I'm certainly no expert, but I didn't think the 3 day Starwood priority applied to on-going requests?
Fredm - you wrote the TUG article, right? What do you think?
Sorry, I did not respond sooner. jerseygirl has it right.
The first 3 days a Starwood is on deposit, no one but a Starwood owner has visibility to it. BUT, it would never become an available deposit visible to Starwood owners if a pending request was waiting for it. Make sense? Why would it be made visible to other Starwood owners? That would suggest it was available. It would not be available if a pending request was already in.
How's that for repeating myself 3 times?
This might go a little ways to counter a point of view that has been stated on this board from time to time. That being the reluctance to deposit (and thereby creating a pending request) your (or a) use-week before knowing what might be available for trade.
You will never know what is not available because it was claimed by a pending request. By definition, if you can see it, a Starwood owner did not have a pending request outstanding. Yet, the single greatest likelihood of getting the trade is placing a pending request for it.
Think about that for a moment, if not routinely accustomed to trading this way. Pick a week, any week, at any Starwood resort. If the resort has 200 units, one owner in 200 must decide to exchange somewhere else in the world for your pending request to be filled.(assuming another is not also pending along side of you). Not terribly hard to imagine. But, that's why you would place a request for at least 3 different dates.
I know. You would say that Starwood controls the inventory, and probably will not deposit the desired week. To which, I say, how do you know? If you have not had a request pending?
All of which gets around to the discussion of owning a trading week.
Imagine for a moment that Starwood were required to deposit your reserved week with I.I. as your trading chip. A 3 day exclusive for trades to other Starwood resorts looks pretty powerful. It is more powerful yet if you have a pending request sitting in front of everyone who need the security of knowing what is already available in those 3 days.
Little question that given a small amount of flexibility in travel dates, you can pack your bags.
Now, to those who mock Marriott's lack of an "internal" trading system, consider this: Take the above as if it were true. Expand the 3 days to 24 days, and expand the resorts available to 59, with a bunch in the pipeline. THAT is why Marriott is the largest quality tier timeshare developer, with the most happy owners.
I am not knocking Starwood here. I am just opening the subject to owning a trading week. When one considers how low prices are now, combined with Marriott backing off its ROFR for the time being, this may be a real opportunity to buy into Marriott very cheaply, and actually get to own it simply for the trading opportunities otherwise not available at any price.