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St. Regis resort planned for Aruba on old Westin land plot

vistana101

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Thought this was interesting... https://www.azure-aruba.com/hotel-complex-in-aruba/

It looks like Marriott is planning to build a St. Regis resort on the land that was once proposed for the Westin timeshare in Aruba. The article says "For more than 20 years, the dignitary said, this plot belonged to the Starwood Group, at a certain time, it was purchased and acquired by the Marriott hotel chain. The process of negotiations began years ago to change the destiny of this plot, supposed to be a timeshare four-star hotel at that time, with a number of 380 rooms."

Does anyone remember why the villa project fell through?
 

okwiater

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Does anyone remember why the villa project fell through?

It's because of the housing and credit meltdown. Too bad it never regained traction to be built as a timeshare.
 

Ken555

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I thought they were never very serious about building it in Aruba.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

SandyPGravel

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I think Vistana was serious about building in Aruba. I have a page in the original binder I received in 2007 with the Aruba resort. It has the floor plans etc. The binder has a page for each existing resort(at the time) and one for Aruba.
 

Sea Six

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Wow, a hotel in Aruba. Considering the fact that the Dolphin and Swan at Disney were upgraded from a CAT 4 to a CAT 6 after the Marriott merger, and the points were tripled, it now costs 50,000 points per night to stay there vs. 10,000 points before the merger. I can't imagine what Aruba would cost. Do they have a CAT 10?
 

GrayFal

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The Aruban government ended a very good tax program that greatly benefited the developer. So Starwood decided to kill the project.
 

dioxide45

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Wow, a hotel in Aruba. Considering the fact that the Dolphin and Swan at Disney were upgraded from a CAT 4 to a CAT 6 after the Marriott merger, and the points were tripled, it now costs 50,000 points per night to stay there vs. 10,000 points before the merger. I can't imagine what Aruba would cost. Do they have a CAT 10?
To be fair, the 10,000 was Starpoints which equated to 30,000 MR points. So only a 67% increase. They only more than tripled because of how Marriott valued their reward points to Starpoints.
 
Last edited:

Sea Six

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To be fair, the 40,000 was Starpoints which equated to 30,000 MR points. So only a 67% increase. They only more than tripled because of how Marriott valued their reward points to Starpoints.

Where do you get the 40,000 Starpoints? I used to stay one night for 10,000 StarPoints, which now cost me 50,000 Rewards Points. That's a 5 times increase vs the 3X points I got from converting from StarPoints to Rewards Points after the merger. Not only did the rewards get watered down, the resort got upgraded from a CAT 4 to a CAT 6. What used to cost me 40,000 points now costs me 200,000. Not 3X the former, but 5X.
 

dioxide45

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Where do you get the 40,000 Starpoints? I used to stay one night for 10,000 StarPoints, which now cost me 50,000 Rewards Points. That's a 5 times increase vs the 3X points I got from converting from StarPoints to Rewards Points after the merger. Not only did the rewards get watered down, the resort got upgraded from a CAT 4 to a CAT 6. What used to cost me 40,000 points now costs me 200,000. Not 3X the former, but 5X.
Sorry, I meant 10,000 StarPoints. So in the past those 10,000 StarPoints were worth 30,000 MR points per Marriott's own conversion. If you had 10,000 StarPoint sitting in your account on the cutover day in the summer of 2018, you ended up with 30,000 Bonvoy Points. Then you only needed 20,000 more to book the property. So only a 67% increase, not 500%.
 

okwiater

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I used to stay one night for 10,000 StarPoints, which now cost me 50,000 Rewards Points. That's a 5 times increase vs the 3X points I got from converting from StarPoints to Rewards Points after the merger. Not only did the rewards get watered down, the resort got upgraded from a CAT 4 to a CAT 6. What used to cost me 40,000 points now costs me 200,000. Not 3X the former, but 5X.

Have you considered a career in timeshare sales? Your fuzzy math skills are exemplary... ;)
 
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