CLOSED: Thread Dedicated to the Upcoming/Anticipated Integration of Vistana & Marriott Ownerships (Marriott Link + Vistana Discussion)

[M&MsDad2008]

Wouldn’t Marriott just be able to exercise ROFR on this inventory to get it into the trust at half price or less? If they do not exercise ROFR on Maui OF inventory, then I will assume they own a bunch already and it was not sold out.

I hate to say this and once again it will be controversial…but Tuggers sound like they think they are smarter than a corporation employed by experts. I am not talking about the lowly employees at the sales offices but the highly paid marketing and finance experts. I used to work for the corporate office of a travel corporation and believe me, they knew what they were doing.

Even if they were able to procure ROFR Maui OF inventory, they would still be bound by the overall agreement at 12 months out. MVC would be like any other purchaser, and they could not have an extended reservation time period.

If MVC was able to do that, there would be less inventory for an owner at WKORV or WKORVN to secure a reservation for an OF at 12 months out for their selected week That most likely would be in violation when Starwood first sold the timeshares, starting in the early 2000s. This would expose MVC to liability to a class action for all owners of those properties.

If MVC follows the advice of their lawyers, they will not provide the 13 month window at WKORV or WKORVN.

 

[timsi]

Class action attorneys love to go after companies like Marriott. If the documents provide purchasers would only compete against other owners at 12 months out, then it would seem very unlikely that there would be a 13 month window for MVC DP holders at a place like WKORV.

"
Home Resort Float Period means the period during which all Network Members owning VOIs at a particular Home
Resort have the exclusive right to compete to reserve the use of Vacation Periods within their Season and Unit type
at their Home Resort, subject to the Resort Documents and the Network Rules.
Home Resort means one or more Network Resorts where Accommodations in a vacation ownership plan are located
and in which Network Members in that vacation ownership plan have their VOI and derive their use rights. During the
Home Resort Reservation Period, Network Members may request reservations of Accommodations comprising the
Home Resort.
Home Resort Reservation Period means the four (4)-month period beginning twelve (12) months and ending eight (8)
months prior to the Check-in Day of the Vacation Period. The Home Resort Reservation Period is comprised of the
Home Resort Fixed Priority Period (12-10 months) and the Home Resort Float Period."

 

[Venter]

I personally cannot see the problem. Is the destination club not like an exchange company? Elect points which means you deposit your week into the exchange club and they can do with it what they want. Release their inventory at 13 months and voila, members of the club can book before owners. Remember, you will have to elect before 13 months in most cases to get club points.

 

[timsi]

I personally cannot see the problem. Is the destination club not like an exchange company? Elect points which means you deposit your week into the exchange club and they can do with it what they want. Release their inventory at 13 months and voila, members of the club can book before owners. Remember, you will have to elect before 13 months in most cases to get club points.

The problem is that it violates the rules of the resort. I posted above the rules.

 

[dioxide45]

"
Home Resort Float Period means the period during which all Network Members owning VOIs at a particular Home
Resort have the exclusive right to compete to reserve the use of Vacation Periods within their Season and Unit type
at their Home Resort, subject to the Resort Documents and the Network Rules.
Home Resort means one or more Network Resorts where Accommodations in a vacation ownership plan are located
and in which Network Members in that vacation ownership plan have their VOI and derive their use rights. During the
Home Resort Reservation Period, Network Members may request reservations of Accommodations comprising the
Home Resort.
Home Resort Reservation Period means the four (4)-month period beginning twelve (12) months and ending eight (8)
months prior to the Check-in Day of the Vacation Period. The Home Resort Reservation Period is comprised of the
Home Resort Fixed Priority Period (12-10 months) and the Home Resort Float Period."

Those are the VSN rules though. Couldn't they theoretically take non mandatory (voluntary) resorts out of VSN when they convey the deeds to Abound? It would save the the trust point owners having to pay VSN fees on all the weeks they convey to the trust and would allow all those weeks to work off whatever underlying rules are in the CC&R for each resort and not rely on VSN rules for reservations.

 

[DanCali]

Even if they were able to procure ROFR Maui OF inventory, they would still be bound by the overall agreement at 12 months out. MVC would be like any other purchaser, and they could not have an extended reservation time period.

If MVC was able to do that, there would be less inventory for an owner at WKORV or WKORVN to secure a reservation for an OF at 12 months out for their selected week That most likely would be in violation when Starwood first sold the timeshares, starting in the early 2000s. This would expose MVC to liability to a class action for all owners of those properties.

Unless they use humans to make reservations, then even if they stick to the 12-months they could still procure all the inventory they want before any owner even has a chance to click the search button at 00:00:01am.

So whether it's booked at 13 months or 12 months, owners could be disadvantaged if inventory is not booked equitably (pro-rata for all weeks in the season). No reason to believe it's not - time will tell...

 

[timsi]

Those are the VSN rules though. Couldn't they theoretically take non mandatory (voluntary) resorts out of VSN when they convey the deeds to Abound? It would save the the trust point owners having to pay VSN fees on all the weeks they convey to the trust and would allow all those weeks to work off whatever underlying rules are in the CC&R for each resort and not rely on VSN rules for reservations.

Actually they are the BYLAWS OF CANCUN LAGUNAMAR PROPERTY OWNERSHIP ASSOCIATION and they clearly state an exclusive right to compete during the Home resort period. I did not check but I assume other resorts have similar rules.

 

[rcv82]

Well, that would totally kill the idea that WKORV owners are going to enroll in droves. Nobody wants the value of their 176K SO OF week to go from $30K-$35K to $3K-$5K overnight....

Not that I want it to happen, but I don’t think it would affect the value of WKORV OF much. It is nice to have the backup, but it is a very expensive way to get StarOptions. I suspect the vast majority book their week near 12 months out. And if I didn’t want to use (or rent it), it would be worth far more in DP than StarOptions.


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[DanCali]

Except DP don’t transfer on resale so any subsequent buyer would be buying a Hawaii week with high MF with no SO and no DP.

I do agree that even in that scenario $3k-$5K is exaggerated. But saying all resale values for IV, OV and OF would be at least cut in half from where they are now if it was voluntary is not exaggerating imo.


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[remowidget]

Wouldn’t Marriott just be able to exercise ROFR on this inventory to get it into the trust at half price or less? If they do not exercise ROFR on Maui OF inventory, then I will assume they own a bunch already and it was not sold out.

I hate to say this and once again it will be controversial…but Tuggers sound like they think they are smarter than a corporation employed by experts. I am not talking about the lowly employees at the sales offices but the highly paid marketing and finance experts. I used to work for the corporate office of a travel corporation and believe me, they knew what they were doing.

I bet they are doing ROFR where it makes financial sense, but probably not anywhere near half price.

 

[remowidget]

They can probably do whatever they want because of different pools of inventory.

They do this with MVC properties. Legacy weeks can only book at 12 months, but the same location can be booked at 13 months with Destination Points. There is no conflict, because reservations are made with different pools of inventory.

Vistana has this now. Legacy weeks, flex weeks, and developer weeks. At least three pools of inventory. VSN allows us to cross book at 8 months, but I doubt all of the developer weeks get automatically dropped into VSN.

 

[dioxide45]

I hate to say this and once again it will be controversial…but Tuggers sound like they think they are smarter than a corporation employed by experts. I am not talking about the lowly employees at the sales offices but the highly paid marketing and finance experts. I used to work for the corporate office of a travel corporation and believe me, they knew what they were doing.

The job of those executives working for MVW and my job as a consumer looking to buy/use a produce for the expected value I expect are very different and often competing. It doesn't make them any smarter than me nor me any smarter than them. We each have different goals. Theirs is to create the most attractive and desirable product they can to tell at a price the buyer is willing to pay. Mine is to may no more than I am willing to pay for the product they offer. If those two things get out of line, they probably won't be in their job for very long as sales slump. I have never interpreted what people say here as saying that MVC doesn't know what they are doing.

 

[kozykritter]

I miss this thread so I'm bringing it back to life. Actually I think most of the Marriott Abound thread could be merged into here because it's primarily turned into a speculation thread as well.

My speculation today is how Flex ownerships may be treated in Abound when electing DP with Marriott. We heard early on here that if you enroll a Vistana ownership with Marriott, when you make a yearly election for points you have to elect the entire VOI, no partials. This makes sense for deeded weeks as you have to give up the whole thing to make an exchange work. However Flex contracts aren't pegged to a specific week amount beyond the minimum 20,700 option amount they are sold for that represents the lowest bookable week at the Westin or Sheraton Flex properties. It makes me wonder if Flex owners will be given the ability to determine the amount of options from a contract that they want to elect while still keeping some in the Vistana system in a given year. For example one of my Flex contracts is 140,000 options which doesn't match any of Vistana's magical week numbers. I wonder if they will say you have to elect at least 20,700 options to be converted to DP or perhaps do a chart like II has for Flex ownership when you want to do an exchange and it shows you the amount of options you need per unit size per season. I asked MVC sales staff about this possibility at each of the two presentations that I've had recently and all I got back was blank stares and the admission that they really don't know very much about Vistana beyond the general integration information.

 

[Eric B]

Perhaps now we should start taking bets on how many pages we'll reach by the time the hard launch starts! I'll put my money on 106

I think there's a good chance because this thread killed of the Merger Speculation thread where all the action was....no posts since Friday. Jabberwocky, I'd like to revise my page guess on that thread down from 106

You know if they merged it would blow straight past 106, right. Best to leave them separate and get back to work on this one….

 

[TAT]

Just sat through the “owner’s update” pitch at Nanea. I’m a resale owner at WKORV(S) Ocean View, Annual. Closed 1/12/2022. Based on this the salesman told us that we have to buy FlexOptions to get our ownership grandfathered in to the Marriot system for the merger and that must happen prior to July 1. The cheapest offer was $14,500.00 for studio @ 67,000 flex options.
Since I bought at $13,500, there’s no way that’s gonna happen.
I’m looking to find any available possibilities to get included into the Marriott system without buying retail from the man. I’ve made it this far based on the info from all the gurus here in this forum. Anyone have ideas on how to get in and get my property grandfathered in?

 

[dioxide45]

You know if they merged it would blow straight past 106, right. Best to leave them separate and get back to work on this one….

When they announce the new program and provide real details, someone will just trott in to create a new thread and that one will blow up. There will also be many duplicate thread that will also need merged.

 

[iowaguy09]

I miss this thread so I'm bringing it back to life. Actually I think most of the Marriott Abound thread could be merged into here because it's primarily turned into a speculation thread as well.

My speculation today is how Flex ownerships may be treated in Abound when electing DP with Marriott. We heard early on here that if you enroll a Vistana ownership with Marriott, when you make a yearly election for points you have to elect the entire VOI, no partials. This makes sense for deeded weeks as you have to give up the whole thing to make an exchange work. However Flex contracts aren't pegged to a specific week amount beyond the minimum 20,700 option amount they are sold for that represents the lowest bookable week at the Westin or Sheraton Flex properties. It makes me wonder if Flex owners will be given the ability to determine the amount of options from a contract that they want to elect while still keeping some in the Vistana system in a given year. For example one of my Flex contracts is 140,000 options which doesn't match any of Vistana's magical week numbers. I wonder if they will say you have to elect at least 20,700 options to be converted to DP or perhaps do a chart like II has for Flex ownership when you want to do an exchange and it shows you the amount of options you need per unit size per season. I asked MVC sales staff about this possibility at each of the two presentations that I've had recently and all I got back was blank stares and the admission that they really don't know very much about Vistana beyond the general integration information.

My recent question to ponder: Will Sheraton Flex and Westin Flex be treated equal, once their different conversion values are taken into account?

 

[kozykritter]

My recent question to ponder: Will Sheraton Flex and Westin Flex be treated equal, once their different conversion values are taken into account?

I think once any ownership is converted into DP points, everyone is on equal footing. That is how Marriott handled things with deeded weeks back in 2010 when it created the points trust and there's no reason to think they won't run Abound the same way, despite their lack of experience in integrating an existing pure points program.

 

[mjm1]

Just sat through the “owner’s update” pitch at Nanea. I’m a resale owner at WKORV(S) Ocean View, Annual. Closed 1/12/2022. Based on this the salesman told us that we have to buy FlexOptions to get our ownership grandfathered in to the Marriot system for the merger and that must happen prior to July 1. The cheapest offer was $14,500.00 for studio @ 67,000 flex options.
Since I bought at $13,500, there’s no way that’s gonna happen.
I’m looking to find any available possibilities to get included into the Marriott system without buying retail from the man. I’ve made it this far based on the info from all the gurus here in this forum. Anyone have ideas on how to get in and get my property grandfathered in?

I am not aware of any other way. Vistana sales reps insist that you have to buy some Flex points or wait until after the effective date and buy Marriott DC points at a higher price per point. We have spoken with MVC sales reps in the past few months and those reps have said Vistana owners will need to buy DC points to enroll. However, if you are also a MVC DC member and a Vistana owner then you won’t have to buy anything extra and your Vistana units will be enrolled automatically.

Today we met with a sales rep at Marriott’s Ko Olina and a higher level sales rep said that even a resale Vistana owner who owns Marriott DC will be enrolled automatically. I hope he is correct, but we won’t know for sure until they formally announce the program and indicate which owners are eligible to enroll.

Best regards.

Mike

 

[DavidnRobin]

Just sat through the “owner’s update” pitch at Nanea. I’m a resale owner at WKORV(S) Ocean View, Annual. Closed 1/12/2022. Based on this the salesman told us that we have to buy FlexOptions to get our ownership grandfathered in to the Marriot system for the merger and that must happen prior to July 1. The cheapest offer was $14,500.00 for studio @ 67,000 flex options.
Since I bought at $13,500, there’s no way that’s gonna happen.
I’m looking to find any available possibilities to get included into the Marriott system without buying retail from the man. I’ve made it this far based on the info from all the gurus here in this forum. Anyone have ideas on how to get in and get my property grandfathered in?

Get them to put that in writing (the whole purchase FOs BS) - that will shut them up fast.

It is possible since you own a Mandatory resale you will get opportunity to convert to DC, and you can buy resale DC points if you need more - if I understand correctly.


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[DanCali]

Just sat through the “owner’s update” pitch at Nanea. I’m a resale owner at WKORV(S) Ocean View, Annual. Closed 1/12/2022. Based on this the salesman told us that we have to buy FlexOptions to get our ownership grandfathered in to the Marriot system for the merger and that must happen prior to July 1. The cheapest offer was $14,500.00 for studio @ 67,000 flex options.
Since I bought at $13,500, there’s no way that’s gonna happen.
I’m looking to find any available possibilities to get included into the Marriott system without buying retail from the man. I’ve made it this far based on the info from all the gurus here in this forum. Anyone have ideas on how to get in and get my property grandfathered in?

Two schools of thought on this offer.

- One might say that if you take that offer you get ~6500 DC points for your Maui week and ~2000 DC points conversion value for your Flex purchase. That's about 8500 DC points for $28K, or about $3.30 per DC point, which is actually close to resale values (before the extra $3 junk fee) - so you can view his as a great deal. On top of that, the blended MF/point is probably around 50c instead of around 65c like would be for actual DC points. If you want to use your week as points most if the time, it's a reasonable way to think about it.

- One could also say that the resale value of the flex you are buying is zero and so you are paying a ~$14.5K "enrollment fee" to enroll your week into an exchange company. By Marriott offer standards that's cheap, but it's still a $14,500 "enrollment fee". Interval charges $99/year and you already get that for free...

The Vistana retro rules actually require a purchase of $10K minimum to enroll a week. Odds are those deals will go away after the official announcement. You may be able to negotiate that purchase price of $14.5K down (you'll get fewer Flex points in return).

If you want to play in the DC sandbox this might end up being the best offer you might see for some time. The other alternative is buying 1000 points resale (which will cost around $6K after junk fees) and then, in years you want to use points, you will need to rent out your week and rent points from others (I have enrolled weeks, but I use this strategy because I get significantly more bang for the buck with rentals). The resale purchase of 1000 points is required to become a DC member so you can rent points from others and transfer to your account. It's possible that minimum purchase required is 1500 points and not 1000.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

If you want to play in the DC sandbox this might end up being the best offer you might see for some time. The other alternative is buying 1000 points resale (which will cost around $6K after junk fees) and then, in years you want to use points, you will need to rent out your week and rent points from others (I have enrolled weeks, but I use this strategy because I get significantly more bang for the buck with rentals). The resale purchase of 1000 points is required to become a DC member so you can rent points from others and transfer to your account. It's possible that minimum purchase required is 1500 points and not 1000.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying you get more DP points per dollar if you rent DC points rather than depositing your enrolled weeks for DC points? Is this because of your specific week has low DP values relative to renting it out? or does this apply to all enrolled week DP values? This is an interesting option but need to understand it.

 

[SuiteLady]

- One might say that if you take that offer you get ~6500 DC points for your Maui week and ~2000 DC points conversion value for your Flex purchase. That's about 8500 DC points for $28K, or about $3.30 per DC point, which is actually close to resale values (before the extra $3 junk fee) - so you can view his as a great deal. On top of that, the blended MF/point is probably around 50c instead of around 65c like would be for actual DC points. If you want to use your week as points most if the time, it's a reasonable way to think about it.

New here and trying to learn about the upcoming integration. Learned about TUG and bought a resale Vistana week last year that I used. I have many questions since this idea sounds enticing.
-How would I know how many destination points my flex purchase would convert to?
-What are the maintenance fees on the flex purchase?
-How would I make a Flex purchase to enroll my week?
-Do you have a contact person to inquire with?

Thank you in advance.

 

[remowidget]

My recent question to ponder: Will Sheraton Flex and Westin Flex be treated equal, once their different conversion values are taken into account?

Until I see otherwise, I am giving MVC the benefit of the doubt. I feel like they will be a neutral as they can. They are attempting to build a better product to sell.

I haven't seen anything that seemed like a negative to me, well other than DP valuation and that seems to be made in relation to current DP properties which seems reasonable to me. If a Vistana property is vastly more DP than a nearby MVC property, who would stay at that Vistana Property? It's an optional way to use our ownership that they didn't have to give to us, but they will because they are trying to do the fair thing and keep us as customers.

 

[remowidget]

Today we met with a sales rep at Marriott’s Ko Olina and a higher level sales rep said that even a resale Vistana owner who owns Marriott DC will be enrolled automatically. I hope he is correct, but we won’t know for sure until they formally announce the program and indicate which owners are eligible to enroll.

If you buy a Marriott resale week, is it automatically enrolled if you are a destination points owner? It seems unlikely to me when they charge $3 a point to enroll resale destination points.