Advice on Crystal Shores Encore package- What would you have done?

[TugSavesMoney]

Hi All,

Thank you for the years of good advice. We stayed at Crystal Shores in April of 2016. They sold us an Encore package (cost around 2k) to come back and stay 6 nights at the JW Marriott. We knew that our family was having a wedding in April of 2017 and made this perfectly clear with the sales people. They said April of 2018 was perfectly fine. Fast forward many calls later and Crystal Shores has not shored up their JW allocation for the Encore packages for 2018. With a type A husband, the stress of not being able to confirm the vacation and acquire airline tickets, this is ongoing torture for him. We finally reached the end of our patience and accepted a 6 night stay at Crystal Shores for the family during April spring break.

Does this seem like a fair exchange or did we get so frustrated that we settled?

Thank you to all the big brains!

Courtney

 

[JIMinNC]

I've never heard of Encore packages that allow bookings to be made at a Marriott hotel. Usually it's just the Marriott Vacation Club timeshare properties. Having said that, assuming that what you bought can actually be used at the JW Marriott, it's not that surprising that they haven't released the JW Marriott inventory for April yet. We booked a similar preview package through another system (Vistana) for the Westin Los Cabos. We bought the package this past May, but they were only accepting bookings through November at the time (hurricane season in Cabo). They said bookings for our desired travel time in February 2018 would open about six months out, and that's exactly what happened. Not sure if Marriott follows a similar schedule or not, but it would make sense that they might wait until closer to the desired travel dates to decide how much inventory to allocate to the discount packages.

As far as your question about whether you settled or not - I've never stayed at either property myself, but we would always choose the extra living space/kitchen of a Marriott Vacation Club over almost any Marriott hotel as long as the locations were generally comparable. That's the case whether we're traveling as a family or just my wife and I. We like the extra space of a den to relax in the evenings rather than having to sit on the bed in a hotel room, and having the kitchen for breakfast and sometimes lunch is a big plus. We will usually dine out for dinner. So while your preferences may be different, if I were in your shoes I would rather stay at Crystal Shores than a hotel room at the JW any day - so I don't see it as settling, I see it as an upgrade.

 

[Seaport104]

Hi All,

Thank you for the years of good advice. We stayed at Crystal Shores in April of 2016. They sold us an Encore package (cost around 2k) to come back and stay 6 nights at the JW Marriott. We knew that our family was having a wedding in April of 2017 and made this perfectly clear with the sales people. They said April of 2018 was perfectly fine. Fast forward many calls later and Crystal Shores has not shored up their JW allocation for the Encore packages for 2018. With a type A husband, the stress of not being able to confirm the vacation and acquire airline tickets, this is ongoing torture for him. We finally reached the end of our patience and accepted a 6 night stay at Crystal Shores for the family during April spring break.

Does this seem like a fair exchange or did we get so frustrated that we settled?

Thank you to all the big brains!

Courtney

Wow, I would say that's definitely more than a fair exchange. Crystal Shores are all at least 2BR and if that is during spring break for 6 nights is a bargain!

 

[BocaBoy]

I've never heard of Encore packages that allow bookings to be made at a Marriott hotel. Usually it's just the Marriott Vacation Club timeshare properties.

When we stayed at Grande Ocean in December of 2016 they offered us an Encore package that had several hotel choices as well as some timeshare choices. Basically it was for the timeshare if it had studios and for the nearby Marriott hotel if the timeshare there did not have studios, although there were a few exceptions like Hilton Head in the winter. We almost took the package to stay at the Waikoloa Ocean Club, which the sales closer said was where it would be, but when we read the fine print it said the offer was for a room at the Marriott hotel there. So we passed on the offer.