So you own more than Marriott?

[CourtShorr]

I was talking with someone today (a Marriott owner of both weeks and points) and they mentioned that they also own Hilton points/weeks. They said it's very common to own through multiple vacation companies and I was curious if that's true.

Do you own through more than one company? If so, why did you decide on more than one and how long have you owned both? What other companies do you own? Is it as common as this other owner states?

Just curious

 

[dioxide45]

I was talking with someone today (a Marriott owner of both weeks and points) and they mentioned that they also own Hilton points/weeks. They said it's very common to own through multiple vacation companies and I was curious if that's true.

Do you own through more than one company? If so, why did you decide on more than one and how long have you owned both? What other companies do you own? Is it as common as this other owner states?

Just curious

We also own Vistana and have a pending transfer of another system in the works. We bought Vistana prior to any merger or integration with Marriott. Mainly for the ability to go to the Westin Lagunamar. Now that MVC acquired Vistana and have combined the systems it gave us a big bump in status.

I don't know how common it is, perhaps more common on TUG. Most timeshare owners probably only own a week or a single contract in timeshare. The top 10% probably own multiple weeks/contracts and in multiple systems.

 

[geist1223]

We own Worldmark, DRI, and Solaris.

 

[Steve Fatula]

It's enough for us to keep up with Marriott intricacies and stuff so for us, we'd never do that. Don't want to spend too much time managing different timeshare companies, have other things to do. I know a number of people in this forum own multiple systems, it's just not for us. I'm doubting it's common or even close to a majority of people. Most we talk to at the pools or other events on stays just own 1 system.

 

[mjm1]

We started with Marriott and then added Vistana, primarily for use at Westin Kierland Villas, but also for the internal trading options using their StarOptions. The we added Hilton for their internal trading options using points. Finally, we added Hyatt to use in Sedona as well as the legacy point system for internal trades to other Hyatt locations. Each of our additions were on the resale market. Part of our thinking was also to try these other systems and see if they work well for us. If not, we can resell them for about the same as we paid. So far we have enjoyed each one.

We still use II on occasion, but really like the ability to trade internally to other resorts.

Best regards.

Mike

 

[jwalk03]

I only own Marriott. But my in-laws own Wyndham that I manage for them. They use their points for an extended family vacation every year or every other year that I plan. They just pay the maintenance fees.

So I’m pretty familiar with both of those systems. They actually complement each other pretty well- with each having some unique locations that the other lacks.

 

[VacationForever]

Vistana, Marriott and Worldmark. Thinking about Wyndham... nah...

 

[jme]

Great questions........

We have 10 Marriott weeks (most bought between 1998-2005)......8 weeks at Hilton Head, one at Myrtle Beach & one lockoff at Williamsburg, VA),
..........................................................................................................but we also own 6 non-Marriotts for various reasons, bought between 2005-2015......
..........................................................................................................a few early Marriotts bought directly, but many resales. Non-Marriotts all resales.
+ Two non-Marriotts (Waterside by Spinnaker 3BR/3bath) are at Hilton Head also, strictly for extra HH time.....(usually give one to my office manager & family).
+ Two non-Marriotts (Sheraton Broadway Resort-Vistana) at Myrtle Beach for extra Myrtle Beach time (and I give those to a couple of my other staff members).
+ Two non-Marriotts (Church Street Inn-Festiva) in the historic district of Charleston, SC......just because we love Charleston. (We split those 2 weeks into 4 annual weekend stays.)

WHY?
Flexibility, access to locations we love, access to seasons we enjoy, access to activities we like........not only for my wife and me, but for the children (and now grandchildren).

We also have weeks for trading......we use Interval Int'l to obtain 2-3 amazing trades annually.....we've visited many, many different resorts around the USA and in Europe.
(Newport Coast Villas, Boston's Custom House, Summit Watch & Mountainside (all skiing), Ocean Pointe, Lakeshore Reserve, Cypress Harbour, Grande Vista, Royal Palms,
Maui Ocean Club, Kaua'i Beach Club, Beachplace Towers, Manor Club (original), back into Grande Ocean, back into Barony Beach Club, Surfwatch,
Harbour Club, Harbour Point, Sunset Pointe, Monarch, back into Oceanwatch, Marbella Beach Resort, Cameron House (Loch Lomond, Scotland),
Wychnor Park CC (central England).

We have visited several of the above resorts multiple times thru trades (in addition to our ownership weeks at a few)........upgrade of seasons, for example.
.........into Boston Custom House 10 times, into Orlando resorts at least 25 times,
Summit Watch x3, Mountainside x3, into Hilton Head resorts 35-40 times, into Oceanwatch 5 times, back into Manor Club at Ford's Colony (original) about 10 times.

We have been extremely flexible with our ownership weeks as to where we can go, and therefore have pretty much been anywhere, anytime.
And being enrolled on many of our Marriott weeks, we've used Destination Points annually too. Very lucky.
Never bought Trust points directly from Marriott, only enrolled several weeks in 2010......enough to have about 20,000 annually if we wanted to (but we don't, not yet anyway).
I'd say we were simply in the right place at the right time.....pure dumb luck. All our ownership resorts are winners, and that makes the difference.
Couldn't be happier.

 

[bnoble]

They said it's very common to own through multiple vacation companies and I was curious if that's true.

TUGgers are probably not representative of the average timeshare owner.

 

[dsmrp]

We started out with Vistana, one unit given to us by in-laws about 15 years ago. Got grandfathered into Marriott Abound, with a higher status than we could ever get if we originally had MVC.
Then bought a Hilton affiliate resale for a Hawaii home resort about 10 yrs ago. Several years later got our final and last timeshare at Hyatt Pinon Pt for access to HRC legacy system and trading pts in II. And I like Sedona as a home resort. This last was cause Marriott had acquired HRC in a combo deal and in the approx 1 yr interim before they took over operations, very little was being ROFR'ed. So a fair number of people, including myself were getting good deals.

I don't think we're an exception in which our timeshare eggs are not in one basket. But we likely have more weeks (4 total) than the average timeshare owner.

 

[AlmostRetired]

I always like to go back to the basics, what challenges are you trying to solve? If adding another brand can address those challenges the answer is clear. For those who own multiple brands, what took them down that path. Personally, the Marriott brand works well for how we enjoy beach vacationing. We have weeks that trade well, a Hilton Head week that rents well and the last two years I have been renting points since one of my weeks is enrolled. We have owned Marriott since 1996 and even then we bought resale (from Marriott). I have re swizzled our ownership twice since 1996. We often travel outside of timeshares to areas timeshares will not work (Israel and Greece being our next two vacations). Maybe the truth is I do not have enough patience (or smarts) to learn another brand and I can’t even get my kids interested in learning Marriott. Good luck with whatever you decide.

 

[bazzap]

We now have 12 MVC weeks (14 usable with lock offs)
This takes quite enough time and effort to ensure optimum usage, without us wanting to even consider investing in other timeshare companies too!

 

[jmhpsu93]

We purchased an RTU week in 2006 in a little Mexico system called Golden Shores (Crown Paradise in Cancun is their flagship) after going there for our honeymoon and a few times in the early 2000s with our young daughter. We've been there probably 25 times now, know all the staff, etc. We converted it to a points-based system in 2010 or so and it's now just paying the all-inclusive daily fee which runs from $70-150/pp/day depending on season and we have about 100 days of 2-bedroom stays left in our points bank (no maintenance fees).

We had thought about MVC for a few years and bought retail into the system in 2018, then bought a bunch of resale lockoff traders in Orlando over the past five years after discovering you wonderful people and this site. We dabbled in Vistana resale but I got rid of them as I didn't want three Interval accounts and dealing with two systems (this was before integration).

Our long-term plan is 4-5 weeks of true "vacationing" plus another 6-8 weeks of "wintering" which we've done the past three years. My company is pushing us back into offices next year so I'll have to be a little more conservative in the wintering approach though we do have an Orlando-area office I could commute to so we're going to see how that goes. I plan 2-3 years out (which drives my wife and daughter crazy - "do you guys want to go to Spain in September 2025?? Just working on the travel planning/wish board." LOL).

So all-in-all two VERY different systems with different purposes. We bought in Cancun to use it there every year (which is how they sold it to us), and Marriott to go all over though in the five years we've owned we've stuck to the East Coast and Caribbean properties.

 

[Dean]

Chairman's Club with MVC, Platinum with Bluegreen and own a fair # of DVC points. I also own points in MX which equates to a 2BR per year which I normally use for exchanging (II) and a small amount of Wyndham points. I do think it's common when volume is needed but not if one only needs 1 or 2 weeks/units per year.

 

[ljmiii]

I was talking with someone today...and they mentioned that they also own Hilton points/weeks. Do you own through more than one company? If so, why did you decide on more than one...

I own HGVC and DVC as well. "Why" is easy to answer...the top three reasons to buy any piece of real estate - location, location, and location.

Then again, I am in some sense 'conservative' when it comes to buying timeshares and believe in the adage, "Buy where you want to stay." HGVC makes that easy as the competition for Home Week reservations is no where near as fierce as booking weeks with MVC. The same goes for DVC.

 

[dougp26364]

We started out with DRI, bought a Marriott week, bought a Hilton week, bought another Marriott week, purchased a Spinnaker week, purchased an independent week in Branson and bought a week with Breckenridge Grand Vacations. So yea, we’ve owned more than Marriott.

Over the years we’ve rid ourselves of the DRI weeks and the independent week in Branson went bankrupt, which got rid of that week for us ( it was strictly and exchanger). We bought the Spinnaker week when it was an independent, but it also went bankrupt but was immediately taken over by Spinnaker. We like it’s location but dislike Spinnaker. Our only way out would be to default on the MF payments as Spinnaker makes themselves so undesirable as a resale it’s been impossible to even give it away. Since they’re now exchanging through Interval, we’ll see if we can get adequate value that way. We bought Hilton because they were points based reservations when Marriott wasn’t. We loved their reservations system, but they only had three main locations at the time, the rest were affiliates and difficult to book. They promised more locations, but as they’ve expanded they changed the rules. bHC and their MAX product has restrictive booking windows. We bought in Breckenridge for a couple of reasons, we didn’t like Marriotts offering in town as a regular place to stay in the summer (no ac, smallish rooms), We wanted a resort on the mountain and not in town and, most of all, a resort that allowed us to bring our dogs. Grand Colorado is a considerably larger resort with more amenities than offered by the Marriott in Breck.

So those are our reasons for owning more than Marriott. Marriott does offer more than all the others and that’s why we own as much as we do with Marriott. Marriott is far and away are largest timeshare investment, both financially and in weeks/points. It would likely be the last we get rid of when the t8me comes. Marriott offered greater variety in locations and resort accommodations than all the others.

 

[DRH90277]

Chairman's Club with MVC. We own 16 timeshare weeks - 6 Newport Coast, 6 OceanWatch, 2 Custom House, Grand Chateau (lock-off), and Timber Lodge. Everything is platinum excepting 1 gold week. We also own 7,500 VC points from 2 purchases. Thirteen of the 16 weeks are enrolled - we have access to about 54,000 VC points each year through point ownership and deposit of enrolled weeks. We enrolled 7 weeks last year with a points purchase to modernize our portfolio for transition to the kid's. The remaining 3 weeks will remain unenrolled with no intention to ever enroll as they are at OceanWatch (a high demand easy to rent property).

Our use might be different than most as we generally use OceanWatch or Newport Coast for family reunions. We have found the points system to be poor when trying to book 6 concurrent same view reservations. In fact, the 6 OceanWatch were bought over the last 4 years to alleviate our problem in booking points reservations for reunions - I gave up on the points program for OceanWatch reservations.

We have more than enough timeshare access to serve our needs plus those of our five children's families.

A caution, there is a lot of planning that goes into owning all these and ensuring we don't waste anything. One also needs to plan carefully for the annual maintenance fees - rent some out and save money for some.

 

[TXTortoise]

I haven’t seen GregT on here in a bit, but I remember his portfolio being pretty extensive and diverse.

 

[vol_90]

I believe frank808 has a pretty extensive portfolio as well.

For us it's Marriott only. 43 Phuket Beach Club Platinum weeks (5 are EOY), 2 Aruba Surf Club (weeks 7 & 52), Grand Chateau 3BD Platinum, Desert Spring Villas II White, Canyon Villas EOYE Gold, 6,500 Abound Points and 3,000 Asia Pacific points. 34 of 48 weeks enrolled.

Our original purchase from Marriott was a Phuket Beach Club week in 2007, then Asia Pacific Points, Abound Points and the Surf Club weeks at various times to enroll resale weeks.

 

[Fasttr]

For us it's Marriott only. 43 Phuket Beach Club Platinum weeks (5 are EOY), 2 Aruba Surf Club (weeks 7 & 52), Grand Chateau 3BD Platinum, Desert Spring Villas II White, Canyon Villas EOYE Gold, 6,500 Abound Points and 3,000 Asia Pacific points. 34 of 48 weeks enrolled.

Our original purchase from Marriott was a Phuket Beach Club week in 2007, then Asia Pacific Points, Abound Points and the Surf Club weeks at various times to enroll resale weeks.

Sounds like you have got your “retirement home” covered!!!

 

[ahdah]

I have Marriott's but along the way we bought 3 weeks at Brewster Green on Cape Cod just to use, after my husband died I sold 2 of the weeks and may have to get rid of my last week because I have had to trade because I have not been able to go to MA. We also bought a week at Lake Lure that we also just used but got rid of it twhen my husband could no longer climb all of the stairs. Now I have 2 Marriott SurfWatch platinum weeks that I use with family unless I can't go, and then I rent.

 

[The Colorado Kid]

Chairman's Club with MVC. We own 16 timeshare weeks - 6 Newport Coast, 6 OceanWatch, 2 Custom House, Grand Chateau (lock-off), and Timber Lodge. Everything is platinum excepting 1 gold week. We also own 7,500 DVC points from 2 purchases. Thirteen of the 16 weeks are enrolled - we have access to about 54,000 DVC points each year through point ownership and deposit of enrolled weeks. We enrolled 7 weeks last year with a points purchase to modernize our portfolio for transition to the kid's. The remaining 3 weeks will remain unenrolled with no intention to ever enroll as they are at OceanWatch (a high demand easy to rent property).

Our use might be different than most as we generally use OceanWatch or Newport Coast for family reunions. We have found the points system to be poor when trying to book 6 concurrent same view reservations. In fact, the 6 OceanWatch were bought over the last 4 years to alleviate our problem in booking points reservations for reunions - I gave up on the points program for OceanWatch reservations.

We have more than enough timeshare access to serve our needs plus those of our five children's families.

A caution, there is a lot of planning that goes into owning all these and ensuring we don't waste anything. One also needs to plan carefully for the annual maintenance fees.

@DRH90277 Love your family reunion strategy! We are doing the same and have already had such memorable family gatherings using our extensive timeshare portfolio. Love that our young grandkids are already remembering and looking forward to the next gatherings.

 

[rickandcindy23]

43 Phuket Beach Club Platinum weeks is a lot.

We used to just own a couple of Marriott weeks, but in the last few years we bought more weeks and kind of regret adding our Shadow Ridge weeks. The fees are high on them but may stabilize after they do some updates. Trade power has been incredible. We have not enrolled our Marriott weeks, all purchased resale for pennies on the dollar, compared to buying direct.

We kind of just lucked into our Westin Ka'anapali Chairman's Club. We bought resale, right before the deadline. I didn't do that on purpose at all. I just wanted to own Westin to stay there ourselves. I doubt we will use Abound at all with those points, but I would consider enrolling our others, but that is a wilderness I have yet to wander into.

Bought a Westin Desert Willow EOY platinum week. Such great trading power, but it's an expensive week to own.

I have been told I need to buy something worth enrolling first. Maybe I should be looking at a Maui or Oahu Marriott to enroll along with our Shadow Ridge. I just don't seem to be able to understand the system or how to make it work for us. Rick leaves everything to me.

The Willow Ridge weeks we own are valuable in II. We won't enroll those. I don't see how that would benefit us.

We also own Wyndham and have the highest status there, also quite a nice accident, but Wyndham has changed over the last two years. They have been cracking down on renters. We were one of the culprits.

We own some weeks in Colorado, two that we use for PIC in Wyndham. We own two in N. Carolina, one late spring week at Blue Ridge Village; one at Foxrun, a week 52 that I have tried many times to give away without any luck. Blue Ridge is expensive to own with the recent special assessment and increasing fees that are actually about the same as Marriott. I have had my tantrum on TUG about this, but the trading power is great and it pulls 2 bedrooms at Disney, so unless that changes, I am happy with it for now.

Our favorite weeks that we own to use every year are our Hono Koa weeks, oceanfront, 40 feet to the water, West Maui. A very average resort, but we love it there and stay 3 weeks during whale season. Not a great pool, but we don't use the pool. It's the absolute best place to stay for us.

We own a bunch of Sheraton Broadway Resort weeks. Bought additional weeks recently, but I am basically done buying those. We rent those each year. If Marriott places restrictions on renting our floating weeks, I will be in deep doo-doo.

 

[dioxide45]

Chairman's Club with MVC. We own 16 timeshare weeks - 6 Newport Coast, 6 OceanWatch, 2 Custom House, Grand Chateau (lock-off), and Timber Lodge. Everything is platinum excepting 1 gold week. We also own 7,500 DVC points from 2 purchases. Thirteen of the 16 weeks are enrolled - we have access to about 54,000 DVC points each year through point ownership and deposit of enrolled weeks. We enrolled 7 weeks last year with a points purchase to modernize our portfolio for transition to the kid's. The remaining 3 weeks will remain unenrolled with no intention to ever enroll as they are at OceanWatch (a high demand easy to rent property).

Our use might be different than most as we generally use OceanWatch or Newport Coast for family reunions. We have found the points system to be poor when trying to book 6 concurrent same view reservations. In fact, the 6 OceanWatch were bought over the last 4 years to alleviate our problem in booking points reservations for reunions - I gave up on the points program for OceanWatch reservations.

We have more than enough timeshare access to serve our needs plus those of our five children's families.

A caution, there is a lot of planning that goes into owning all these and ensuring we don't waste anything. One also needs to plan carefully for the annual maintenance fees - rent some and save some.

You might want to be careful with the term "DVC". I was wondering how you bought 7,500 Disney Vacation Club points in just two transactions.

 

[DRH90277]

@DRH90277 Love your family reunion strategy! We are doing the same and have already had such memorable family gatherings using our extensive timeshare portfolio. Love that our young grandkids are already remembering and looking forward to the next gatherings.

Just returning from OceanWatch today. A great time with 5 families,13 of the 20 grandchildren). Numbers lessen as some grandkids get married, etc. Had a photographer come on Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm and this was great. It's interesting to see how the families & kids interact, group and go from one thing to another all day - exhausting for Kay and me. It's just a fun filled week in a beautiful place with very comfortable villas.

Timeshare is expensive but resale weeks are a bargain. The economics - If I was starting over, I could see us spending only the $70,000 for 6 OceanWatch (OceanSide resale units) with $9,800 in annual maintenance fees. After the initial $70,000 which I can recover upon sale, that's roughly $1,633 in MF per week or $233 per night for a great 2 bedroom villa on the beach. Incidentally, this is a lot of money for a Northern Utah farm boy, but a bargain in today's world. And, this can be done 1 unit at a time.....

What do you tell a young 5-year-old when she says she wants to go to our beach home? She has grown up with these annual events. I guess she should just continue her dreams with her cousins.