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MVC finally got my last, holdout week

dougp26364

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Since the inception of the trust, it’s become a little more difficult to book our home resort week for the week we want (typically first week of December) and have a full selection of check in days. Because we both changed jobs, the check in day became important in order to use a minimum number of paid time off hours.

This year we had a choice of only 2 of 4 possible days AND, we couldn’t reserve our full unit, only the master suite. This left us with a studio unit deposited into II and has created some issues with booking our vacations as I try to use that week (I don’t have the patience or time for to play the rental game).

After having spent a week end enjoying our time on Marco Island, we’ve decided to begin depositing our Ocean Pointe week for trust points and booking one of three resorts, either a 1 bedroom ocean front at our home resort (points will be left over but not a lot), 2 bedroom on Marco Island (several points left over) or a 2 bedroom ocean front at Oceana Palms (takes more points than we receive for our unit). Perhaps we’ll even begin to look at Palm Desert or even maybe Hawaii once CoVid restrictions level out.

But what annoys me the most is that, as an owner booking the first day the window opens, only having 2 of 4 check i. Days available and zero check in days available if we wanted to book our full unit. IMHO that’s just not right, but it’s the way it is in this brave new world.

My guess is this is the exception and not the rule. I doubt there are very many owners experiencing the same issues as we’ve had these last 5 years trying to get a specific check in day in our full unit. This is the first year we haven’t been able to book our full unit but not the first year we’ve been limited on our check in days. These past few years we’ve never had the option to book any of the four (Thur-Sun) with most times only having the choice of two of the four, but it is the first time in 20 years of ownership we weren’t able to book the full unit.
 

hcarman

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We have had similar problems with Canyon Villas Platinum week and even our Crystal Shores Gold for holiday weeks. I would agree - it seems in the past few years it has gotten tougher (even tougher now with Covid). I was told by Owners Services that they can hold aside a percentage of the units until closer in - so some inventory not open at the 12-13 month mark may show at the 10th month mark - even for weeks owners. That unfortunately keeps you glued to the site and isn’t fun for those of us that don’t have as much time to spend on it.
 

bazzap

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We have had similar problems with Canyon Villas Platinum week and even our Crystal Shores Gold for holiday weeks. I would agree - it seems in the past few years it has gotten tougher (even tougher now with Covid). I was told by Owners Services that they can hold aside a percentage of the units until closer in - so some inventory not open at the 12-13 month mark may show at the 10th month mark - even for weeks owners. That unfortunately keeps you glued to the site and isn’t fun for those of us that don’t have as much time to spend on it.
If this is really true for Weeks inventory, I don’t understand the basis on which MVC could hold back release of weeks from the 12-13 month mark?
It would contravene MVC’s own well documented inventory release policy, which clearly states that up to 50% of Week’s inventory is released at the 13 month mark with the remainder released at the 12 month mark.
8FDBC516-3A23-4951-99CF-D7EDA78C7718.jpeg
 

Norcal5

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Consider electing your 2023 week for points and either trying to book with points or renting off RedWeek or other for your 2023 vacation. Then you will have (if you buy a few extra points from vacationpointexchange or frank808) enough points for 3 years of having a points option backup to your week via borrowing, using current year points, and banking.
By electing early you will have 3 years to use your points as a backup plan to double the chances of getting what you want.
 

dougp26364

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Hilton Grand Vacation Club Las Vegas Blvd
Grand Colorado on Peak 8
Spinnaker French Quarter Resort Branson
In our case, it’s a December week we book and, we have to decide on converting to DC points by October, but can’t search using point until December. It’s sort of a blind spot in the system.

What ticked me off when I went to book our 2021 week was, I could see the exact week I wanted using points, but that week wasn’t available to us as weeks owners at my home resort. So anyone else willing to use points could book a week at the resort we own, but we couldn’t.

I believe it’s more of an anomaly than the norm, but it has been getting worse each year until I decided to just give up and exchange for DC points.
 

Norcal5

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If it’s always December I think the points system might be your best bet.
 

dougp26364

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Marriott Shadow Ridge
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Marriott Destination Club Points
Hilton Grand Vacation Club Las Vegas Blvd
Grand Colorado on Peak 8
Spinnaker French Quarter Resort Branson
If it’s always December I think the points system might be your best bet.

Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
 

Pamplemousse

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Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
Just curious, have you ever tried depositing your week in II and exchanging back in?
 

GrayFal

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Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
Sorry to hear this but not surprised to hear this.
Also an owner since 2021
 

Ralph Sir Edward

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In our case, it’s a December week we book and, we have to decide on converting to DC points by October, but can’t search using point until December. It’s sort of a blind spot in the system.

What ticked me off when I went to book our 2021 week was, I could see the exact week I wanted using points, but that week wasn’t available to us as weeks owners at my home resort. So anyone else willing to use points could book a week at the resort we own, but we couldn’t.

I believe it’s more of an anomaly than the norm, but it has been getting worse each year until I decided to just give up and exchange for DC points.
I had the same problem in 2014 - it's not new.
 

Ralph Sir Edward

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Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
The points difference used to be nicknamed "the skim".

Despite other long-term owners insisting otherwise here, I came to the same conclusion in 2013. It's even worse for a single week owner. So I sold and exited Marriott. I used the proceed to buy in at HGVC Bay Club. Nowadays, Bay Club is barely more expensive in MFs than equivalent Palms Marriott week properties in Orlando. 2021 - Bay Club 2 BDR top floor - $1595; Sabal Palms - $1498. This is an apples-to-apples comparison; as neither of them have a ROFR, nor are able to be converted to points, as is. (and it is FAR cheaper to convert to points with HGVC than Marriott, although HGVC charges more "nickle and dime" charges for points use - but no "skim".) And HGVC has a initial 3 month window where owners get to book their weeks before the points system get a shot at them.
 

Dean

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Doug, while I don't think this is unique to OP, I do think it's a limited situation where there are a few weeks in a lower season where the demand is higher than originally anticipated and/or where they border a higher season and people use them for access for later weeks using the 13 month reservation option. Because the demand is higher for those few weeks they are understandably more points than other weeks in the same season and more points than one gets for owning that season. This happens for the 2 summer weeks at MGO that are Gold but Platinum at Barony & Surfwatch. There are other examples. And of course Marco Island is simply an expensive property during higher demand times, go back and look at the price list for the weeks there when being sold as weeks. I looked at Silver weeks for OP when it was a hole in the ground and decided it wasn't a good choice partly for this reason. Obviously the points weren't a factor at the time but the unequal demand was obvious to me to be a potential problem.
 

TheTimeTraveler

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I
Doug, while I don't think this is unique to OP, I do think it's a limited situation where there are a few weeks in a lower season where the demand is higher than originally anticipated and/or where they border a higher season and people use them for access for later weeks using the 13 month reservation option. Because the demand is higher for those few weeks they are understandably more points than other weeks in the same season and more points than one gets for owning that season. This happens for the 2 summer weeks at MGO that are Gold but Platinum at Barony & Surfwatch. There are other examples. And of course Marco Island is simply an expensive property during higher demand times, go back and look at the price list for the weeks there when being sold as weeks. I looked at Silver weeks for OP when it was a hole in the ground and decided it wasn't a good choice partly for this reason. Obviously the points weren't a factor at the time but the unequal demand was obvious to me to be a potential problem.



....and some of those same Silver weeks @ Ocean Pointe are designated as either Gold or Platinum @ Oceana Palms which is less than 2 miles along the beach from each other. Granted the Oceana Palms units are nicer, but wouldn't you think they would have kept the Seasons alike?



.
 

Dean

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....and some of those same Silver weeks @ Ocean Pointe are designated as either Gold or Platinum @ Oceana Palms which is less than 2 miles along the beach from each other. Granted the Oceana Palms units are nicer, but wouldn't you think they would have kept the Seasons alike?



.
As with HH, HL, Lakeshore, Aruba, etc; the way I see it is they took the additional information they had related to demand and adjusted the seasons for the new resort. IMO that's better than keeping them the same just to be the same but knowing there is a significant difference is demand. One can look at it both ways. That those weeks are higher demand so more difficult to reserve, like you own a Gold or Platinum week for the up front price of Silver or that you get less points than you would if the weeks schedule were different. Basically all are true it just depends on how it fits into one's situation. My guess is for Doug that it was a plan to get a good week at a cheaper price, obviously the points were not in play at the time.
 

AlmostRetired

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I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players

I am curious,, as a multi week owner (Platinum Grande Ocean, Monarch and 3 bedroom Grand Chateau) with only one enrolled week, I am not sure I understand what you are suggesting. Can you help me understand why you think this. Inventory for DP is based on what is in the trust and what weeks are exchanged for DP. The competition for usage is only within points or weeks.
 

Dean

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I am curious,, as a multi week owner (Platinum Grande Ocean, Monarch and 3 bedroom Grand Chateau) with only one enrolled week, I am not sure I understand what you are suggesting. Can you help me understand why you think this. Inventory for DP is based on what is in the trust and what weeks are exchanged for DP. The competition for usage is only within points or weeks.
That's true however, there is some asynchronous availability. For some situations the points side has a slight advantage and in others, the weeks side is ahead. My information suggests that the entire season is opened up for potential availability when a week in that resort and season is elected for points. That puts even more pressure on the highest demand weeks within that season since weeks and points are competing head to head until all the days are gone that were either in the trust or elected for points in that season. For example let's say there were 10 weeks in the season in question and 10 units to keep it simple. Let's assume no trust owned weeks and everyone who owns those 100 weeks is enrolled. For sake of discussion let's make the first week the most in demand. Then 10 out of 100 weeks owners elect for points. In theory it's possible that those 10 units the first week could be reserved on points locking out the weeks owner from that week which is the most in demand in our example. Of course there are other limitations that make it essentially impossible for the difference to be as extreme as our example. Basically weeks owners who own multiple weeks and reserve ahead of 13 months out for consecutive will have first access for any week after the first one, then points, then 13 month owners reserving concurrently then theoretically at 12 months points and weeks owners should have equal access. Safeguards include that points can't reserve more within that season than the weeks given to points either by the trust or when elected for points plus the limitation of when inventory is released which shouldn't be more than half at 13 months out.

Convoluted I know but in reality the only way to make it exactly even would be to have the releases on the same day AND the weeks available for points to be the actual owned underlying week.
 

bazzap

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Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
I guess we are lucky, as there is no skim with Points allocation at Phuket Beach Club, except for Christmas / New Year and Chinese New Year which we never want anyway.
Apart from with Covid impact, where Points definitely offer more flexibility than with weeks, we ve yet to have a problem booking our home weeks in almost 20 years!
 

Superchief

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Except our owned week receives 4,225 points but with points, it takes >5,000 points to reserve the same unit and the same view. Fortunately (I suppose) as a couple we no longer need the 3 bedroom unit and often don’t use the extra space. It runs me wrong to own a 3 bedroom, but going forward the best I might be able to do is a 1 bedroom with a little over 1,000 points left over.

I think what really causes me grief is the thought that weeks owners, in some ways, take a back seat to points players. Then again, this is why we jumped on the opportunity to be elected weeks owners and why we’ve slowly expanded our ownership to chairman’s level as decent opportunities were offered. I still feel somewhat disrespected by MVC as a Marriott owner in that the original promise of a lifetime of vacations has devolved into a lifetime of vacations not for the dates of my choosing, but of the left over dates after my resort weeks have been picked over by owners who have been given a different promise. As a weeks owner and a points owner, I get a good view of those promises and both sides of the coin.

All these years down the road it looks to me as if points owners rule while weeks owners drool. We’re just lucky we’ve kept our options open and can play the game either way.

The difference to me is, with points we HAVE flexibility with our vacation plans, but with weeks we NEED to be flexible with our vacation plans. That’s NOT the Marriott promise that was sold to us in 2001.
At least with OP you receive a significant number of DC points for your week. I receive fewer points for a Oceana Palms Gold week than I get for Ocean Pointe Silver week even though Oceana Palms has much higher maintenance fees. I typically convert Ocean Pointe to DC points but try to use/exchange my Oceana Palms week. I wish I could get MVC to let me switch to a higher point value resort but they would force me to buy more points and spend a lot.
 

dougp26364

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Marriott Shadow Ridge
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Hilton Grand Vacation Club Las Vegas Blvd
Grand Colorado on Peak 8
Spinnaker French Quarter Resort Branson
Just curious, have you ever tried depositing your week in II and exchanging back in?

I could, but then I’d likely give up a 3 bedroom for a 2 bedroom and give up our ocean front view.
 
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