortizing the upfront cost over 10 years is another way to account for the upfront cost, but in that case, since we are analyzing just one 7 night trip, we must only use the upfront cost for the points used for that *one* trip. So, for upfront cost, I'll use *our* real average per-point upfront cost of our Trust points of a little over $11/point, heck I'll even round up to $12/point to account for closing costs, etc. I'm intentionally not averaging in the upfront cost of the points we get from that resale Barony week to calculate the average cost, since those only wound up costing us about $2/point to buy. If you calculate the total upfront cost of our entire 6375 usable points (including the week), our cost actually falls to only $8.63/point, but I'll use the higher $12/point number to be more reflective of the return on the Trust points specifically. So, using that:
> 
> *Seven nights at 1BR OF Maui Ocean Club Lahaina/Napili - 5675 points.*
> ...



It does not seem you are using the best available rate on Marriott.com when you make your comparisons. When I used the owner code and I got $956 per night 1BR OF unit which is significantly better than $1390 that you mentioned.  You also get a *minimum of 67,726 Bonvoy points *for your stay (worth about $475) when you book through Marriott.com.  *This would bring your actual cost on Marriott.com to $888 per night *and I should mention that if you have any Bonvoy status, you can get more points.   I do not agree with using zero cost of capital indefinitely, but even so, it seems there is no saving whether you use 10 or 20 years amortization. I think we are also not taking into account that when you own points, you always need to own a bit more.  I wonder what the average annual waste per trust point owner, points that expire without being used. I doubt it is zero.  The owner rate is also more flexible, and you do not have to deal with banking deadlines, expiring points for late cancellations etc.  I also believe the current hotel prices are inflated, we have to see how things shake out once the revenge travel subsides. Maybe they will be higher, but I doubt it, it is more likely we may see a lot more deals going forward.

*Marriott's Maui Ocean Club - Lahaina & Napili Towers
Guest room, 1 King, Sofa bed, Oceanfront, Balcony*

*  Check in: Friday, March 3, 2023
    Check out: Friday, March 10, 2023*
Summary of Charges 824.00USD Avg./night + 1,004.61USD Taxes and fees *6,772.61USD*
Cancelling Your Reservation
*You may cancel your reservation for no charge before 11:59 PM local hotel time on February 18, 2023 (14 day before arrival) *


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## JIMinNC (Oct 14, 2022)

timsi said:


> It does not seem you are using the best available rate on Marriott.com when you make your comparisons. When I used the owner code and I got $956 per night 1BR OF unit which is significantly better than $1390 that you mentioned.  You also get a *minimum of 67,726 Bonvoy points *for your stay (worth about $475) when you book through Marriott.com.  *This would bring your actual cost on Marriott.com to $888 per night *and I should mention that if you have any Bonvoy status, you can get more points.   I do not agree with using zero cost of capital indefinitely, but even so, it seems there is no saving whether you use 10 or 20 years amortization. I think we are also not taking into account that when you own points, you always need to own a bit more.  I wonder what the average annual waste per trust point owner, points that expire without being used. I doubt it is zero.  The owner rate is also more flexible, and you do not have to deal with banking deadlines, expiring points for late cancellations etc.  I also believe the current hotel prices are inflated, we have to see how things shake out once the revenge travel subsides. Maybe they will be higher, but I doubt it, it is more likely we may see a lot more deals going forward.
> 
> *Marriott's Maui Ocean Club - Lahaina & Napili Towers
> Guest room, 1 King, Sofa bed, Oceanfront, Balcony*
> ...



You are correct. I used the Bonvoy member rate, not the MVC discount code rate. I was doing quick and dirty comparisons. For any owner who qualifies for the MVC discount codes but doesn't use points, they can certainly save off the Bonvoy or Senior rates. That doesn't change the basic equation in my payback model, it just stretches out the payback. So, if I substitute the total cost of $6773 that you found above, and subtract my MF cost of $3916, then my cash flow savings would be just under $2900. So that would indeed cut the payback contribution in half - from $5800 to $2900 - and increase the time it would take to recoup the upfront costs.

We've focused a lot in this academic debate on the raw economics of cash vs points, but honestly, from my personal perspective, I don't really worry all that much about whether my "real" payback is 10 years, 15 years, or longer. All I really care about is, "will I eventually recoup most of that upfront cost?" I'm comfortable that in our case the answer is probably "yes." YMMV.  What I actually like best about ownership versus cash rental is, with ownership, the cost of lodging for X number of nights per year is paid for in lump sum maintenance fee payments in December and January. Then, when we actually want to travel, it's really just a question of, "what do we want to book?" All those nights are already paid for. With cash rentals, each trip becomes a question, "Is this trip worth $7000 (or whatever)?" That's an intangible psychological value to us that is impossible to quantify.

The raw economics are only part of the story though. If you look at the availability calendar on Marriott.com for MOC, cash reservation availability is somewhat spotty. By contrast, I've always had my choice of the exact dates I want when booking with my MVC points (or weeks). When trying to schedule multiple weeks in Hawaii using a mix of points and weeks across both MVC and HGVC, that ease helps a lot. That's another intangible benefit.

In the end, though, the savings/price comparisons we are debating about all get lost in the rounding of all the things we spend money on in life. Whether I recoup all of our $54,000 cost of our ownership before going to the big timeshare in the sky, or only half of it, so what? That difference is peanuts over 10-15 years. We use our timeshares to make it easier to travel. They work for us.

Finally, the only reason I started into this debate in the first place was your contention that owning Trust points can NEVER make sense. My whole point was to point out that they can and do work for at least some of us. Again, YMMV.


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## timsi (Oct 14, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> You are correct. I used the Bonvoy member rate, not the MVC discount code rate. I was doing quick and dirty comparisons. For any owner who qualifies for the MVC discount codes but doesn't use points, they can certainly save off the Bonvoy or Senior rates. That doesn't change the basic equation in my payback model, it just stretches out the payback. So, if I substitute the total cost of $6773 that you found above, and subtract my MF cost of $3916, then my cash flow savings would be just under $2900. So that would indeed cut the payback contribution in half - from $5800 to $2900 - and increase the time it would take to recoup the upfront costs.
> 
> We've focused a lot in this academic debate on the raw economics of cash vs points, but honestly, from my personal perspective, I don't really worry all that much about whether my "real" payback is 10 years, 15 years, or longer. All I really care about is, "will I eventually recoup most of that upfront cost?" I'm comfortable that in our case the answer is probably "yes." YMMV.  What I actually like best about ownership versus cash rental is, with ownership, the cost of lodging for X number of nights per year is paid for in lump sum maintenance fee payments in December and January. Then, when we actually want to travel, it's really just a question of, "what do we want to book?" All those nights are already paid for. With cash rentals, each trip becomes a question, "Is this trip worth $7000 (or whatever)?" That's an intangible psychological value to us that is impossible to quantify.
> 
> ...


I do not know why you do not include the Bonvoy points you would get for a Marriott.com rental. Without any status bonus you would get 67,726 Bonvoy points for your stay (worth about $475). This would bring the actual cost to *$6297* (6,772 - 475). The difference to the MF is only $2391. I just do not see how anyone can justify paying today $75,000  to get an annual saving of $2400, it would take 31 years to break even and that does not include any cost of capital or opportunity cost. In reality you will never see your money back and if you get sick and can't travel, it is mostly a writeoff.  Not including any amortization in the calculation does not make any sense to me. By the same token, the timeshares where you can prepay the MF  for a number of years, are free!   Don't forget we are still comparing the trust point bookings with Marriott.com at the current inflated hotel prices. It gets a lot worse if we look at Redweek which should still be an option for a lot of folks.

I have no advanced knowledge about the big timeshares in the sky. I heard though that they are very well appointed and that there are no maintenance fees, special assessments etc. Once you get there you can stay, nobody will kick you out, so you do not have to worry about future inventory issues or glitchy IT. On the flip side, there are no exchanges, so we have to be happy with what we get. In any case, I am in no rush to find out.


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## JIMinNC (Oct 14, 2022)

timsi said:


> I do not know why you do not include the Bonvoy points you would get for a Marriott.com rental. Without any status bonus you would get 67,726 Bonvoy points for your stay (worth about $475). This would bring the actual cost to *$6297* (6,772 - 475). The difference to the MF is only $2391. I just do not see how anyone can justify paying today $75,000  to get an annual saving of $2400, it would take 31 years to break even and that does not include any cost of capital or opportunity cost. In reality you will never see your money back and if you get sick and can't travel, it is mostly a writeoff.  Not including any amortization in the calculation does not make any sense to me. By the same token, the timeshares where you can prepay the MF  for a number of years, are free!   Don't forget we are still comparing the trust point bookings with Marriott.com at the current inflated hotel prices. It gets a lot worse if we look at Redweek which should still be an option for a lot of folks.
> 
> I have no advanced knowledge about the big timeshares in the sky. I heard though that they are very well appointed and that there are no maintenance fees, special assessments etc. Once you get there you can stay, nobody will kick you out, so you do not have to worry about future inventory issues or glitchy IT. On the flip side, there are no exchanges, so we have to be happy with what we get. In any case, I am in no rush to find out.



Why don't I count Bonvoy points? Because between my wife and I we have over 2.2 million Bonvoy points. Getting more has minimal value at this point. Plus, as I said earlier, our priority isn't squeezing every dollar of value out of everything we do. We are convenience and experience driven.

Bottom line, as your numbers show, if you are determined to produce numbers that show Points are a terrible value, you can do that. On the other hand, if you believe Points have value, numbers can be produced that prove that as well - like mine. In the end, it's all about the assumptions each of us use in our numbers. There is no right answer, universally. What works for me may not work for you. We're happy with our weeks and our points. They meet our needs. Your Lagunamar weeks meet your needs. We're both happy, so why debate this any more? This horse is very, very dead.


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## timsi (Oct 15, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Why don't I count Bonvoy points? Because between my wife and I we have over 2.2 million Bonvoy points. Getting more has minimal value at this point. Plus, as I said earlier, our priority isn't squeezing every dollar of value out of everything we do. We are convenience and experience driven.
> 
> Bottom line, as your numbers show, if you are determined to produce numbers that show Points are a terrible value, you can do that. On the other hand, if you believe Points have value, numbers can be produced that prove that as well - like mine. In the end, it's all about the assumptions each of us use in our numbers. There is no right answer, universally. What works for me may not work for you. We're happy with our weeks and our points. They meet our needs. Your Lagunamar weeks meet your needs. We're both happy, so why debate this any more? This horse is very, very dead.


You can’t be serious. The Bonvoy points are valued at $500 per transaction (875 dollars with the bonus if you are Titanium, $17,500 in 20 years, a good chunk of your “saving”), you do not look at the best alternatives in terms of rental price (whether Marriott.com with the owner’s rate or Redweek)  and you can ignore 54,000 dollars sitting uninvested (or 75,000 if someone bought today) and the opportunity cost for 20 years.  I understand your _subjective _position about the intangible value but let’s not mix apples and oranges.


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## l0410z (Oct 15, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> There is no right answer, universally. What works for me may not work for you. We're happy with our weeks and our points. They meet our needs. Your Lagunamar weeks meet your needs. We're both happy, so why debate this any more? This horse is very, very dead.



Thank you.  This is the net net of all timeshare ownership.   Value can mean least cost, least time to spent on it, convenance, most tradable, comfort level. etc but  these are individual owner decisions.


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## sponger76 (Oct 15, 2022)

timsi said:


> You can’t be serious. The Bonvoy points are valued at $500 per transaction (875 dollars with the bonus if you are Titanium, $17,500 in 20 years, a good chunk of your “saving”), you do not look at the best alternatives in terms of rental price (whether Marriott.com with the owner’s rate or Redweek)  and you can ignore 54,000 dollars sitting uninvested (or 75,000 if someone bought today) and the opportunity cost for 20 years.  I understand your _subjective _position about the intangible value but let’s not mix apples and oranges.


What about the opportunity cost of all the time you spend griping about Abound that you could be spending productively enjoying your life?


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## timsi (Oct 15, 2022)

sponger76 said:


> What about the opportunity cost of all the time you spend griping about Abound that you could be spending productively enjoying your life?


That seems to be matched by others who, in absence of supporting numbers, have to come with creative ideas to defend it.


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## sponger76 (Oct 15, 2022)

timsi said:


> That seems to be matched by others who, in absence of supporting numbers, have to come with creative ideas to defend it.


I'm still trying to figure out if someone from MVC peed in your coffee or something. Abound hasn't even launched yet but you're already crusading like it's Sauron coming forth from Mordor and you're trying to rally the Fellowship of the Ring. Just not rational considering they haven't done anything to you. Yes, it's possible that they could. But any stranger on the street *could* hit or rob you. Should you start campaigning against the evils of strangers on the street?


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## JIMinNC (Oct 15, 2022)

timsi said:


> You can’t be serious. The Bonvoy points are valued at $500 per transaction (875 dollars with the bonus if you are Titanium, $17,500 in 20 years, a good chunk of your “saving”), you do not look at the best alternatives in terms of rental price (whether Marriott.com with the owner’s rate or Redweek)  and you can ignore 54,000 dollars sitting uninvested (or 75,000 if someone bought today) and the opportunity cost for 20 years.  I understand your _subjective _position about the intangible value but let’s not mix apples and oranges.



That old horse is still dead, but I'll leave you with one or two more thoughts...

We are good friends with a couple who are very value-conscious consumers - they always shop for the best price, comparison shop, look for bargains, etc. They also try to maximize their credit card points/rewards by paying _*everything*_ with their cards - estimated taxes, property taxes, utility bills, etc. They analyze in detail which card offers the best value for each transaction. When they travel they use AirBnB and VRBO and discount escorted tours. They wouldn't ever consider spending what we do for meals when dining out. If they can get a cheaper fare on Spirit, Southwest, or Frontier they will choose them over American, Delta, or United. This couple is at least as financially secure as we are, but they are value-focused and search for deals.

We are friends with another couple who prefer to stay at Ritz Carltons, fly First Class, and they enjoy dining out in really nice places like we do. They will certainly take whatever benefits they get from airline/hotel loyalty programs and using Rewards cards, but it doesn't drive their decisions. They are almost certainly more financially secure than we are.

We are somewhere in between these two couples. We don't usually fly First Class, but we avoid the discount carriers. We don't usually spring for the Ritz, and are happy with Marriotts and Westins, but we stay away from the discount hotels and AirBnBs our more frugal friends often use. 

My point is, we all have different priorities. I like our timeshares mainly because they allow me to pay for my travel as a fixed cost every year, then I don't have to shop rates and pay a la carte like when we are traveling to places without timeshares. My costs are locked in each year and I don't have to worry whether that cheapest possible cash rate rental you used in your calculations will be available for the dates I want. If over time, I can save enough to recoup my initial costs, that's great. If I don't recoup it all, that's fine too. We can't take it with us.

The numbers I used are the same methodology I've used to evaluate our timeshare purchases at a high level since we bought our very first timeshare in another system in 1998. A number of us on the MVC board have had almost this same rent vs. buy debate multiple times over the last eight years, and we've all floated around enough numbers to make @SueDonJ 's head spin. 

It's all about which assumptions we each use that has a huge impact on what the numbers say. My numbers reflect my specific costs and my specific priorities and I assign no value to things that have no meaningful value to us and don't factor into our decision making. My personal experience has been the cash rates vary and the cheapest rates aren't always there for the dates I want, but I've always been able to get what I want with both my weeks and Points, so I'm uncomfortable using the cheapest cash rate as a comparison. It appears to me that your intent is to use the most favorable rental costs (even if they might not always be available) and attribute every benefit to the cash rentals (like Bonvoy value) while doing the least favorable analysis of the cost and value of Trust Points because that supports your belief that no one can ever justify Trust points.

So, let's please let this horse die a respectful death. That is my plan from here on out. It's 75 degrees in Hilton Head Island and the beach is calling me. I'm going back to productively living my life as @sponger76 suggested - on the beach!


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## TravelTime (Oct 15, 2022)

I am somewhere in between Jim’s examples. I can afford to stay almost anywhere (within financial reason) but I like timeshares for different reasons. I compare to the cash rate at hotels to calculate breakeven because that is where I would stay. I also factor in benefits like Titanium status and upgrades with Marriott hotels, gold status with United and my extra points I received for a hydrid package. I actually only calculated any of this for a little while after purchase with back of the envelope calculations. When I got close to break, I stopped bc I do not care anymore. It was good enough. 

I like timeshares because the cost of owning can be half of renting on Redweek for the places I go and 1/4 of the expensive hotels I would stay at with more space. I do not like Redweek because of the strict refund policies if I change my mind, which frequently happens. You lose 50% to 100% of the cost of the rental if you cancel. Plus there is always the risk of a scam when renting from an owner. 

I do not like Airbnb for some of the same reasons plus, even if legit, you may not get what you see in the photos and they are rarely in resorts. It could be a good back up for places where there are no timeshares but I still pick a hotel or professionally managed property when I stay outside of my timeshares to guarantee quality.


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## SueDonJ (Oct 15, 2022)

timsi said:


> That seems to be matched by others who, in absence of supporting numbers, have to come with creative ideas to defend it.


If "supporting numbers" was the only qualifier that defined reasonable timeshare ownership, every single TUGger would own Weeks that can't be given away unless the seller includes ten years worth of MF's and his/her firstborn in the deal, and fighting each other to the death over access to the Sightings board would be a thing.

@JIMinNC is right - I hate math. I do it only in my sewing room and that's more than enough. Don's a numbers guy but even he didn't project the numbers into the thirty-eighth year of our timeshare ownership to make sure we squeeze only the exact necessary amount of pennies into our vacations.

Our timeshares are for fun. The only nickel-and-diming we do with timeshares is making sure that our discretionary travel funds will cover the cost of the timeshares that work most conveniently for us. For me, it's not convenient to run spreadsheets or to scour the resale market or to get mired in the muck of eBay or to take unnecessary risks with strangers possibly scamming me.

For other timeshare owners, the fun is IN the numbers. Fine, you all have at it. Just don't tell me that your way is the only way or that my way requires a suspension of reason. There is no one right way to approach timeshare ownership, period.


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## Dean (Oct 15, 2022)

I'm late to this party I know but it doesn't seem to matter since it's the same thing time after time anyway.  


timsi said:


> To me the only way to save money is to buy resale and either use your own week or exchange in Interval. The moment you pay developer prices, the potential saving goes away and that is particularly the case with Abound that is expensive both in terms of initial cost and MF. I have not seen yet a sweet spot to excite me.


Not true but I think we all would agree that simply buying retail at the present time as the only purchase is difficult to defend.  There are lots of nuances.  There has always been a certain amount of economy in a larger scale and that is definitely true with MVC in 2022.  Assuming one is not enrolled or new to MVC or simply needs to add significant volume, there are in between options that can be great for many.  Enrolling 7 to 12 resale weeks with a GOOD retail purchase OR buying a resale fractional and enrolling are probably the best ways available to do so.  The latter will be best just for points, the former for a combination of usage (using owned weeks, exchanging, points).  And if one chooses good weeks, they'll save around 1/3 to 1/2 off fees with the former and maybe 2/3 with the latter.  Certainly just buying cheap weeks and exchanging will be the cheapest overall but will have limitations that many of us are not OK with.  


Huskerpaul said:


> Today resale MVC points sell for $6-$8 and work just like points bought from Marriott.


And there are still cheaper ways to get in than that both up front and yearly.


timsi said:


> Something does not make sense with the Marriott inventory if the week owners have a hard time booking when the window opens. How many units does Marriott own at Barony Beach and Surf Watch?


Other than resorts where the developer still owns the majority of the weeks, it doesn't matter.  For the rest it's not owned by MVC but by members.  The question is valid as to the volume in the trust and the volume of owners enrolled for a given season (esp the higher seasons).  Points systems and floating weeks systems inherently create a bottleneck for the highest demand times.  Anyone deciding to participate should understand that before joining.  If not, that's on them.


timsi said:


> But this is not true in practice, Abound will "anticipate demand" based on its sole discretion. The best example is your resort where the platinum season ends before the end of the election period. You do not know what formula they use to give MVC a certain number of Memorial day weeks. It is possible they are "anticipating" deposits that will only come in October. What happens by the way if they did not anticipate correctly?


A certain amount of trust is required that they will not take more weeks than they should.  But they have a boatload of historical data plus early booking trends to guide them.  Could they take all the best weeks before anyone else had access, likely not, but they could tilt the table in their favor if they wanted.  Anyone who's uncomfortable with that shouldn't participate in such a way they are caught up in this issue if they are overly concerned about it.  And anyone who is completely distrustful, the a degree it's controlling their life, they really should simply get out and move on.  Life's too short.  BTW, exchanging to MX is easy for great weeks and resorts so I'd ague that owning in MX is a poor choice in general to use for MX.


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## TravelTime (Oct 15, 2022)

I have not been reading the @timsi comments but it seems like he should not own timeshares.

I have read volumes of logical replies from many Tuggers about how different people like and enjoy timeshares for different reasons. How some timeshare owners calculate the ROI on timeshare ownership and how people calculate it different ways. How some people simply do not bother with all spreadsheets and are happy with good enough.

Getting into the transparency issues with timeshares seems like a fruitless endeavor. So does worrying about the changes in the programs. We all know anything can change with timeshares. I think TUG is helpful for learning how to maximize weeks or points.

It is fruitless to tell someone what they prefer is not good based on your own preferences. Not only fruitless but sort of demeaning to continuously do so like a pit bull. You can say why you do not like something for yourself but do not preach to others about their choices and what works for them.


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## Quadmaniac (Oct 17, 2022)

Just a ball of laughs here, be great for parties 

Tequila anyone ?


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## LizMcCoy (Dec 16, 2022)

First time on TUG.  Starwood/Westin owners for 17 years now.  4* Elite in the old system.  Mostly floating properties.  Would describe us as more like JIMinNC and TravelTime.  Originally bought the timeshares so could travel with our kids and bring the grandparents and have space, kitchen, W/D.  Now, we use the timeshare properties for R&R and are generally happy with what we are able to book when we get around to planning/booking (no longer tied to a school calendar and don't always book a year out).  At this point, we do more traveling staying at hotel properties using the (now) Bonvoy points than at the VOI properties.  But, we are intrigued by some of the new opportunities the MVC offers.

We are a bit behind the 8-ball on the Abound scenario because we moved 18 months ago and even though we did an owner update last December as well as updating our address/email in the owner dashboard back when we moved, we did not receive the invites in the past few months to join zooms and get walked through the new system over the phone.  Just did an owner update at Desert Willow and learned that we are just shy of Chairman status in the Marriott Abound world.  They of course pushed us to purchase MVC Trust Interests to get us up to Chairman status.   (And, their archaic system had all of our contact info wrong (address, phone, email) in the system they used yesterday at Desert Willow, despite my pulling our account up on my laptop and showing them how we are up to date online -- good thing for MVC that we pay our MFs online and that I know when they are due since we haven't received paper invoices yet this year.) 

Here are my questions.  Sorry that some are very basic questions (we still haven't gone through the tutorials).  

1.  Is the Chairman level that much more desirable than Presidential?  Seems that you get access 3 weeks earlier, but not sure what else we get for the upfront costs and additional MF.  They were claiming Titanium Elite status for life, grandfathered regardless of future changes to the program.  Limit of 1% of owners in the Chairman level (so presumably, better access if booking in that earliest of early windows).  Any other significant benefits different from Presidential?  Or is Presidential good enough?  Any idea what % of owners/properties are in the Presidential level?
2.  We need MVC Trust interests for 1250 Club Points to get us to Chairman level.  They offered us 5 interests to get us those 1250 Club Points for $19500 and $850/year MF.  Reading on TUG elsewhere I saw someone say that 1500 could be purchased for about $10,000 on the secondary market.  Is that true?  If so, where do we go to do that transaction?  And, does it matter if those interests are purchased on secondary market versus directly from MVC in order to boost the status, assuming we want to go that route? 
3.  If we opt in for Club Points, do we have to convert all of our properties that year over to Club Points or can we do it property by property?
4.   If we opt in for some properties in a year and not others, does that mean we get Presidential or Chairman status only for the transactions in Abound, but lose the Elite 4* status and benefits for the properties that we do not convert to Club Points in a year?
5.  Will Elite 4* (now Presidential or Chairman) still get 20% bonus points on conversion to hotel points (we do a lot of that most years)?  Is there a similar bonus in the Abound system for Presidential or Chairman level -- I'm assuming you can still convert unused Club Points to Bonvoy points (meaning if we turn a Westin VOI over to Club points in a year but don't use the points that we have a mechanism to then convert to Marriott Bonvoy hotel points -- is this true?  I did read somewhere on HUB that in the fine print if you do not opt in for Club Points that many of the old elite bonuses disappear (now there will be conversion fees; will we still get that 20% bonus?)
6.  At the sales office yesterday they were excited to show us how we can use Chairman status to (early) reserve desirable properties in particular locations and then rent them on VRBO as a way to earn money to pay for the additional interests we need to get to Chairman level.  Has anyone had success doing this?  The only time I tried to rent out one of our weeks (at Westin St. John) I had no luck and ended up canceling the reservation.

BTW I went back and looked at my notes from our owner update a year ago and some of the property valuations from Vistana to Abound ended up being quite different from what they were speculating a year ago.  I know I read on TUG recently that you can take your Staroptions and divide by 30,000 to get to your Club Points, but that is inaccurate.  Differs property by property (and possibly by season).


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## daviator (Dec 16, 2022)

LizMcCoy said:


> First time on TUG.  Starwood/Westin owners for 17 years now.  4* Elite in the old system.  Mostly floating properties.  Would describe us as more like JIMinNC and TravelTime.  Originally bought the timeshares so could travel with our kids and bring the grandparents and have space, kitchen, W/D.  Now, we use the timeshare properties for R&R and are generally happy with what we are able to book when we get around to planning/booking (no longer tied to a school calendar and don't always book a year out).  At this point, we do more traveling staying at hotel properties using the (now) Bonvoy points than at the VOI properties.  But, we are intrigued by some of the new opportunities the MVC offers.
> 
> We are a bit behind the 8-ball on the Abound scenario because we moved 18 months ago and even though we did an owner update last December as well as updating our address/email in the owner dashboard back when we moved, we did not receive the invites in the past few months to join zooms and get walked through the new system over the phone.  Just did an owner update at Desert Willow and learned that we are just shy of Chairman status in the Marriott Abound world.  They of course pushed us to purchase MVC Trust Interests to get us up to Chairman status.   (And, their archaic system had all of our contact info wrong (address, phone, email) in the system they used yesterday at Desert Willow, despite my pulling our account up on my laptop and showing them how we are up to date online -- good thing for MVC that we pay our MFs online and that I know when they are due since we haven't received paper invoices yet this year.)
> 
> ...


Not really.  I don't think there is a scenario where it's worth spending five figures just to get to Chairman's  Club.  I have been Titanium the past few years (from stays) and haven't found it to make much difference over Platinum.  Upgrades at hotel properties are rare and usually very minor upgrades.  And it's not "Titanium for Life", it's Titanium for as long as you own all of your timeshares.  For some people, those won't be the same thing.


LizMcCoy said:


> 2.  We need MVC Trust interests for 1250 Club Points to get us to Chairman level.  They offered us 5 interests to get us those 1250 Club Points for $19500 and $850/year MF.  Reading on TUG elsewhere I saw someone say that 1500 could be purchased for about $10,000 on the secondary market.  Is that true?  If so, where do we go to do that transaction?  And, does it matter if those interests are purchased on secondary market versus directly from MVC in order to boost the status, assuming we want to go that route?


Somebody that knows more about this will undoubtedly answer you, but yes, you can buy points resale, and then you have to pay a fee to MVC to register those points.  My understanding is that once you do so, they are exactly the same as if you'd bought them from MVC.


LizMcCoy said:


> 3.  If we opt in for Club Points, do we have to convert all of our properties that year over to Club Points or can we do it property by property?


Property by property, year by year.  You do need to elect an entire VOI, so if you have a two-bedroom lockoff, you have to convert the whole thing or none of it; you can't convert just one side or the other.  If you own Flex points, you can convert the entire VOI or in 20,000 SO increments.


LizMcCoy said:


> 4.   If we opt in for some properties in a year and not others, does that mean we get Presidential or Chairman status only for the transactions in Abound, but lose the Elite 4* status and benefits for the properties that we do not convert to Club Points in a year?


There's no more 4* elite, your status is whatever your Abound status is.  It doesn't matter whether you elect all or none of your VOIs for Club Points, your status is your status and it's based on what your VOIs would convert to (in Club Points) if you WERE converting them.  You don't actually have to ever do it.


LizMcCoy said:


> 5.  Will Elite 4* (now Presidential or Chairman) still get 20% bonus points on conversion to hotel points (we do a lot of that most years)?  Is there a similar bonus in the Abound system for Presidential or Chairman level -- I'm assuming you can still convert unused Club Points to Bonvoy points (meaning if we turn a Westin VOI over to Club points in a year but don't use the points that we have a mechanism to then convert to Marriott Bonvoy hotel points -- is this true?  I did read somewhere on HUB that in the fine print if you do not opt in for Club Points that many of the old elite bonuses disappear (now there will be conversion fees; will we still get that 20% bonus?)


Yes, the extra 20% on Bonvoy conversion stays for elite owners.  Again, it doesn't matter whether or not you ELECT TO CONVERT in any given year.  The option to "opt out" means completely opting out of the Abound program, and there is *no good reason to do that.*  You should stay "opted in" even if you never plan to elect Club Points, because opting out means that you give up that option along with many of the elite benefits you get in Abound even if all your trading stays in VSN.  People get confused about the terminology, but "opt out" refers to rejecting the option to ever participate in Abound.  "Electing" is what you can do each year, with one or more of your VOIs, to trade them for Club Points for that year.


LizMcCoy said:


> 6.  At the sales office yesterday they were excited to show us how we can use Chairman status to (early) reserve desirable properties in particular locations and then rent them on VRBO as a way to earn money to pay for the additional interests we need to get to Chairman level.  Has anyone had success doing this?  The only time I tried to rent out one of our weeks (at Westin St. John) I had no luck and ended up canceling the reservation.


They make it sound much easier than it is.  Some people do it, but the VSN rules only allow you to rent stays at your home resort(s), not at resorts you book using StarOptions.  I'm not sure what the rules are for bookings you make via Abound.  It's also worth noting that when you elect Abound points, you'll pretty much always get less value than you'd get from that ownership in VSN.  The benefit is that you can access more properties and you have more booking flexibility (any number of nights, any checkin day, etc.)  But if you elect a week that you own to Abound and the turn around and try to book that week (through Abound) with the points you just exchanged for, you'll often find that it's not enough points.  That's what people call the "skim" and it's one of the ways that Abound is profitable for Marriott Vacations.  So you really only want to elect if you want to book something that you couldn't book within VSN.
I have found renting to be quite a bit of work and hassle.  But it can be done, sometimes.


LizMcCoy said:


> BTW I went back and looked at my notes from our owner update a year ago and some of the property valuations from Vistana to Abound ended up being quite different from what they were speculating a year ago.  I know I read on TUG recently that you can take your Staroptions and divide by 30,000 to get to your Club Points, but that is inaccurate.  Differs property by property (and possibly by season).


Yes, that's totally inaccurate.  Every property (and season) is different and the number of SOs is irrelevant.  I own two different VSN properties that have identical SOs but very different values in Abound.

Hope this helps.


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## Lv2Trvl (Dec 16, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> If you book a longer vacation than you need and you want to reduce the number of nights, is this possible without canceling and rebooking? On Facebook, people were saying that you were technically not even allowed to do this. But if you did, you would risk losing the original reservation.


Yes. You can modify point reservations. Only time I had a problem was 4-5 years ago with one Hawaii resort. They (owner's services) claimed the resort did not allow anything less than 7 day stays at that time of year (December). Not how points work. Seems like I called the GM directly and got it fixed. It was strange. 

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk


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## Eric B (Dec 17, 2022)

daviator said:


> Yes, the extra 20% on Bonvoy conversion stays for elite owners.



I believe the premium on Bonvoy conversion for elite owners becomes 10% for those that are Chairman's Club or Presidential level.  Source: VSN club points benefits dated August 2022, attached.



daviator said:


> They make it sound much easier than it is. Some people do it, but the VSN rules only allow you to rent stays at your home resort(s), not at resorts you book using StarOptions. I'm not sure what the rules are for bookings you make via Abound.



New VSN rules for rental are in paragraph 8.5 of the latest version of the VSN Disclosure Guide for Mandatory Members of the Vistana Signature Network, quoted below. The one for Voluntary Members hasn't been updated yet. The rules are worded to suggest that the rental option is a bit broader now, allowing booking and renting any Vacation Period at your Home Resort(s) while the old rules seemed to limit it to the unit type and home resort/phase you own.

8.5 Network Member Rentals. A Network Member may reserve a Vacation Period at the Network Member’s Home Resort and rent it on the Network Member’s own account. All renters must comply with the rules and regulations of the Resort Documents affecting occupancy, and the renting Network Member will be responsible for the acts or omissions, including non-payment of any personal charges, of the Network Member’s renters or any other person or persons permitted by the Network Member to use the Unit. Rental by a Network Member of Units reserved through Network (other than a Vacation Period reserved at the Network Member’s Home Resort) is prohibited.


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## timsi (Dec 17, 2022)

Eric B said:


> I believe the premium on Bonvoy conversion for elite owners becomes 10% for those that are Chairman's Club or Presidential level.  Source: VSN club points benefits dated August 2022, attached.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Guess who owns units at most if not all the resorts? The developer of course. This is probably done with the intention to rent any unit using any points, any unit etc without bothering with the details.


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## daviator (Dec 18, 2022)

Eric B said:


> I believe the premium on Bonvoy conversion for elite owners becomes 10% for those that are Chairman's Club or Presidential level.  Source: VSN club points benefits dated August 2022, attached._. _


It's always been 10%.  I said 20% which was either a typo or a brain fart… it’s been 10% all the way back to SVO when they started the elite program.  Apologies for my_ mistake_


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## LizMcCoy (Dec 18, 2022)

daviator said:


> Not really.  I don't think there is a scenario where it's worth spending five figures just to get to Chairman's  Club.  I have been Titanium the past few years (from stays) and haven't found it to make much difference over Platinum.  Upgrades at hotel properties are rare and usually very minor upgrades.  And it's not "Titanium for Life", it's Titanium for as long as you own all of your timeshares.  For some people, those won't be the same thing.
> 
> Somebody that knows more about this will undoubtedly answer you, but yes, you can buy points resale, and then you have to pay a fee to MVC to register those points.  My understanding is that once you do so, they are exactly the same as if you'd bought them from MVC.
> 
> ...


Thank you.   That was super informative and helpful.


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## LizMcCoy (Dec 18, 2022)

daviator said:


> It's always been 10%.  I said 20% which was either a typo or a brain fart… it’s been 10% all the way back to SVO when they started the elite program.  Apologies for my_ mistake_


20% was actually my typo.  Anyway, yes thanks for the chart with all that info.  Very helpful.  Going to go through the Abound Tutorials with my husband tonight.

May post some more questions afterwards.

Thanks again


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