Hello TUGgers,
Someone asked earlier about inventory access. When DC was rolled out, I spent alot of time trying to understand how inventory loaded and how Marriott made inventory available. I had numerous conversations with the head of Customer Advocacy for Marriott and he described the below to me. The original conversation is buried somewhere on the Marriott board and if I can find it, I will link.
Fundamentally, what he said is that every year, Marriott projects how many weeks they think will be redeemed for DC points (in addition to other projections, like how many weeks will be rented by the owner, through Marriott). Marriott then holds back these weekly projections and releases the remaining weeks to be reserved by the owners for their home ownership.
As an example, if the Trust owns 20% of Maui Ocean Club (which it did way back then) and they project another 20% of the Maui Ocean Club owners redeem for points, then only 60% of the weeks are released for home use. Marriott makes some of those available 13 months out and some of those 12 months out, as permitted under the Marriott rules, and does it on a level basis, so that every week the same number of weeks are made available (ie, they aren't cherry picking the best weeks for some groups benefit). They adjust their projection every year based on the previous years experience.
If Marriott follows this same structure for Westin, then I would expect Westin weeks to be available for reservation 12 months out (because there is no mechanism in Starwood that allows a 13 month reservation, that I am aware of) and Marriott would have to forecast how many Westin owners are going to 1) use their StarOptions to book other weeks 2) use their week to redeem for DC points. Marriott's goal, as described to me, is to fairly balance supply and demand.
One thing that he impressed upon me over multiple conversations is Marriott's desire to be fair and impartial. They are aware of the perception (and risk) that they could unfairly treat certain classes of owners and he expressed a desire (circa 2011) that no ownership class be unfairly treated. They also don't take advantage of their leverage in an unfair way -- as an example, although they are allowed to get inventory from Interval International, we do not see a pattern where they sweep the best deposits and place them into the DC exchange inventory. I still get great trades that Marriott would have scooped up if they were sweeping the best deposits -- I therefore don't expect them to cherry pick the Westin inventory at the 8 month mark. I believed him and I have continued to see where Marriott doesn't "take away" rights and privileges, but merely offers new privileges to people writing checks today.
This is one of the reasons I will be surprised if Marrott doesn't allow resale owners and mandatory owners to somehow participate in the system. I expect something more like a cutoff, where everyone who owned Starwood as of a specific date will have some manner to access or participate in the Marriott system. I don't expect it to be free or even modest, but would expect something like a $3K fee to join. Even though they don't want or need my Bella weeks in the system, the Marriott of 10 years ago didn't want to disenfranchise that owner. Marriott has less desirable weeks in their system too, but they were permitted to access.
We will see. Interesting stuff.
Best,
Greg
Here is the original
thread -- but it's a lot to read (even for me, and I wrote it).
