Here's an even smaller minority opinion: All owners should be treated equally, and all owners should be free to assign their usage, along with all the attendant rights of ownership, to anyone they want in exchange for whatever they want. So if I use my home week, or let my kids use it, or let my neighbor use it, or rent it to my uncle, or trade it through II, TUG or Redweek, all rights should transfer, including view category and priority. The ownership rights shouldn't go away (and be stolen by Marriott) simply because you don't personally stay there. This gives the owner full value in gifting, renting or trading their week.
Either use a random system, lottery, or rotation to give the best views within category.
I know this will never happen, and probably no one agrees, but its still my opinion with respect to property rights in general.
Ownership rights to view types aren't taken away in any of the examples you gave except II exchanges, and other than that I actually don't disagree with you as far as random/lottery/rotational placements. In fact I prefer the rotational placement system that my resorts use, and wouldn't at all mind if a lottery system was used during the highest/holiday-demand periods for BOTH availability and unit placement. The reason I'm okay with manipulating II exchanges differently (other than it's an II rule, I mean) is because that gives the rooms controllers some wiggle room to reward status or other factors within the exchange pool.
In the simplest example say that you have 2 same-size units available to II exchangers, 1 oceanfront and 1 gardenview, because 2 owners deposited their Weeks to II, and, those 2 units are matched to 2 other Marriott owners who deposited same-size units from other resorts. The unit view type makes absolutely no difference in the exchange value of what's deposited to II or what gets matched in II, but they do consider the dates of deposit and requests, i.e. the further out you deposit and the further out you request a match, the better your chance at success. Now say I deposit a Barony oceanfront and request a Maui Ocean Club as far out as possible which gets matched to a MOC gardenview immediately because that owner also deposited as far out as possible, and I get the II confirmation with the code that indicates an MOC gardenview. Then a month later the same thing happens in reverse with a new request matching newly-deposited inventory, resulting in a Barony gardenview owner getting matched to an MOC unit coded as oceanfront.
Two deposits and two matches of two different view type but same-size units, with all other ownership factors being equal. But because of the timing of deposits and requests the person, me!, who deposited the oceanfront view type at an earlier date gets the gardenview confirmation while the later-deposited oceanfront confirmation goes to the person who later deposited a gardenview unit. The fact that at check-in Marriott can then manipulate those two exchanges to give the person, ME!, who deposited earliest the "better" unit - which also coincidentally matches the view type that I deposited - is a good thing!
You're right in that inventory allocation is never this simple. My example leaves no room, for one thing, for the deposits which are made but never matched to other owners and thereby can be manipulated by Marriott with any other inventory available for cash guests. Thus, Marriott can (and does, we assume!) cherry-pick the "better" oceanfront units for cash stays leaving the "lesser" gardenview units for II exchangers. Add in the metric that the individual resorts are all over the map with how they choose to reward Destination Club status, Marriott Rewards status, etc. and there's even more room for manipulation. But on the whole, despite knowing that Marriott's end game is to enrich themselves before the owners, if in the simplest examples I may benefit from their manipulation, that's okay with me. It's better than always being the underdog, anyway.
For the record, despite owning multiple high-value Weeks that convert to Chairman's Club DC status and being Lifetime Plat MR Rewards status (which I say not to brag but to prove a point,) I don't have nearly as much success with unit placement as many TUGgers report. Never have and don't expect I ever will. I fill out the request forms, I'm polite when I talk to reps, at check-in I offer to wait hours for a better unit to become available ... none of it works. I've decided to believe that the people who think it's a breeze to ask for and get their desired unit placement are slipping twenties into the pockets of front desk staff, and I just can't bring myself to do that. Yet.
