Questions regarding selling Westin Ka'anapali with existing reservations?

[PamMo]

I guess more than anything, I'm just hoping for confirmation from Tuggers that Vistana/Marriott won't screw things up.

I'm selling a few of my WKORV/WKORVN units and they are heading to closing. I've talked with Owner Services about my existing reservations, and they tell me so long as everything is spelled out in the contracts, there won't be any problems. In the sales contracts, buyers' first use is in 2023, and I have confirmed reservations for February next year, which I was assured will stay in place for the new owners. I still have 2022 reservations for family who will be using two weeks in our OF units this November, but I worry that they will get there and the reservations will have vanished. Has anyone sold Vistana with existing reservations? Can you reassure me that everything goes smoothly?

 

[DavidnRobin]

I guess more than anything, I'm just hoping for confirmation from Tuggers that Vistana/Marriott won't screw things up.

I'm selling a few of my WKORV/WKORVN units and they are heading to closing. I've talked with Owner Services about my existing reservations, and they tell me so long as everything is spelled out in the contracts, there won't be any problems. In the sales contracts, buyers' first use is in 2023, and I have confirmed reservations for February next year, which I was assured will stay in place for the new owners. I still have 2022 reservations for family who will be using two weeks in our OF units this November, but I worry that they will get there and the reservations will have vanished. Has anyone sold Vistana with existing reservations? Can you reassure me that everything goes smoothly?

I bought OFD with a reservation already made and they changed the name to mine as part of the agreement.

I gave up our WSJ-VGV and put reservations in new Owners name. No issue, but these were fixed villas.

You could always ask @Syed - I am sure he deals with this all the time.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[PamMo]

Thanks, @DavidnRobin. Syed is handling the sales, and I’m very confident in him. I’m just hoping Vistana/Marriott doesn’t drop the ball somewhere. The reservations are all Home Resort reservations, not fixed week/units.

 

[SVOTransplant]

I’ve been on the purchasing end of a reservation four times, all with Syed. It’s great you went with Syed - he has lots of experience and will point you to the next step if you hit issues.

When it was a home resort reservation, it usually worked fine. I only ran into issues once when closing spanned the MF due date, and the resort cancelled the reservation because they didn’t open the envelope with the MF check in the closing packet for 6 weeks. Room was gone, I had no recourse. I found a different date.

When it was a SO reservation… it was a total nightmare. I got run around for about a month.

Chapter 1. The players.
On the backend, there’s a couple of players that don’t talk to each other:
- Title Desk - these folks only take email, takes three days to respond, and have a terrible attitude. Their general MO is “go away. You bought a resale, I hope you suffer”
- RoFR Desk - these folks are the ones who read and verify the contract
- Westin owner services - these folks are super warm and friendly, but can’t do anything against the notes of the title desk people.
- Marriott support - oooof. Did you know there’s a whole separate set of shadow reservations?


Chapter 2. The situation.
When a voi is used with SOs, it’s spent. On the backend, it locks the VOI down and says “this voi has no usage rights this year” If you try to argue you have a reservation, you’ll get treated as a scammer. It took me a while to realize you had to approach it from the “here’s a reservation. It’s actually mine. Please update.”

Then the cycle looks like this. Owner services will tell you only the title desk can enforce transfers. The title desk tells you RoFR reads contracts. RoFR tells you to go to owner services because they only do RoFR. After enough loops, and enough evidence, a sympathetic owner services agent will just change the reservation to your name. Now it looks like it will work.

But if you call the hotel and confirm (As Syed suggested, since they’re so inept), you’ll find that the Vistana booking fix is useless, because it’s the Marriott reservation that matters if you want to check in. Now, you’re in trouble because the loop you were stuck in, can’t touch the Marriott system. The Marriott person, can’t see any of the Vistana stuff. I got stuck here.

Chapter 3. Marriott to the rescue.
So apparently, Marriott has a super contact line. customer.advocacy@mvwc.com - I emailed this address with my plight. It was the weekend, and I got an immediate response of “it’s the weekend, I’ll take care of it first thing Monday.” Then, first thing Monday, it was all fixed.

o.m.g. I’m so glad Marriott is able to fix its own ineptitude with these super customer service agents. I actually walked out feeling better about Marriott.