At Crystal Shores - Charging option change

[JPrisco]

We are enjoying Crystal Shores! The villas are fantastic.

We just heard that we can not use our room charge at the Marriott down the street after Nov 5th. They said because of the corporate change of the Vacation Club, Marriott will no longer allow these room charges. Wonder if it is the same everywhere.....

 

[timeos2]

It likely is as the "Marriott" timeshare owners are now just a different company paying big to have the Marriott name but no real connection to what used to be the mothership. It is looking like a clean split and Marriott wants to distance itself form it as much as possible.

 

[BocaBoy]

It likely is as the "Marriott" timeshare owners are now just a different company paying big to have the Marriott name but no real connection to what used to be the mothership. It is looking like a clean split and Marriott wants to distance itself form it as much as possible.

No real connection? What about the Marriott Rewards program?

 

[dioxide45]

No real connection? What about the Marriott Rewards program?

I think the relationship will be more like that between Chase and Marriott vs how it is now between MAR and MVCI. Chase buys points from Marriott Rewards in order to give them as a benefit of being a cardholder. My guess is that VAC will have to do the same. Why would VAC want to give points out for incidentals charged to their rooms when those revenues are actually going to the hotel next door?

 

[kjd]

No real connection to Marriott? What's that 50m that VAC is going to pay Marriott every year for? You know who's really paying that? It's us.

 

[BocaBoy]

I think the relationship will be more like that between Chase and Marriott vs how it is now between MAR and MVCI. Chase buys points from Marriott Rewards in order to give them as a benefit of being a cardholder. My guess is that VAC will have to do the same. Why would VAC want to give points out for incidentals charged to their rooms when those revenues are actually going to the hotel next door?

I think it is more like the relationship between Marriott and most of its hotels, which are for the most part owned by third parties. Marriott's name is on both and Marriott manages both.

 

[dioxide45]

I think it is more like the relationship between Marriott and most of its hotels, which are for the most part owned by third parties. Marriott's name is on both and Marriott manages both.

The difference is that Marriott manages many of those hotels. Marriott doesn`t manage the VAC properties, VAC does.

 

[BocaBoy]

The difference is that Marriott manages many of those hotels. Marriott doesn`t manage the VAC properties, VAC does.

Good point.

 

[dioxide45]

Good point.

Now we should point out that there are some hotels that Marriott doesn't manage. They operate under a franchisee arrangement just like VAC will in the near future. I really don't know the accounting dynamics behind it all but those points have a real cost behind them. When one books a stay on points, the hotel does still get paid a set price. So money does flow in and out of the MR program in order to cover the value of those points.

There are properties around the world that are located side by side that do allow reciprocal charging privileges. I think though, it many cases those properties are often owned by the same companies. I guess it will be interesting to know how other TS properties handle this. I know we were able to charge purchases at the Aruba TS properties to our room at the hotel and I assume that people at the TS properties could do the same with purchases at the hotel.

 

[BocaBoy]

There are properties around the world that are located side by side that do allow reciprocal charging privileges. I think though, it many cases those properties are often owned by the same companies. I guess it will be interesting to know how other TS properties handle this. I know we were able to charge purchases at the Aruba TS properties to our room at the hotel and I assume that people at the TS properties could do the same with purchases at the hotel.

At Fairway Villas, you can charge meals at the adjoining hotel to your timeshare room (unless this has changed since we were there in May), even though the hotel does not carry the Marriott name and is neither owned nor managed by Marriott. It used to be a Marriott, however, so maybe this history is the reason.

 

[dioxide45]

At Fairway Villas, you can charge meals at the adjoining hotel to your timeshare room (unless this has changed since we were there in May), even though the hotel does not carry the Marriott name and is neither owned nor managed by Marriott. It used to be a Marriott, however, so maybe this history is the reason.

Does one earn MRP for those purchases? I wouldn't expect one to since it isn't a Marriott owned service. In any case, the explanation given at Marco Island seems to be more of an excuse than any real reason.

It could be that they don't want to cause confusion if they won't be giving MRP for purchases at the hotel charged to the Crystal Shores folio. I could see a lot of arguments and customer service issues with people wondering why they didn't get MRPs on purchases made at the hotel.

 

[BocaBoy]

Does one earn MRP for those purchases? I wouldn't expect one to since it isn't a Marriott owned service. In any case, the explanation given at Marco Island seems to be more of an excuse than any real reason.

It could be that they don't want to cause confusion if they won't be giving MRP for purchases at the hotel charged to the Crystal Shores folio. I could see a lot of arguments and customer service issues with people wondering why they didn't get MRPs on purchases made at the hotel.

We did earn MRP for the two hotel meals we charged to our villa. I was pleasantly surprised and did not ask any questions.

 

[SueDonJ]

We did earn MRP for the two hotel meals we charged to our villa. I was pleasantly surprised and did not ask any questions.

We had a similar experience on our trip to Marco Island when we rented chairs from the outside vendor on the beach. They allowed us to charge the rental to our unit and it was included in the folio on check-out. We paid that bill with our Marriott VISA and got the bonus MRP for all charges including that outside vendor. If I'm remembering correctly, at the time (11/09) only the restaurants at the Marriott hotel allowed charging to Crystal Shores; the spa services had to be paid onsite when used.

Somewhat related, the outside vendor chair rentals on Hilton Head cannot be charged to either SurfWatch's or Barony's units. I wish they could.

 

[ilene13]

We have always been able to charge our meals at the Marriott Hotel to our Aruba Ocean Club Villa. We have also received MRP for those charges. We will be there in 44 days and only time will tell if anything has changed.

 

[dioxide45]

We had a similar experience on our trip to Marco Island when we rented chairs from the outside vendor on the beach. They allowed us to charge the rental to our unit and it was included in the folio on check-out. We paid that bill with our Marriott VISA and got the bonus MRP for all charges including that outside vendor. If I'm remembering correctly, at the time (11/09) only the restaurants at the Marriott hotel allowed charging to Crystal Shores; the spa services had to be paid onsite when used.

Somewhat related, the outside vendor chair rentals on Hilton Head cannot be charged to either SurfWatch's or Barony's units. I wish they could.

Did you get the 10 (15 if you are platinum MR member) points per dollar for those chair rentals, or only the 5 points on the Chase credit card?

 

[SueDonJ]

Did you get the 10 (15 if you are platinum MR member) points per dollar for those chair rentals, or only the 5 points on the Chase credit card?

The folio shows 10/$. It cost $90.10 for the "RENTAL WK UMB" and our total bill for the week was $296.20. "Eligible Revenue" is listed as $296.20, "Points Earned" shows 2962.

(I didn't realize before this that you can only access the last 13 months transactions on marriottrewards.com. So despite the appearance of being a packrat, it does help to save folios in a Marriott junk file!)

[eta] That's why we'll generally book and pay for outside-vendor activities through the resort if they're on the Activities Calendars, because of the bonus MRP. We check the calendar and compare the prices between booking direct and through the resort, if it's less than $50 we'll go through the resort. Barony and SW always have a few different bike/dolphin/Savannah tours on their calendars. At Waiohai the MRP bonuses added up very quickly because some of their activities, like helicopter tours, are $100-$200 pp.

 

[BocaBoy]

Did you get the 10 (15 if you are platinum MR member) points per dollar for those chair rentals, or only the 5 points on the Chase credit card?

And I got the 12.5 points per dollar (Gold level at the time) in May for the hotel meals charged to our room at Fairway villas.