Interesting Sales presentation - Vacation club is worthless, it’s all about Bonvoy points.

[rthib]

We have both developer but also resale weeks and also resale points (just a small amount that got us to executive.)

Main sales guy was nice enough but pitch was all about Bonvoy points.
He brought up the booking Villas and how for just 20k points you could book a house in Hawaii, much better than using them at hotels. Talking about the bold per night cost vs the total cost.
The pitch - Bonvoy points are better than Abound points since they never expire. So his suggestion was to buy more points and then every year convert them to Bonvoy points.
So when you retire you have millions of Bonvoy points.
And MVCI was going to announce changes that would allow you convert more of your abound points to Bonvoy points.
Then suggest we buy 1500 points.
Just weird that the whole time the pitch was MVCI was worthless except to get Bonvoy points. And the only reason they were building new resort was to get points so people could convert them.
Didn’t really say no, just never really said yes. Then the manager came in (i.e. The Closer)
He was really pushy. Did the, can’t believe you don’t want to buy now on this once in a life time price/bonus.
Then said - are you really throwing away your chance and forever be stuck without this great option since Marriott will never offer you another chance.
I just let him talk and it seemed as if he was having my side of the conversation based on what he expected me to say,
Said that if I was thinking I could just buy resale, Marriott was really pushing to get more points and that ROFR was going to be around $10 then you would have to pay the fee, so his would be cheaper.
At least he didn’t try the your resale points are useless. He did mention how expensive our resale week was since we have to pay all those fees to lock off and trade,
I guess I had just tuned out his obnoxious push but my wife said he really turned her off. I never argued with him just politely said not now. He seemed very thrown off by me not arguing with him.
Original guy came back, he was nice and took us to get the receipt for the 400 points.

Pretty painless but just weird that the pitch is Time Shares are a waste of money and Bonvoy are the thing.
Of course the first rule of frequent traveler programs is never expect them to hold value. Even if the conversion worked financially, buying points now to use 10 years from now is a bad plan. I didn’t challenge, just let them talk.

During the talk about how useless Abound points are, he did pitch the events (dinners, concerts etc…) you could buy with points. We didn’t really show any interest so he quickly moved on to mentioning Adventure travel with Abound points and how great the company was. Then when back to how Bonvoy are the real value,

I did ask about the new resorts and he mentioned that permitting issues were delaying Charleston/Savanah, not sure if that was true or not but there was no pitch around it, I had just asked about any new resorts during the opening get to know you portion where I get info I want to know.
Other thing he mentioned was changes coming to improve reservation website so easier to see availability.

Took the full 90, but partly my fault as we did talk a lot about places to visit and hockey at the start.

 

[n42]

Hoarding Bonvoy points is foolish, given that they get devalued every couple of years.

You're better off investing that money in the S&P for retirement. Vacation money is fun money, not an investment.

Bluegreen paid me $300 last year to attend a sales presentation. They said that they are trying to compete for our discretionary vacation budget. At no point did they suggest that they are selling an investment vehicle for retirement. It was still overpriced compared to the resale market though, so I passed.

 

[DanCali]

Millions of Bonvoy points in retirement is a great idea (historical depreciation aside) - but I prefer collecting them for free 40K-50K at a time in these presentations!

 

[claraj]

@rthib Sorry if I missed it, but at which resort did the presentation take place?

 

[dioxide45]

The problem with buying Abound Club Points for conversion to Bonvoy is that you can never 10)% of Club Points to Bonvoy. So, you will always be stuck with some amount of useless Club Points.

 

[SmithOp]

Hilton has tried the same pitch, converting HGVC points to HHonors because they never expire, they even called it a 401V Vault for retirement vacation fund.

My Sales Presentation (aka Owner Update)

I haven’t done a HGVC presentation since 2010. Honestly, I absolutely hate going to presentations because of the lies but my DH talked me into it after they offered both the $100 Visa gift card and $100 HGVC Elevated Reward (which we used for dinner at the onsite restaurant District Tap). So...

tugbbs.com

 

[jwalk03]

It would be a heck of a lot cheaper to just buy Bonvoy points directly during one of the numerous sales they have every year. (Though this is also almost always unwise since the cost is still higher than the typical redemption value unless you find a really good gem.)

 

[MikeM132]

Dumbest thing I've ever heard. Bonvoy points used to be pretty great...like 25 years ago. Now you convert a week at a timeshare for the same number of Bonvoy points as 25 years ago and instead of a week in Paris you get one night on Parris Island.

 

[rickandcindy23]

What were these salespeople hoping you would buy to get Bonvoy points?

This reminds me of the presentation at Westin Mission Hills about the Starwood credit card benefits for flights.

 

[jeffox]

Wasn't this an episode of the Simpsons? They had accumulated millions of points and when they go to use them they are worth 8 hours in a room.

Later when they found the salesman that sold them the worthless points, he now switched to the get out of timeshare scam and offers to get them their money back by paying him thousands of dollars. Or did I just have a fever dream?

 

[Hindsite]

As ever there may be a minute grain in this it seems to be reported as a new sales message and hasn't been one for at least 20 years to my knowledge. Several weeks have silently had their Bonvoy points allocation increased, so no reason to believe the same won't happen with Club points at some point in time. The increase doe not change the trading from being dreadful so I doubt the prevailing advice not to do it would change. Just the same as the imminent ability to book all Bonvoy hotels with Club points is unlikely to be good value for money in general.

 

[davidvel]

These guys are getting so desperate. Maybe MVC should increase the cost per point so they can make up for lost sales.

 

[TolmiePeak]

These guys are getting so desperate. Maybe MVC should increase the cost per point so they can make up for lost sales.

I'm just shocked that in 2025 with everyone lying all of the time that people actually believe their nonsense.

 

[Superchief]

What goes around, comes around. One of the main reasons I originally bought my Royal Palms week in Orlando millions of years ago was that I could convert it to 110K Marriott Rewards points every year that I didn't use my week. At that time, 110k points got me 7 nights at any Marriott resort worldwide, 2 roundtrip tickets on Delta or TWA, a free 7 day Hertz rental, and a BOGO certificate for a 7 night cruise. That didn't change for several years. I would never exchange MVC points for Bonvoy unless there were no other options.

 

[DanCali]

It's hard to have a positive outlook on where things are headed. The peak in the stock price was coming out of COVID in early 2021 and it's 60% below that now...

In my view the reckless increase in MFs in 2023-2024 of 25%-30% over a 2-year period will be very hard to recover from. You can see it in the decline in weeks and points resale prices, in weeks rental prices, and in points rental prices. Points on VPE are renting not only at substantially less than point MFs, but also at less than they were 3 years ago. Sure, if someone is clever enough, they can find a way to recoup points MFs via a rental, but in economic terms, when something rents are below the cost of maintaining it, there little value in that asset...

 

[n42]

99% of timeshares are liabilities, not assets. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, as long as it fits within your vacation budget.

 

[rthib]

It's hard to have a positive outlook on where things are headed. The peak in the stock price was coming out of COVID in early 2021 and it's 60% below that now...

Thanks for the reminder. One of the things the pushy closer said was that Marriott shareholders wanted a return and building timeshares wasn’t a way to get value but getting people to buy points to convert was going to make the stock rise.
I seriously couldn’t believe that he thought that was a good sales tactic.

Being in sales had a fun time afterwards replaying the presentation with my wife and telling her what I would have done. A few times as he was pushing hard and seemed to be lost, I would say something as a softball to see where he would go. Like I mentioned my status but worried that of something happened to me what would my wife do since she would only be platinum with Executive status. I expected him to go into a pitch for points to get me to the next level but nope. Same thing when I mentioned was there anyway to make my resale weeks useful again (letting him believe I had bought the resale weeks have no value) He just said that they would deduct what I had paid for the weeks if I showed a bill of sale and give it as a credit if I bought the point value (so basically giving them my week and buying the week equivalent of points.) Even after I had said we use the week all the time but I might want flexibility of it being enrolled to save on fees. It was strange, like he only knew how to go on script. Might expect that from the first guy, but expect the closer to be able to pivot and adapt more.

I will give details on where but we did the tour on first day here so will wait until I am home to give details.

 

[davidvel]

Thanks for the reminder. One of the things the pushy closer said was that Marriott shareholders wanted a return and building timeshares wasn’t a way to get value but getting people to buy points to convert was going to make the stock rise.
I seriously couldn’t believe that he thought that was a good sales tactic.

Being in sales had a fun time afterwards replaying the presentation with my wife and telling her what I would have done. A few times as he was pushing hard and seemed to be lost, I would say something as a softball to see where he would go. Like I mentioned my status but worried that of something happened to me what would my wife do since she would only be platinum with Executive status. I expected him to go into a pitch for points to get me to the next level but nope. Same thing when I mentioned was there anyway to make my resale weeks useful again (letting him believe I had bought the resale weeks have no value) He just said that they would deduct what I had paid for the weeks if I showed a bill of sale and give it as a credit if I bought the point value (so basically giving them my week and buying the week equivalent of points.) Even after I had said we use the week all the time but I might want flexibility of it being enrolled to save on fees. It was strange, like he only knew how to go on script. Might expect that from the first guy, but expect the closer to be able to pivot and adapt more.

I will give details on where but we did the tour on first day here so will wait until I am home to give details.

I think the old timers are often more on script than newbies. They have done he same thing so many times every day that they just become robotic.

 

[1Kflyerguy]

Hilton has tried the same pitch, converting HGVC points to HHonors because they never expire, they even called it a 401V Vault for retirement vacation fund.

My Sales Presentation (aka Owner Update)

I haven’t done a HGVC presentation since 2010. Honestly, I absolutely hate going to presentations because of the lies but my DH talked me into it after they offered both the $100 Visa gift card and $100 HGVC Elevated Reward (which we used for dinner at the onsite restaurant District Tap). So...

tugbbs.com

I got this pitch several times with HGV, one time they even had a few slides showing how great this would work.. I don't recall getting a similar pitch from Marriott.

 

[davidvel]

Dumbest thing I've ever heard. Bonvoy points used to be pretty great...like 25 years ago. Now you convert a week at a timeshare for the same number of Bonvoy points as 25 years ago and instead of a week in Paris you get one night on Parris Island.

Yes, such a great reason to buy DC points at $17 each. You can book a run of the mill Fairfield Inn for only $750/night!! Sign me up.

Literally bats in the belfry with these sales people.

 

[DanCali]

99% of timeshares are liabilities, not assets. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, as long as it fits within your vacation budget.

What timeshares feel like to an owner due to how the developers strip their value if you ever resell is a different issue.

From a legal perspective, a timeshare is absolutely an "asset" (probably with some distinction between deeded real estate and RTU). This does have implications in bankruptcy, divorce or inheritance matters. And you obviously pay real estate taxes because it's an asset...

 

[n42]

What timeshares feel like to an owner due to how the developers strip their value if you ever resell is a different issue.

From a legal perspective, a timeshare is absolutely an "asset" (probably with some distinction between deeded real estate and RTU). This does have implications in bankruptcy, divorce or inheritance matters. And you obviously pay real estate taxes because it's an asset...

You mean I can get out of this crappy timeshare just by getting a divorce? Or faking my death?

 

[DanCali]

You mean I can get out of this crappy timeshare just by getting a divorce? Or faking my death?

No need to go that far. Depending on what you own, just call Marriott and say you want to give it back to them for free. They might take it (and make you pay a few hundred dollars in fees) and sell it for $30,000+ to somebody else.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[WBP]

We have both developer but also resale weeks and also resale points (just a small amount that got us to executive.)

Main sales guy was nice enough but pitch was all about Bonvoy points.
He brought up the booking Villas and how for just 20k points you could book a house in Hawaii, much better than using them at hotels. Talking about the bold per night cost vs the total cost.
The pitch - Bonvoy points are better than Abound points since they never expire. So his suggestion was to buy more points and then every year convert them to Bonvoy points.
So when you retire you have millions of Bonvoy points.
And MVCI was going to announce changes that would allow you convert more of your abound points to Bonvoy points.
Then suggest we buy 1500 points.
Just weird that the whole time the pitch was MVCI was worthless except to get Bonvoy points. And the only reason they were building new resort was to get points so people could convert them.
Didn’t really say no, just never really said yes. Then the manager came in (i.e. The Closer)
He was really pushy. Did the, can’t believe you don’t want to buy now on this once in a life time price/bonus.
Then said - are you really throwing away your chance and forever be stuck without this great option since Marriott will never offer you another chance.
I just let him talk and it seemed as if he was having my side of the conversation based on what he expected me to say,
Said that if I was thinking I could just buy resale, Marriott was really pushing to get more points and that ROFR was going to be around $10 then you would have to pay the fee, so his would be cheaper.
At least he didn’t try the your resale points are useless. He did mention how expensive our resale week was since we have to pay all those fees to lock off and trade,
I guess I had just tuned out his obnoxious push but my wife said he really turned her off. I never argued with him just politely said not now. He seemed very thrown off by me not arguing with him.
Original guy came back, he was nice and took us to get the receipt for the 400 points.

Pretty painless but just weird that the pitch is Time Shares are a waste of money and Bonvoy are the thing.
Of course the first rule of frequent traveler programs is never expect them to hold value. Even if the conversion worked financially, buying points now to use 10 years from now is a bad plan. I didn’t challenge, just let them talk.

During the talk about how useless Abound points are, he did pitch the events (dinners, concerts etc…) you could buy with points. We didn’t really show any interest so he quickly moved on to mentioning Adventure travel with Abound points and how great the company was. Then when back to how Bonvoy are the real value,

I did ask about the new resorts and he mentioned that permitting issues were delaying Charleston/Savanah, not sure if that was true or not but there was no pitch around it, I had just asked about any new resorts during the opening get to know you portion where I get info I want to know.
Other thing he mentioned was changes coming to improve reservation website so easier to see availability.

Took the full 90, but partly my fault as we did talk a lot about places to visit and hockey at the start.

No mention by the sales guy of the new MVC/Management Company “asks” of owners and/or their guests, like, strip the beds? I can’t believe the sales guy left that out, as a new feature/benefit of MVC ownership.

MVC can take their food stamps, and shove them; our vacation time is much more valuable that MVC’s food stamps, in exchange for our time.

 

[n42]

No need to go that far. Depending on what you own, just call Marriott and say you want to give it back to them for free. They might take it (and make you pay a few hundred dollars in fees) and sell it for $30,000+ to somebody else.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

But then how will I retire with millions...of Bonvoy points