I work for Marriott Vacation Club. There is no such thing that has been announced or implemented that I nor anyone is aware of. I am personal friends with many people with very high positions in the company and although it would be "confidential" i feel they would tell me. Or at the very least I would think SOMEONE at our work would get wind of it.
The only time I ever hear anything about Marriott Internal exchanges is through Owners themselves.
DaveM has pretty good contacts and, to date has received basic info that has generally been spot on. BUT, all he's been told is that there is an internal exchange program coming and it's supposed to be released sometime next year. The qualifier of delay's are possible has been tossed in.
As far as not hearing it from anyone other than owners, well, spend some time on the sales floors as some of the Marriott resorts. On our last stay the owners meeting (not a sales presentation but how to use your Marriott ownership lecture/question/answer session) it was mentioned that Marriott was working on an internal exchange program.
Either your not as well connected as you say you are or, you're not who you claim to be.
there are so many flaws with internal exchanging. The first being Owner Services is way too small to handle the huge influx of call flow. I could go on, but just trust me, it's not as simple as you all would like to make it seem.
From what I've noticed most people who want "Marriott Exchanges" are very close-minded people (in terms of ownership) who see the whole thing as "If I do it directly with Marriott, I won't have to pay fees at all!" This would be totally untrue. You would be surprised how many people I talk to daily who think this.
"I am not getting what I want, so Interval must be lying to me". Also bogus. If you aren't getting what you want the majority of the time it is because A) the week you bought sucks for trading and nobody has the heart to tell you or B) you are asking for a ridiculous exchange because you are stubborn and can only go on vacation to one place, one week out of the year. "I want to go to Maui for spring break, weeeee!"
Exchanges won't get any better for "these particular people". Stop blaming Interval and figure out how to work the Interval system. And maybe I am wrong, maybe there is something in the works that nobody at Marriott Vacation Club knows about.......but I doubt it.
Again you obviously DON'T have a good grib on internal exchange programs. The only point you make is that nothing is free. You're right, nothing is free. It's just less expensive to do internal exchagnes. The two internal exchange programs I can speak from experience on would be Hilton and Diamond Resorts.
Hilton has a $99 club fee that includes RCI membership for owners. There are nominal fee's associated with internal exchanges but, they're in the $39 range. That's FAR below RCI's fee's for making external exchanges. We much prefer to make internal exchanges because it is considerably less expensive and we know what we're going to get.
Diamond Resorts has a $255 membership fee for their internal exchange program but, that fee includes the annual dues for Interval Gold. That's ~$140/year of the cost members would pay anyway. Internal exchanges have no additional fee associated with them. Each internal exchange saves members $149 in fee's. The membership pays for itself with just one internal exchange rather than exchanging through Interval.
Another point you make is about exchange value, not getting the exchanges owners want/expect/demand and owning weeks that suck. Internal points based systems spell out CLEARLY what you week's true value is and, makes those now impossible exchanges possible. How do they become possible you're asking? In most points based systems, points can be saved to the next year and/or borrowed from the future years. Both DRI and Hilton offer that option. I'd guess many other internal points based exchange programs offer it as well. Combining low value weeks points make it possible for one to grab a high value week they'll never be able to get in the current week for week system. Exchanges might not get any better but, they'll have another option that will allow them to get that impossible trade.
And by the way, Marriott already HAS an internal points exchange system in place. If you don't know about it, you're definately NOT a Marriott employee or, you're so new you're to green to know about it. Look at Marriott's Asian system. MGC in Las Vegas participates in that internal points system already.
Sorry but your story doesn't match some of the basic facts. Pretenders are easy to spot on TUG. IMHO, you're either a pretender or to new to really know what's going on. Yes there's to much speculation on this thread. No one really knows what Marriott will do, if they do anything. But I'll take DaveM's word that something is in the pipeline.
but not for resale buyers, of course. 