Any 2007 Booking Problems with Marriott yet?

[pwrshift]

I haven't heard any complaints about Marriott's 2007 booking system - does that mean things have improved or is it just too early to know. Today was the first day to book for President's Week 2007 if you have multiple weeks.

Using the 13-month priority system, I was able to book 4 weeks in a row at BeachPlace today starting Feb 17/07 by splitting the 2 suites into 4 parts. No problems. Took me 5 calls to get connected with a rep and my requests went through fine. Love them lockoffs!

Brian

 

[squiggle]

when you split and reserve, are you only allowed to reserve concurrent or consecutive weeks?
thanks

 

[pwrshift]

yes - if you are booking 13 months ahead.

Brian

 

[MOXJO7282]

Brian,
You are my idol. I have to say you might get more value out of Marriott TSs than any one person out there. I match up with you, I think when it comes to renting your LO units to recoup value, and maximizing the value from reward points, but you kick it up a notch, and back up those weeks to use consecutively, something I've yet to accomplish. That is outstanding!!

Its great when you are able to split one week, but when you are able to turn 2 weeks into 4, you are really doing something. Even when you are dealing with Marriott's high MFs, when you split like that you bring your price per night down into the Days Inn territory.

What does the cost actually come to per night?, when you consider MF, split fees and so forth. I would think it is less than $100/night, for a luxury oceanfront resort. Can't touch that.

Now that I have 5 weeks, 3 being LOs, my grandiose dream is to someday split the LOs, back everything up consecutively and go on vacation for 8 weeks at a clip. Hey a man can dream can't he? I'll have to consult you, when I am able to go after my life's dream vacation.

I'd love to see how many others match Brian's ROI, but unless you do all three or more, Brian takes the cake. Great job!!

Regards.
Joe

 

[buzzy]

I haven't heard any complaints about Marriott's 2007 booking system - does that mean things have improved or is it just too early to know. Today was the first day to book for President's Week 2007 if you have multiple weeks.

Using the 13-month priority system, I was able to book 4 weeks in a row at BeachPlace today starting Feb 17/07 by splitting the 2 suites into 4 parts. No problems. Took me 5 calls to get connected with a rep and my requests went through fine. Love them lockoffs!

Brian

Brian, How are you reserving for 2007, wouldn't you need to do that at 9:00 today?

 

[MOXJO7282]

This is something I recently discovered, and I also booked President's week already.

I have a plat Aruba Surf, that I wanted to reserve Feb 10, 2007 for. The 13 month window for Feb 10th 2007, was Jan 9, 2006. So since the 13 month window was available for that, I was allowed to book my Maui units the following consecutive week, President's week, even though those actually are outside the 13 month window.

Regards.
Joe

 

[pwrshift]

Joe...you make me blush. If you keep buying Marriotts I won't be able to rent any to you anymore!

Buzzy...booking 13 months ahead can be a little complicated. I always call owner services a few weeks early to make sure I've calculated the right date. Here's my take on it, and I'm sure DaveM has an easier explanation.

If you want to check in on Feb. 17, 2007 (Saturday) the whole weekend starting Friday Feb 16/07 is the start day (this was changed last year I believe - before that you called on the 17th to book a 17th check in, which made more sense to me).

So go 13 months ahead from Feb. 16/07 and the start day for calling for reservations is 9 am on January 16, 2006 - which was Monday, the day I called.

Clear as mud?

Brian

 

[buzzy]

Joe...you make me blush. If you keep buying Marriotts I won't be able to rent any to you anymore!

Buzzy...booking 13 months ahead can be a little complicated. I always call owner services a few weeks early to make sure I've calculated the right date. Here's my take on it, and I'm sure DaveM has an easier explanation.

If you want to check in on Feb. 17, 2007 (Saturday) the whole weekend starting Friday Feb 16/07 is the start day (this was changed last year I believe - before that you called on the 17th to book a 17th check in, which made more sense to me).

So go 13 months ahead from Feb. 16/07 and the start day for calling for reservations is 9 am on January 16, 2006 - which was Monday, the day I called.

Clear as mud?

Brian

I think I get it. For me at 12 months is would be 9 am on February 16. 2006. I am just reserving in order to rent my lockout and deposit my 1 bedroom. I was told since I want to travel with my deposit in May of 2007 that I can call II to deposit but will be waitlisted.

Brian, do you know if Presidents week is taken what spring break week would be the best at BeachPlace?

 

[pwrshift]

I don't really know, buzzy. My Pres week 2006 Studio week just rented for $925 on Ebay and my Mar 11, 2006 studio week rented for $975. There was more bidding on the Pres. week but the price didn't get as high. I thought the March week would be a better week, but there was less activity on it - actually I listed it twice on Ebay as it didn't move at all over Christmas week. March is a busy month at MBP but I think spring break weeks change depending where you go to school, or whether you're in college, etc.

Brian

 

[buzzy]

I don't really know, buzzy. My Pres week 2006 Studio week just rented for $925 on Ebay and my Mar 11, 2006 studio week rented for $975. There was more bidding on the Pres. week but the price didn't get as high. I thought the March week would be a better week, but there was less activity on it - actually I listed it twice on Ebay as it didn't move at all over Christmas week. March is a busy month at MBP but I think spring break weeks change depending where you go to school, or whether you're in college, etc.

Brian

A really helpful rep at II said March has a better trade value than Presidents week as far as the deposit. I didn't think that was true for the rental but your experience kindof reinterated what the II rep said. He also said Easter is good as well. Thanks Brian!

 

[Quilter]

My President's Week didn't get rental activity until after Christmas either. Once the holiday's are over, Northerner's start thinking of getting out of the cold

FWIW, University of Michigan usually has it's winter break the week after Pres. Week along with Western Michigan University. Grand Valley State is March 5-12. These are people who will be looking to get on a plane and go somewhere warm. Many of the public schools in Michigan have a break either President's Week or the week after.

 

[Clemson Fan]

I haven't heard any complaints about Marriott's 2007 booking system - does that mean things have improved or is it just too early to know.

It’s still a very broken system. What I just learned is that they have rules in place to try and be fair, etc., but they don’t have the technology in place to implement those rules. I just had a very bad experience which leaves me very frustrated and causes me to frankly question the overall “integrity” of the system.



I own two platinum weeks in Park City, Utah – one at Mountainside and one at Summit Watch. I got the original Mountainside week b/c we really like Sundance there which we really want to go there every year. With the reservation craziness, I decided to purchase a second week at Summit Watch last year to get the 13 month advantage as well as give me a second villa there for extended family and such so we can all hopefully do a big family type trip each year.



The main Sundance week for 2007 has check in days of Jan 19-21, 2007. So, I set my calendar to make sure I called into reservations exactly 13 months in advance on Dec 19th, 2005, which I think was a Monday. I called in right at 8:59 or so and was immediately put on hold for a couple of minutes. I spoke to a rep around 9:03 and told her exactly what I wanted to do. She found and booked me a Mountainside week right away, but when she went to Summit Watch there was no longer availability for any of the check in days. This was around 9:04 exactly 13 months in advance. She then had to book my Summit Watch week for Jan 13-20 to make it consecutive and fit within the 13 month rules.



To say the least, I was shocked that I couldn’t book this week even 13 months out calling on an odd day (Monday) at exactly 9AM. During the past month I called owner services and my VOA to frankly bitch about it. I was told by multiple reps that the week was probably gobbled up by the folks online. I called BS on that excuse as 13 month reservations aren’t available online. Some of the reps definitively said they were available online at 13 months, but I’ve spoken to a supervisor who has told me that they are not. Something just didn’t smell right to me. Something smelt rotten in Denmark so to say. I frankly wonder if there were many of those weeks available at all and whether they were gobbled up by folks on the “inside” before they even saw the light of day.



So, I bid my time and waited for today to try and book that Summit Watch week at the 12 month interval. In preparation for today, I spoke with my VOA earlier this week and asked her if I could cancel that Jan 13-20 reservation without affecting my Mountainside reservation so that SW week would be free to book online this morning. She said I could and she cancelled my SW reservation this past Tuesday.



Also, during this past month I would go online multiple times and would go the reservations section. Online it kept saying that my weeks were eligible for booking and I could never find my 13 month reservations that I had made. I called Marriott about this and they said the 13 month reservations don’t get put into the website until later, but they had my reservation on their computer and everything was fine.



Well, this morning comes around and I’m sitting at the computer with my phone in hand promptly at 8:55. I get on the website only to discover that it now has my SW week listed as occupied with the Jan 13-20 week reservation (the one I thought I had cancelled) right there, and my Mountainside week is listed as eligible to book with my Jan 20-27 reservation nowhere to be found. I about blew my top at this point as I thought my VOA had messed up and cancelled my Mountainside week and not my SW week. I was shocked at this as I couldn’t have been more explicit with her. Anyway, I called Marriott right at 8:59 and was promptly put on hold. I then focused to the computer while I was on hold and fortunately right at 9AM the Mountainside calendar showed up for that week and I quickly booked and reserved the Jan 20-27 week for Mountainside and was given a reservation number. At least not all was lost. However, I was completely frozen out from making a SW reservation online this AM as it still had my reservation listed as Jan 13-20 and it would not allow me to cancel it and said I would need to call owner services. I then got through to a rep at 9:03 and very quickly told her I wanted to book my SW week for Jan 20-27. Guess what – no availability for that date or any of the other check in dates that week.



I then proceeded to explain to that rep all of the above that I had gone through in the past month. She looked further into my account and she saw that my Jan 13-20 SW reservation was indeed cancelled by my VOA rep and that my original Mountainside reservation made on Dec 19th was still valid and in their system. I then told her that I just booked another Mountainside week this AM online thinking the original reservation was accidentally cancelled. I gave her the new Mountainside reservation number I received and she looked it up and low and behold that one was good too. So, I had two confirmed Mountainside reservations even though I only owned one Mountainside week. She immediately said she didn’t understand what was going on and immediately set me up with a supervisor.



I again explained my story to the supervisor and he started to look into it. He then proceeded to tell me that they have multiple systems in play and that the information is MANUALLY transferred from one system to another. He said that it sometimes takes a month or more for the 13 month reservations to be manually updated into the online website and that my 13 month SW Jan 13-20 reservation was manually put into the online system just two days ago and that they probably hadn’t crosschecked to learn that I actually cancelled it the same day. So, hence the website has me listed as already having a reservation and I’m locked out from making further reservations online with my SW week until they MANUALLY remove that reservation which I was told by the supervisor can take 2 weeks or more. I told the supervisor that I now wanted to book that SW week for sometime in Feb or March and that if I can’t use the online booking that I will be at a severe disadvantage given my prior experience. He agreed and told me they would do everything as quickly as they could and he was making the higher-ups aware of the problems.



The supervisor then looked at my Mountainside week and indeed I did have two valid reservations. He said this had happened b/c my 13 month reservation made in Dec still hadn’t been manually placed online, so the website allowed me to book a second week. He then proceeded to cancel one of my reservations. Of course, before he did this I was overly explicit that the reservation he didn’t cancel must remain valid and he gave me multiple assurances it would. I made sure to take his name just in case.



What a mess. I can’t believe that in this day and age Marriott has multiple reservation systems that don’t instantaneously communicate with each other and data needs to be transferred manually between the different systems. The system they have in place is wide open for mistakes as well as fraud. I wonder what happened to that second Mountainside week I had booked that was cancelled and whether it went to a “friend of a friend” so to speak.



Back to my original statement:



Marriott has reservation rules in place to try and maintain fairness, but they lack the technology to effectively implement those rules.

 

[floyddl]

What a mess. I had something similar happen once where I booked online and on the phone simultaneously before they had the automatic confirmations. I ended up with two separate reservations for my week.

I also had another booking fiasco when I called to book the week 53 that was offered first come first served in 2004. I own at Mountainside and they confirmed me into Summit Watch. By the time I got the confirmation email the weeks were all gone and after talking to a lot of different people they were able to several months later get the week for me from an interval exchange.

Question for the 13 month experts. What is the first day to call for check-in on March 31st 2007? There is no February 31st so I assume that the first date would be March 1st since that is 30 days prior to the desired check-in date or would it be Feb. 28th which is the last day of the previous month? Or is it some other date I can't figure out?

 

[jmatias]

floyddl,

I don't have an answer for you but I usually call MS and ask them when I need to call in to book for a certain day.

 

[floyddl]

floyddl,

I don't have an answer for you but I usually call MS and ask them when I need to call in to book for a certain day.

I will but I always like to hear more than one opinion. It has been stated here more than once that you do not always get the correct answer from Marriott as evidence in the posts above.

 

[Clemson Fan]

What a mess. I had something similar happen once where I booked online and on the phone simultaneously before they had the automatic confirmations. I ended up with two separate reservations for my week.

I'm an example that it still can happen even with "automatic confirmations."



This whole mess smells so rotten to me of insider trading or favors?



Where is MVCI central booking and the VOA's located? - Utah



Arguably, what is the most popular Park City Platinum week? - Sundance



Hmmm, well over 200 reps with access to the reservation system that's easily manipulated who live in close proximity to a place where all of the allotted weeks (supposedly 50%) for the 13 month reservations get eaten up in less than 2 minutes?



Makes me wonder.

 

[floyddl]

I don't know if this is rotten or not but I was told a couple of years ago by an owner advisor that was assigned to me that they can get into the system a few minutes ahead of the masses. This was when they booked each check in day individually and I had missed out on Friday and Saturday checkin so I called him and told him my situation and he offered to make the reervation for me the next day. Just in case he didn't, I was on the phone dialing in a few minutes prior to 9:00 and the confirmation popped into my email so I hung up. I am certain that this was happening as I experienced it. I suspect that it still does although I do not have the same advisor and have not spoken to my new one about it since I now own weeks that allow me to book 13 months ahead and have no problems.