I'm surprised by all the people willing to pay this much to enroll their post 2010 weeks. I'm hearing the cheapest to enroll is 2500 points for just over 10 per point. Isn't that at least $25,000 (wow) that is a ton of money just for the flexibility of points. Is that really worth it? It seems I could rent many really nice vacations for that kind of price.
If I would have been offered this option for around the $2-3,000 range I'd consider it, but $25,000 seems like way too much.
How many tuggers are really planning on doing this?
I'm surprised right along with you, and not by "only" the money required. It would be one thing, albeit a ridiculously expensive thing, if the cost was simply an enrollment fee. But it's not. It's a purchase of Trust Points that requires an ongoing financial commitment in the form of annual MF's; it's an additional ownership on top of the enrolled Weeks.
I asked somewhere upthread, "how many of us would have enrolled at the outset if these were the terms then?" Thinking back the answer would have been a resounding, "a few if any!" I still don't think this is anything worth writing home about but GregT seems to think that it will be a successful promotion so I'm thinking I must be missing something.
I don't currently have any post-6/2010 weeks with which to take advantage of this deal, but I can say unequivocally if we did have any such weeks, we would seriously consider a deal like this. Here's why:
We only have 3375 points right now from a small number of Trust points and an enrolled Barony week. While that is adequate for the next year or two, once our youngest heads to college and frees us from the school calendar, we'll likely need more. My dilemma going forward is how to add those points for a reasonable price.
With the current special offer, when you factor in the cost of the Trust points (with the discounted price) plus the enrolled points, the net cost/point of the new points (Trust points + the newly enrolled points) can wind up being in the $4-$5/point range (or less) with a reasonably high point-value week. No way we could touch that with resale points + junk fees or another hybrid bundle.
From what I've seen, if we already owned a decent point value post-6/2010 week, this new offer would likely be the cheapest way to get to Executive level and the 1+ day 13 month booking privilege.
We don't do direct owner rentals on Redweek, etc, so renting accommodations on Marriott.com or other similar travel sites can get expensive fast. I also much prefer points as a way to travel to a variety of destinations versus the weeks trading game. While renting points is a viable option for us if we don't find a way to own more at price we can justify, if I could acquire a batch of points at $4/point or so, I would be hard pressed to pass that up since that would give us full flexibility to bank/borrow whereas rented points don't offer that. It also would offer some insurance against any future Marriott policy changes that devalue point rentals (Plus we would pick up the 1+ day 13 month ability).
I believe deeded weeks are still superior to points for going to the same resort frequently, and we may add a deeded week in the next couple years for that specific purpose. But if I could later enroll that week with an offer similar to this one, it would be hard to pass up. If I were sitting here today with a Post-2010 Gold Grande Ocean OF week worth 3850 points or so and could enroll that by spending $27K for 2500 points, I would be adding 6350 points to my ownership.
