With Hyatt, most of us own deeded, fixed weeks at our home resorts. That won't change, even if Marriott is a points system--unless one willingly donates their deeded week into a points system, which would be ill-advised. I know the company that owns the Marriott timeshare system is separate and distinct from Marriott International (the hotel company), but one of the strategies that has worked so well for Marriott is its branding strategy, which now owns brands as different as Four Points and Fairfield Inns to Le Meridien, Marriott, and Renaissance to St. Regis, JW Marriott, and Ritz-Carlton. This has allowed Marriott to segment the market into micro-markets and cover the broad spectrum of pricing, amenities, and demographic groups of customers.
Will Marriott now look at applying some of these principles in the timeshare industry? I think it's possible, though it won't happen overnight. First, Marriott is faced with an interesting challenge--to transform the hotel images of Marriott, Westin, Sheraton, and Hyatt into timeshare sub-brands that mean something to their owners and which are not carbon copies of each other. They also have to manage to do this without disenfranchising or offending existing owners. But if there is one thing that defines Marriott, it is that they are a great marketing company. So I think it's possible that we see this kind of branding strategy unfold over time.
I would not be surprised if the company is right now conducting focus groups with owners, trying to learn what attributes owners enjoy and appreciate about the various systems that now come under the Marriott umbrella. From there, Marriott may try to accentuate those attributes to begin building brand personalities that they can use to segment the timeshare market and use those elements to more effectively market themselves, both to existing owners as well as prospective ones.