Latest owner update at WKV $7k for 25K SO + 2M Bonvoy Points

[tourproto]

So currently at WKV and did the owner update for 40k Bonvoy Points. Good for a night most places and we had time to kill before a Dodger game.

He saw that we own multiple resale weeks at WKV so he knew he wasn’t going to sell us anything (FYI current platinum week 2bdrm lockoffs are selling at $79k at WKV)

The sales guy even admitted he owns 5 weeks himself that he bought resale. So we shot the breeze for most of the time talking about SO usage strategies.

But of course as any good salesman should do, he did try to sell us something other than a week at WKV.

What he offered was interesting to say the least. It was a bi-annual purchase of 25K StarOptions for $7k and $250 annual MFs.

Obviously not a great deal on SOs but the “sweetener” was to buy 2M Bonvoy Points for $13k. So for $21k (and yes, another $250 a year in MFs in perpetuity) I get 2M Bonvoy points which allows me to stay at Marriott properties that are not timeshare properties.

Would never use these for run of the mill properties but at elite locations like Mauna Kea in Hawaii that run $1000/night and I can stay there for roughly 375k Bonvoy points. So I am getting 42 nights at $1000/night hotels for a 50% discount off the rack rate.

So the question is if I can stay at a hotel where i would never pay the full retail rate but would be ok paying the equivalent of $500/night would this be a good trade off?

Interested in TUG thoughts on this. My wife likes the idea of staying at really nice hotels but she would never pay $1000/night but is OK at $500/night.

Just don’t know if you can find deals at top hotels for cheap rates. Seems like we would actually get value from this deal at non-timeshare places that we wouldn’t otherwise stay at.

TIA for people’s thoughts

 

[Ken555]

Just keep reminding yourself that Marriott is devaluing Bonvoy points every year.

 

[Hindsite]

With the current 40% bonus offer for buying Bonvoy points in your account you pay $1,875 for 210,000 bonvoy points = $0.0089/bonvoy point

Your 2 million for $13k comes out at $0.0065 per bonvoy point so is a decent deal, but comes with the overhead of a SO purchase. If you write the timeshare purchase off to the Bonvoy points, (as its actually worthless) its $21k for 2million Bonvoy, which is $0.011 and not a great deal

Depends how you do the math and as ken says there's the impact of timing of usage vs Bonvoy devaluation.

 

[tourproto]

With the current 40% bonus offer for buying Bonvoy points in your account you pay $1,875 for 210,000 bonvoy points = $0.0089/bonvoy point

Your 2 million for $13k comes out at $0.0065 per bonvoy point so is a decent deal, but comes with the overhead of a SO purchase. If you write the timeshare purchase off to the Bonvoy points, (as its actually worthless) its $21k for 2million Bonvoy, which is $0.011 and not a great deal

Depends how you do the math and as ken says there's the impact of timing of usage vs Bonvoy devaluation.

Well the 25k SOs aren’t totally worthless. They allow me to upgrade the smaller 1 bedroom to a premium 1 bedroom when I split up a 2bdrm lock off.

Fair point about the devaluation of Bonvoy points. I wonder if I can get them to sweeten the Bonvoy points. I know I prob can’t get them to reduce the price of the SOs

 

[byeloe]

Is that Westin Flex? I have never seen a sale of just SO

 

[daviator]

Is that Westin Flex? I have never seen a sale of just SO

You can’t buy SOs. So he must be talking about a Flex product.

 

[dioxide45]

What they are offering with the sale is certificates you can use to buy Bonvoy points. I don't remember all the details, you should know more than I do since you were just there, but it was about 300,000 points per certificate for a little over $2000 each. An annual purchase would include 6 of these but an EOY would be only half of that. Being 3. So yhou would want to confirm that you would actually get the 6 which would work out to about the

 

[Hindsite]

Well the 25k SOs aren’t totally worthless. They allow me to upgrade the smaller 1 bedroom to a premium 1 bedroom when I split up a 2bdrm lock off.

Sheraton flex resale would do the same and people are giving them away, hence the true market value of zero.

 

[bizaro86]

$13k for 2MM bonvoy is 0.65 cents per point. That's approximately the grey market value of those. And that's the current value, before the devaluation later this year, and the devaluation next year, and the one the year after that.

I'd be a hard pass of this offer.

 

[DavidnRobin]

What Options they are actually trying to sell you - either WestinFlex or SheratonFlex (free on resale market) as StarOptions are not sold as a VOI (timeshare).

The good old fuzzy math that timeshare sales loves... You can stay in a place that charges a super high rack rate, blah, blah, blah.
However, as you would never pay that rate in first place - it is an awful comparison.
Pass.

 

[BA21]

What they are offering with the sale is certificates you can use to buy Bonvoy points. I don't remember all the details, you should know more than I do since you were just there, but it was about 300,000 points per certificate for a little over $2000 each. An annual purchase would include 6 of these but an EOY would be only half of that. Being 3. So yhou would want to confirm that you would actually get the 6 which would work out to about the

Last year, 2025 I purchased an EOY Adventuras contract in order to enroll to 2 resale weeks Westin Los Cabos Baja Point into the Vistana/Marriott Abound Network. I received 6 certificates to purchase 330,000 Bonvoy Points for $2,275 ($.00689 per Bonvoy Point). I have until Dec 15th to decide if I want to buy Bonvoy points as my first year use of the EOY Adventuras purchase is 2026. I haven't used any certificates to buy Bonvoy Points yet.

I wouldn't make a Developer purchase soley for the Bonvoy certificates. If you plan to buy this, purchase an Encore package first and then get the cost of the Encore discounted off the Deveoper purchase later. You really only get bang for your buck if you need to enroll a resale purchase into the network and get the Bonvoy certificates as a bonus

 

[daviator]

They’ve given those certificates away with every purchase for at least 25 years. I got them with every developer purchase I made starting in about 2003.

At one time, they were a decent deal. Now they are not, and I let the last several expire unused. You are buying points that are not really worth the price charged for them, and by the time you use them they’ll be worth even less. I have to work so hard these days to get decent value out of Bonvoy points, it’s almost not worth the trouble.

If somebody gave me six of those certificates today, I’d shred them.

 

[tourproto]

Is that Westin Flex? I have never seen a sale of just SO

He called it an SO buy. I didn't dig deeper on whether it was flexor not. It was purely what they were forcing you to buy to get the 330,000 Bonvoy Points for $2275. As a prior person already replied that is a decent deal but when you wrap in that, I have to spend 7000 for the right to purchase at that price, it does kind of dilute the value of the deal. Especially when I can buy 210,000 for $1875 direct on the Bonvoy site right now

 

[tourproto]

What they are offering with the sale is certificates you can use to buy Bonvoy points. I don't remember all the details, you should know more than I do since you were just there, but it was about 300,000 points per certificate for a little over $2000 each. An annual purchase would include 6 of these but an EOY would be only half of that. Being 3. So yhou would want to confirm that you would actually get the 6 which would work out to about the

I did confirm that I have 3 years to buy all 6 certs even with an EOY product

 

[tourproto]

$13k for 2MM bonvoy is 0.65 cents per point. That's approximately the grey market value of those. And that's the current value, before the devaluation later this year, and the devaluation next year, and the one the year after that.

I'd be a hard pass of this offer.

Yeah the devaluation is the problem I could never spend 2M points before Marriott started to devalue them AND they already have my money

 

[tourproto]

They’ve given those certificates away with every purchase for at least 25 years. I got them with every developer purchase I made starting in about 2003.

At one time, they were a decent deal. Now they are not, and I let the last several expire unused. You are buying points that are not really worth the price charged for them, and by the time you use them they’ll be worth even less. I have to work so hard these days to get decent value out of Bonvoy points, it’s almost not worth the trouble.

If somebody gave me six of those certificates today, I’d shred them.

I did some testing last night on my own, and you are correct. The only place where the value of the certificates exceeded the value that I could get on my own by booking directly through the Bonvoy site was a property in Sydney Australia. Booking a Ritz-Carlton in Hawaii or another property on the Champs Elysees in Paris there was no difference in the dollar value

 

[dioxide45]

I did confirm that I have 3 years to buy all 6 certs even with an EOY product

Thanks for confirming. My info was from a sales presentation many years ago. So perhaps they changed or they just gave me bad info.

 

[tourproto]

Is that Westin Flex? I have never seen a sale of just SO

You can’t buy SOs. So he must be talking about a Flex product.

Yes, in my follow up he confirmed it is a Flex product

 

[dioxide45]

Yes, in my follow up he confirmed it is a Flex product

HomeOptions work very much the same, at least when they become StarOptions for 8 month reservations. We all just get hung up on StarOptions vs HomeOptions around here. The technicalities do matter but they work as StarOptions all the same. That said, the deal isn't really all that great and you have to spend a bunch of money to maybe save a little in the long run.

 

[tourproto]

HomeOptions work very much the same, at least when they become StarOptions for 8 month reservations. We all just get hung up on StarOptions vs HomeOptions around here. The technicalities do matter but they work as StarOptions all the same. That said, the deal isn't really all that great and you have to spend a bunch of money to maybe save a little in the long run.

You are correct. And as many others pointed out, with Marriott continually devaluing Bonvoy Points, this makes no sense. Better off to pay a higher price directly with Bonvoy (210,000 points right now for $1875, including the 40% bonus) if I need extra points to supplement my existing points to book a points reservation instead of a $$$ reservation

 

[tourproto]

Closing note: thank you once again to all the great TUG members!

I did pass on the offer. I did "counter" with an offer to buy the 6 certificates for $1200 each but of course they said "no" and that the price of the certs is fixed. (I would have done it at that price).

The argument from others that Marriott continues to devalue the value of points is what sealed the deal to not do it. Combined with the fact that I could just directly book with 3 of the hotels I looked at (Hawaii, Paris, Australia) for the same amount of dollars that the certificates cost, it makes no sense to "give" Marriott my money in advance (time value of money)

 

[YYJMSP]

As others have said, the devaluation of the Bonvoy points makes it not worth it. Long gone are the days when you could redeem with points for half the cash booking price. Most are now a break even if you're lucky, but quite a few are cheaper to book with cash vs redeeming points

Another purchase alternative is a 200K points Explorer package. It's about the same price and includes 4nts stay at a Vistana property when you do the return presentation. We've done this a few times, and call it a wash, valuing the stay as $400-$500ish off the package cost, leaving the other $1500ish as the cost of 200K Bonvoy points...

 

[tourproto]

As others have said, the devaluation of the Bonvoy points makes it not worth it. Long gone are the days when you could redeem with points for half the cash booking price. Most are now a break even if you're lucky, but quite a few are cheaper to book with cash vs redeeming points

Another purchase alternative is a 200K points Explorer package. It's about the same price and includes 4nts stay at a Vistana property when you do the return presentation. We've done this a few times, and call it a wash, valuing the stay as $400-$500ish off the package cost, leaving the other $1500ish as the cost of 200K Bonvoy points...

Haven't heard of the "Explorer Package". Is it something offered during the homeowner's update? Or something they send you in the mail?

 

[EnglishmanAbroad]

Haven't heard of the "Explorer Package". Is it something offered during the homeowner's update? Or something they send you in the mail?

In my experience it's usually the last offer they make at the end of an owner update if they have 'failed' to sell you anything else. I've also had them shoved under our villa door the night before checkout.

 

[dioxide45]

Haven't heard of the "Explorer Package". Is it something offered during the homeowner's update? Or something they send you in the mail?

They're called Encore Packages today. "Explorer Packages" is what Vistana used to call them prior to Marriott acquisition.