Haha so true . Today they said club points was too expensive and requires too many points to go anywhere. Sheraton flex was it.
When Marriott created the DC program way back in 2010, they did realign the values of weeks by allocating more DC points required to book them. In reality, January is more gold season than Platinum IMO. Weather can be iffy. But this is a good reason to have options and still being able to use StarOptions is a great benefit.
Another good thing, is if II exhcnage fees go away for Vistana to Vistana or Vistana to Marriott HomeOption based trades, it would always be good to look at II to see if there is inventory there before just doing an Abound or StarOption reservation. In quite a few cases, the amount of HomeOptions needed for an II trade are less than the number of StarOptions through VSN. Right now there is a $164 fee, but in the future that should be $0.
I wonder if they would restrict that possibility? Maybe I misunderstood it, but I thought you couldn’t use DP to book Marriott through II. I wonder if they will extend this restriction to Vistana resorts given the $0 exchange fee. Otherwise it seems to be a loophole.
Well, you can't use DC/Abound points to trade through II into Marriott, but that restriction doesn't exist for the underlying week. Or in the case of VSN, it might not for the underlying VOI. Adding the restriction on the VOI would be taking away something we have already. I can see them restricting all Marriott and Vistana from booking with Abound points in II to other Marriott and Vistana properties, but I would think they would leave VOIs alone. Who knows.
You cannot deposit SOs into II, you have to deposit the original week for one or 2 lockoff sides. I guess what Jeremy meant originally is that if you find a Vistana/Marriott week in II, then you use a Vistana week to exchange in II. Since SOs is not an election, unlike in MVC DC/Abound system, where election is done the year before, you can do that with a Vistana week.
Thanks for the reminder. I just realized that after I typed it and edited it out.
I am now understanding that if you have flex options (Westin, Sheraton, homeoptions) you can book directly thru interval for any resort and the points required are usually less than if you booked using staroptions thru VSN or DPs thru Marriott.
I think January 2023 at Lagunamar was very hard to book compared to other years. Abound did not even start yet and odd things are happening already. I am very curious to see in October if those weeks show up miraculously in Abound and of course much more expensive than in VSN.
Sometimes the case, sometimes not. There are some crossovers in seasonality that make it advantageous to book in your home systems rather than through II and sometimes the reverse. You just have to do all the investigating which is sort of the fun part!
But you pay an exchange fee currently. So you get to keep some points, but you pay for it with cash.
I add up all costs on both sides of the transaction and then if it's a significant difference I don't mind spending cash if it saves me points I've paid cash for or would pay cash for to rent. For example I wanted to book a holiday week that was 2900 DP. Due to seasonality differences in II, I could book that same unit with 44,000 SFlex options which would have converted to only 1,286 DP in Abound. Renting 2900 DP would have cost me $2,030 as I've used all my 2023 points for other reservations. Using Flex through II cost me $1091 including $838 option MF and $253 exchange fee/e-plus (I need flexibility for my 2023 plans due to some ongoing family situations). For me that's a big win because the bulk of the cost comes from MF that I already had to pay and I've saved about half of the cost.
Flex and Abound will both be booking at The 12 month mark and are essentially another form of weeks ownership (just the trust/exchange holds the week).
They messed up by making January Gold Season, IMHO. Cabo isn't Gold in January. The average high temperature in Cancun only varies by 2 degrees from November to March. Lagunamar is uber popular in January because it takes so many fewer Staroptions. The worst weather for a whole trip we ever experienced was the one time we went in February. We go in January almost every year.
But if January had Platinum Plus SO pricing, it would be a lot less popular.
Maybe... I just checked and Abound values Cabo above Lagunamar across the board. Weird.
THis is the best we have so far.
tugbbs.com
It looks like the only major changes are to banking and converting to Bonvoy. It also looks like they are staying Bonvoy will never expire where currently they had a 6 year expiration that was never really enforced.
