Starwood Explorer Hawaii time share problem

[toes2thnose42]

My spouse and I went to Maui in August to look at the Westin Ka'napali villas and resort on an invitation from Westin. We loved it but felt the timing wasn't right for us to buy at the time. They offered us another package for a lot more to come back for 7 nights to give it another try. We jumped on it. We tried reserving our room 6 months in advance and they are now telling us there are no available rooms for our dates. But, the website has available rooms for about the same price. I spoke to someone about this at the Starwood Vacation Ownership website and was told sorry, there is nothing I can do but offer you an upgrade for an additional $1200! I was also told to just reserve the room and pay for the week now and just use my Explorer package at another time.
Is this common practice for Starwood? I'm a Preferred Gold member and feel like my patronage is not appreciated. We certainly don't want to buy now but would like to take our family on vacation. We have spent $2800 for this package and don't want to travel until April 2014. How can the website have the same villas not owned available to the general public and not someone with an Exporer ?

 

[DeniseM]

Are you trying to reserve Easter week?

The online inventory belongs to Starwood and it is like hotel inventory - it's not timeshare owner inventory, and it's probably not available for promo reservations.

Also - SPG Gold does not apply at Starwood timeshares - that is a hotel program.

BTW - there is no good reason to buy from the developer - you can buy on the resale market for a fraction of the cost.

 

[LisaRex]

I'm sure that your Explorer package mentioned something about availability. If you have to travel in high season, which is basically anytime that kids are routinely out of school, then you have to call well before 6 months to get a shot at those dates. As DeniseM said, SVO cannot offer what it doesn't own. What you are seeing is SPG inventory, not SVO inventory.

I'm assuming that they offered to upgrade you to a 1 or 2 bdrm (from a studio) for an additional $1200? If that's the case, then that still may be a good deal vs what you'd pay to rent that same villa either from Starwood or from another owner. Maintenance fees in Hawaii are ~$2400/year and that doesn't include the purchase price. Rental rates for a 2 bdrm are $3500 and up, higher during high season.

Personally, I'd ask them to extend the current package another year so that I could better plan. If they can't do that, then I'm sure that there are tons of dates available and you'll have to work with them to find mutually agreeable dates. If summer weeks are all sold out, then consider booking a fall week and taking the kids out of school. If it helps, airfare and car rentals are much cheaper in low season (fall).

 

[czar]

I think the explorer packages are good for two years but only guarantee villa purchase pricing for one year.

If you read certain threads you'll see that owners of non-fixed weeks need to call to reserve at exactly 12 months to guarantee availability during certain time periods.

 

[triangulum33]

The Explorer Package's inventory is in a separate bucket from the rest of the resort. They only assign a certain amount of availability into that bucket and when its empty....

 

[DeniseM]

Just to clarify - what you can reserve with the Explorere Pkg. does not reflect what you can reserve as an owner.

However, even as an owner, you need to make your reservation at 12 mos. out from check-in, to guarantee your deeded view and get the highest priority for a good view.

For more info. about how Starwood works, please see the FAQ at the top of the forum.