# Abound has been created. Now what for the unqualified Vistana voluntary weeks?



## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

Unlike the voluntary VOIs, the mandatory resale VOIs have not been offered anything to mitigate the losses that arise from the creation of Abound, primarily the infringement of the right to enjoy without competition exclusive priority during the home reservation period. I looked at the documents for Westin Lagunamar that are current and still found on Vistana.com (even now after the August 9 cut-off date). Owners at _other_ voluntary resorts may find similar if not identical verbiage. Of course, I welcome everyone to comment but I am very interested in the opinion of those that own mandatory resale and who are seeing their rights impaired IMO.

I am a resale owner at WLR. Because I bought resale, I am a member of the Cancun Lagunamar Property Ownership Association, but I am not a member of the Vistana Signature Network. According to the VSN documents, the VSN rules only apply to their members *“Network Rules are binding on all Network Members, their guests, invitees, lessees, licensees, and designees.”* (pag.8)

The current rules of the Cancun Lagunamar Property Ownership Association and relevant to the reservation process specify that the reservation windows start with the Home Reservation Period and give the members the right to enjoy exclusive priority without competition from non-members. This is fundamental right of the members of the Cancun Lagunamar Property Ownership Association:

*“4.2.1 Required Reservation Periods.

There must be at least one “Home Reservation Period”. The Home Reservation Period must permit a VOI Owner to request a reservation, without competition from anyone who does not own a Vacation Ownership Interest for a Vacation Unit that is the same type and season as the VOI Owner’s unit type and season provided that nobody else has reserved the Vacation Period and that no other persons have the exclusive right to reserve the Vacation Period. The Home Reservation Period must last at least sixty (60) days. The reservation rules may create other Reservation Periods that are Home Reservation Periods.” *

I believe that the 60-day period is an absolute priority that the developer does not have a right to infringe. 4.2.3 lays out the possibility to create other reservation periods, but they can start no more than one hundred and twenty (120) days before the Check-in:

*“4.2.3 Reservations of the VOI Owners.

The reservation rules may create one or more Reservation Periods during which the VOI Owners may reserve any Use Period in a Vacation Unit that nobody else has reserved and that no other persons have the exclusive right to reserve. This Reservation Period may not start more than one hundred and twenty (120) days before the Check-in-Day of a Use Period, and it may overlap with other Home Reservation Periods.”*

I expect one of the objections to my post to refer to Interval because VSN has made deposits in the past during the home reservation period. This is not a valid point because the Association allows the bulk deposits to external exchanges as an exception, they can be done “from time to time”, and “from time to time” means “occasionally but not regularly” according to Collins dictionary. As far as I can tell, Vistana has done Interval bulk deposits infrequently and at random times, as proven by many posts in the Sightings section. No interpretation of “from time to time” may explain what Marriott is trying to do and Marriott cannot build a whole new program with Vistana inventory flowing towards Abound more than occasionally, but it seems they want to do it regularly and possibly once a week as stated in the Abound rules. This clearly infringes the rights of the resort owners.

Another objection may be that Vistana can change the rules so they can do whatever they want. However, everyone must abide by the existing rules (at any time and specifically at the time the program was announced) and there are policies and procedures to change _some_ rules FOR THE FUTURE. IMO not all rules can be changed and especially resort specific rules, testimony being that the rules for the mandatory resorts have not changed, and they have enjoyed the same VSN and now VSN and Abound membership. As far as I can tell even after 8/9 the mandatory resale weeks will continue to enjoy VSN membership.


IMO the right to enjoy priority without competition from non-owners is a fundamental right as it was legally structured when the resort was developed, and it cannot be changed unilaterally by the developer. If they want Abound to function properly and legally, the best they can do is to make it whole to the voluntary resort owners.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

We own a bunch of SBP that didn't get SO's at all because we bought resale, and of course this is voluntary, so nothing transferred to us.  I kind of expect Marriott to look at we own and at first me aghast, then they will do what Westin did on Maui 18 months ago and will select weeks 24-32 and offer us some unbelievably expensive deal to buy something and then enroll those weeks (for a price).  It could be costly, and I would be a sucker to do it, most likely. 

We do own Shadow Ridge and Willow Ridge, too.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

rickandcindy23 said:


> We own a bunch of SBP that didn't get SO's at all because we bought resale, and of course this is voluntary, so nothing transferred to us.  I kind of expect Marriott to look at we own and at first me aghast, then they will do what Westin did on Maui 18 months ago and will select weeks 24-32 and offer us some unbelievably expensive deal to buy something and then enroll those weeks (for a price).  It could be costly, and I would be a sucker to do it, most likely.
> 
> We do own Shadow Ridge and Willow Ridge, too.


If they take away a right that we currently have as voluntary resale owners, and they want to do it because it is the only way to build Abound, a proper compensation has to take place not just an "unbelievably expensive deal". As you can see, they may have overlooked some fundamental facts about our voluntary ownerships, or they thought they would not be challenged even if the legal foundation is shaky IMO. They are giving the mandatory resorts full rights because they had to (not because they wanted to) and all options should be on the table for the voluntary resorts including full membership with benefit recognition.

Resale owners should not be shy to ask for their rights. Marriott is the big winner with Abound, they will get the skim and many other benefits, and the voluntary owners do not have to be on the losing side. Aside from that Marriott does not lose a penny when a resale transaction takes place, it is just greed. They hope to buy VOIs stripped of benefits, give them full rights and sell them for a huge profit.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

Be sure to save any rules and regulations to your computer. Don't rely on these always being available on the website.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

Marriott has this in the Abound  by Marriott Vacations Exchange procedures;

_When an Exchange Member or VSN Member Deposits a Use Period with Exchange Company, such Exchange Member or VSN Member, as applicable, assigns and Exchange Company will automatically have all of such Exchange Member’s or VSN Member’s rights to reserve and use such Use Period for the given Use Year. Once such Use Period has been Deposited with Exchange Company, it may not be withdrawn._

That said, I don't think those exchange procedures can override the rights of deeded owners.



timsi said:


> I expect one of the objections to my post to refer to Interval because VSN has made deposits in the past during the home reservation period. This is not a valid point because the Association allows the bulk deposits to external exchanges as an exception, they can be done “from time to time”, and “from time to time” means “occasionally but not regularly” according to Collins dictionary. As far as I can tell, Vistana has done Interval bulk deposits infrequently and at random times, as proven by many posts in the Sightings section. No interpretation of “from time to time” may explain what Marriott is trying to do and Marriott cannot build a whole new program with Vistana inventory flowing towards Abound more than occasionally, but it seems they want to do it regularly and possibly once a week as stated in the Abound rules. This clearly infringes the rights of the resort owners.



Abound is really no different than Interval International though. It is just another exchange company. So they could do similar bulk deposits into Abound.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

@timsi
I don’t understand your 1st paragraph - seems the opposite is true.
What have I lost with my resale VSN Mandatory VOIs?
Seems to me that resale VSN Voluntary owners are getting the short stick in this.

Other than potential of MVC grabbing premium weeks - the HomeResort inventory is intact for reserving as always. MVC cannot claim what they don’t own (Legally).

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## heitmullerj02 (Sep 3, 2022)

If I have a deeded week, can Vistana deny me entry on the week, date I own?


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

heitmullerj02 said:


> If I have a deeded week, can Vistana deny me entry on the week, date I own?


If you own a fixed week and fixed unit, they can't deny that unless you elect for Abound Club points.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

@timsi, I understand your concern about the potential erosion of the exclusivity in the Home Reservation Period. However, as I've kept thinking about it, I'm not sure I see the conflict that you do. I think about four owner use scenarios:

1) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period.
2) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period and the rents their week for cash to a non-owner.
3) A Vistana weeks owner exchanges in II, so their usage gets assigned to one of the bulk deposits Vistana made with II. Vistana chooses the week to deposit.
4) A Vistana weeks owner elects his week into Abound for their use, and in lieu of cash, receives Abound Club Points. Vistana/VSN chooses the week for Abound.

The commonality in all four of these is an Owner is making a decision on how to use their rights to use a week at their resort/season/unit type. Scenarios 1-3 are the same options an owner has always had with their deeded week. Scenario 4 is new, but the deeded owner is still making their decision for their deeded week, just to elect their usage rights over to Abound (just as they can elect to deposit with II or choose to rent to a non-owner for cash). Like scenario 3, they don't get to choose the exact week, but they assign their rights to the Program Manager to choose the week. So, based on this, I don't see how Abound erodes the owner exclusivity. The Owner is making the choice to be compensated for their owner usage in Club Points rather than cash, and giving Abound the right to pick the actual week as they do with II exchanges.

Maybe I'm missing something, but that's how I see it.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> Be sure to save any rules and regulations to your computer. Don't rely on these always being available on the website.


That is a great idea.  I will do that.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

I tend to reserve my SBP weeks at a year out, and even further out for my weeks 24-32.  I reserve only summer weeks and our daughter rents them every year.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> @timsi, I understand your concern about the potential erosion of the exclusivity in the Home Reservation Period. However, as I've kept thinking about it, I'm not sure I see the conflict that you do. I think about four owner use scenarios:
> 
> 1) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period.
> 2) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period and the rents their week for cash to a non-owner.
> ...





The exclusivity during the home reservation period means that an owner has higher chances of getting a particular week at the home resort, not just _any_ week. This is the rule, period it does not matter what you think, what is equivalent (to you) or not.


If there are 10 units at a resort (say a 52 week season), I own 10 units at the resort and I want to book all 10 units  of a particualar calendar week, if other owners are not that interested in that week, it means that if I am online at midnight 12 months before check in, I have access to all 10 units and theoretically book them all. That would not happen if Marriott, based on inventory rules you can’t even reference, decides to deposit 1 or 3 or 9 units of that week in Abound just because some other of the 510 owners deposited to Abound their VOIs (or not even yet) and those owners did not even intend to travel during that week or even to their home resort that year. 

The bottom line is that what they are doing is against the resort rules, everything else is details. There is a huge difference between an exchange and if I decide to rent out a week that I book, as an owner I still retain full control of what happens to that week until the check in day. And the exchangers cannot book during the home reservation, period. You are trying to make false equivalences and the developers love to juggle with these "equivalent" deposits to their $$$ advantage.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> @timsi, I understand your concern about the potential erosion of the exclusivity in the Home Reservation Period. However, as I've kept thinking about it, I'm not sure I see the conflict that you do. I think about four owner use scenarios:
> 
> 1) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period.
> 2) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period and the rents their week for cash to a non-owner.
> ...



Forgot a key one - a HR Owner can use their SOs for exchanging in VSN at 8 months. This is not going away - at least anytime soon no matter what the conspiracy theorists state.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

timsi said:


> The exclusivity during the home reservation period means that an owner has higher chances of getting a particular week at the home resort, not just _any_ week. This is the rule, period it does not matter what you think, what is equivalent (to you) or not.
> 
> 
> If there are 10 units at a resort (say a 52 week season), I own 10 units at the resort and I want to book all 10 units of a particualar calendar week, if other owners are not that interested in that week, it means that if I am online at midnight 12 months before check in, I have access to all 10 units and theoretically book them all. That would not happen if Marriott, based on inventory rules you can’t even reference, decides to deposit 1 or 3 or 9 units of that week in Abound just because some other of the 510 owners deposited to Abound their VOIs (or not even yet) and those owners did not even intend to travel during that week or even to their home resort that year.
> ...



Theoretically you can, but by the time you start booking the 2nd VOI - they are getting snapped up since you cannot book all at once.
Please use realistic hypotheticals as these do not provide insight.
No disrespect meant, just being honest…


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

This is my opinion and others have said this as well. I think unenrolled resale voluntary owners will still get home resort priority. I believe they will continue to be able to get it going forward since resale Marriott weeks owners seem to be getting their home resort weeks. 

I also do not see why voluntary resale owners should get free enrollment since you did not have VSN trading ability before. Not even mandatory resale owners will get free enrollment going forward.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Theoretically you can, but by the time you start booking the 2nd VOI - they are getting snapped up since you cannot book all at once.
> Please use realistic and realistic hypotheticals as these do not provide insight.
> No disrespect meant, just being honest…
> 
> ...


I gave an example to show what access to the inventory means how the odds work. It looks that Marriott owners, and the mandatory resort owners (no disrespect) completely forgot (or pretend to have forgotten) what  this means: "*The Home Reservation Period must permit a VOI Owner to request a reservation, without competition from anyone who does not own a Vacation Ownership Interest for a Vacation Unit that is the same type and season as the VOI Owner’s unit type and season* "


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> @timsi, I understand your concern about the potential erosion of the exclusivity in the Home Reservation Period. However, as I've kept thinking about it, I'm not sure I see the conflict that you do. I think about four owner use scenarios:
> 
> 1) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period.
> 2) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period and the rents their week for cash to a non-owner.
> ...



What about scenario #5: Deeded week owner uses their week to trade in VSN using SOs?

I am assuming you are talking about mandatory resale owners who are enrolled since that is what #4 applies to.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> This is my opinion and others have said this as well. I think unenrolled resale voluntary owners will still get home resort priority. I believe they will continue to be able to get it going forward since resale Marriott weeks owners seem to be getting their home resort weeks.
> 
> I also do not see why voluntary resale owners should get free enrollment since you did not have VSN trading ability before. Not even mandatory resale owners will get free enrollment going forward.


I certainly would never expect that.  I don't even expect or care whether my Westin Ka'anapali is included.  I can rent it those years we do not use it ourselves.  I have already been successful in renting the studio.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> What about scenario #5: Deeded week owner uses their week to trade in VSN using SOs?


That doesn't happen until 8 months out, which is outside the home resort window. Owners that decide to use StarOptions in VSN end up making their unit available to other owners during the home resort booking window due to them just not booking their home resort. Owners who opt to use StarOptions actually make it easier for people booking their home resort, more inventory with less competition. With Abound, Marriott will make those units unavailable to home resort owners to book in the home resort reservation window. Abound is not good to those who reserve their home resort, even if they are members of Abound.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> What about scenario #5: Deeded week owner uses their week to trade in VSN using SOs?
> 
> I am assuming you are talking about mandatory resale owners who are enrolled since that is what #4 applies to.



I mentioned this as well.
The 4 pillars of VSE/VSN ownership still apply.
1) HomeResort usage (8-12 months)
2) VSN Usage (at <8 months using StarOptions)
 3) II usage (now also Abound from what I gather)
4) BV points conversion (to those that qualify) - not good value anyway

and not part of the pillars…
5) Rentability - which for some VSN VOIs is extremely valuable. Our WKV P+ have paid for themselves.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> Marriott has this in the Abound  by Marriott Vacations Exchange procedures;
> 
> _When an Exchange Member or VSN Member Deposits a Use Period with Exchange Company, such Exchange Member or VSN Member, as applicable, assigns and Exchange Company will automatically have all of such Exchange Member’s or VSN Member’s rights to reserve and use such Use Period for the given Use Year. Once such Use Period has been Deposited with Exchange Company, it may not be withdrawn._
> 
> ...


Indeed, Abound and VSN are not exchanges I belong to and it is not important what new rules they come up with. They have to comply with the existing resort rules as they are the backbone of the ownership.

Yes, in ABOUND they completely "forgot" that they can only do this "from time to time" = infrequently (how convenient) so they are in hot water IMO since they announced they would do it every week. As far as I can tell, they have respected the resort rules with their deposits into Interval because they have been done "from time to time"


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

timsi said:


> I gave an example to show what access to the inventory means how the odds work. It looks that Marriott owners, and the mandatory resort owners (no disrespect) completely forgot (or pretend to have forgotten) what this means: "*The Home Reservation Period must permit a VOI Owner to request a reservation, without competition from anyone who does not own a Vacation Ownership Interest for a Vacation Unit that is the same type and season as the VOI Owner’s unit type and season* "



That is a false equivalency that assumes your float inventory is not available to you - it is as it has always been. Yes, they can grab premium weeks w/o transparency. But you forget - this was always the case as VSE (now MWV) owns ~10% of the VOIs. Along with controlling what had been turned in.

btw - I have been on TUG since 2005 and have the original CCRs and read (and reported on) them years before you found TUG.

But, keep up the good fight…
good luck.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Yes, they can grab premium weeks w/o transparency. But you forget - this was always the case as VSE (now MWV) owns ~10% of the VOIs. Along with controlling what had been turned in.


I think the difference is that Abound doesn't "own" anything. They just have an owner who has deposited their week. Abound doesn't own the week. Now there is a difference if the VOI was placed into the Abound (Destinations) Trust, but as an exchange company, should they just be able to reserve any available week at whim in the Home Reservation Period? I beleive the trust can reserve what they want and then deposit those into the Abound Exchange, but if an owner elects Club Points, what gives Abound the right to pull weeks from inventory to make them available only to Abound members?

Another thing, Abound is affiliated with VSN, not each individual resort. VSN can't make a reservation until the VSN reservation period at 8 months. Shouldn't units deposited into Abound only be able to be used to confirm into something at 8 months? I don't mean that those owners that deposited into Abound would have to wait until 8 months to book, but that those actual VOIs that were deposited can't be used to pull anything from the resort inventory until 8 months. So there really should be two times when inventory at Vistana resorts is available, the first at 12 months when those Vistana VOIs in the trust can confirm reservations and again at 8 months when those VOIs can book VSN inventory.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I think the difference is that Abound doesn't "own" anything. They just have an owner who has deposited their week. Abound doesn't own the week. Now there is a difference if the VOI was placed into the Abound (Destinations) Trust, but as an exchange company, should they just be able to reserve any available week at whim in the Home Reservation Period? I beleive the trust can reserve what they want and then deposit those into the Abound Exchange, but if an owner elects Club Points, what gives Abound the right to pull weeks from inventory to make them available only to Abound members?
> 
> Another thing, Abound is affiliated with VSN, not each individual resort. VSN can't make a reservation until the VSN reservation period at 8 months. Shouldn't units deposited into Abound only be able to be used to confirm into something at 8 months? I don't mean that those owners that deposited into Abound would have to wait until 8 months to book, but that those actual VOIs that were deposited can't be used to pull anything from the resort inventory until 8 months. So there really should be two times when inventory at Vistana resorts is available, the first at 12 months when those Vistana VOIs in the trust can confirm reservations and again at 8 months when those VOIs can book VSN inventory.


But how is Abound different from II? Based on what I’ve read here, Vistana owners can’t  choose which week to deposit to II, and those specific weeks were also chosen by VSE. 

I acknowledge that having another exchange competing for weeks could have an impact on the availability of specific weeks for deeded owners, but if Abound having access is a legal problem, it would seem II has always been as well. I don’t understand the distinction unless the resort level terms and conditions specify only one exchange system is allowed. Abound seems to be an exchange system just like II, they simply monetize the exchanges as points.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> But how is Abound different from II? Based on what I’ve read here, Vistana owners can’t  choose which week to deposit to II, and those specific weeks were also chosen by VSE.
> 
> I acknowledge that having another exchange competing for weeks could have an impact on the availability of specific weeks for deeded owners, but if Abound having access is a legal problem, it would seem II has always been as well. I don’t understand the distinction unless the resort level terms and conditions specify only one exchange system is allowed. Abound seems to be an exchange system just like II, they simply monetize the exchanges as points.


It isn't necessarily any different than II, but in the past Vistana has traditionally deposited low season inventory into II. Perhaps they will do the same with Abound? We don't know how they will allocate inventory to Abound. If it is a percentage of each week based on the percentage of owners they expect to elect, then that isn't equivalent to how they do it in II at all.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Forgot a key one - a HR Owner can use their SOs for exchanging in VSN at 8 months. This is not going away - at least anytime soon no matter what the conspiracy theorists state.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I didn’t include that in the list since that can’t happen until the Home Resort priority window has closed. I don’t think there is any dispute that is within the rules. The debate is about access prior to eight months.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I think the difference is that Abound doesn't "own" anything. They just have an owner who has deposited their week. Abound doesn't own the week. Now there is a difference if the VOI was placed into the Abound (Destinations) Trust, but as an exchange company, should they just be able to reserve any available week at whim in the Home Reservation Period? I beleive the trust can reserve what they want and then deposit those into the Abound Exchange, but if an owner elects Club Points, what gives Abound the right to pull weeks from inventory to make them available only to Abound members?
> 
> Another thing, Abound is affiliated with VSN, not each individual resort. VSN can't make a reservation until the VSN reservation period at 8 months. Shouldn't units deposited into Abound only be able to be used to confirm into something at 8 months? I don't mean that those owners that deposited into Abound would have to wait until 8 months to book, but that those actual VOIs that were deposited can't be used to pull anything from the resort inventory until 8 months. So there really should be two times when inventory at Vistana resorts is available, the first at 12 months when those Vistana VOIs in the trust can confirm reservations and again at 8 months when those VOIs can book VSN inventory.



Sorry to nuance it incorrectly. My point still stands - control was given up when exchanging out of a HR VOI and that doesn’t change the proportionality of Owner to available VOIs during the HomeResort period. Unless they want to act illegally which I don’t believe is worth their time.

btw - I am only on TUG during these beautiful NorCal days as I ended up with a brutal IgA vasculitis rash from Covid (16 days positive) - on prednisone- and been isolating inside. Covid sucks especially after avoiding for 2+ years. Luckily double boosted or not sure how sick I could have gotten. 

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## MICROZE (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Forgot a key one - a HR Owner can use their SOs for exchanging in VSN at 8 months. This is not going away - at least anytime soon no matter what the conspiracy theorists state.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I thought *Voluntary* Resale owners are unable to exchange within VSN.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Sorry to nuance it incorrectly. My point still stands - control was given up when exchanging out of a HR VOI and that doesn’t change the proportionality of Owner to available VOIs during the HomeResort period. Unless they want to act illegally which I don’t believe is worth their time.


I think the difference is that when you opt to use StarOptions for a reservation it does change the proportionality of owners to available VOIs; fewer owners reserving the same amount of weeks. It won't work that way in Abound. It will be fewer owners and fewer weeks available to reserve.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

MICROZE said:


> I thought *Voluntary* Resale owners are unable to exchange within VSN.



Correct - only if the VSN Voluntary Resale was requalified can it be used in VSN.  This is why it was better to requal a Voluntary VOI of a Mandatory one - since Mandatory one’s already have access to VSN. I requaled our resale WKORV OFD because that was the only one we had available. The upside was it went from 148.1K to 176.7K StarOptions.

The OP was talking about VSN Mandatory Resale VOIs - of which I could not follow the logic (still can’t).
Sorry for the confusion.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> It isn't necessarily any different than II, but in the past Vistana has traditionally deposited low season inventory into II. Perhaps they will do the same with Abound? We don't know how they will allocate inventory to Abound. If it is a percentage of each week based on the percentage of owners they expect to elect, then that isn't equivalent to how they do it in II at all.


Are you saying if an owner of a Platinum season week chose an II deposit over home week use, Vistana would deposit a Gold or Silver season? I didn’t think they could do that, as that would destroy the inventory balance within each deeded season/category.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Are you saying if an owner of a Platinum season week chose an II deposit over home week use, Vistana would deposit a Gold or Silver season? I didn’t think they could do that, as that would destroy the inventory balance within each deeded season/category.


I think they have to deposit a Platinum week, but we don't know which week specifically. They usually don't deposit the better weeks in the Platinum season. Think of some resorts that have a 1-52 Platinum season (Like Hawaii). We rarely if ever see summer and winter weeks deposited.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I think the difference is that when you opt to use StarOptions for a reservation it does change the proportionality of owners to available VOIs; fewer owners reserving the same amount of weeks. It won't work that way in Abound. It will be fewer owners and fewer weeks available to reserve.



Sorry not following.
Say there are a 1000 HR VOIs.
300 are turned in via exchange removing those Owners and their weeks from HR inventory (regardless of where they end up).
The proportion of HR VOIs available (700) to remaining HR Owners (700) stay the same.

In VSN - this gets complicated and dilutes availability in VSN.

But, still don’t see how this impacts my HR Ownership as the inventories are separate.

Still think it’s odd that no one seems to care that MVC grabbed up a bunch of early 2023 (whale season) 1Bd WKORV days when they were not easily available to Owners. That to me shows some shadiness (but another topic).


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> But how is Abound different from II? Based on what I’ve read here, Vistana owners can’t  choose which week to deposit to II, and those specific weeks were also chosen by VSE.
> 
> I acknowledge that having another exchange competing for weeks could have an impact on the availability of specific weeks for deeded owners, but if Abound having access is a legal problem, it would seem II has always been as well. I don’t understand the distinction unless the resort level terms and conditions specify only one exchange system is allowed. Abound seems to be an exchange system just like II, they simply monetize the exchanges as points.


They are both external exchanges and according to the resort rules, Vistana can only do bulk deposits infrequently *(from time to time) *not to build a whole new system based on this exception. This was designed as a limited case to give Vistana some flexibility not to turn the whole idea of home reservation period upside down. By contrast, Abound has already announced weekly Vistana inventory and that cannot be considered from time to time. 
Also, if Vistana ever deposited into Interval  in violation of the resort rules, they should be held accountable for that, and it should not be interpreted as permission to take it to a whole new level.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I think they have to deposit a Platinum week, but we don't know which week specifically. They usually don't deposit the better weeks in the Platinum season. Think of some resorts that have a 1-52 Platinum season (Like Hawaii). We rarely if ever see summer and winter weeks deposited.


Yeah, that makes more sense, and I can see where if they proportionally reserved some high season weeks for Abound, that would take away  prime weeks that had previously been there for the taking by Home Week owners. But is their something in the Vistana rules that says they can’t give a prime week to an exchange? The OP was questioning the legality of Marriott reserving home weeks, not just his distrust of their motives.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

DavidnRobin said:


> Sorry not following.
> Say there are a 1000 HR VOIs.
> 300 are turned in via exchange removing those Owners and their weeks from HR inventory (regardless of where they end up).
> The proportion of HR VOIs available (700) to remaining HR Owners (700) stay the same.
> ...


The inventories are not "separate" because they are fluid and change minute by minute and because Abound and Vistana claim they have the right to "anticipate" demand and deposits which gives them a free card to block whatever they want for these buckets.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Yeah, that makes more sense, and I can see where if they proportionally reserved some high season weeks for Abound, that would take away  prime weeks that had previously been there for the taking by Home Week owners. But is their something in the Vistana rules that says they can’t give a prime week to an exchange? The OP was questioning the legality of Marriott reserving home weeks, not just his distrust of their motives.


I think the OP has already called that out in that Vistana "can only do bulk deposits infrequently *(from time to time).*" We really don't even know that they reserve a specific week and deposit it into Abound. They could just allocated x% of inventory for a week to Abound reservations, which then means owners no longer have exclusive home reservation rights at the resort for a given week since Abound can also come in and make a reservation. They could fix this by depositing an actual week into exchange, but they can't do it on a consistent schedule based on "infrequently *(from time to time)"*

That said, I don't see where the OP is quoting the resort rules and regulations where it comes to bulk deposits...


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

It just occurred to me that years ago right after MVC started the Destination Club, there was a class action lawsuit filed against MVC by a group of MVC weeks owners claiming that the DC violated their deeded ownership rights since MVC had a reservation advantage. I don’t recall the specific arguments, but my recollection is the argument they were making was similar to that being made here by the OP. I do seem to recall that the case was thrown out by the judge before ever going to trial, but in any event, whether pre-trial or at trial, Marriott won.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> It just occurred to me that years ago right after MVC started the Destination Club, there was a class action lawsuit filed against MVC by a group of MVC weeks owners claiming that the DC violated their deeded ownership rights since MVC had a reservation advantage. I don’t recall the specific arguments, but my recollection is the argument they were making was similar to that being made here by the OP. I do seem to recall that the case was thrown out by the judge before ever going to trial, but in any event, whether pre-trial or at trial, Marriott won.


I don't think we should use previous cases to make a snap judgement here in that "corporations always win". That isn't the fact at all. In many cases it is their own rules that work against them and it seems that with Vistana, the individual resort rules were written differently with the fact that VSN existed. I don't think there should be a quick judgement to equivalency here.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I don't think we should use previous cases to make a snap judgement here in that "corporations always win". That isn't the fact at all. In many cases it is their own rules that work against them and it seems that with Vistana, the individual resort rules were written differently with the fact that VSN existed. I don't think there should be a quick judgement to equivalency here.


I did not mean to imply that there was an absolute equivalency here, but the point really is, management has been down this road before and I would expect they feel they have all the legal bases covered. The only way to prove shenanigans is to have a case, take it to court, and hope for the best.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I did not mean to imply that there was an absolute equivalency here, but the point really is, management has been down this road before and I would expect they feel they have all the legal bases covered. The only way to prove shenanigans is to have a case, take it to court, and hope for the best.




It is not relevant if the Marriott resort rules where not the same as our rules. Additionally it is also possible all Marriott week owners (retail and resale) were offered enrollment in 2010 to soften the potential claims and this is why they did it for all the subsequent takeovers. 
In this case, because the voluntary resale owners may be  less numerous they may have thought they can get away with it. Regardless, the rules are rules and I have not seen a shred of evidence that they can do what they are trying to do in obvious violation of the resort rules. 
2022 is not 2010


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

If anyone feels that strongly that Marriott is violating rules, then find a lawyer who will file a class action lawsuit. If it is not going to fly at all, a lawyer will not waste their time on it because they will not make any money. The past does set precedent even if the past case was not exactly the same. So I would say give it a try and see what happens.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> If anyone feels that strongly that Marriott is violating rules, then find a lawyer who will file a class action lawsuit. If it is not going to fly at all, a lawyer will not waste their time on it because they will not make any money. The past does set precedent even if the past case was not exactly the same. So I would say give it a try and see what happens.


Sometimes you may have a case, but an attorney doesn't feel the damages warrant their time and effort. So unless someone is willing to spend their own money to cover the legal costs, it may not go anywhere. Big companies can wear you down because they use in house attorneys that they are already paying to handle any litigation.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> If anyone feels that strongly that Marriott is violating rules, then find a lawyer who will file a class action lawsuit. If it is not going to fly at all, a lawyer will not waste their time on it because they will not make any money. The past does set precedent even if the past case was not exactly the same. So I would say give it a try and see what happens.


As a public company, I assume Marriott will do the right thing once notified of these problems. Of course if things escalate who knows where it goes  but they may have a hard explaining to a neutral party EXACTLY how they manage the inventory on a daily basis, including the VOIs they own. So far I did not notice a lot of enthusiasm for being transparent in that regard.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 3, 2022)

timsi said:


> As a public company, I assume Marriott will do the right thing once notified of these problems. Of course if things escalate who knows where it goes  but they may have a hard explaining to a neutral party EXACTLY how they manage the inventory on a daily basis, including the VOIs they own. So far I did not notice a lot of enthusiasm for being transparent in that regard.



One last word on this all...just be aware, those of us from the Marriott world have been trying to delve into the "black box" of their inventory allocation process for the last 12 years. It's more or less just as opaque today as it was 12 years ago. While the timeshare geek in me would love to know more details, from where I sit, what's most important really is, "Can I get the weeks reservations I want? Can I get the points reservations I want?" So far, in my own eight years of ownership in the MVC program, that answer is an unequivocal "yes." I have no idea what the future holds for availability any more than you all here on the Vistana Board do. I do have my own mild concerns about what impact adding the Vistana demand to the DC/Abound exchange system might mean for our ability to book reservations, but we will all just have to wait and see what happens. I'm not naturally distrustful/skepitcal of corporate intentions in general (not just MVC), so I'm also not inclined to get all spun up over what _*might*_ happen. I'm just going to have to wait and see.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> One last word on this all...just be aware, those of us from the Marriott world have been trying to delve into the "black box" of their inventory allocation process for the last 12 years. It's more or less just as opaque today as it was 12 years ago. While the timeshare geek in me would love to know more details, from where I sit, what's most important really is, "Can I get the weeks reservations I want? Can I get the points reservations I want?" So far, in my own eight years of ownership in the MVC program, that answer is an unequivocal "yes." I have no idea what the future holds for availability any more than you all here on the Vistana Board do. I do have my own mild concerns about what impact adding the Vistana demand to the DC/Abound exchange system might mean for our ability to book reservations, but we will all just have to wait and see what happens. I'm not naturally distrustful/skepitcal of corporate intentions in general (not just MVC), so I'm also not inclined to get all spun up over what _*might*_ happen. I'm just going to have to wait and see.


What you lose on the weeks side you may gain on the points side but in our case (the voluntary resale owners), what is lost, is lost for good.  We are not members of Abound and even though I appreciate you have been a staunch defender of MVC, I do not see why those who are not members of Abound should care about the booking experience in MVC. I think you are fair though in general and I think you will appreciate when they fix this.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> Sometimes you may have a case, but an attorney doesn't feel the damages warrant their time and effort. So unless someone is willing to spend their own money to cover the legal costs, it may not go anywhere. Big companies can wear you down because they use in house attorneys that they are already paying to handle any litigation.



Yes that was my point. For vague cases, many attorneys will not even take on a case when you pay them by the hour. So all this threatening to sue Marriott over Abound sounds like people felling powerless and venting here.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> If anyone feels that strongly that Marriott is violating rules, then find a lawyer who will file a class action lawsuit. If it is not going to fly at all, a lawyer will not waste their time on it because they will not make any money. The past does set precedent even if the past case was not exactly the same. So I would say give it a try and see what happens.


Sounds familiar. Lawyers fighting for timeshare owners, who will come out ahead in that fight?  The lawyers on the big company side.

I am sure I will be able to book our oceanfront units at midnight a year out.  If that doesn't work out, I will complain on TUG.  

The one thing Marriott could do is mess with the website, which they have already done to some extent.  It's not working as it should.  

Are we going to get one big website with all Marriott and Vistana together? I read that somewhere.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> One last word on this all...just be aware, those of us from the Marriott world have been trying to delve into the "black box" of their inventory allocation process for the last 12 years. It's more or less just as opaque today as it was 12 years ago. While the timeshare geek in me would love to know more details, from where I sit, what's most important really is, "Can I get the weeks reservations I want? Can I get the points reservations I want?" So far, in my own eight years of ownership in the MVC program, that answer is an unequivocal "yes." I have no idea what the future holds for availability any more than you all here on the Vistana Board do. I do have my own mild concerns about what impact adding the Vistana demand to the DC/Abound exchange system might mean for our ability to book reservations, but we will all just have to wait and see what happens. I'm not naturally distrustful/skepitcal of corporate intentions in general (not just MVC), so I'm also not inclined to get all spun up over what _*might*_ happen. I'm just going to have to wait and see.



To add to this, I think the Marriott Vacation Club side (not sales) is a very nice side to deal with. They bend over backwards on the phone to help me. I never even have a wait on the phone since they have a special number for the higher benefit levels. No one ever talks about the special phone line as a benefit.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

rickandcindy23 said:


> Sounds familiar. Lawyers fighting for timeshare owners, who will come out ahead in that fight?  The lawyers on the big company side.
> 
> I am sure I will be able to book our oceanfront units at midnight a year out.  If that doesn't work out, I will complain on TUG.
> 
> ...



I had problems with the Marriott website for about a week. Since then it has been great again. The Vistana website has really been terrible but it seems to have improved again. I almost could not reserve my home resort week at 12 months with Vistana. I had to keep clicking for 45 minutes.

BTW, the VSN seems to have very recently added view and phases. When I looked in 2021, that option was not there. I am hopeful that means we will see phases when we book through Abound as well.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I had problems with the Marriott website for about a week. Since then it has been great again. The Vistana website has really been terrible but it seems to have improved again. I almost could not reserve my home resort week at 12 months with Vistana. I had to keep clicking for 45 minutes.
> 
> BTW, the VSN seems to have very recently added view and phases. When I looked in 2021, that option was not there. I am hopeful that means we will see phases when we book through Abound as well.


The Vistana site was flawless before Marriott took over so don't blame Vistana for what you experienced.  Abound did not start yet so it remains to be seen if problems are indeed fixed.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

timsi said:


> The Vistana site was flawless before Marriott took over so don't blame Vistana for what you experienced.  Abound did not start yet so it remains to be seen if problems are indeed fixed.



The Marriott website has had quite a few changes already. It has the new 2023 points charts loaded which includes the Vistana resorts.


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## timsi (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> The Marriott website has had quite a few changes already. It has the new 2023 points charts loaded which includes the Vistana resorts.


Because they had a lot of time to do it, I assume most if not all problems have been fixed by now in preparation for the launch. However, just because they have included some static new pages and it works, I would not draw the conclusion that is all going to be fine. That does not take long.  The real test will be booking and how the different buckets of inventory interact.


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## CPNY (Sep 3, 2022)

@timsi it sounds like you hate Marriott and I’m totally here for that! ….. I’m with you, unless they give me executive level on my resales then look out, I’ll be “Mr Marriott” and post all over the Marriott forum because ya know, we are one now. At what point do “Vistana People” become “Marriott people”?


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 3, 2022)

Marriott's website is ridiculously slow for booking my deeded weeks.


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## Venter (Sep 3, 2022)

timsi said:


> Unlike the voluntary VOIs, the mandatory resale VOIs have not been offered anything to mitigate the losses that arise from the creation of Abound, primarily the infringement of the right to enjoy without competition exclusive priority during the home reservation period. I looked at the documents for Westin Lagunamar that are current and still found on Vistana.com (even now after the August 9 cut-off date). Owners at _other_ voluntary resorts may find similar if not identical verbiage. Of course, I welcome everyone to comment but I am very interested in the opinion of those that own mandatory resale and who are seeing their rights impaired IMO.
> 
> I am a resale owner at WLR. Because I bought resale, I am a member of the Cancun Lagunamar Property Ownership Association, but I am not a member of the Vistana Signature Network. According to the VSN documents, the VSN rules only apply to their members *“Network Rules are binding on all Network Members, their guests, invitees, lessees, licensees, and designees.”* (pag.8)
> 
> ...


Just let it rest, please.
On Tugg people have always been advised to buy where you want to go as everyone knows rules about participation in a system can be changed, except for your deed.  Yes, I know VSN rules are written in your deed but, there have been many discussions whether the 'club' can or cannot just be disbanded. To me this says the language is such that it can be interpreted in many ways.  Therefore, all you ever had for certain was where you could stay, in what specific time period, and in what type of unit.  Be thankful Vistana did not go bankrupt with so much debt that you were ultimately left with nothing(I know they were not in trouble but, just saying this could have been.).
Look at your lemons and make some bittersweet lemonade.  Stress is ultimately bad for your whole body including your psyche. Adapt or die(I originally made a Freudian slip and typed 'Adapt or buy'...no I am not a salesman but try and take things as they come and make the best of it.).

(Edit)OK.  So I read your whole post and must eat humble pie.  I see your point.  If you are so adamant about your loss and others agree, you should totally start an HOA revolution and vote Marriott out to become an independent resort with only your home rights.  You will not have the benefit of being in the Marriott system but you will have the right to reserve as stated in your deed. If every other owner agrees it should not be difficult to do as Lagunamar was sold as weeks mainly, was it not?
Problem solved.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

CPNY said:


> @timsi it sounds like you hate Marriott and I’m totally here for that! ….. I’m with you, unless they give me executive level on my resales then look out, I’ll be “Mr Marriott” and post all over the Marriott forum because ya know, we are one now. At what point do “Vistana People” become “Marriott people”?



I am 99.9% sure you will get Executive level or whatever level you qualify got based on all your enrolled VSN weeks and any other enrolled weeks, if any, that you own. They already announced that.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

Venter said:


> Just let it rest, please.
> On Tugg people have always been advised to buy where you want to go as everyone knows rules about participation in a system can be changed, except for your deed.  Yes, I know VSN rules are written in your deed but, there have been many discussions whether the 'club' can or cannot just be disbanded. To me this says the language is such that it can be interpreted in many ways.  Therefore, all you ever had for certain was where you could stay, in what specific time period, and in what type of unit.  Be thankful Vistana did not go bankrupt with so much debt that you were ultimately left with nothing(I know they were not in trouble but, just saying this could have been.).
> Look at your lemons and make some bittersweet lemonade.  Stress is ultimately bad for your whole body including your psyche. Adapt or die(I originally made a Freudian slip and typed 'Adapt or buy'...no I am not a salesman but try and take things as they come and make the best of it.).



You name is Venter, LOL, but I do not hear you venting in a negative way. You seem pretty positive.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

Venter said:


> On Tugg people have always been advised to buy where you want to go as everyone knows rules about participation in a system can be changed, except for your deed.


That is the crux of the issue, they beleive their deed is what is being impacted. Their ability to make a home resort reservation is their deed and may very well be negatively impacted by Abound making reservations in the Home Reservation Period. I don't think anyone should be telling other to "let it rest".


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## Venter (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> That is the crux of the issue, they beleive their deed is what is being impacted. Their ability to make a home resort reservation is their deed and may very well be negatively impacted by Abound making reservations in the Home Reservation Period. I don't think anyone should be telling other to "let it rest".


Yeah, I did edit my post.  Initially I did not read through the whole post because of all the previous posts by timsi just harping on about the same thing.  This time he eloquently brings some legitimate concerns to the table.  I still think that, given the giant corporate muscle, one can either join the game or get out.

We have maybe learned something new and that is that not even our deeds are safe from interference.  This may actually be the scandal that devalues all timeshares if we cannot even be sure that corporate bodies will play fair.  Maybe as 'insiders' we should all sell now before the bottom drops out of the 'valuable' resale market too(Not that I own anything close to resale value of the HI weeks). Paying MF's that just keep going up but having less and less control may not be worth it.  Maybe the only owners who are safe are the fixed week ones, but then again maybe even they could somehow have their usage rights negatively impacted.

I myself will just sit back patiently and see how this all works out over time just like I did way back in 2010 and evaluate if there is any way to make the best of the situation.  Hey, people forget that this is a first world problem and even if we have to go vacation during mud weeks we are still priveleged to stay in amazing places in amazing accommodations while spending leisure time.


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## CPNY (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I am 99.9% sure you will get Executive level or whatever level you qualify got based on all your enrolled VSN weeks and any other enrolled weeks, if any, that you own. They already announced that.


Technically speaking, my mandatory resales are not “enrolled” in terms of retro with a developer purchase. However, I’m confident that I will have executive level with my mandatory resale units based on my owners update today.

I’m glad I picked up those two EOY SVV and WKV contracts this spring/summer.

technically I deserve to be included at all levels, I did make a developer purchase and paid substantially for it. If they let me in with my resales I’ll call us square, lol


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

Venter said:


> This time he eloquently brings some legitimate concerns to the table. I still think that, given the giant corporate muscle, one can either join the game or get out.


I think the main concern is with Voluntary ownership, there is no option to join the game. At least not without a significant developer purchase.


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## TravelTime (Sep 3, 2022)

I wonder what the requirements will be to enroll post 8/9 mandatory resorts. I wonder if it will be a nominal enrollment fee or significant points or hybrid week purchase. I assume it will end up being a points or hybrid week purchase or there will be a mad dash on resales.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I wonder what the requirements will be to enroll post 8/9 mandatory resorts. I wonder if it will be a nominal enrollment fee or significant points or hybrid week purchase. I assume it will end up being a points or hybrid week purchase or there will be a mad dash on resales.


I doubt it will be a simple enrollment for a fee. I don't think you can do a bundle/hybrid at the same time as you enroll an external resale. At least I don't think they do that on the Marriott side today. I suspect it will be the same or similar annual enrollment promotion that Marriott does today where you must buy a minimum of 2,500 (or is it 3,000?) points to enroll one week and the number of points goes up as you enroll more. The dollar requirement may go down (lower Club Point purchase) to get more in line with how much Vistana used to (may still do) charge, $10K+$5K, vs the 2,500 point (>$30K) that Marriott has with their enrollment offers.


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## CPNY (Sep 3, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I wonder what the requirements will be to enroll post 8/9 mandatory resorts. I wonder if it will be a nominal enrollment fee or significant points or hybrid week purchase. I assume it will end up being a points or hybrid week purchase or there will be a mad dash on resales.


I have a resale coming in very soon, I’ll let you know lol


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## Venter (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I think the main concern is with Voluntary ownership, there is no option to join the game. At least not without a significant developer purchase.


Yes, I get that too as I only own voluntary.  It doesn't sit right with me but it is what it is.  Most of the voluntary resorts had low buy in costs so it is not such a big loss.  However, some of the Orlando mandatory resorts had low buy in relative to my Westin Flex resale and they get to play for free.  I am just glad I didn't follow advice given to me at the time of buying to make higher offers because the sellers thought ROFR would be imposed. 

I did know what I was getting into and planned to use it where I wanted to go.  Maybe reservations using voluntary points and resort weeks may be harder so I do see timsi's point that we should all be 'compensated' for the possible reduction in our ownership usage just like the mandatory resorts.  From past experience on how Marriott handled MVC I still am positive that Marriott will do what is right managing this product and that the impact will be minimal with some errors but also corrections where needed.  Time will tell...


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## Venter (Sep 3, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I doubt it will be a simple enrollment for a fee. I don't think you can do a bundle/hybrid at the same time as you enroll an external resale. At least I don't think they do that on the Marriott side today. I suspect it will be the same or similar annual enrollment promotion that Marriott does today where you must buy a minimum of 2,500 (or is it 3,000?) points to enroll one week and the number of points goes up as you enroll more. The dollar requirement may go down (lower Club Point purchase) to get more in line with how much Vistana used to (may still do) charge, $10K+$5K, vs the 2,500 point (>$30K) that Marriott has with their enrollment offers.


From my experience trying to enrol my VOI's through Marriott the salesman contacted corporate.  The email they returned stated that they would require 1000 points for the first week and 500 per extra week thereafter.  However, this has been refuted by another member who tried to get this deal and was told it cannot be done.  What made me think this may not happen again is that Marriott normally requires a similar points purchases to what your week/s is/are worth.  Secondly, some Tuggers have been able to enroll weeks with the purchase of a non-US week/s but it sounds like there is also criteria where the amount of weeks or what they are worth is taken into consideration. Thirdly, they may not let you enrol a WKORV week just by buying 1000 points due to the points it or similar weeks may generate.  Lastly, it all depends on the day and the salesman, and what they have at their disposal to make it work.


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## TravelTime (Sep 4, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I doubt it will be a simple enrollment for a fee. I don't think you can do a bundle/hybrid at the same time as you enroll an external resale. At least I don't think they do that on the Marriott side today. I suspect it will be the same or similar annual enrollment promotion that Marriott does today where you must buy a minimum of 2,500 (or is it 3,000?) points to enroll one week and the number of points goes up as you enroll more. The dollar requirement may go down (lower Club Point purchase) to get more in line with how much Vistana used to (may still do) charge, $10K+$5K, vs the 2,500 point (>$30K) that Marriott has with their enrollment offers.



I did a hybrid package to enroll my Marriott Ko Olina week. I bought a Spain week and they enrolled my Ko Olina week. It was a lot more cost effective than other options but they do it in the US too.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 4, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I did a hybrid package to enroll my Marriott Ko Olina week. I bought a Spain week and they enrolled my Ko Olina week. It was a lot more cost effective than other options but they do it in the US too.


That isn't a hybrid package by definition. That is the enrollment promotion. A hybrid/bundle is where you buy a resale week through Marriott Resale Dept and also buy an equal number of Trust points direct from Marriott. I don't think you can buy a Marriott resale week+points+enroll an external resale at the same time.


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## TravelTime (Sep 4, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> That isn't a hybrid package by definition. That is the enrollment promotion. A hybrid/bundle is where you buy a resale week through Marriott Resale Dept and also buy an equal number of Trust points direct from Marriott. I don't think you can buy a Marriott resale week+points+enroll an external resale at the same time.



I would not want to buy a resale week plus points from Marriott. When I have asked about hybrid packages, Marriott always offers me a week at a cost effective price. I have spoken to the US offices about this as well as the Spain office. I think Marriott uses the word “hybrid” for weeks only packages. You can buy a resale week from Marriott and enroll a resale week of your own. It is actually not a special promotion. They do it all the time.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 4, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> You can buy a resale week from Marriott and enroll a resale week of your own.


I don't think you can enroll your own resale week while buying a resale week from Marriott Resales.

*There are two programs that I am aware that are in play;*

Buy a week through Marriott Resales + a equal number of direct trust points - *I am calling this Hybrid, but I think Marriott actually call it Bundle*.
Have your own resale week that you bought external after 6/2010 and then buy a certain number of points or a direct developer international week (Spain, Caribbean, Costa Rica). - *I am referring to this enrollment promotion.* They used to only offer this certain months of the year, but perhaps they offer it all the time now.


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## TravelTime (Sep 4, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> I don't think you can enroll your own resale week while buying a resale week from Marriott Resales.
> 
> *There are two programs that I am aware that are in play;*
> 
> ...



I did #2 by buying a Spain week and then they enrolled my MKO week. They do this one all the time and not at any special time.

So what would be a generic term to refer to any resale purchase direct through Marriott? This would encompass #1 and #2 as well as a third option which is only buying a resale week from Marriott without any points. They do this one with any week you want. 

In fact, I called this week to see if MVC could see my Vistana week. They did not see it of course in their system. However, they mentioned 2 US resale weeks that I had agreed to buy from MVC but then rescinded on. They still have that data on their system.


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

CPNY said:


> @timsi it sounds like you hate Marriott and I’m totally here for that! ….. I’m with you, unless they give me executive level on my resales then look out, I’ll be “Mr Marriott” and post all over the Marriott forum because ya know, we are one now. At what point do “Vistana People” become “Marriott people”?



I do not "hate" Marriott but they methodically burned all the credit they started with when they acquired ILG and they are clearly now in deep negative territory.  I hear you, people are influenced by their own interests. As far as I can tell, the Tuggers who are the most active in the Vistana forum own quite a bit of mandatory VOIs and also an unusually high number of Westin Ka’anapali and many may already be part of MVC. I assume they feel they benefit from they way Abound was structured. Because of their own interests, it should not be a surprise if they have other priorities  than being concerned if Marriott broke rules that pertain to somebody else’s home resort.

This is not the case with the rest of the resale owners, and many own only voluntary VOIs and just because you do not see them here it does not mean they are not prepared to make their voices heard. Marriott would make a tactical mistake to believe that the strong defenders on TUG are representative for their ownership base.

By the way, several of my friends who own _only _voluntary resale have received the email: “_Because you’re a member in the VSN, you will be able to elect to receive Club Points in Abound even though your Vacation Ownership Interest (VOI) was not purchased from the Developer, meaning that you will be able to access Abound without an additional purchase._” Vistana may have sent it to a lot of voluntary resale owners. My friends were very disappointed to hear that Marriott wants to take inventory for Abound during the home reservation period and mess with their exclusive priority rights AND that this email may have just been sent to them in error. Marriott is a public company and I think it is in their best interest to fix this to the full satisfaction of the voluntary owners and continue blissfully with the grand plan.


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## Venter (Sep 4, 2022)

I plan to make my encore package presentation a short one by by voicing timsi's concerns.  I will then say there is no way I am buying if this is the way they treat owners from now on. ;-)
I have enough points and weeks anyway and will get all my good info from here instead of from a biased salesman.


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## CPNY (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> I do not "hate" Marriott but they they methodically burned all the credit they started with when they acquired ILG and they are clearly now in deep negative territory.  I hear you, people are influenced by their own interests. As far as I can tell, the Tuggers who are the most active in the Vistana forum own quite a bit of mandatory VOIs and also an unusually high number of Westin Ka’anapali and many may already be part of MVC. I assume they feel they benefit from they way Abound was structured. Because of their own interests, it should not be a surprise if they have other priorities  than being concerned if Marriott broke rules that pertain to somebody else’s home resort.
> 
> This is not the case with the rest of the resale owners, and many own only voluntary VOIs and just because you do not see them here it does not mean they are not prepared to make their voices heard. Marriott would make a tactical mistake to believe that the strong defenders on TUG are representative for their ownership base.
> 
> By the way, several of my friends who own _only _voluntary resale have received the email: “_Because you’re a member in the VSN, you will be able to elect to receive Club Points in Abound even though your Vacation Ownership Interest (VOI) was not purchased from the Developer, meaning that you will be able to access Abound without an additional purchase._” Vistana may have sent it to a lot of voluntary resale owners. My friends were very disappointed to hear that Marriott wants to take inventory for Abound during the home reservation period and mess with their exclusive priority rights AND that this email may have just been sent to them in error. Marriott is a public company and I think it is in their best interest to fix this to the full satisfaction of the voluntary owners and continue blissfully with the grand plan.


It would be interesting to see if they add voluntary in. Even if they don’t, I wouldn’t worry about not being able to reserve home usage. If they only take into Abound what Vistana owners give them, there will be plenty of inventory at 12 months.

With this acquisition inventory control and the future of the VSN has been the concern for everyone on the vistana side.


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

CPNY said:


> It would be interesting to see if they add voluntary in. Even if they don’t, I wouldn’t worry about not being able to reserve home usage. If they only take into Abound what Vistana owners give them, there will be plenty of inventory at 12 months.
> 
> With this acquisition inventory control and the future of the VSN has been the concern for everyone on the vistana side.


The inventory problems have already started for certain weeks and I am concerned that the relationship between the inventory  buckets is so complicated and Marriott so incompetent that once Abound is live, booking will be more frustrating than before. It is not only a matter of concern but about abiding by the rules. If you have 10 million dollars in the bank, you are not going to be happy if the bank wants to take a million from you with the idea that you still have "enough".


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## CPNY (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> The inventory problems have already started for certain weeks and I am concerned that the relationship between the inventory  buckets is so complicated and Marriott so incompetent that once Abound is live, booking will be more frustrating than before. It is not only a matter of concern but about abiding by the rules. If you have 10 million dollars in the bank, you are not going to be happy if the bank wants to take a million from you with the idea that you still have "enough".


I’m not disagreeing with you.


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## divenski (Sep 4, 2022)

Going back to this list, it's arguable that the biggest risk to home week availability for certain weeks is #2 and not #4. Consider that an owner who rents their week(s) typically goes after the highest demand weeks, which is the concern being voiced about MVC.

But if MVC takes an average of weeks through the year, then the impact on high demand weeks is less than #2.

Having said this, it's clear that an owner has the right to reserve and then rent whatever week they want. But in some sense, it violates the spirit of the original purpose of a TS week and negatively impacts those who want to actually use their weeks. Now flame away...



> 1) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period.
> 2) A Vistana weeks owner reserves his deeded week for use during the Home Reservation Period and the rents their week for cash to a non-owner.
> 3) A Vistana weeks owner exchanges in II, so their usage gets assigned to one of the bulk deposits Vistana made with II. Vistana chooses the week to deposit.
> 4) A Vistana weeks owner elects his week into Abound for their use, and in lieu of cash, receives Abound Club Points. Vistana/VSN chooses the week for Abound.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 4, 2022)

divenski said:


> Going back to this list, it's arguable that the biggest risk to home week availability for certain weeks is #2 and not #4. Consider that an owner who rents their week(s) typically goes after the highest demand weeks, which is the concern being voiced about MVC.
> 
> But if MVC takes an average of weeks through the year, then the impact on high demand weeks is less than #2.
> 
> Having said this, it's clear that an owner has the right to reserve and then rent whatever week they want. But in some sense, it violates the spirit of the original purpose of a TS week and negatively impacts those who want to actually use their weeks. Now flame away...



As an owner who owns at a MVC resort where #2 is a frequent practice - Maui Ocean Club - I can say without question that mega-renters who own many weeks and snap prime weeks up to rent on Redweek and elsewhere definitely impacts owner availability significantly for the best weeks in whale season. I assume peak weeks in summer are similarly impacted, but we don't go in summer, so don't have first hand knowledge. Is this also common at WKORV North and South to have people who own many (dozens) of weeks and run a business renting them?


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## divenski (Sep 4, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Is this also common at WKORV North and South to have people who own many (dozens) of weeks and run a business renting them?



I don't have any first hand knowledge, but it certainly seems that the Redweek rental activity is higher than it used to be for WKORV, and especially since the rental rates went up. It remains to be seen whether some of this is still a post-COVID surge, but I suspect not as people have become more comfortable renting through the internet and there isn't a lot of new building going on.


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## jabberwocky (Sep 4, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> As an owner who owns at a MVC resort where #2 is a frequent practice - Maui Ocean Club - I can say without question that mega-renters who own many weeks and snap prime weeks up to rent on Redweek and elsewhere definitely impacts owner availability significantly for the best weeks in whale season. I assume peak weeks in summer are similarly impacted, but we don't go in summer, so don't have first hand knowledge. Is this also common at WKORV North and South to have people who own many (dozens) of weeks and run a business renting them?


I think how Vistana and Marriott have dealt with multiple week bookings plays a role in some of the fears being expressed. My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that Marriott will allow you to “chain” several weeks in a row together all at once, even if some of those weeks go beyond the current booking window. With Vistana, you have to wait until the window opens for each individual week. As such, those who own 10 weeks have the exact same opportunity to book at the 12-month mark as the person who owns one week.

In a sense, Vistana has been much more of an egalitarian system where status doesn’t play as large a role in being able to access properties. The good news is that for home resort bookings, the Vistana rules will still apply - so the playing field will still be relatively level for all.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 4, 2022)

jabberwocky said:


> I think how Vistana and Marriott have dealt with multiple week bookings plays a role in some of the fears being expressed. My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that Marriott will allow you to “chain” several weeks in a row together all at once, even if some of those weeks go beyond the current booking window. With Vistana, you have to wait until the window opens for each individual week. As such, those who own 10 weeks have the exact same opportunity to book at the 12-month mark as the person who owns one week.
> 
> In a sense, Vistana has been much more of an egalitarian system where status doesn’t play as large a role in being able to access properties. The good news is that for home resort bookings, the Vistana rules will still apply - so the playing field will still be relatively level for all.



In the old MVC weeks system, that is correct, multiple weeks owners can string consecutive weeks together at 13 months and book well beyond the normal window if they own a lot of weeks. That's how mega renters front run other weeks owners to get rentable prime weeks. That's not the case in the MVC points system; the windows are fixed.


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## jabberwocky (Sep 4, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> In the old MVC weeks system, that is correct, multiple weeks owners can string consecutive weeks together at 13 months and book well beyond the normal window if they own a lot of weeks. That's how mega renters front run other weeks owners to get rentable prime weeks. That's not the case in the MVC points system; the windows are fixed.


Thanks for clarifying. This is useful information.


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## TravelTime (Sep 4, 2022)

I understand all the concerns. The fear of not booking at one’s home resort makes sense. Even though my week is WKOVRN, when I want to go to Maui, I am going to use my home resort over Abound points. I am not worried because I do not believe Marriott will steal inventory or doing something wicked. I get the loss of 2 years of banking and the loss of some other Elite benefits.

The one concern I do not understand is why voluntary resorts should get free enrollment. Right now, they can’t use VSN so really isn’t it only the ability to book your home resort now? I used to own a voluntary week and that was all I could do with it.


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## TravelTime (Sep 4, 2022)

divenski said:


> Having said this, it's clear that an owner has the right to reserve and then rent whatever week they want. But in some sense, it violates the spirit of the original purpose of a TS week and negatively impacts those who want to actually use their weeks. Now flame away...



This is one thing that bugs me. I understand renting your week when you can’t use it. 

Technically, commercial use of timeshares is not allowed. So when folks all rant about Marriott breaking the rules (which is questionable), how about mega renters breaking the rules?


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> As an owner who owns at a MVC resort where #2 is a frequent practice - Maui Ocean Club - I can say without question that mega-renters who own many weeks and snap prime weeks up to rent on Redweek and elsewhere definitely impacts owner availability significantly for the best weeks in whale season. I assume peak weeks in summer are similarly impacted, but we don't go in summer, so don't have first hand knowledge. Is this also common at WKORV North and South to have people who own many (dozens) of weeks and run a business renting them?


These are details, can be discussed separately and completely not relevant to this topic since the resort rules give the owners exclusive rights during the home reservation period to access the whole inventory,* without competition from non-owners*.  This is a public company not a street market and is supposed to be based on rules not on subjective substitutions.  

I understand why those who have been accustomed to MVC and its practices may need a bit of adjustment to the Vistana specifics, but the rules are clear. Since the merger is a monumental task, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I assume that even their legal department overlooked this problem, but once they know about it, they cannot ignore.


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## jabberwocky (Sep 4, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> The one concern I do not understand is why voluntary resorts should get free enrollment. Right now, they can’t use VSN so really isn’t it only the ability to book your home resort now? I used to own a voluntary week and that was all I could do with it.


I agree. If you purchased a voluntary resale you know that you can’t exchange it or use the VSN system. I paid good money to bring my SDO into the VSN system and I would be upset if they admitted others to VSN without having to do a retro. 

For mandatory weeks I’m on the fence. I’m happy they included my WKORVN week, but I would not be upset if they had excluded resale owners - assuming no changes to VSN banking etc. the fact that they made some significant changes to VSN terms means they likely had to make up for it with free enrollment of mandatory weeks.


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## jabberwocky (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> These are details, can be discussed separately and completely not relevant to this topic since the resort rules give the owners exclusive rights during the home reservation period to access the whole inventory,* without competition from non-owners*.  This is a public company not a street market and is supposed to be based on rules not on subjective substitutions.
> 
> I understand why those who have been accustomed to MVC and its practices may need a bit of adjustment to the Vistana specifics, but the rules are clear. Since the merger is a monumental task, I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I assume that even their legal department overlooked this problem, but once they know about it, they cannot ignore.


I think I’m going to put this thread on ignore. This has been hashed out many times, yet it doesn’t seem to get through.

There is no impact on you as an owner if you want to compete for your home resort week, you still have the same rights and opportunity you do now. In order for what you are calling a non-owner to book, an actual owner transfers their right to book in the home resort period to the exchange, or the trust uses a week that is in their trust inventory. This is no different than you transferring your right to book by exchanging in II or a Flex owner booking through the Flex trust (by your definition Flex owners would also be non-owners at the resort).


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## dioxide45 (Sep 4, 2022)

jabberwocky said:


> I think I’m going to put this thread on ignore. This has been hashed out many times, yet it doesn’t seem to get through.
> 
> There is no impact on you as an owner if you want to compete for your home resort week, you still have the same rights and opportunity you do now. In order for what you are calling a non-owner to book, an actual owner transfers their right to book in the home resort period to the exchange, or the trust uses a week that is in their trust inventory. This is no different than you transferring your right to book by exchanging in II or a Flex owner booking through the Flex trust (by your definition Flex owners would also be non-owners at the resort).


IMO there is a significant difference between some home resort owners trying to reserve their week vs electing it for points where several hundred thousand owners have access to that same reservation. It isn't necessarily about the numbers, but more about who can make a reservation in the Home Reservation Period. That is generally reserved for owners. Depositing it into an exchange now leads to non owners being able to reserver use periods during the Home Reservation Period. In the past, one of those owners may have decided to wait until 8 months to make a VSN reservation. The week they could have reserved went unreserved and available to a smaller pool of owners to book. Now with Abound, an even larger pool of non owners can reserve it.


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

TravelTime said:


> I understand all the concerns. The fear of not booking at one’s home resort makes sense. Even though my week is WKOVRN, when I want to go to Maui, I am going to use my home resort over Abound points. I am not worried because I do not believe Marriott will steal inventory or doing something wicked. I get the loss of 2 years of banking and the loss of some other Elite benefits.
> 
> The one concern I do not understand is why voluntary resorts should get free enrollment. Right now, they can’t use VSN so really isn’t it only the ability to book your home resort now? I used to own a voluntary week and that was all I could do with it.


Between the skim, reducing banking from 2 to 1 years for most Vistana owners and being able to juggle with the inventory, Abound will be a huge gain for Marriott. However, the way they created it infringe the rights of the resort owners. They can remedy that in some way, start trading in Abound at 10-8 months for example, or give to the voluntary owners something in return. I suspect that the latter is a lot simpler, less costly (or no cost) and less of a PR nightmare than the former.


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

jabberwocky said:


> I think I’m going to put this thread on ignore. This has been hashed out many times, yet it doesn’t seem to get through.
> 
> There is no impact on you as an owner if you want to compete for your home resort week, you still have the same rights and opportunity you do now. In order for what you are calling a non-owner to book, an actual owner transfers their right to book in the home resort period to the exchange, or the trust uses a week that is in their trust inventory. This is no different than you transferring your right to book by exchanging in II or a Flex owner booking through the Flex trust (by your definition Flex owners would also be non-owners at the resort).


I am really surprised when those that said countless times in the past that you need home priority to book at 12 months a certain popular week at X, Y, Z resort and that it will be very hard to get it as an exchanger suddenly forget what home priority is and why it is there for.


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## Red elephant (Sep 4, 2022)

jabberwocky said:


> I agree. If you purchased a voluntary resale you know that you can’t exchange it or use the VSN system. I paid good money to bring my SDO into the VSN system and I would be upset if they admitted others to VSN without having to do a retro.
> 
> For mandatory weeks I’m on the fence. I’m happy they included my WKORVN week, but I would not be upset if they had excluded resale owners - assuming no changes to VSN banking etc. the fact that they made some significant changes to VSN terms means they likely had to make up for it with free enrollment of mandatory weeks.


Not only that does’nt mandatory weeks cost more? And how many people own them from all owners?


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

jabberwocky said:


> I agree. If you purchased a voluntary resale you know that you can’t exchange it or use the VSN system. I paid good money to bring my SDO into the VSN system and I would be upset if they admitted others to VSN without having to do a retro.
> 
> For mandatory weeks I’m on the fence. I’m happy they included my WKORVN week, but I would not be upset if they had excluded resale owners - assuming no changes to VSN banking etc. the fact that they made some significant changes to VSN terms means they likely had to make up for it with free enrollment of mandatory weeks.




As a resale owner, I will still pay to these guys something like 100k or more in maintenance fees in the next 10 years (assuming some inflation) and you bet I want to make sure my rights are protected, regardless of what you did or did not do. So your point is that the voluntary resale owners have to lose* their* rights because of *your* decision to make a transaction with the developer and the games they play.  It does not work like that but  I have to say that the developers play the divide and conquer game pretty well. You should have been upset with the developer *at the time*  because you had to pay 10, 15 or 25 thousand dollars for deeds that cost them 3, 5 or 8 thousands.


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## Great3 (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> By the way, several of my friends who own _only _voluntary resale have received the email: “_Because you’re a member in the VSN, you will be able to elect to receive Club Points in Abound even though your Vacation Ownership Interest (VOI) was not purchased from the Developer, meaning that you will be able to access Abound without an additional purchase._” Vistana may have sent it to a lot of voluntary resale owners. My friends were very disappointed to hear that Marriott wants to take inventory for Abound during the home reservation period and mess with their exclusive priority rights AND that this email may have just been sent to them in error. Marriott is a public company and I think it is in their best interest to fix this to the full satisfaction of the voluntary owners and continue blissfully with the grand plan.



Thanks for confirming there are others besides me that are Resale voluntary owners only that received the same email.  Thru the FAQ, we know that email is a complete mistake.  They should have put an * with a footnote to cover themselves. Without such, it's such a misleading email, even if unintentional.

Obviously I don't care, and ain't going to get mad about it, but others may feel differently, feeling like they been deceived because lots of owners can't be bothered to read the FAQ or newly released rules/docs, and only listen to what others tell them.

While I completely see your point that there will be less inventory during both home resort priority booking period and in VSN 8 months booking due to Abound Elections, I don't think enough owners care enough to formally protest/complain.  I for one won't, because I don't think it's going to have a big enough effect, but only time will tell.

Good Luck on your efforts to affect change with Marriott!

Great3


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

Great3 said:


> Thanks for confirming there are others besides me that are Resale voluntary owners only that received the same email.  Thru the FAQ, we know that email is a complete mistake.  They should have put an * with a footnote to cover themselves. Without such, it's such a misleading email, even if unintentional.
> 
> Obviously I don't care, and ain't going to get mad about it, but others may feel differently, feeling like they been deceived because lots of owners can't be bothered to read the FAQ or newly released rules/docs, and only listen to what others tell them.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your comment. I hope (or hoped) that more owners would side with the little guy but I understand others have other priorities or may even see things differently. What I can tell you is that I do not see how they are not going to try to fix it, cause it is really wabbly.


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## Great3 (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> Thank you for your comment. I hope (or hoped) that more owners would side with the little guy but I understand others have other priorities or may even see things differently. What I can tell you is that I do not see how they are not going to try to fix it, cause it is really wabbly.



Personally, I foresee them ignoring you no many how many times you bring it to their attention, until you lodge a formal legal lawsuit.  That's why I said good luck, because I think you sincerely believe you have a infallible argument, and Marriott will have lots of high powered lawyers to twist the meaning around on everything you are trying to convey.  I am not trying to discouraging from trying, especially since I see you are passionate in your feelings of your interpretation of the exclusive home resort booking rights, but I personally predict they will just wear you down, and do nothing but laugh at all those that complains.

All I am saying is, I just wouldn't be so certain that will try to address anything!

Great3


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

Great3 said:


> Personally, I foresee them ignoring you no many how many times you bring it to their attention, until you lodge a formal legal lawsuit.  That's why I said good luck, because I think you sincerely believe you have a infallible argument, and Marriott will have lots of high powered lawyers to twist the meaning around on everything you are trying to convey.  I am not trying to discouraging from trying, especially since I see you are passionate in your feelings of your interpretation of the exclusive home resort booking rights, but I personally predict they will just wear you down, and do nothing but laugh at all those that complains.
> 
> Great3


I am not sure Marriott has a huge reason to oppose this and it does not cost them anything, especially if they find a reasonable way to save face (199 enrollment or something like that). Typically the public companies do not want to show they are breaking their own rules, the stakes are a lot higher in that regard.


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## Great3 (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> I am not sure Marriott has a huge reason to oppose this and it does not cost them anything, especially if they find a reasonable way to save face (199 enrollment or something like that). Typically the public companies do not want to show they are breaking their own rules, the stakes are a lot higher in that regard.



Again, I will just say good luck!  I know I will benefit from your efforts if it does happen!

Great3


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

Great3 said:


> Again, I will just say good luck!  I know I will benefit from your efforts if it does happen!
> 
> Great3


As you are probably aware,  HGVC chose to respect the home priority and created Max that starts well after the end of the home priority and  the internal exchange. Somehow their lawyers, or the management, thought they should not mess with the resort and the exchange rules.


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## CPNY (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> As you are probably aware,  HGVC chose to respect the home priority and created Max that starts well after the end of the home priority and  the internal exchange. Somehow their lawyers, or the management, thought they should not mess with the resort and the exchange rules.


I guess the alternative would have been for Marriott to give all Marriott owners access to the VSN at 8 months…. No thanks! I like the Abound system better.

What’s your home resort?


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## Great3 (Sep 4, 2022)

timsi said:


> As you are probably aware,  HGVC chose to respect the home priority and created Max that starts well after the end of the home priority and  the internal exchange. Somehow their lawyers, or the management, thought they should not mess with the resort and the exchange rules.



Now we are getting off topic, but since you are the OP anyways, you won't be upset we are going off topic since you are leading the way (LOL)!  I am very well aware of HGVC and HGVC Max, as I also own in HGVC in addition to in Vistana.  I am very happy with the booking rules for new HGVC Max program, I would have been upset if they if they did it like wat Marriott is doing with Abound.  With HGVC Max, nobody on Diamond side or HGVC side can be upset, because all home resort and all club booking / trading rights are preserve in each respective system.  In my opinion, Marriott owners should be upset also with Abound, allowing VSN to book all the Abound Resorts (former DP club resorts) as now there is more increase of competition for Marriott owners to book their own home resort, so it goes both ways.

For those in VSN that plan on electing Abound points, they should be happy with Abound program rules.  For those that don't plan on electing Abound points, especially those that own mandatory WKV, I can see why they are upset.  I own only Resale Voluntary only, and I hardly book Home Resort as I mainly trade in II for the Vistana preference period, so I am not upset.  And I am certain I can get my home resort booking any year I want to, as my schedule is flexible and I will just pick a different week, I am not locked to having to travel during certain periods.  So, it really does affect everyone differently, and I suspect you will be in minority group of owners that really isn't happy, upset even!

Great3


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## timsi (Sep 4, 2022)

CPNY said:


> I guess the alternative would have been for Marriott to give all Marriott owners access to the VSN at 8 months…. No thanks! I like the Abound system better.
> 
> What’s your home resort?


Who knows how many options they have considered, they chose this because it suits them best. 

I am not even convinced they did not want to enroll all resale owners, as they did in the past, and that the sales force opposed it vehemently since they had a stain on their shirt. Maybe this is why they thought they could compromise and included for the moment just the mandatory resorts. 
I am also speculating that their legal department may have warned them that there are problems with how they structured it but they went on anyways because of the internal pressures.


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## timsi (Sep 10, 2022)

dioxide45 said:


> Marriott has this in the Abound  by Marriott Vacations Exchange procedures;
> 
> _When an Exchange Member or VSN Member Deposits a Use Period with Exchange Company, such Exchange Member or VSN Member, as applicable, assigns and Exchange Company will automatically have all of such Exchange Member’s or VSN Member’s rights to reserve and use such Use Period for the given Use Year. Once such Use Period has been Deposited with Exchange Company, it may not be withdrawn._
> 
> ...


Indeed, the exchange procedures do not override the rights of the resort owners. At Lagunamar, the order is clear:

"ARTICLE TWO    GENERAL PROVISIONS
*Conflicts. In the event of conflict between the provisions of the Vacation Plan Documents, the following shall control in order of priority: **these Bylaws**, the Reservation Rules, the Resort Rules and, as to any particular Member, the Equity Membership Certificate."*

The VSN rules (including the bulk deposit rule which does not exist in the Bylaws), any Vistana agreement with Interval, any VSN agreement with Abound or anything they may draft in the future cannot dictate over the provisions of the Bylaws specifically:

"Required Reservation Periods. There must be at least one “Home Resort Reservation Period.” The Home Resort Reservation Period *must permit a Member to request a reservation, without competition from anyone who is not assigned a  Vacation  Ownership Interest in a Vacation Unit that is the same Unit Type as the Member’s Unit Type and for any Vacation Period in the same Season as the Member’s Vacation Week,* provided that nobody else has reserved the Vacation Period and that no other Persons have the exclusive right to reserve the Vacation Period. The Home Resort Reservation Period must last at least sixty (60) days. The Home Resort Reservation Period cannot begin more than eighteen months before the Check-in Day for any Use Period."

*This article can only be changed with the vote of 90% of the owners.*

As far as I can tell, regardless of what VSN and Marriott plot about Abound they are still in hot water if they give units to Abound before the end of the home resort reservation period, and that applies for the developer deposits as well. 

If in the past Vistana made deposits to Interval during the home resort reservation period, they were also off-side because of the Bylaws. They will not be able to do it in the future.


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## timsi (Sep 10, 2022)

ocdb8r said:


> Again, save it for your other thread or challenge MVC in court.  "From time to time" may not be legally interpreted in the way you've described it from whatever online dictionary you've looked it up in.  Regardless, perhaps they only do it "from time to time" as necessary to balance the inventory between Abound and VSN. Repeatedly you act like MVC takes all these weeks for their own use; they are not.  They are only taking enough inventory to balance VSN owners who have elected Abound points with those Abound owners who want to trade into VSN.
> 
> 
> I thought it didn't matter what was done in the past or whether or not VSN/MVC abused the rules in the past?  That's what you've posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again whenever anyone pointed out that MVC gained these same rights when they launched the DP program and the fear of "abuse" was largely not realized.  Yes, the ability is there....IT'S IN THE RULES...whether they abuse them or not is still to be seen.
> ...


ocdb8r Read my comment above. To be clear, I was initially wrong and in fact during the Home Reservation Period they can make NO deposits to Abound, they cannot even make them "from time to time". When I read the VSN bulk deposit rule before, I thought they could do it sometimes. Not really because it is in conflict with the Bylaws of Cancun Lagunamar Property Ownership Association, and the Bylaws have priority over all other documents when two rules are in conflict.

Basically, Abound can only start exchanges at the same time as VSN, at least at Lagunamar.  I suspect they may have the same problem at other resorts.


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## timsi (Sep 10, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> As an owner who owns at a MVC resort where #2 is a frequent practice - Maui Ocean Club - I can say without question that mega-renters who own many weeks and snap prime weeks up to rent on Redweek and elsewhere definitely impacts owner availability significantly for the best weeks in whale season. I assume peak weeks in summer are similarly impacted, but we don't go in summer, so don't have first hand knowledge. Is this also common at WKORV North and South to have people who own many (dozens) of weeks and run a business renting them?


The developers are in general the mega-renters.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 10, 2022)

timsi said:


> The developers are in general the mega-renters.


Developers are a mega-renter, but they aren’t the only ones. I do know there are at least several private owners who own a lot of weeks at Maui Ocean Club and use them to run what is essentially a rental business. As long as Marriott chooses not to enforce their prohibition on commercial use, there is nothing we can do about it, but it does impact availability for people who are booking for our own use. So my point was simply that the developers aren’t the only ones that benefit from commercial rental activities that take inventory away from people who are booking for their own use. 

 I don’t know if that is also the case at the Westins on Maui.


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## 5finny (Sep 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Developers are a mega-renter, but they aren’t the only ones. I do know there are at least several private owners who own a lot of weeks at Maui Ocean Club and use them to run what is essentially a rental business. As long as Marriott chooses not to enforce their prohibition on commercial use, there is nothing we can do about it, but it does impact availability for people who are booking for our own use. So my point was simply that the developers aren’t the only ones that benefit from commercial rental activities that take inventory away from people who are booking for their own use.
> 
> I don’t know if that is also the case at the Westins on Maui.




Vistana owners do not have the ability to string together weeks to get early access to inventory so that removes a major advantage that Marriott Mega renters who have week ownerships have
Seems a little strange that Marriott lets week owners do this but not point owners when they obviously want to push owners into points

I was considering buying a MOC week (probably two)
How much of a problem is it in booking at MOC ?
Significant enough that I should reconsider a purchase if I would want to book two back to back  prime whale weeks?
I have heard that if you want a prime summer week at NCV and own only 1 week you can pretty much forget it.


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## timsi (Sep 11, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Developers are a mega-renter, but they aren’t the only ones. I do know there are at least several private owners who own a lot of weeks at Maui Ocean Club and use them to run what is essentially a rental business. As long as Marriott chooses not to enforce their prohibition on commercial use, there is nothing we can do about it, but it does impact availability for people who are booking for our own use. So my point was simply that the developers aren’t the only ones that benefit from commercial rental activities that take inventory away from people who are booking for their own use.
> 
> I don’t know if that is also the case at the Westins on Maui.


For all the Marriott resorts, can you estimate the combined revenue of all the individual mega-renters?  Compare that to half a billion dollars in annual rental revenue that MVW reports.


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## sponger76 (Sep 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> For all the Marriott resorts, can you estimate the combined revenue of all the individual mega-renters?  Compare that to half a billion dollars in annual rental revenue that MVW reports.


With the amounts that some are able to rent their weeks for (multiple thousands of dollars each), it's not hard to imagine that mega renters, when combined, could come close to or even match that half a billion.


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## divenski (Sep 11, 2022)

> "Required Reservation Periods. There must be at least one “Home Resort Reservation Period.” The Home Resort Reservation Period *must permit a Member to request a reservation, without competition from anyone who is not assigned a  Vacation  Ownership Interest in a Vacation Unit that is the same Unit Type as the Member’s Unit Type and for any Vacation Period in the same Season as the Member’s Vacation Week,* provided that nobody else has reserved the Vacation Period and that no other Persons have the exclusive right to reserve the Vacation Period."



Do the resort's bylaws clearly define what is meant by "assigned?"


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## JIMinNC (Sep 11, 2022)

5finny said:


> Vistana owners do not have the ability to string together weeks to get early access to inventory so that removes a major advantage that Marriott Mega renters who have week ownerships have
> Seems a little strange that Marriott lets week owners do this but not point owners when they obviously want to push owners into points
> 
> I was considering buying a MOC week (probably two)
> ...



As far as difficulty booking MOC, I have never had an issue booking our 2BR OV unit in the original towers during whale season. I have heard people have difficulty if they must have Presidents Week and my perception (although it’s just perception) is that OF is harder to book than OV because more people who buy to rent buy OF due to the better $$$ rentals. I’ve also heard more complaints about difficulty booking OF in the Lahaina/Napili towers than the original buildings.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> For all the Marriott resorts, can you estimate the combined revenue of all the individual mega-renters?  Compare that to half a billion dollars in annual rental revenue that MVW reports.


I obviously have no idea, but MVW is in the business to do that and they acquire rentable inventory through a lot of channels - like when people exchange for Bonvoy points or book Explorer Collection tours/cruises - not just rentals they own. I also know from looking at MVC and Westin timeshare properties on Marriott.com that MVW has inventory for rent at almost all resorts in all seasons, whereas the individuals who operate as mega-renters concentrate on the highest value resorts and seasons like Maui, Hilton Head summer, etc. As a result, my suspicion is (but I have no proof) that the large individual renters represent more competition for high demand weeks at high demand resorts than MVW does.


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## timsi (Sep 11, 2022)

divenski said:


> Do the resort's bylaws clearly define what is meant by "assigned?"



Yes, the Bylaws are clear that the VOIs are assigned to the members and the members have to be registered with the Registrar 
*“ that performs all  registration, transfer and exchange of Equity Membership Certificates. The Registrar has to be a “recognized title insurance corporation or other financially capable organization deemed acceptable to the Board as the registrar of the Equity Membership Certificates (the“Registrar”) for purposes of registering Equity Membership Certificates and related Vacation Ownership Interests and transfers of Equity Membership Certificates as herein provided. The initial Registrar is Chicago Title Insurance Company of Florida”*

Chicago Title is still the Registrar today. Marriott cannot claim that the VOIs can be magically assigned temporarily through Abound. 

*“12.2. Nature of a Vacation Ownership Interest .
(a) There will be one Vacation Ownership Interest assigned to a Membership.
There are a number of different Vacation Ownership Interests that may be selected to be
assigned to a Membership. The type of Vacation Ownership Interest assigned to a Membership
will determine when the Members of that Membership may make reservations for a Vacation
Unit and will determine what kind of Vacation Unit may be reserved. Pursuant to the
Declaration, each Vacation Unit has been divided into at least fifty-two (52) separate Annual
Vacation Ownership Interests. In addition, each Annual Vacation Ownership Interest may be
further divided into one Even Year Biennial Vacation Ownership Interest and one Odd Year
Biennial Vacation Ownership Interest. There are at least fifty-two (52) Vacation Ownership
Interests in each Vacation Unit and there may be up to one hundred and four (104) Vacation
Ownership Interests in each Vacation Unit, if Biennial Vacation Ownership Interests are
conveyed.”*


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## timsi (Sep 11, 2022)

Great3 said:


> Now we are getting off topic, but since you are the OP anyways, you won't be upset we are going off topic since you are leading the way (LOL)!  I am very well aware of HGVC and HGVC Max, as I also own in HGVC in addition to in Vistana.  I am very happy with the booking rules for new HGVC Max program, I would have been upset if they if they did it like wat Marriott is doing with Abound.  With HGVC Max, nobody on Diamond side or HGVC side can be upset, because all home resort and all club booking / trading rights are preserve in each respective system.  In my opinion, Marriott owners should be upset also with Abound, allowing VSN to book all the Abound Resorts (former DP club resorts) as now there is more increase of competition for Marriott owners to book their own home resort, so it goes both ways.
> 
> For those in VSN that plan on electing Abound points, they should be happy with Abound program rules.  For those that don't plan on electing Abound points, especially those that own mandatory WKV, I can see why they are upset.  I own only Resale Voluntary only, and I hardly book Home Resort as I mainly trade in II for the Vistana preference period, so I am not upset.  And I am certain I can get my home resort booking any year I want to, as my schedule is flexible and I will just pick a different week, I am not locked to having to travel during certain periods.  So, it really does affect everyone differently, and I suspect you will be in minority group of owners that really isn't happy, upset even!
> 
> Great3


IMO  WKV is one of the biggest losers, I am surprised they are not up when they hear that everything will be the same. No matter what Marriot says, WKW lost the home resort priority, will only see much smaller inventory in VSN and received Abound instead where they have a much lower purchasing power. To make it worse their resale value will probably drop because of the above and because Abound does not transfer with future resales, so the potential buyers would only be able to use a severely wounded VSN for internal trades and a home resort priority that in fact does not exist.


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## Red elephant (Sep 11, 2022)

timsi said:


> IMO  WKV is one of the biggest losers, I am surprised they are not up when they hear that everything will be the same. No matter what Marriot says, WKW lost the home resort priority, will only see much smaller inventory in VSN and received Abound instead where they have a much lower purchasing power. To make it worse their resale value will probably drop because of the above and because Abound does not transfer with future resales, so the potential buyers would only be able to use a severely wounded VSN for internal trades and a home resort priority that in fact does not exist.


If WKV owners do not elect Abound points then they will continue to rent/use their resort. So what is there to be upset about ?


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## Ken555 (Sep 12, 2022)

Red elephant said:


> If WKV owners do not elect Abound points then they will continue to rent/use their resort. So what is there to be upset about ?



1. Less VSN resort availability
2. Poor Abound conversion rate
3. Seems there's a concern that Abound may grab prime WKV weeks BEFORE owners may reserve them (I haven't followed this in detail, and I'm curious if this is accurate because if so then it's a significant issue).
4. Many of us who bought WKV did so to trade within VSN, so I'd call #1, #2 and possibly #3 above would justify being "upset", wouldn't you?


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## Red elephant (Sep 12, 2022)

Ken555 said:


> 1. Less VSN resort availability
> 2. Poor Abound conversion rate
> 3. Seems there's a concern that Abound may grab prime WKV weeks BEFORE owners may reserve them (I haven't followed this in detail, and I'm curious if this is accurate because if so then it's a significant issue).
> 4. Many of us who bought WKV did so to trade within VSN, so I'd call #1, #2 and possibly #3 above would justify being "upset", wouldn't you?


If you bought WKV to use/rent/VSN then poor Abound conversion rate should not upset you.
The fact that the rate is so poor means it would stay in VSN so availability should not be an issue. That’s a good thing unless I am missing something
How would Abound grab prime WKV weeks if their owners do not deposit it in Abound? 
Unless you are saying owners would elect Abound points despite the poor conversion rate. 
The only thing I see here is that Maui weeks would not be as available in the near future in VSN cause the owners have elected to deposit their weeks in Abound.


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## timsi (Sep 12, 2022)

Say you currently have 200 owners who want to book a popular spring training week and the resort only has 100 units. The 200 owners have a 50% chance of booking it.

When you add Abound to the picture, if out of the 200 who would normally want to book that week you have 50 who deposit into Abound and Vistana allocates to Abound 50 units for that week,, the remaining 150 owners who want to book the spring training week will have to compete over the remaining 50 units, so the odds are only 1 in 3.
Your question would be valid if all units were fixed because any deposit into Abound would remove a specific week from the pool and would not affect the others. It does not work like that in a floating system and the demand for the popular weeks will increase exponentially.
To make it worse, the WKV owners do not have an idea how many units will be released to the owners and Abound and Marriott may decide to give Abound 70 units for that week based on “anticipated demand”. You cannot prove they cannot because there are no rules to protect the owners.  This would make it even tougher for the owners to book.

Marriott knows that from time to time they mess up the inventory and that the “anticipated demand” may prove completely unrealistic so they want to be able to get units from wherever they can, and they proclaim Abound is “authorized to demand balance, reserve, deposit, or rent”.  If the WKV deposits into Abound match perfectly the number of weeks the Abound exchangers can book, and this is accurate from the moment they make the initial decision, why do they think they need all the discretion to acquire new inventory, including by renting it?


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## grrrah (Sep 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> Say you currently have 200 owners who want to book a popular spring training week and the resort only has 100 units. The 200 owners have a 50% chance of booking it.
> 
> When you add Abound to the picture, if out of the 200 who would normally want to book that week you have 50 who deposit into Abound and Vistana allocates to Abound 50 units for that week,, the remaining 150 owners who want to book the spring training week will have to compete over the remaining 50 units, so the odds are only 1 in 3.
> Your question would be valid if all units were fixed because any deposit into Abound would remove a specific week from the pool and would not affect the others. It does not work like that in a floating system and the demand for the popular weeks will increase exponentially.
> ...



I understand what you are saying, but what should happen is if 25% of the people elect Abound, then 25% of each of the platinum weeks should be moved to abound.  Not just the prime one month of spring training, but yeah, who knows how the magic algorithm works for them.


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## timsi (Sep 12, 2022)

grrrah said:


> I understand what you are saying, but what should happen is if 25% of the people elect Abound, then 25% of each of the platinum weeks should be moved to abound.  Not just the prime one month of spring training, but yeah, who knows how the magic algorithm works for them.


I am afraid in practice it is impossible to implement what you suggest.  Take for example a WKV booking for March 16-23, 2024. How many units should be released to Abound at the time the booking window opens on March 16, 2023 . How many units have been deposited by owners by that time? This is why Abound wants to have full control and to "anticipate demand" but by doing so they undermine the idea that every single unit in Abound matches a unit deposited by an owner at the time they divide the inventory. 

I believe they created a mess because they are giving Abound almost equal powers to the resort owners and this is not how the club was created.

When it comes to Lagunamar, I think they messed up even worse. As a reminder the Lagunamar Bylaws do not mention bulk deposits (it is a VSN rule), the home resort reservation period is clearly exclusive to owners; Marriott cannot change the home resort reservation rule in the Bylaws because they would need the vote of 90% of the members. To top it off, in case of conflict the Bylaws have priority over any other document, so any Abound rule is null and void if it conflicts with the priority of the owners.


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## timsi (Sep 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I obviously have no idea, but MVW is in the business to do that and they acquire rentable inventory through a lot of channels - like when people exchange for Bonvoy points or book Explorer Collection tours/cruises - not just rentals they own. I also know from looking at MVC and Westin timeshare properties on Marriott.com that MVW has inventory for rent at almost all resorts in all seasons, whereas the individuals who operate as mega-renters concentrate on the highest value resorts and seasons like Maui, Hilton Head summer, etc. As a result, my suspicion is (but I have no proof) that the large individual renters represent more competition for high demand weeks at high demand resorts than MVW does.


It is a fair point that they rent at many resorts and in all seasons. The low season could be an important chunk of their rental business and it may be as profitable as high season. I know it sounds like something that does not happen in the timeshare world. However, if I understood correctly one of your comments, Marriott could rent what is not used by owners and since the maintenance fees for those units are already paid they may still make a very decent amount of cash. An individual week owner cannot do that because the MF are too high relative to the rental value. This is another reason why they may not need to own a lot of low season inventory, why pay for something you may get for free?

Say you are right and only 20% of their rental revenue comes from the highest value weeks at the high demand resorts. Last quarter they made 140 million dollars in rental revenue. If the average high value rental was $8000, they still rented 3500 top units. I just do not think you can find that many rentals in a quarter at the top Marriott and Vistana resorts in Redweek, Tug etc. 
Of course, you can put your own numbers. With the exception of the rental revenue that is public, the rest is made up.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> It is a fair point that they rent at many resorts and in all seasons. The low season could be an important chunk of their rental business and it may be as profitable as high season. I know it sounds like something that does not happen in the timeshare world. However, if I understood correctly one of your comments, Marriott could rent what is not used by owners and since the maintenance fees for those units are already paid they may still make a very decent amount of cash. An individual week owner cannot do that because the MF are too high relative to the rental value. This is another reason why they may not need to own a lot of low season inventory, why pay for something you may get for free?
> 
> Say you are right and only 20% of their rental revenue comes from the highest value weeks at the high demand resorts. Last quarter they made 140 million dollars in rental revenue. If the average high value rental was $8000, they still rented 3500 top units. I just do not think you can find that many rentals in a quarter at the top Marriott and Vistana resorts in Redweek, Tug etc.
> Of course, you can put your own numbers. With the exception of the rental revenue that is public, the rest is made up.



Again, we have no real visibility into the whole inventory management process and most likely never will. It's all just speculation, and in my view irrelevant as long as most owners can get high demand reservations. While there are always tough-to-get reservations, I do think based on most posts I've seen on TUG over the last 8 years that I've been an MVC owner that most people get what they want IF they plan in advance and book at reservation window opening. Most of the hard-to-get stuff is places like Maui Ocean Club, Hilton Head Grande Ocean, and other places that have higher owner usage.

However, I did look at the next 11-12 months of rental availability on Marriott.com for two of those high demand resorts - Maui Ocean Club and Hilton Head Grande Ocean - all that is available from Marriott right now is mostly all lower season rentals. I don't know how quickly prime time reservations get snapped up on marriott.com, but I would think cash bookings on a hotel rental site would more likely than not be people who book closer to the booking date than normal timeshare reservations.

On the other hand, if you go onto redweek.com you will see there are over 350 rentals listed for Maui Ocean Club, a very high percentage of which are prime weeks like Thanksgiving, Christmas/New Years, whale season, and summer/July 4. For Hilton Head Grande Ocean there are 180 rental listings, again heavily skewed towards holiday and summer vacation weeks. While this is just a point in time and is anecdotal instead of scientific, it would seem to indicate that a lot of owners are snapping up prime weeks to rent for a profit, maybe Marriott not so much.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> However, if I understood correctly one of your comments, Marriott could rent what is not used by owners and since the maintenance fees for those units are already paid they may still make a very decent amount of cash. An individual week owner cannot do that because the MF are too high relative to the rental value. This is another reason why they may not need to own a lot of low season inventory, why pay for something you may get for free?



I’ll add that weeks that Marriott gets rental access to without owning might actually be less profitable than those they own and only have to pay the maintenance fees for. Marriott gets access to owner weeks when they convert their week or Abound points to Bonvoy points, but MVW has to pay Marriott International for those points. Similarly, when an owner chooses to book a cruise or tour, MVW has to pay a price to the tour operator or cruise agency for that booking. I have no idea how those payments compare to maintenance fees, but I’m sure the payments are not insignificant.


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## timsi (Sep 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Again, we have no real visibility into the whole inventory management process and most likely never will. It's all just speculation, and in my view irrelevant as long as most owners can get high demand reservations. While there are always tough-to-get reservations, I do think based on most posts I've seen on TUG over the last 8 years that I've been an MVC owner that most people get what they want IF they plan in advance and book at reservation window opening. Most of the hard-to-get stuff is places like Maui Ocean Club, Hilton Head Grande Ocean, and other places that have higher owner usage.
> 
> However, I did look at the next 11-12 months of rental availability on Marriott.com for two of those high demand resorts - Maui Ocean Club and Hilton Head Grande Ocean - all that is available from Marriott right now is mostly all lower season rentals. I don't know how quickly prime time reservations get snapped up on marriott.com, but I would think cash bookings on a hotel rental site would more likely than not be people who book closer to the booking date than normal timeshare reservations.
> 
> On the other hand, if you go onto redweek.com you will see there are over 350 rentals listed for Maui Ocean Club, a very high percentage of which are prime weeks like Thanksgiving, Christmas/New Years, whale season, and summer/July 4. For Hilton Head Grande Ocean there are 180 rental listings, again heavily skewed towards holiday and summer vacation weeks. While this is just a point in time and is anecdotal instead of scientific, it would seem to indicate that a lot of owners are snapping up prime weeks to rent for a profit, maybe Marriott not so much.


I had a look at Maui Ocean Club and indeed there are tons of rentals in Redweek. I have to point out though (without trying to undermine your analysis because it is still very good) not all of them end up being rented, in many cases owners list at a high price with the idea to use if they don't get an offer "they can't refuse". My point is that not all of them are private mega rental businesses, some of the owners may have 1 or 2 weeks only. Also, in Redweek "rented" does not necessarily mean rented but delisted and that can be for a lot of reasons.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> I had a look at Maui Ocean Club and indeed there are tons of rentals in Redweek. I have to point out though (without trying to undermine your analysis because it is still very good) not all of them end up being rented, in many cases owners list at a high price with the idea to use if they don't get an offer "they can't refuse". My point is that not all of them are private mega rental businesses, some of the owners may have 1 or 2 weeks only. Also, in Redweek "rented" does not necessarily mean rented but delisted and that can be for a lot of reasons.



Of course. In no way am I implying that all of the listings are the “mega-renters.” I’m confident some are because we know they exist in the MVC world. There are also at least a few TUG members who own lots of weeks specifically for rental.


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## timsi (Sep 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I’ll add that weeks that Marriott gets rental access to without owning might actually be less profitable than those they own and only have to pay the maintenance fees for. Marriott gets access to owner weeks when they convert their week or Abound points to Bonvoy points, but MVW has to pay Marriott International for those points. Similarly, when an owner chooses to book a cruise or tour, MVW has to pay a price to the tour operator or cruise agency for that booking. I have no idea how those payments compare to maintenance fees, but I’m sure the payments are not insignificant.


You followed their events in the past. It would be interesting to see how the rental income is in Q3.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 12, 2022)

timsi said:


> You followed their events in the past. It would be interesting to see how the rental income is in Q3.



In their last call, they said they expected Q3 and Q4 rental income to still be negatively impacted by their decision to allocate rental inventory to owner use. That was how they said they were able to allow people to cancel reservations during Covid and have 120-day restricted use points beyond their normal expiration date.


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## CPNY (Sep 12, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> In their last call, they said they expected Q3 and Q4 rental income to still be negatively impacted by their decision to allocate rental inventory to owner use. That was how they said they were able to allow people to cancel reservations during Covid and have 120-day restricted use points beyond their normal expiration date.


So when they go back to their rental business, owners will suffer with less inventory. It’s nice to see there is WSJ inventory in the VSN. I expect that will end quickly. This is why I’m booking while I can!


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## JIMinNC (Sep 13, 2022)

CPNY said:


> So when they go back to their rental business, owners will suffer with less inventory. It’s nice to see there is WSJ inventory in the VSN. I expect that will end quickly. This is why I’m booking while I can!


Maybe not. Remember the reason they are using some of their rental inventory for owner usage the last couple years is to deal with the excess demand caused by 2020 and early 2021 demand being pushed later into 2021 and into 2022 from Covid cancellations/rebooking. Had they not committed some of their inventory to support that shift in demand, there would have been too many unused extended points chasing too few available reservations later in 2021 and 2022. Once those extended points are used or expire, the normal supply-demand balance should be restored in 2023 and beyond. 

So, while they have been supplying an artificially high amount of inventory for owner use, that extra supply was offset by artificially high owner demand due to point extensions. In the end, if they modeled the expected demand properly and fed that amount of supply to cover owner usage, the system should have still been balanced.


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## CPNY (Sep 13, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Maybe not. Remember the reason they are using some of their rental inventory for owner usage the last couple years is to deal with the excess demand caused by 2020 and early 2021 demand being pushed later into 2021 and into 2022 from Covid cancellations/rebooking. Had they not committed some of their inventory to support that shift in demand, there would have been too many unused extended points chasing too few available reservations later in 2021 and 2022. Once those extended points are used or expire, the normal supply-demand balance should be restored in 2023 and beyond.
> 
> So, while they have been supplying an artificially high amount of inventory for owner use, that extra supply was offset by artificially high owner demand due to point extensions. In the end, if they modeled the expected demand properly and fed that amount of supply to cover owner usage, the system should have still been balanced.


Based on some of the Facebook rental groups, so many have a ton of expiring point. A lot of people still didn’t use their banked/restricted star options. I expect that there are many more owners who still never got to use their ownerships. As long as I get what I want at 8 months like I always have I won’t be so upset.


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## timsi (Sep 13, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> In their last call, they said they expected Q3 and Q4 rental income to still be negatively impacted by their decision to allocate rental inventory to owner use. That was how they said they were able to allow people to cancel reservations during Covid and have 120-day restricted use points beyond their normal expiration date.


I know I am supposed to take a moment and shed a tear for Marriott but I will not, unless you have more details. This does not mean they gave inventory for free to the individual owners. Seeing how stingy they are in other areas (after the takeover they left Vistana without a functioning customer service for months to save few million bucks) I will say it is quite unlikely we are talking about a “gift”. It may just mean they banked some points, like everyone else, knowing they could not use everything this year.

In this case, if they can make 600 or who knows 800 million dollars in rental revenue in a "bad" year, how can some say Marriott is not in the rental business, at least in part?


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## JIMinNC (Sep 13, 2022)

timsi said:


> I know I am supposed to take a moment and shed a tear for Marriott but I will not, unless you have more details. This does not mean they gave inventory for free to the individual owners. Seeing how stingy they are in other areas (after the takeover they left Vistana without a functioning customer service for months to save few million bucks) I will say it is quite unlikely we are talking about a “gift”. It may just mean they banked some points, like everyone else, knowing they could not use everything this year.
> 
> In this case, if they can make 600 or who knows 800 million dollars in rental revenue in a "bad" year, how can some say Marriott is not in the rental business, at least in part?



I’m not sure who thinks Marriott is NOT in the rental business. I know I’ve never made that point. If someone else said that, they are terribly mistaken. While rental is certainly not their largest revenue source, it is indeed a very important source of revenue and gross margin. They clearly make that point in every earnings call I’ve listened too. Selling VOIs is their primary goal and their main revenue driver, but rental is still important to their bottom line. 

Speaking as a shareholder, I am very happy to see them generate significant profit from renting their owned and unsold inventory, turning what would otherwise be a non-productive asset into a source of positive cash flow and earnings. Speaking as an MVC owner, if they can do that and I can still book my vacations successfully (as I have always been able to do up to now), that seems like a win-win.


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## timsi (Sep 14, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> I’m not sure who thinks Marriott is NOT in the rental business. I know I’ve never made that point. If someone else said that, they are terribly mistaken. While rental is certainly not their largest revenue source, it is indeed a very important source of revenue and gross margin. They clearly make that point in every earnings call I’ve listened too. Selling VOIs is their primary goal and their main revenue driver, but rental is still important to their bottom line.
> 
> Speaking as a shareholder, I am very happy to see them generate significant profit from renting their owned and unsold inventory, turning what would otherwise be a non-productive asset into a source of positive cash flow and earnings. Speaking as an MVC owner, if they can do that and I can still book my vacations successfully (as I have always been able to do up to now), that seems like a win-win.


Marriott is judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to the inventory. Marriott is also the legislator. Marriott has all the data, and the process is behind closed door, a black box as you said. Is Marriott at least a neutral party? They must manage their own rental inventory and for business reasons they may favor one program (Abound) vs another (VSN). If an owner books the home week, Marriott makes nothing, while depositing and booking through Abound will result in a profit (skim plus the potential to rent the units not booked by the owners)

The sales process is horrendous and a frequent complaint.  At the minimum, they do not mention the huge savings on the resale markets and that 5 days after you sign the contract, you lose 80-100% of the value if you want to sell. Of course, the sales meetings are also peppered with innuendo and lies, at least as far as I can tell from the social media reports. I doubt that the senior management is not aware, not that that would be an excuse. It just seems to be part of who they are.

I get it, Marriott will never make public specific rules regarding the inventory. This will eventually turn against them because they cannot claim the resort owners won’t lose any units during the home resort reservation period, and at the same time they want full control, secrecy  and can’t explain exactly how it works and how they determine where the weeks go. 

They have designed the rules and processes with the clear intention to maximize their control and flexibility and minimize the accountability. It is a long way from our Vistana's exclusive priority during the Home Resort Reservation period to “sole discretion” mentioned 64 times in the Abound exchange procedures. They claim  the owners lose nothing during the priority period due to Abound and at the same time they tell us Abound would manage the inventory based on “anticipated demand” and in their sole discretion and they declare they are “authorized to demand balance, reserve, deposit, or rent”, presumably because they know from experience, they can screw up badly  the inventory.

The way they appear to interpret the existing rules is ludicrous IMO. When it comes to Lagunamar, the Bylaws are clear, and I assume they will have to fold sooner or later. I do not know specifics about all the other resorts but they seem to use vague paragraphs in the VSN rules to turn the idea of home resort reservation period  on its head. They want to place at the same table at the same time the resort owners and the exchangers. They claim Abound is just like Interval. They may  call Abound an internal exchange when convenient, or an external exchange depending on the rule they want to interpret in their favor at the time. They want us to believe that the annual or semi-annual Westin Princeville Interval deposits are the same as weekly or daily deposits into Abound. Apparently  low demand “from time to time” deposits in Interval are the same as ongoing, algorithm driven deposits into Abound.

IMO their public statements do not match the reality so how is their credibility? Anyone can mention few major changes for the Vistana owners but Marriott claims that Abound is just an option and that the owners won’t lose anything. The new exchange was designed to position the Abound exchangers at the same level as the resort owners and to be superior to VSN. For a lot of Vistana owners a lot will change, and not for the better. I am not even sure we will have Abound, Marriott, Vistana and Interval booking systems all functioning at the same time. Fingers crossed.

All these problems do not paint a very flattering picture and do not go away because several Tuggers say they may have gotten certain reservations in MVC. Other owners may have different needs, flexibility and they may not be able to book early.  Those who defend Marriott also do not know what they do not know, the inventory is a black box as you said.  There is no shortage of Marriott owners on social media posting they cannot get what they want.


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## timsi (Sep 20, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Speaking as an MVC owner, if they can do that and I can still book my vacations successfully (as I have always been able to do up to now), that seems like a win-win.



If the trust administrators accepted sub-par inventory to be conveyed to the trust what would be your view as a trust point owner?


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## JIMinNC (Sep 20, 2022)

timsi said:


> If the trust administrators accepted sub-par inventory to be conveyed to the trust what would be your view as a trust point owner?



Ultimately, it is irrelevant to me whether the inventory I book is from the Trust or from the Exchange. I judge based on my experience booking, not hypotheticals about the source. So, as long as I am able to book what I am looking for, I'm happy. If that changes, so will my perception/feelings. Until something changes in my experiences, I'm not going to worry about what *might* change.


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## timsi (Sep 21, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Ultimately, it is irrelevant to me whether the inventory I book is from the Trust or from the Exchange. I judge based on my experience booking, not hypotheticals about the source. So, as long as I am able to book what I am looking for, I'm happy. If that changes, so will my perception/feelings. Until something changes in my experiences, I'm not going to worry about what *might* change.


How does subpar inventory affect the maintenance costs of the trust?


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## JIMinNC (Sep 21, 2022)

timsi said:


> How does subpar inventory affect the maintenance costs of the trust?



Of course, as I’m sure you know, off season and lower demand inventory does result in a higher assessment fee per point for the Trust compared to prime enrolled weeks. That’s been true since the inception in 2010, and is a known feature of Trust points, so I’m not sure what your point is.

In my personal case, I bought most of my Trust points in order to enroll my two lower maintenance fee/point Hawaii weeks, so my overall blended MF cost per point is much less than the pure Trust points. Since I had unenrolled post-2010 weeks I wanted to enroll, it was the price I had to pay, but I’m OK with my blended costs.


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## DavidnRobin (Sep 21, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> That’s been true since the inception in 2010, and is a known feature of Trust points, so I’m not sure what your point is.



No one does - maybe a few more thousand word posts may make it clearer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## alexadeparis (Sep 21, 2022)

timsi said:


> How does subpar inventory affect the maintenance costs of the trust?


 The trust inventory has always consisted of the "third go of the biscuit dough", so to speak and DOES have a much higher MF relative to prime weeks, but prime weeks have a higher purchase price. Once again, much ado about nothing.


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## timsi (Sep 21, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> Of course, as I’m sure you know, off season and lower demand inventory does result in a higher assessment fee per point for the Trust compared to prime enrolled weeks. That’s been true since the inception in 2010, and is a known feature of Trust points, so I’m not sure what your point is.
> 
> In my personal case, I bought most of my Trust points in order to enroll my two lower maintenance fee/point Hawaii weeks, so my overall blended MF cost per point is much less than the pure Trust points. Since I had unenrolled post-2010 weeks I wanted to enroll, it was the price I had to pay, but I’m OK with my blended costs.


I would be very curious how the negotiations are between the trust administrators and Marriott. I assume the trust administrators want to advance the interests of the owners and want the best possible inventory with the lowest cost per point. As you described in your previous comments, Marriott may have different priorities when it comes to conveying inventory to the trust. How do they resolve this? Is the result of these tough negotiations the "third go of the biscuit dough"?


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## alexadeparis (Sep 21, 2022)

timsi said:


> I would be very curious how the negotiations are between the trust administrators and Marriott. I assume the trust administrators want to advance the interests of the owners and want the best possible inventory with the lowest cost per point. As you described in your previous comments, Marriott may have different priorities when it comes to conveying inventory to the trust. How do they resolve this? Is the result of these tough negotiations the "third go of the biscuit dough"?


i think you are missing a key component here which is that Marriott people are in charge of the trust, and therefore dictate which inventory goes in it. When these trust products were created throughout the timeshare industry it was what was left of their respective inventory that they couldn't sell alone - blue weeks (low season) primarily. But having home booking priority at 10 resorts sure sounds better than one mud week in Podunk. That's not to say that it is all garbage weeks, but it's more garbage than prime in those trusts, that's for sure. Marriott is not unique in that respect.  Wyndham does the same, etc. They manage what goes in it, along with what gets rented out to non owners and where they can maximize profit, they do. Again not unique to Marriott.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 21, 2022)

timsi said:


> I would be very curious how the negotiations are between the trust administrators and Marriott. I assume the trust administrators want to advance the interests of the owners and want the best possible inventory with the lowest cost per point. As you described in your previous comments, Marriott may have different priorities when it comes to conveying inventory to the trust. How do they resolve this? Is the result of these tough negotiations the "third go of the biscuit dough"?



As @alexadeparis noted above, the "Trust Administrator" *IS* Marriott Vacations Worldwide, so the overall strategic goals of MVW is what drives the decision making process in both Trust administration and inventory acquisition. Marriott does, of course, have multiple things to consider in determining what inventory to reacquire. I suppose buying at an attractive price is priority #1, but they also do have a secondary incentive to try to get better inventory available for points bookings, since happy owners buy more points (and 60-70% of sales come from existing owners). As a result, I do suspect that they might look at that secondary factor when trying to decide at what price they are willing to ROFR an attractive week.


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## dioxide45 (Sep 21, 2022)

These trusts have no independant administrators or BOD. There is a BOD, but not one that is voted on by the overall trust ownership. This is unlike deeded weeks based ownership where there is a homeowners association involved.


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## timsi (Sep 21, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> As @alexadeparis noted above, the "Trust Administrator" *IS* Marriott Vacations Worldwide


The optics would not be good, to say the least. 

If I understand correctly, the developer has a number of avenues to acquire cheap inventory (foreclosures, ROFR etc). The developer is under no obligation to be fair to the trust owners (this actually remains to be determined); Marriott can choose the deeds conveyed to the trust and, theoretically speaking, keep the best units conveying to the trust many weeks with little usage value and for which the trust owners have to pay the MF. The trust is completely controlled by Marriott, and, by design, there is no independent management that can defend the interest of the owners, above all other interests.   I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say this cannot be happening, I just do not want to believe it. 

Again, it would be interesting to see how the inventory owned directly by the developer is different from the inventory of the trust.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 21, 2022)

timsi said:


> The optics would not be good, to say the least.
> 
> If I understand correctly, the developer has a number of avenues to acquire cheap inventory (foreclosures, ROFR etc). The developer is under no obligation to be fair to the trust owners (this actually remains to be determined); Marriott can choose the deeds conveyed to the trust and, theoretically speaking, keep the best units conveying to the trust many weeks with little usage value and for which the trust owners have to pay the MF. The trust is completely controlled by Marriott, and, by design, there is no independent management that can defend the interest of the owners, above all other interests.   I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say this cannot be happening, I just do not want to believe it.
> 
> Again, it would be interesting to see how the inventory owned directly by the developer is different from the inventory of the trust.



In the end, as I’ve said before, all that should really matter to us is can we, as owners in a program, book the reservations we want at a cost we can accept. For the last eight years, my answer is certainly yes. No idea what the changes might bring, but until something changes, I’m not going to fret about it. YMMV.


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## timsi (Sep 21, 2022)

JIMinNC said:


> In the end, as I’ve said before, all that should really matter to us is can we, as owners in a program, book the reservations we want at a cost we can accept. For the last eight years, my answer is certainly yes. No idea what the changes might bring, but until something changes, I’m not going to fret about it. YMMV.


One would only hope that all the trust owners are as charitable as you are, especially those who regularly complain about the inventory.
Generally we should not confuse subjective matters with those related to money. If a cell phone company  overcharges the customers, it may have to return the fees regardless of the number of cusomers who find the  coverage adequate.


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## JIMinNC (Sep 22, 2022)

timsi said:


> One would only hope that all the trust owners are as charitable as you are, especially those who regularly complain about the inventory.
> Generally we should not confuse subjective matters with those related to money. If a cell phone company  overcharges the customers, it may have to return the fees regardless of the number of cusomers who find the  coverage adequate.



I'm not sure I understand the cell phone analogy or how that relates to timeshare inventory. In any event, Verizon, AT&T, T Mobile, etc. all set their own prices in a free market determined by competition. I'm not sure how they would "overcharge" since they each set whatever price they want to charge. We as customers can decide whether to buy or switch carriers, but the companies set their prices.


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## timsi (Sep 23, 2022)

alexadeparis said:


> Wyndham does the same, etc. They manage what goes in it, along with what gets rented out to non owners and where they can maximize profit, they do. Again not unique to Marriott.



Are you saying that there is a Wyndham trust and that the trust administrators do not have an obligation to act in the best interest of the trust owners? 
"Everybody does it" is not an excuse by the way.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 23, 2022)

alexadeparis said:


> i think you are missing a key component here which is that Marriott people are in charge of the trust, and therefore dictate which inventory goes in it. When these trust products were created throughout the timeshare industry it was what was left of their respective inventory that they couldn't sell alone - blue weeks (low season) primarily. But having home booking priority at 10 resorts sure sounds better than one mud week in Podunk. That's not to say that it is all garbage weeks, but it's more garbage than prime in those trusts, that's for sure. Marriott is not unique in that respect.  Wyndham does the same, etc. They manage what goes in it, along with what gets rented out to non owners and where they can maximize profit, they do. Again not unique to Marriott.


Wyndham is such a low-class company in comparison to Marriott.  Just sayin'.  But I have big problems with Wyndham right now, which is definitely affecting my opinion of their treatment of owners.  They can rent whatever they want, but we cannot rent what we own.  

We are the owners, yet the management pushes us around and actually shuts down our accounts for up to 90 days at a time for "commercial rentals."  I hope everyone who is considering Wyndham realizes that they are on the bottom rung of the timeshare ladder.  Marriott, Hyatt and Westin/ Sheraton are at the top.  But if Marriott decides we cannot rent what we own, think of the outrage here on TUG!  

Sure, Wyndham has some decent and even beautiful resorts, but a lot of them are sub-par.  Rick and I were offered a stay in a very old unit in Pagosa Springs just this past Monday night.  The excuse was that the HOA works with management to get these updated, and so only parts get updated.  I think a 1980's unit needs an update as fast as Wyndham can get it done.  It's Wyndham managed and probably has an all- Wyndham employee board.  I don't think the owners would have any say, should they decide to charge a special assessment.  

I have never had a bad unit at any Marriott-managed resort.


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## timsi (Sep 23, 2022)

rickandcindy23 said:


> Wyndham is such a low-class company in comparison to Marriott.  Just sayin'.  But I have big problems with Wyndham right now, which is definitely affecting my opinion of their treatment of owners.  They can rent whatever they want, but we cannot rent what we own.
> 
> We are the owners, yet the management pushes us around and actually shuts down our accounts for up to 90 days at a time for "commercial rentals."  I hope everyone who is considering Wyndham realizes that they are on the bottom rung of the timeshare ladder.  Marriott, Hyatt and Westin/ Sheraton are at the top.  But if Marriott decides we cannot rent what we own, think of the outrage here on TUG!
> 
> ...


The quality of the resorts is not relevant for this thread. Westin must maintain a certain standard because it would lose the brand otherwise. The same for Sheraton, Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz, or any other brand under MVW. It also cost more to buy and maintain a premium brand and we decide to own a certain brand based on all factors. 

Thankfully the developer cannot play with the quality of the resorts the same way it plays with the quality of the services rendered to the owners.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 23, 2022)

That was in response to the comment made (and quoted) about Wyndham, and it's partly because I am Wyndham-bitter. Wyndham rentals are the only rentals they will allow.  If you an owner, you can use Extra Holidays ONLY.  Just like Marriott, they will "rent" your reservation for you, but if the renter doesn't take the full rental you reserved, tough luck!  They will give you a percentage that may not even cover MF's.  

Marriott, so far, has not taken such a stance and allows us to rent what we own.  Wyndham does not.  They have reduced the value of their own system.


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## alexadeparis (Sep 23, 2022)

rickandcindy23 said:


> Wyndham is such a low-class company in comparison to Marriott.  Just sayin'.  But I have big problems with Wyndham right now, which is definitely affecting my opinion of their treatment of owners.  They can rent whatever they want, but we cannot rent what we own.
> 
> We are the owners, yet the management pushes us around and actually shuts down our accounts for up to 90 days at a time for "commercial rentals."  I hope everyone who is considering Wyndham realizes that they are on the bottom rung of the timeshare ladder.  Marriott, Hyatt and Westin/ Sheraton are at the top.  But if Marriott decides we cannot rent what we own, think of the outrage here on TUG!
> 
> ...


yes, that's why i got rid of my shells and Wyndhams i totally agree with you


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## timsi (Sep 23, 2022)

rickandcindy23 said:


> That was in response to the comment made (and quoted) about Wyndham, and it's partly because I am Wyndham-bitter. Wyndham rentals are the only rentals they will allow.  If you an owner, you can use Extra Holidays ONLY.  Just like Marriott, they will "rent" your reservation for you, but if the renter doesn't take the full rental you reserved, tough luck!  They will give you a percentage that may not even cover MF's.
> 
> Marriott, so far, has not taken such a stance and allows us to rent what we own.  Wyndham does not.  They have reduced the value of their own system.


Right but we were not talking about that or about the quality of the resorts. @alexadeparis ' comment was referring to the administrators of the Wyndham trust who may have a behavior similar to the administrators of the Marriott trust. The question is whether they have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the trust owners or not.


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## alexadeparis (Sep 23, 2022)

timsi said:


> Right but we were not talking about that or about the quality of the resorts. @alexadeparis ' comment was referring to the administrators of the Wyndham trust who may have a behavior similar to the administrators of the Marriott trust. The question is whether they have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the trust owners or not.


They have a responsibility to manage the trust in a way that's beneficial for owners, yes, but remember in any timeshare trust, that the corporate owned interest will always be the largest stakeholder, and will act accordingly.


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## timsi (Sep 23, 2022)

alexadeparis said:


> They have a responsibility to manage the trust in a way that's beneficial for owners, yes, but remember in any timeshare trust, that the corporate owned interest will always be the largest stakeholder, and will act accordingly.


Say the developer owns 10% of the trust, you still have 90% of the ownership base you have to take care of. 

Referring to the inventory,say Marriott owns a deed that has high maintenance fees and low rental value. If they keep it, they may not even break even. If they convey it to the trust, they only pay 10% of the maintenance fees for that week (or whatever % of the trust they own). To make it better, such unit may not even be booked by the trust owners and the developer can rent it a significant margin now, even if the rental price is small (Interval getaway, sales tour etc). The fact that the developer owns few percentages of the trust is not very important since the other owners still cover most of the costs.

I guess you see my point, even if they own some trust units, the bottom line of the developer weights a lot more than the direct interest the developer has in the trust.


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## rickandcindy23 (Sep 23, 2022)

alexadeparis said:


> yes, that's why i got rid of my shells and Wyndhams i totally agree with you


Yes!  I am so darned sick of constant fees with Shell.  

I love Marriott so much that I will be a sucker for the next salespitch, which means that Rick will be telling me we are not going to any Marriott/ Westin presentations.  

Be glad you all bought Marriott.  We own a lot of Marriott resales and love the trading power of the units we own.  It's been a blessing, but as I said, I could be a sucker for any offer to enroll our weeks into the DC (Abound) program.  

I am SO HAPPY that Wyndham didn't take over the management of Sheraton, and that was a distinct possibility back when Marriott took over.  We own a lot of Sheraton Broadway Plantation and a few SDO, and of course we now own Westin Desert Willow (not mandatory so no points), platinum EOY 2 bedroom.  We also own Westin Ka'anapali oceanfront, but we will leave that one as-is.


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## alexadeparis (Sep 23, 2022)

timsi said:


> Say the developer owns 10% of the trust, you still have 90% of the ownership base you have to take care of.
> 
> Referring to the inventory,say Marriott owns a deed that has high maintenance fees and low rental value. If they keep it, they may not even break even. If they convey it to the trust, they only pay 10% of the maintenance fees for that week (or whatever % of the trust they own). To make it better, such unit may not even be booked by the trust owners and the developer can rent it a significant margin now, even if the rental price is small (Interval getaway, sales tour etc). The fact that the developer owns few percentages of the trust is not very important since the other owners still cover most of the costs.
> 
> I guess you see my point, even if they own some trust units, the bottom line of the developer weights a lot more than the direct interest the developer has in the trust.


Yes, but again the largest single owner is always going to be the developer. Remember that we are playing their game by buying into these trusts- they make the rules of the game and usually they can change them at any time - at the end of the day you only have exactly what you bought, which is why some of us old timers say buy where and when you want to go, I will ALWAYS be on St John for Week 40 and 41 until I am too old or sick to travel. If i owned equivalent trust points, that is not a certainty.


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## alexadeparis (Sep 23, 2022)

Deleted, duplicate.


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## timsi (Sep 24, 2022)

alexadeparis said:


> Yes, but again the largest single owner is always going to be the developer. Remember that we are playing their game by buying into these trusts- they make the rules of the game and usually they can change them at any time - at the end of the day you only have exactly what you bought, which is why some of us old timers say buy where and when you want to go, I will ALWAYS be on St John for Week 40 and 41 until I am too old or sick to travel. If i owned equivalent trust points, that is not a certainty.


What percentage of the MVC trust is owned by the developer? Not that it really matters. The trust administrators should have a duty to the regular folks who own 90%-95% of the trust. 

I agree with you that the deeded weeks are the way to go, or at least that was the case until they decided to mess with the home resort reservation period.


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